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The earliest translation of the Hebrew Bible is the Old Greek (OG), the translation made in Alexandria, Egypt, for the use of the Greek-speaking Jewish community there. At first, just the Torah was translated, in the third century B.C.E.; the rest of the biblical books were translated later.
Jul 2, 2024 · Photo: IAA. For centuries, Bible scholars examined two ancient texts to elucidate the original language of the Bible: the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint. The Masoretic Text is a traditional Hebrew text finalized by Jewish scholars around 1000 C.E.
- A Cultural Shift
- The Magical Writing of Priests and Kings
- The Spread of Literacy and Origins of Biblical Literature
- Dark Years of Exile
- The Text Becomes The Teacher
In writing How the Bible Became a Book, I began with a different question than scholars usually ask. Namely, why did the Bible become a book at all? This question began to haunt me more and more as I studied the archeology of ancient Palestine and the early history of Hebrew writing. Scholars agree that early Israel was an oral society of pastorali...
In ancient Palestine, writing was a restricted and expensive technology. Writing was controlled by the government and manipulated by the priests. Writing was seen as a gift from the gods. It was not used to canonize religious practice, but rather to engender religious awe. Writing was magical. It was powerful. It was the guarded knowledge of politi...
The invention of alphabetic writing was a pivotal development in the history of writing, but it alone did not encourage the spread of writing beyond the palace and the temple. Recent discoveries at Wadi el-Hol in Egypt date the invention of the alphabet back to 2000 B.C., and for centuries after, writing likely remained the province of the elite. S...
The composition of biblical literature continued into the period of the Babylonian exile (586-539 B.C.), after the Babylonians overthrew the Assyrians in the north and invaded the Kingdom of Judah. However, it was hardly a time when biblical literature could flourish. The exile resulted in a massive depopulation of the land of Israel. Archeological...
By the time of the fall of Babylon in 539 B.C., and the return of the Jewish exiles to Palestine, the core of the Hebrew Bible was completed. The very language of Scripture changed as society became more textualized. Most tellingly, the Hebrew word torah, which originally meant "teaching, instruction," increasingly began to refer to a written text,...
Jul 9, 2019 · The Bible was written over a period of more than 1,500 years, on three continents (Asia, Europe, and Africa) by more than 40 authors (some authors wrote more than one book of the Bible), who wrote in three different languages: The Old Testament was written primarily in Hebrew with some Aramaic.
Read the history of the Bible - from early manuscripts, through the invention of the printing press, to the many versions and over 2500 language translations that we have today.
Nov 10, 2023 · In a world where the Bible has been published in over 1200 languages, it's astounding to reflect on its ancient origins and development. In this article, we'll unveil the linguistic origins of both the Hebrew and the Christian Bible, exploring their unique features and significance.
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The Reformation in Europe notably led to translations of the Bible into the people’s common languages so that ordinary people, not just clergymen, could read and understand it. Further, with the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany around 1440 just prior to the Reformation, Bibles could be affordably mass printed.
