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Jan 11, 2023 · Arguably the most significant set of problems has to do with the text that the translators were translating. The brief reality is that in the early 17 th century, Greek editions of the New Testament were based on very few and highly inferior manuscripts. Only after the King James was translated did scholars begin to become aware of the ...
Jun 9, 2009 · Baptist writer William P. Grady, in a chapter titled the “Synagogue of Satan,” writes, “The average Christ-ian is unaware that the manuscripts from which the modern ‘Bibles’ have been translated are Egyptian in origin; more specifically, Alexandrian.
17. The King James Version or Authorized Version as it was originally known, was translated by a group of 47 scholars. It was actually a thought-for-thought translation, rather than word-for-word translation. The idea is that they tried to take the original meaning of the text (not just the individual word) and translate that into the (then ...
This traditional Hebrew text, called the Masoretic Text (or MT), serves as the source of most Bible translations of the Old Testament, including the KJV. [6] Scribes copied biblical texts by hand for generations. Consequently, changes to the text crept in by nature of imperfect copying [7] as well as by intention. [8]
- John Wycliffe
- William Tyndale
- The Coverdale Bible
- Matthew’s Bible
- The Great Bible
- The Geneva Bible
- The Bishops’ Bible
Background
Picture, if you can, what it would be like to be alive in fourteenth century England. You are most likely a peasant, a farmer who toils to bring in an adequate harvest for the landowner. Like everyone else, you consider yourself a Christian, yet you struggle to understand God’s will. In the middle of this century, in 1348, the Bubonic Plague or Black Death hit England, and at least one out of four of your friends and relatives were dead within a few months. One out of four! Your grief for you...
Text
The text that Wycliffe and his associates translated from was the LatinVulgate rather than the original Greek and Hebrew. Now, a word should be said about the Latin Vulgate because this will be important as we look at the English Bible the rest of this week. The Vulgatewas the official Bible in western Europe from the late fourth century on. It was a translation that St. Jerome had made, by the order of Pope Damasus. And since Greek had begun to die out in western Europe after Constantine mov...
Translation
The Wycliffe Bible went through two editions—one in 1382 and in c. 1395, the second by Wycliffe’s assistant, John Purvey.11 And although Purvey’s revision was a significant improvement, one could hardly call either version a masterpiece of English prose. But the first edition was slavishly literal—even to the point of retaining the Latin word order when it made no sense in English!12 The Wycliffe Bible illustrates on every page that a ‘word-for-word’ translation is not necessarily an accurate...
Background
No new English translations occurred between Wycliffe’s and Tyndale’s. One hundred and thirty years passed without progress. A part of the reason was no doubt that the 1408 British law against any Bible in English was still in effect. It would be risky enough just to make a copy of Wycliffe’s Bible! Meanwhile, there were encouraging signs in the rest of Europe. Italian, French, Spanish, and Dutch Bibles appeared in the 1400s, most likely inspired by Wycliffe’s pioneering efforts. The stage wa...
Text
Although Tyndale consulted Luther’s German translation and the Latin Vulgate to help him over the hard places, his translation of the NT was based on the Greek text. He used primarily Erasmus’ third edition.24
Translation
The 1534 edition was a major departure from 1526. It was wonderful English and a lucid translation for its day. Tyndale knew the biblical languages better than any Englishman at the time,25and he knew English better than most. He turned good Greek into good English.
The Coverdale Bible (1535) was the work of Myles Coverdale, Tyndale’s assistant. He did not translate directly from the Greek and Hebrew, but did use Luther’s German translation, more than one Latin text, and Tyndale’s OT portions. And he did complete the whole Bible—and thus Coverdale’s became the first complete Bible printed in English. It was Co...
In 1537, Matthew’s Bible appeared. This Bible was the work of John Rogers, whose pen name was Thomas Matthew. He combined Coverdale’s OT with Tyndale’s NT.28 But Rogers also added about 2000 notes, many of them controversial, making this the first revision of Tyndale’s NT. This Bible is sometimes called the “Wife-Beater’s Bible” because the margina...
Matthew’s and Coverdale’s Bibles both had Henry VIII’s permission to be printed. Stimulating their popularity but also instigating their demise, in September, 1538 the king ordered an English Bible to be placed in every church. The churches began to use the Matthew Bible because it was a large folio version suitable for public reading, while Coverd...
When Edward VI, Henry’s son, became king, the Reformation was back in swing. But his reign did not last long. In 1553 Mary Tudor, Edward’s sister, ascended the throne.34She reversed Edward’s Protestant advances, returning the country to Catholicism. And she began to systematically burn both Bibles and Protestants. Many Protestant scholars fled from...
“The instant success of the Geneva Bible made it impossible to go on using the Great Bible for reading in church; its deficiencies became all too obvious in the light of the new version.”39 But the Geneva Bible clearly could not be used in ecclesiastical settings: it was too Calvinistic for the English clergy and was so popular among the lower clas...
Mar 25, 2016 · 0. In the sense that it is considered by some to be a God-inspired translation, the Greek Septuagint may be relevant to your question. It was, as you are probably aware, a translation into Greek of the Old Testament Scriptures, undertaken by Hellenic Jews in Alexandria in the 2nd century BC.
Apr 21, 2011 · Believing the King James Version of the Bible to be the only authentic, historically and divinely preserved revelation of God is an attempt to achieve such certainty.” The King James-only proponents, as exemplified at Charity Baptist Church, believe a perfect God not only inspired a perfect Bible but also preserved a perfect Bible, he explained.
