Bible translations
By the year 1000, a number of other translations were added (in some cases partial), including Old Nubian, Sogdian, Arabic and Slavonic languages, among others.
Examples of major variants are the endings of Mark, the Pericope Adulteræ, the Comma Johanneum, and the Western version of Acts.
[7] Jerome also reports in his preface to St Matthew that it was originally composed "in Hebrew letters in Judea" not in Greek[8] and that he saw and copied one from the Nazarene sect.
The exact provenance, authorship, source languages and collation of the four Gospels is unknown but subject to much academic speculation and disputed methods.
The Talmud ascribes the translation effort to Ptolemy II Philadelphus (r. 285–246 BC), who allegedly hired 72 Jewish scholars for the purpose, for which reason the translation is commonly known as the Septuagint (from the Latin septuaginta, "seventy"), a name which it gained in "the time of Augustine of Hippo" (354–430 AD).
[9][10] The Septuagint (LXX), the very first translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, later became the accepted text of the Old Testament in the Christian church and the basis of its canon.
[2] Christian translations of the Old Testament also tend to be based upon the Hebrew, though some denominations prefer the Septuagint (or may cite variant readings from both).
Bible translations incorporating modern textual criticism usually begin with the Masoretic text, but also take into account possible variants from all available ancient versions.
[14] The Bible was translated into Gothic (an early East Germanic language) in the 4th century by a group of scholars, possibly under the supervision of Ulfilas (Wulfila).
The Codex Vaticanus dates to c. 325–350, and is missing only 21 sentences or paragraphs in various New Testament books: it is one of the four great uncial codices.
Latin and its early Romance dialects were widely spoken as the primary or secondary language throughout Western Europe, including Britain even in the 700s and 800s.
By the end of the eighth century, Church of the East monasteries (so-called Nestorians) had translated the New Testament and Psalms (at least, the portions needed for liturgical use) from Syriac to Sogdian,[21] the lingua franca in Central Asia of the Silk Road,[22] which was an Eastern Iranian language with Chinese loanwords, written in letters and logograms derived from Aramaic script.
These included passages from the Ten Commandments and the Pentateuch, which he prefixed to a code of laws he promulgated around this time.
The arrival of the mendicant preaching orders in the 12th century saw individual books being translated with commentary, in Italian dialects.
[26] In England, "about the middle of the fourteenth century—before 1361—the Anglo-Normans possessed an independent and probably complete translation of the whole of the Old Testament and the greater part of the New.
The provincial synods of Toulouse (1229) and Tarragona (1234) temporarily outlawed possession of some vernacular renderings, in reaction to the Cathar and Waldensian heresies, in South France and Catalonia.
New translation efforts were regulated in England by the provincial Oxford Synod in 1408 under church law to require the approval of a bishop; possession of material that contained Lollard material (such as the so-called General Prologue found in a few Wycliffite Bibles) was also illegal by English state law, in response to Lollard uprisings.
The invention of printing saw complete Catholic Bibles produced in German (1466 and after; multiple), Valencian Catalan (1478), Tuscan (1471), Venetian (1471) and Dutch (1477).
[24] From the late 1300s, the Brethren of the Common Life encouraged their laypeople to read the Gospels they would hear at church at home beforehand, in the vernacular.
He was an irenical, anti-ceremonial Catholic, and his ad fontes preference for the Greek manuscripts as well as the Latin Vulgate and Patristic quotations led some traditionalist theologians to view him with suspicion.
The first complete Dutch Bible, partly based on the existing portions of Luther's translation, was printed in Antwerp in 1526 by Jacob van Liesvelt.
[32] The first printed edition with critical apparatus (noting variant readings among the manuscripts) was produced by the printer Robert Estienne of Paris in 1550.
Since the launch of Vision 2025, Bible translation efforts have increased dramatically, in large part due to the technology that is now available.
Due to the increase, at current rates, Bible translation will begin in every language by 2038, thus being 112 years faster.
[1] Modern critical editions incorporate ongoing scholarly research, including discoveries of Greek papyrus fragments from near Alexandria, Egypt, that date in some cases within a few decades of the original New Testament writings.
Their apparatus includes the result of votes among scholars, ranging from certain {A} to doubtful {E}, on which variants best preserve the original Greek text of the New Testament.
Among these, some argue that the Byzantine tradition contains scribal additions, but these later interpolations preserve the orthodox interpretations of the biblical text—as part of the ongoing Christian experience—and in this sense are authoritative.
Inside the Bible-translation community, these are commonly categorized as: though modern linguists, such as Bible scholar Dr. Joel Hoffman, disagree with this classification.
Historian David Lawton notes that the Middle Ages in the West, even up to the late period, "There is little or no sense that the Bible, even if seen as single or whole, should necessarily stand alone and self-sufficient.
[45] A number of Sacred Name Bibles (e.g., the Sacred Scriptures Bethel Edition) have been published that are even more rigorous in transliterating the tetragrammaton using Semitic forms to translate it in the Old Testament and also using the same Semitic forms to translate the Greek word Theos (God) in the New Testament—usually Yahweh, Elohim or some other variation.
