
“By the seventh month the people of Israel
were all settled in their towns. On the first day
of that month they all assembled in Jerusalem,
in the square just inside the Water Gate. They
asked Ezra, the priest and scholar of the Law
which the LORD had given Israel through
Moses, to get the book of the Law. So Ezra
brought it to the place where the people had
gathered---men, women, and the children who
were old enough to understand. There in the
square by the gate he read the Law to them
from dawn until noon, and they all listened
attentively.” (Nehemiah 8:1-3)
 “They
gave an oral translation of God’s Law
and explained it so that the people could
understand it. When the people heard what
the Law required (when they understood the
meaning), they were so moved that they
began to cry. So Nehemiah, who was the
governor, Ezra, the priest and scholar of the
Law, and the Levites who were explaining
the Law told all the people, ‘This day is holy
to the LORD your God, so you are not to
mourn or cry.’” (Nehemiah 8:8-9)
What is “the Bible”?
66
Books:
 39 Old Testament books –
Hebrew, some Aramaic
 27 New Testament books –
Greek
“The Bible” in Jesus’ day
 The
Greek translation of the Hebrew OT the Septuagint, LXX (285 – 246 B.C.)
 The first translation of the Hebrew
 “All Scripture is inspired by God…” (1 Timothy
3:16)
 All OT quotes in the NT are from the LXX
 To
this day it is the authoritative biblical text
of the OT for the Greek Orthodox church
 Christian Bible accepted the LXX
sequencing, not the Hebrew
“The Bible” in Jesus’ day
 Samaritans
 Lived in the former northern kingdom
 Only considered the 5 books of Moses
(the Pentateuch) to be “the Bible”
 “…he will send you a prophet like me
from among your own people, and you
are to obey him.” (Deuteronomy 18:15)
“The Bible” in Jesus’ day
 Sadducees
 Only
considered the 5 books of
Moses (the Pentateuch) to be “the
Bible”
 Did not believe in the resurrection or
angels, etc.
“The Bible” in Jesus’ day
 Essenes
 A collection of the books of Moses,
the prophets, Psalms, and
apocryphal works
 Dead Sea scrolls
“The Bible” in Jesus’ day
 Pharisees
 Essentially held to the same 39
books of the OT as modern
Christianity
The Catholic Bible
 Includes
the apocrypha
 Considered “2nd class” books
(“deuterocanonical”) but yet….
 What happens to “the soul” at the
resurrection? (“The Book of Wisdom”)
Muratorian fragment (canon)
Discovered in Milan (1730’s)
 Dated late 2nd century (170 A.D.)

 A list of all the works that were accepted as
canonical.
 Added the 4 gospels, and the rest of the NT
(except Hebrews, James, Peter)
 Rejected the gnostic writings
 Accepted certain apocryphal writings (Book
of Wisdom, etc.)
Eusebius canon (bishop of Caesarea)
 4th
century (325 A.D.)
 27 books of the NT
 Greek Septuagint (OT)
 Apophryphal OT writings
 Athanasius
of Alexandria
 Eliminated apocryphal books (367
A.D.)
 Specified the 27 books of the NT
 Council
of Carthage (397 A.D.)
Manuscripts
We have no original composition of any
part of the Bible!
 Copies of copies of copies of copies
 Masoretes added vowels between 500700 A.D.
 Chapters added 1240 A.D.
 Verses added 1551 A.D.

Ancient versions






A tribute to the success and spread of Christianity!
Aramaic Targums
Arabic (10th century)
Syriac (Syria, Iraq, southeast Turkey) – a branch of Aramaic
Coptic (Egypt)
Latin (Western church)










Gothic (Eastern Germanic people) - extinct
Slavonic
Anglosaxon (7th, 8th century)
Frankish
Greek (Eastern church)
Armenian (Black sea, turkey, Syria)
Georgian (North of Armenia – Black/Caspian sea)
Ethiopian
Persian
Chinese
The Latin Vulgate (405 AD)
Multiple very poor quality Latin
translations pre-Jerome
 Jerome (340-422 AD)

Jerome
A scholar of Greek, Latin, and some
training in Hebrew
 Translated in Latin from the Greek and
Hebrew
 Did not want to include the apocryphal
works
 For that time, a great translation

For almost 1,000 years (6th-16th century) the
Vulgate was the recognized text of
Scripture
 Justification
 Sanctification
 Expiation
 Propitiation
 Salvation
 Reconciliation
Jerome to his detractors
“two-legged asses”
 “yelping dogs”
 People who “think that ignorance is
identical with holiness”

Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085)

“For it is clear to those who reflect upon
it that not without reason has is pleased
Almighty God that holy scripture should
be a secret in certain places lest, if it
were plainly apparent to all men,
perchance it would be little esteemed
and be subject to disrespect; or it might
be falsely understood by those of
mediocre learning, and lead to error.”
English Bible pre-KJV
 John Wycliffe (1330-1384)
 Anticipated the reformation
 The Bible is the sole criterion of doctrine, not
the church or the pope
 The authority of the pope is not found in
scripture
 Handwritten translation from the Latin
○ 1382 – literal and “wooden”
○ 1388 – more readable
○ The only English Bible until 1526
 Wycliffe
Bible:
 Jesus spoke Aramiac  Greek
 Latin  English

About 180 copies survive
The Reformation
 Constantinople
fell (1453 A.D.),
Greek scholars came west
 Plato
The Reformation
 Printing
press, Guttenberg (1398-
1468)
 First printed Hebrew OT – 1488
 First published Greek NT – 1516
The Bible translated from the original
languages – “the peoples book”










French Bible (1530)
Spanish Bible (1569)
Dutch Bible (1637)
Swedish (~1600)
Czech (1579)
Finnish (1598)
Hungarian (1541)
Polish (1541)
German (1534)
English (1525)
The reformation
 Tension
between scholar and priest
 The scholar had better versions
 Tension
between priest and the
common person
 The common person had better
versions
 The
authority of medieval
Catholicism challenged
The reformation
Wealth/prosperity of the church vs. the
humility of Christ
 Sacraments
 Indulgences
 Need for a priest/saint “in between”
 Purgatory
 Monasticism
 Transubstantiation

German Bible – Luther (1534)
From the Greek and Hebrew
 “Sola scriptura” (the Bible alone)
 Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation of
lesser quality
 Preface to the NT (1522) – James is “a letter
written in straw”
 Revelation – “I can in no way detect that the
Holy Spirit produced it”
 Rejected all forms of allegory as a means of
understanding scripture

English Bible’s pre-KJV
 William
Tyndale
 THE father of the English Bible
 Educated at Oxford and Cambridge in Greek
and Hebrew
 English version, based on the Greek and
Hebrew
 NT completed in 1525
 “If
God spare my life, ere many
years, I will cause a boy that
driveth the plough to know more
of the Scripture than thou dost.”
 Tyndale
– “A great linguist!”
 “Tush, ye shall not die.” (Genesis
3:4)
 “The Lorde was with Joseph, and he
was a luckie felowe.” (Genesis 39:2)
 “80% or more of the English Bible
down to the Revised Version has
been estimated to be his…”
Toxic foot notes
 “666” – clearly the pope
 “Oh, abominable pope with all his
idols.”
 Breaking someone’s neck: “This is a
good text for the pope.”
 “Lord, open the king of
England’s eyes”

Miles Coverdale (1535) – first printed
edition
 NT based on Tyndale’s translation
 OT based on the Vulgate

Matthew’s Bible (1537)
 Pseudonym: John Rogers
 Tyndale (and Coverdale) revision
 Burned alive in 1555 – “Rogers died with such
composure that it might have been a wedding”


Richard Taverner’s Bible (1539)
The Great Bible (1539) – the largest Bible
(15”x10”)
 A revision of the Coverdale and the Matthew’s
Bible

“Long live the King!”
 Edmund Beck’s Bibles (1549, 1551)
 “In the same way you husbands must live
with your wives with the proper
understanding that they are more
delicate than you. Treat them with
respect...” (1 Peter 3:7 – GN)
 “And if she be not obedient and healpeful
unto hym: endeavoureth to beate the
feare of God into her heade…”
The Geneva Bible (1560)
 Persecution in England, led to
Protestant’s fleeing to Geneva,
Switzerland
 The names of the translators were
hidden (William Whittingham)
 From 1560 to 1616 a new edition was
published every year!
○ The Bible of Shakespeare, John Bunyan,
Mayflower captain, Puritan pilgrims, King
James
 The most popular English Bible for
almost 200 years!
The Geneva Bible (1560)
 The first English Bible to have
chapters and verses
 “Breeches” Bible – “They sewed
figge-tree leaves together and made
themselves breeches” (Genesis 3:7)
 Marginal notes:
○ “the angel of the bottomless pit” = the
pope
○ King James decision in 1604 for a new
translation
 The Bishop’s Bible (1558)
 Revisers were bishop’s
 Displaced the Great Bible in churches
 Less popular than the Geneva
 Rheims-Douay Bible (1582-1610)
 An English version for Catholics
 A translation from the Latin Vulgate**
(“KJV”)
 Footnotes
○ Protestant “hereticks”
○ 666
 “You
cannot be a slave of two masters;
you will hate one and love the other;
you will be loyal to one and despise the
other. You cannot serve both God and
money.” (Matthew 6:24 – GN)

Footnote: “Two religions, God and Baal, Christ
and Calvin, Masse and Communion, the
Catholike Church and Heretical Conventicales.”
The King James Bible (1611)
1604 – Committee of 50 “learned men” (the model
to follow)
 Lancelot Andrews – “had he been present at the
tower of Babel, he could have served as interpreter
general.”
 Rules:

 “The Bishops’ Bible was to be followed with ‘as little
altered as the truth of the original will permit’ and to
include other translations – ‘Tindoll’s Matthew’s,
Coverdale’s, Whitechurch’s (the Great Bible), and
Geneva.”
 Marginal notes only to explain the Greek and Hebrew!
 Italics used
Preface
The KJV is a REVISION, not a new translation
(although they did have the Greek and Hebrew)
 The KJV is really a revision of the Bishop
Bible....which was a revision of the Great Bible,
which was a revision of Coverdale and Tyndale.
 The "credit" of the KJV in terms of vocabulary
should go to Tyndale, the expression and
harmony to Coverdale, the scholarship and
accuracy to the Geneva Bible.

 The
first printed version of the KJV
contained about one error for every
10 pages - some of these errors, due
to printing, persist in the current KJV
today.
 Matthew 23:34 “Ye blind guides, which
strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel”
(KJV) should have been printed, “strain
out a gnat.”
 1631 printed edition of Exodus 20:14:
"Thou shalt commit adultery"!
 “Ask,
and it shall be given you; seek,
and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be
opened unto you: For every one that
asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh
findeth; and to him that knocketh it
shall be opened.” (Matthew 7:7,8 –
KJV)
 “Our Father which art in Heaven,
Hallowed be thy name…” (Matthew
6:9 - KJV)

Weakness:
 The textual basis for the KJV is inadequate.
 NT: Textus Receptus (Erasmus of Roterdam)
– 1469-1536
○ Mediocre manuscripts, the earliest from the
10th century!
○ Erasmus did not have a complete Greek NT
text (Revelation) – using the Latin Vulgate he
finished it into Greek!!
 OT: A partially corrupt Erasmus Greek text
○ Codux Alexandrinus (5th century) not available
Many errors in the book of Job, Isaiah
 But, the best Bible to date

Weakness:
Knowledge of Hebrew largely derived from
the Bible
 Less knowledge of the Greek
 The English language has changed:
 “Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no
means come out thence, till thou hast paid
the uttermost farthing.” (Matthew 5:26 – KJV)

“Lest haply if they of Macedonia
come with me, and find you
unprepared, we (that we say not, ye)
should be ashamed in this same
confident boasting.” (2 Corinthians 9:4
– KJV)
 “From which some having swerved
have turned aside unto vain
jangling…” (1 Timothy 4:6 – KJV)

 “And
Jonathan stripped
himself…to his girdle.” (1 Samuel
18:4 – KJV)
 ERV
(1881)
 ASV (1901)
 RSV (1952)
 NASB (1963 – 1995)
 NKJV (1982)
 NRSV (1990)
“To many people, the KJV sounds like the Bible
because it is different than our modern English.
It is old and therefore seems to be
authoritative…and other Bible’s just don’t
sound right…
 “Most Bible translators greatly respect the KJV
for what it is and what it was. But the KJV can’t
be used in modern translation work for the
simple reason that its language and its text are
out of date.” (Essential Guide to Bible Versions,
Philip Comfort, pages 159, 160)

Between the KJV and the RV (1870)
 Private
versions:
 Edward Harwood’s NT (1768)
 Charles Thomson’s Bible (1808)
 Noah Webster’s Bible (1833)
○ Found 150 words and phrases in the
KJV to be erroneous or misleading.
Almost all used by the RV.
 Julia E. Smith’s Bible (1876)
The hunt for older/better
manuscripts
– “the Greek manuscripts
had shown beyond question that the KJV
was based upon a Greek text that
contained the accumulated errors of
fifteen centuries of manuscript copying.”
(The Bible in Translation, pg. 100 –
Metzger)
 Today, 5,000 Greek NT manuscripts that
date back prior to the 5th century!
 Mid-1800’s
Constantin Von Tischendorf
 St.
Catherine’s Monastery (1844)
 43 leaves in the trash - - virtually an
entire Greek translation of the NT
 The entire Old and New Testament
dated as early as 340 AD
 In the British Museum since 1933
P52 (1920)
P52
The Oldest known fragment of the NT – 125
A.D.
 John 18:31-33; 37,38 – “Are you the King of
the Jews?... I was born and came into the
world for this one purpose, to speak about
the truth….What is truth?”
 Shot down several theories!

Dead Sea scrolls – 1947,1948
Scrolls found in a cave by the Dead Sea, dated
100 BC – 100 AD (? 70AD)
 1,000 years earlier than any of the Masoretic
manuscripts!
 Every OT book except Esther is represented,
LXX, Targums of the OT…
 Surprisingly few differences from the Masoretic
manuscripts, despite 1,000 years of copying! –
“This shows that Jewish scribes for over a
millennium copied one form of the text with
extreme fidelity.”

 “No
one has seen God at any time.
The only begotten Son, who is in the
bosom of the Father, He has
declared Him.” (John 1:18 – NKJV)
 “No one has ever seen God. The only
Son, who is the same as God and is
at the Father's side, he has made
him known.” (John 1:18 – GN)
 KJV
still dominated
 English Revised Version (18701895)
 “And they did eat, and were all filled;
and there was taken up that which
remained over to them of broken
pieces, twelve baskets.” (Luke 9:17)
 American
(1901)
Standard Version
NKJV (1982)
 Updated
language but still….
 “day of his espousals” (Song of Songs
3:11)
 “dandled” (Isaiah 66:12)
 Inferior
edition of the Greek text

“In these lay a great multitude of sick
people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for
the moving of the water. For an angel went
down at a certain time into the pool and
stirred up the water; then whoever stepped
in first, after the stirring of the water, was
made well of whatever disease he had. Now
a certain man was there who had an
infirmity thirty-eight years.” (John 5:3-5 –
NKJV)
 “Few textual scholars today would accept the
authenticity of any portion of vv. 3b–4, for they
are not found in the earliest and best witnesses.”
Biblical Studies Press. 2003; 2003. The NET
Bible Notes .
Modern speech versions

Discovery of large numbers of Greek papyri
 “It became clear that the NT documents were written in
a plain, simple style to meet the needs of ordinary men
and women. Should they not then be translated into the
same kind of English?” (The Bible in Translation, pg.
105, Metzger)

The Twentieth Century NT (1901,1904)
 “Drink ye all of it.” (KJV, RV)
 “Drink from it, all of you.”



Weymouth’s NT in Modern Speech (1903)
Moffatt’s Translation of the Bible (1913,1924-5)
Smith and Goodspeed’s American Translation
(1923,1927)
 “I
have said all this to you in
figures, but a time is coming when
I shall not do so any longer, but I
will tell you plainly about the
Father. When that time comes you
will ask as my followers, and I do
not promise to intercede with the
Father for you for the Father loves
you himself…” (John 16:25,26 Goodspeed)


Revised Standard Version (1952)
New Jerusalem Bible (1966)
 The first Catholic Bible in English translated from the
Greek and Hebrew

New English Bible (1970)
 Asphodel, lapis, lazuli, panniers, reck, ruffled bustard,
runnels of water, and stook

New Revised Standard Version (1990)
 Revision of the ASV, using best Hebrew and Greek
sources
 “…the most up-to-date textual studies of the NT”
(Essential Guide to Bible Versions, Comfort, page
175)
 New International Version (1978)
 Somewhere in between a “literal” translation
and a free, modern-speech edition
 Since 1987 has outsold the KJV
 “I gave your ancestors no commands about
burnt offerings or any other kinds of sacrifices
when I brought them out of Egypt.” (Jeremiah
7:22 – GN)
 “For when I brought your forefathers out of
Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give
them commands about burnt offerings and
sacrifices…” (Jeremiah 7:22 – NIV)
 New American
Standard Bible
(1971,1995)
 “Literal” translation
 J.B. Phillip’s Version (1972)
 “Of all modern English translations of the
NT epistles, this is one of the best –
perhaps actually the best – for the
ordinary reader.” (The English Bible,
pg.223, Bruce)

“If I speak with the eloquence of men and of
angels, but have no love, I become no more than
blaring brass or crashing cymbal. If I have the gift
of foretelling the future and hold in my mind not
only all human knowledge but the very secrets of
God, and if I also have that absolute faith which
can move mountains, but have no love, I amount
to nothing at all. If I dispose of all that I possess,
yes, even if I give my own body to be burned, but
have no love, I achieve precisely nothing. This
love of which I speak is slow to lose patience - it
looks for a way of being constructive. It is not
possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor
does it cherish inflated ideas of its own
importance. Love has good manners and does
not pursue selfish advantage.

It is not touchy. It does not keep account of
evil or gloat over the wickedness of other
people. On the contrary, it is glad with all
good men when truth prevails. Love knows
no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust,
no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything.
It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands
when all else has fallen. For if there are
prophecies they will be fulfilled and done
with, if there are ‘tongues’ the need for them
will disappear, if there is knowledge it will be
swallowed up in truth. For our knowledge is
always incomplete and our prophecy is
always incomplete, and when the complete
comes, that is the end of the incomplete.

When I was a little child I talked and felt and
thought like a little child. Now that I am a man my
childish speech and feeling and thought have no
further significance for me. At present we are men
looking at puzzling reflections in a mirror. The time
will come when we shall see reality whole and
face to face! At present all I know is a little fraction
of the truth, but the time will come when I shall
know it as fully as God now knows me! In this life
we have three great lasting qualities - faith, hope
and love. But the greatest of them is love.” (1
Corinthians 13:1-13, JB Phillips).
Easy to read translations (ABS)
 The
Good News Bible (1976)
 “The GNB is not a word-for-word translation.
Instead it adopts the principle…called
‘dynamic/functional equivalence’”
 Stresses the clear meaning of each passage
 Gone are the Latin words
 The
Contemporary English Bible (1995)
 Directly from the best available original texts
 Designed for “early youth”
Paraphrase Translations
“Free rendering or amplification of a passage,
expression of its sense in other words.”
 Living Bible (1971)

 Paraphrase of the ASV into simple English
 Mid-1970’s – 46% of all Bible sales in the USA
 “The words of Amos, who was among the herdsmen of
Tekoa…” (ASV)
 “Amos was a herdsman living in the village of Tekoa.
All day long he sat on the hillsides watching the sheep,
keeping them from straying.” (LB)

New Living Translation (1996)
 Dynamic/functional equivalence rather than
paraphrase
 Reading level junior-high student
Paraphrase translations
Paraphrase Translations
 The Message (2000)
 “This version of the NT in a contemporary
idiom keeps the language of the message
current and fresh and understandable in the
same language in which we do our shopping,
talk with our friends, worry about world affairs,
and teach our children their table manners.
The goal is not to render a word-for-word
conversion of Greek into English, but rather to
convert the tone, the rhythm, the events, the
ideas, into the way we actually think and
speak.” (introduction, page 7)

Does not choose simple English words, but powerpacked words to convey the meaning
 Chagrined, embryonic, resplendent

“It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to
get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap
sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional
garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness;
trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness;
cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied
wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be
loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded
and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of
depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and
uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I
could go on.” (Galatians 5:19-21 – The Message)

New Century Version (1991)
 Readable down to 3rd grade level

GOD’S Word (1995)
 “Natural equivalence”
○ Avoid the extremes of formal equivalence
(literal), but the errors of dynamic/functional
equivalence (inaccuracy due to
oversimplification)
 “For God has done what the law, weakened by
the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son
in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with
sin, he condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans
8:3 – NRSV)
 “But God sent his Son to have a human nature
as sinners have and to pay for sin.” (GOD’S
Word)
 “…to be an offering to pay for sin…” (NCV)
 “…for sin” (KJV)
 “by giving His Son as a sacrifice for our sins.”
(NLT)
 “to be a sin offering.” (NIV) – footnote (“for sin”)
 “…for
sin” (ESV)
 “…to do away with sin.” (GN)
 “…sending His own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh and as an
offering for sin, He condemned sin in
the flesh…” (NASB)
 “…to be a sacrifice for our sin.” (CEV)
 “…on account of sin” (NKJV)

“God went for the jugular when he sent his
own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as
something remote and unimportant. In his
Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human
condition, entered the disordered mess of
struggling humanity in order to set it right
once and for all. The law code, weakened as
it always was by fractured human nature,
could never have done that. The law always
ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin
instead of a deep healing of it.” (Romans 8:3
– The Message)
Conclusions
The Bible has never been so
widely available and so well
translated
- Taken “as a whole” all of the
modern translations of the Bible
are trustworthy – but none are
“perfect”
- Strength in numbers
-