The Bible is inspired by God and originally written by inspired men. No Bible translator nor any particular translation was ever inspired by God. The Old Testament is translated from Hebrew texts; the New Testament is translated from Greek manuscripts. The Greek was originally written in all capitals and in continuous text. Verses and verse numbers are placed in the Bible by man, not God.
The Bible has been translated into every known language and into most dialects. The Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, was translated sometime during the 4th century B.C. It was called this because it was said that 70 translators took part in the work. In the 4th Century, a version translated into Latin by Jerome, the Latin Vulgate, was the most widely used translation in the middle ages. The first complete English translation was not produced until 1382 by the influence of John Wycliff. In 1525 William Tyndale produced an English version of the New Testament, the first to be translated directly from the Greek instead of Latin texts. Before his completion of the Old Testament, he was tried as a heretic and executed in 1536. After Tyndale, several other Bibles were produced in the 16th Century.
In 1604, in an effort to resolve factions between Englishmen over Bible versions, King James I authorized the translation of another version that came to bear his name. Forty-seven scholars spent six years on the translation. The King James Version was published in 1611, and together with its four revisions (in 1629, 1638, 1762, and 1769), it is the most widely circulated Bible in existence. A revolution of new Bible versions came in the 20th century.
There have been numerous translations of the Holy Scriptures and we must always be on guard as to which one we should use. There is some good found in nearly all the different versions, but we must always be careful, extremely careful, in choosing the version we use to teach from. Just because it has Bible on the cover doesn’t make it the inspired, revealed word of God.
The purpose of translation is to put a writing into words that can be understood by persons speaking various languages. The first translations were done using a “word-for-word” approach, communicating both the words and grammatical structure of the original language. In the 1960s, a “functional equivalence” translation was introduced, focusing more on the needs of the audience than on the form of the message and emphasizing a need to translate the meaning of words in units like phrases, sentences, and paragraphs, rather than the individual words themselves. Which version of the Bible will most accurately give us God’s Word today? We will use this space to review some of the new English versions now available.
No translation is perfect; a careful study of them should be made and screened for problems. Bible study cannot be approached casually. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith Jehovah.” Isaiah 55:8”
