English translations of the Bible: Encyclopedia - English translations of the Bible

English translations of the Bible

The efforts of translating the Bible from its original languages into over 2,000 others have spanned more than two millennia. Partial translations of the Bible into English can be traced back to the end of the 7th century. Over 450 versions have been created over time. The following paragraphs describe the history of these efforts, focusing on the translation of the Bible into English.

English translations of the Bible - Early translations

English translations of the Bible - Early Jewish translations

Some of the first translations of the Jewish Torah began during the first exile in Babylonian, when Aramaic became the lingua franca of the Jews. With most people speaking only Aramaic and not understanding Hebrew, the Targums were created to allow the common person to understand the Torah as it was read in ancient synagogues.

The most well-known movement to translate books of the Bible appeared in the 3rd century BCE. Most of the Tanakh then existed in Hebrew, but many had gathered in Egypt, where Alexander the Great had founded the city that bears his name. At one time a third of the population of the city was Jewish. However, no major Greek translation was sought (as most Jews continued to speak Aramaic to each other) until Ptolemy II Philadelphus hired a large group of Jews (between 15 and 70 according to different sources) who had a fluent capability in both Greek and Hebrew. These people worked for several years to complete what is now called the Septuagint.

While there is accumulating evidence that there was spoken in Judea at that time a colloquial Greek, with which most people would be familiar, it is yet probable that Jesus spoke neither Greek nor Hebrew, but Aramaic. He knew the Hebrew Bible, but most of his words have come down to us in translation. We have his words as they were translated by his disciples into the Greek, in which the New Testament was originally written. However, because of the hundreds of references to books only contained in the Septuagint that are in the Gospels (and the New Testament in general), it seems clear that Jesus and the early Church tended to use the Septuagint for a basis of teaching.

English translations of the Bible - Early Christian translations

By the time the writing of the New Testament was completed in the 2nd century AD, while Greek was still current speech, the Roman Empire was so dominant that the common people were speaking Latin almost as much as Greek, and gradually, because political power was behind it, the Latin gained on the Greek, and became virtually the speech of the common people. The movement to render the Bible in the language of the time appeared again. It is impossible to say now when the first translations into Latin were made. Certainly, there were some within two centuries after Jesus, and by AD 250 a whole Bible in Latin was in circulation in the Roman Empire. The original writing of what constitutes today's New Testament was most likely written in Greek, and so were the common translations of the Old Testament. The Latin versions of the Old Testament were, therefore, translations (Greek to Latin) of a translation (Hebrew to Greek). These translations generally came to be known as the Vetus Latina.

English translations of the Bible - Jerome's Bible

There were so many of these versions, and they were so unequal in value, that there was natural demand for a Latin translation that should be authoritative. So came into being what is called the Vulgate, the very name of which indicates the desire to render the Bible in the vulgar or common tongue. Jerome began by revising the earlier Latin translations, but ended by going back to the original Greek, bypassing all translations, and going back to the original Hebrew wherever he could instead of the Septuagint. Fourteen years he laboured, settling himself in Bethlehem, in Palestine, to do his work the better. In AD 404 his Latin version appeared. It met a storm of protest for circumventing the Septuagint, so dominant had the translation become. Jerome fought for it, and his version won the day, becoming the authoritative Latin translation of the Bible.

English translations of the Bible - Old English translations

Although John Wycliff is often credited with the first translation of the Bible into English, there were, in fact, many translations of large parts of the Bible centuries before Wycliff's work. Toward the end of the seventh century, the Venerable Bede began a translation of Scripture into Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon). Aldhelm (AD 640–709), likewise, translated the complete Book of Psalms and large portions of other scriptures into Old English. In the 11th century, Abbot Ælfric translated much of the Old Testament into Old English.

For seven or eight centuries, it was the Latin Vulgate that held sway as the common version nearest to the tongue of the people. Latin had become the accepted tongue of the Catholic Church, and there was little general acquaintance with the Bible except among the educated. During all that time, there was no real room for a further translation. Medieval England was quite unripe for a Bible in the mother tongue; while the illiterate majority were in no condition to feel the want of such a book, the educated minority would be averse to so great and revolutionary a change. When a man cannot read any writing, it really does not matter to him whether books are in current speech or not, and the majority of the people for those seven or eight centuries could read nothing at all.

These centuries added to the (unfounded) conviction of many that the Bible ought not to become too common, that it should not be read by everybody, that it required a certain amount of learning to make it safe reading. They came to feel that it is as important to have an authoritative interpretation of the Bible as to have the Bible itself. When the movement began to make it speak the new English tongue, it provoked the most violent opposition. Latin had been good enough for a millennium; why cheapen the Bible by a translation? There had grown up a feeling that Jerome himself had been inspired. He had been canonised, and half the references to him in that time speak of him as the inspired translator.

Criticism of his version was counted as impious and profane as criticisms of the original text could possibly have been. It is one of the ironies of history that the version for which Jerome had to fight, and which was counted a piece of impiety itself, actually became the ground on which men stood when they fought against another version, counting anything else but this very version an impious intrusion.

How early the movement for an English Bible began, it is impossible now to say. Yet the fact is that until the last quarter of the fourteenth century, there was no complete prose version of the Bible in the English language. However, there were vernacular translations of parts of the Bible in England prior to in both Anglo Saxon and Norman French.

English translations of the Bible - Middle English translations

Middle English Bible translations (1066–1500) covers the age of Middle English – it was not a fertile time for Bible translations but saw the first major translation, Wyclif's Bible, from John Wyclif. The period of Middle English begins with the Norman conquest and ends about 1500.

English translations of the Bible - Early Modern English translations

Early Modern English translations are those translations of the Bible which were made between about 1500 and 1800, the period of Early Modern English. This was the first major period of Bible translation into the English language. It began with the dramatic introduction of Tyndale's Bible and included the landmark King James Version and Douai Bibles. It included the first "authorised version", known as the Great Bible (1539); the Geneva Bible (1560), notable for being the first Bible divided into verses; and the Bishop's Bible (1568), which was an attempt by Elisabeth I to again create an authorised version.

English translations of the Bible - Modern translations

Main articles:

Much like early English Bibles, which were based on Greek texts or Latin translations, modern English translations of the Bible are based on the best-available original texts of the time. The translators put much scholarly effort into cross-checking the various sources such as the Pentateuch, Septuagint, Textus Receptus, and Masoretic Text. Relatively recent discoveries such as the Dead Sea scrolls provide additional reference information. There is some controversy over which texts should be used as a basis for translation, as some of the alternate sources do not include verses which are found in the Textus Receptus. Some say the alternate sources were poorly representative of the texts used in their time, whereas others claim the Textus Receptus includes passages that were added to the alternate texts improperly. These controversial passages are generally not the basis for disputed issues of doctrine, but tend to be additional stories or snippets of phrases. The majority of modern English translations, such as the New International Version, contain extensive text notes indicating where differences occur in original sources.

English translations can be broken down into Christian, Critical and Jewish sections.

English translations of the Bible - Christian translations

There are over 50 complete modern English Christian translations and many more partial translations. See main article: Modern English Bible translations.

English translations of the Bible - Critical translations

Although most translations of the Bible have been authorised or made by religious people for religious use, historians and philologists have studied the Bible as a historical and literary text and have presented secular translations.

The best known is the Anchor Bible; each book is translated by a different scholar, with extensive critical commentary.

English translations of the Bible - Jewish translations

Main article: Jewish English Bible translations.

Jewish English Bible translations are modern English Bible translations that include the books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) according to the masoretic text, and according to the traditional division and order of Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim.

Jewish translations often also reflect traditional Jewish interpretations of the Bible, as opposed to the Christian understanding that is often reflected in non-Jewish translations. For example, Jewish translations translate עלמה ‘almâh in Isa 7:14 as young woman, while many Christian translations render the word as virgin.

While modern biblical scholarship is similar for both Christians and Jews, there are distinctive features of Jewish translations, even those created by academic scholars. These include (besides the avoidance of Christological interpretations) either complete adherence to the Masoretic Text or a greater preference for it, and a tendency to prefer transliterated instead of Anglicised names.

The first English Jewish translation of the Bible was by Isaac Leeser in the 19th century.

The Jewish Publication Society produced two of the most popular Jewish translations, namely the JPS The Holy Scriptures of 1917 and the NJPS Tanakh (first printed in a single volume in 1985).

Since the 1980s there have been multiple efforts among Orthodox publishers to produce translations that are not only Jewish, but also adhere to Orthodox norms. Among these are The Living Torah and Nach by Aryeh Kaplan and others, and the Artscroll Tanakh.

See also

• Comparison of English Bible translations – for a comparison of two verses, one from Old Testament Hebrew and one from New Testament Greek, showing how they have been translated into the many different Bible versions
• Jewish English Bible translations
• Bible translations – for a view of translation into languages other than English.

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