BIBLE
BEGINNINGS
The picture so far then, is that
'Holy men of God` wrote down God's message as they were impelled by the
power of the Almighty. These writings originally mainly in Hebrew before the
time of Christ and in Greek after the time of Christ, were copied and copied
and recopied. Can we be sure that the copying was accurate? Other pages have
referred to the fact that
 The
Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans but the Samaritans adopted the
Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) as their sacred book. These
two groups of people copied their books quite independently and copies of
the Pentateuch produced by the Jews can be compared with copies that have
come by the Samaritan route. If mistakes had crept in these would show up
at once.
The
discovery in 1947 of the Dead Sea Scrolls provided copies of Old Testament
books dating from a couple of hundred years before Christ and in 'one
jump` gave us, for example, a complete roll of Isaiah several hundred
years older than the earliest copy that had been in existence. The ancient
copies that we had before 1947 could now be checked against a copy that
was considerably much older.
THE
FIRST TRANSLATION
The Greek Emperor, Ptolemy Philadelphus
wanted to establish a library in Alexandria and his chief librarian was
instructed to include sacred books of the Jews. Because they were in Hebrew
they had to be translated, this translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into
Greek is called the Septuagint. Just as the Hebrew scriptures were copied,
so was the Greek translation. Thus by the time of Jesus the Old Testament
could be read and studied either in Hebrew or from Greek manuscripts.
THE
ORIGINALS HAVE DISAPPEARED
We no longer have the original writings of
Isaiah, Jeremiah or Moses or indeed of any of the writers of the original
books. However because the copies are so numerous and can be checked in the
way already described, we can rely upon the accuracy of the early
manuscripts that we do possess.
Two important developments affected the
history of the Bible. The first is the change in the way manuscripts were
kept, from a scroll which could be easily damaged over a period of time, to
flat pages. A pile of flat pages fastened together was called a Coder and
was the 'grandfather' of all our modern books. There are important Codices
dating from the fourth and fifth centuries. They contain the books of the
Old and New Testaments in Greek (so the Old Testament is the Septuagint
version) and will be referred to in other pages.
THE
LATIN BIBLE
 The
second important development was really due to the fact that as the Roman
Empire spread, so the written language that was commonly used changed from
Greek to Latin. If the Bible was to be read and understood it now needed to
be in Latin. The full work of translation was undertaken by Jerome in the
second half of the fourth century. Jerome was secretary to the Pope and his
translation had the 'authority' of the church although it was not entirely
popular. Jerome translated from the Greek but after going to Bethlehem and
becoming a monk he studied Hebrew with a Jewish Rabbi and worked from Hebrew
manuscripts of the Old Testament as well as from the Septuagint.
Jerome`s translation into Latin is known as
the Vulgate. The word is connected with our word 'vulgar' which originally
meant common or ordinary. So the Vulgate was a translation made into the
ordinary, common language of the time.
It was as the Vulgate that the Bible came
with Christianity to England with the early missionaries like Augustine and
Columba.
Parts of the Bible in Latin and Greek had
already found their way to Africa by this time, as well as to Europe.
THE
BIBLE IN THE MIDDLE AGES
Outside the Roman Empire to the north were
various Germanic tribes called 'barbarians` by the Romans. Christianity had
spread to some of these like the Ostrogoths as early as the third century.
One of their bishops, Ulfilas, made a translation of the Bible in the fourth
century. Not many of their manuscripts remain and none is complete but the
most famous is probably the Codex Argenteus or 'Silver Codex' in Uppsala in
Sweden. This is written in silver and gold on purple vellum
The empire of the Slavs was extensive in
Europe in the ninth century. Two brothers, Cyril and Methodius left
Thessalonica to teach them Christianity. They devised an alphabet based on
Greek letters in order to write their translations of the Bible and a number
of languages such as Russian and Croatian use this 'Cyrillic' alphabet
today. The Slavonic language of the translation of Cyril end Methodius ('Old
Slavonic') is no longer spoken today but it is used in Eastern Europe in the
Orthodox Church.
Peter Waldo, a merchant from Lyons, founded
a religious community in the twelfth century known as the Waldensians. They
were bitter opponents of the established church and because of this they
were greatly persecuted They felt that it was important that people should
be able to read the Bible in their own language. Although very little
evidence remains of their translations it is believed that they produced
translations of the Bible or of parts of the Bible in Italian, German,
Provençal [the language of southern France] Piedmontese (spoken at that time
in northern Italy) and Catalan (the language of north-east Spain)
So the Bible became was available in an
increasing number of languages in Europe and beyond. In all these languages
people were able to read the words of the apostle Paul to Timothy:
"how from infancy
you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for
salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and
is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in
righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every
good work." 2Tim 3v15-17 [N.I.V.]
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