April 15, 2002, Vol.2, No.8.
Two new articles every two weeks.
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us.
THIS ISSUE: "English
Translations of the Bible, Part 1" (below)
and "Part 2"
English Translations
of the Bible
Part 1
by Keith Sharp
More so than any other generation or people in history, English
speaking people today have a wide choice of translations of the
Bible into our native tongue. To many this is bewildering and
causes them to doubt the accuracy of the inspired Scriptures.
All who believe that every word of the original manuscripts of
the Scriptures came from God (1 Corinthians 2:9-13) want to have
the most accurate translation of the Bible into English that
we can have. So, which translation is best?
Languages of the Bible
Most of the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew,
the language the ancient Jews spoke. It is very different from
English. It is even part of a different family of languages,
the family called "Semitic." The Hebrew alphabet is
very different from ours. The letters do not look like ours,
and there are only twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet.
You can learn the Hebrew alphabet by memorizing the names of
the sections of Psalm 119. Hebrew is read from right to left
instead of from left to right as English is. Contrary to popular
opinion, Hebrew is not a dead (unspoken) language. In fact, it
is the official language of the nation of Israel.
 Sometimes
people contend we cannot accurately translate the Hebrew into
English. This is foolish. If the ambassador of the nation of
Israel can negotiate a complex treaty with the United States,
and that treaty can be accurately written in Hebrew for Israelis
and English for Americans, surely we can understand the Old Testament
translated from Hebrew into English. In fact, the Old Testament
the apostles usually quoted in the New Testament is the Greek
translation of the Old Testament, known as the "Septuagint."
If the apostles of Christ could quote a translation of Hebrew
into Greek as the Word of God, why can we not quote a translation
of Hebrew into English as God's Word?
The New Testament was written in koine (common) Greek,
the every day language of commerce and of the common people during
the time of Christ and His apostles. This language is not dead
either, but has simply changed into modern Greek, in much the
same way that the English language of Shakespeare's day has changed
into modern English. Greek is more similar to English. It is,
like English, of the family of languages called "Indo-European."
Its alphabet is much more similar to our English alphabet.
Which Greek Text?
The New Testament cannot be more accurate than the Greek text
from which it is translated. We can be comforted that we have
better assurance of the accuracy of the Greek text of the New
Testament than exists for any other ancient document. But, one
of the main differences in "families" of English translations
of the New Testament is the Greek text on which each is based.
The Textus Receptus, or Received Text,
was the standard text of the Bible in Hebrew and Greek in 1611.
The Greek New Testament of the Textus Receptus
is basically that put together by the learned Catholic priest
Erasmus, a contemporary of Martin Luther. Erasmus constructed
his Greek New Testament from the manuscripts he could acquire
in his day (early 16th century). They were brought from Byzantium
(ancient Constantinople, modern Istanbul, Turkey) after the Byzantine
Empire fell to the Turks in 1453. These Greek New Testaments
were the work of copyists of the Greek Orthodox Church. Since
the Byzantines continued to use the Greek New Testament for over
a thousand years after it ceased to be used in the rest of Europe,
most Greek manuscripts that have survived are the "Byzantine
Text." Thus, this text is also called the "Majority
Text." However, these manuscripts are much later than some
of another type.
In the nineteenth century archaeologists discovered manuscripts
of the Greek New Testament that dated to within two to two and
a half centuries of the close of the apostolic age. These were
a type of manuscript critics call "Alexandrian," for
Alexandria, Egypt, where this type is thought to have originated.
Scholars of the late nineteenth century, led by B.F. Westcott
and F.J.A Hort, gave far more credence to these older manuscripts
in putting together the Greek text of the New Testament. Thus,
the Greek text that was critically accepted in that day was called
the "Westcott and Hort" text. Many conservative
Bible scholars feel strongly that Westcott and Hort, who were
theological liberals, gave too much weight to the two most ancient
Greek manuscripts of the New Testament and, in turn, gave too
little credence to the thousands of other manuscripts and ancient
versions.
Twentieth century archaeological discoveries, such as the
dramatic uncovering of the "Dead Sea Scrolls" and many
fragments have shed new light on textual problems. Textual critics
now identify three families of Greek texts: Byzantine (Majority),
Alexandrian, and Western. The Nestle-Aland Greek text
and the United Bible Society Greek text, favored by the
majority of scholars of our day, are called "eclectic,"
in that they attempt to fairly consider all the textual evidence
now known from all these manuscripts. Rather than following any
one or two Greek manuscripts to the exclusion of others, the
textual critics weighed all the manuscript evidence in deciding
each doubtful reading. Committees that worked on and continue
to revise theses texts include both liberal and conservative
scholars.
Click here for Part
2 of this article.
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