English Translations of the Bible (Part 1)

Author : 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 BibleMost 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 SocietyGreek 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.