SCRIPTURE CANON & BIBLE VERSIONS (PART III)

“How We Got the English Translations of the Bible”

By Akin Ojumu

Because the history of Christianity and the Church is not a subject that the vast majority of church folks care to know or find fascinating, there’s a massive hole in their knowledge of the historical events that occurred in Christianity between the Book of Revelation and the present day. This knowledge gap is the reason many Christians confuse Bible canonization with Bible translation. 

A Bible canon is the officially accepted list of inspired books (e.g., 66 in Protestant, 73 in Catholic) that constitute Scripture, serving as the “measuring stick” for faith. A Bible translation is the rendering of the original texts of Scripture into different languages (e.g., KJV, NIV), focusing on wording and interpretation (Source: Google AI).

There are a lot of different translations available these days – from old ones like the King James Version to new ones like the English Standard Version. In today’s commentary, we’ll try to explain the differences between all of the various translations as well as going through the history of how the Bible came to be translated into English in the first place.

Originally, the Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek. The Old Testament (i.e., the Jewish Bible) was written in Hebrew, with some Aramaic here and there. The oldest complete copy of this part of the Bible, in the original Hebrew, is called the Masoretic Text and generally speaking, this is what Bible translators use when translating the Old Testament. 

However, the New Testament is a bit more tricky. This is because there are many different Greek manuscripts available that scholars can and did use. Generally, these fall into three main categories, namely the Western, Byzantine, and Alexandrian manuscripts. 

We’ll now examine the manuscripts one by one.

WESTERN MANUSCRIPTS

The Western manuscripts go back to the early days of the Church in Rome. These were used to create the Latin Vulgate, which is the Latin version of the Bible that was used by the Catholic church for many centuries. 

The English translations that are based mainly on the Vulgate are colored in red in the chart of this commentary.

BYZANTINE MANUSCRIPTS

The Byzantine manuscripts, also known as the Majority Text, were created by the Eastern Church, when Constantinople was the capital of the Roman Empire. In 1516, they were used to create a Greek version of the New Testament known as the Textus Receptus.

English Bible translations that are based mainly on the Textus Receptus are colored in blue in the chart attached to this commentary. We’ll talk about the Textus Receptus later on. 

ALEXANDRIAN MANUSCRIPTS

The Alexandrian manuscripts, also known as the Neutral Text, include some manuscripts that were found quite recently, like within the last 100 years or so. Generally, these manuscripts are also the oldest and therefore they are considered to be the most reliable. They form the basis of the Novum Testamentum Graece, aka Nestle-Aland Text, which is the Greek text that most scholars use today. 

English Bible translations based mainly on the Nestle-Aland Text, or its precursors, are colored in yellow in the chart.

At this point, we will now proceed to discuss the English Bible translations produced by using the above three manuscripts.

Although the Canon of Scripture was settled as far back as the early 4th century AD, the Bible was not translated into the English language more than one thousand years later. Before the first English translation, Scripture was available in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek. Major early translations included the Greek Septuagint (i.e., the Greek Old Testament, 3rd century BC), the Latin Vulgate (translation by Jerome in late 4th century AD). There were also translations into Syriac, Coptic, and Armenian.

The following are some of the earliest attempts to translate the Bible into the English language.

WYCLIFFE BIBLE (c. 1390)

The first major attempt to translate the Bible into English was made by a priest named John Wycliffe and he relied entirely on the Latin Vulgate. Now, he actually died before his translation was done but some of his colleagues finished it for him around 1390. But one thing to keep in mind about Wycliffe's Bible is that it was actually written in Middle English, not Modern English, so it actually makes for pretty difficult reading.

TYNDALE BIBLE (c. 1526)

The first Bible to be written in Modern English was the Tyndale Bible, translated by William Tyndale using both the Vulgate as well as a bit of the original Hebrew and Greek. Now, Tyndale was one of the early leaders of the Protestant Reformation and this came through in his work. 

Tyndale was executed in 1536 by strangulation and burning at the stake in Vilvoorde, near Brussels on the behest of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and King Henry VIII of England. Tyndale was deemed a heretic for his Reformation/Protestant doctrinal beliefs, translation of the Bible, and his public and strident opposition to the divorce (technically, “annulment”) of King Henry VIII.

Because Tyndale died early, he wasn’t able to finish the complete Bible, so the Tyndale Bible actually only includes the New Testament, the Pentateuch, and the Book of Jonah.

THE GREAT BIBLE (c. 1539)

Ironically, just a few short years after ordering the execution of William Tyndale, King Henry VIII broke from the Catholic Church for personal and political (not religious or spiritual) reasons and declared himself to be head of the Church of England. Henry VIII proceeded to authorize the Great Bible, which was based mostly on the Tyndale Bible with the rest of the Old Testament being finished by a priest named Myles Coverdale. 

The Great Bible was the first English Bible to be used in the church services of the Church of England. 

THE GENEVA BIBLE (c. 1560)

At this point, it was still too expensive for the average person to own a book the size of the Bible. That all changed with the publication of the Geneva Bible, in 1560. This Bible was very different for several reasons.

First of all, its New Testament was based on the Textus Receptus rather than on the

Latin Vulgate. The Textus Receptus was a Greek New Testament created a few decades earlier by the Dutch philosopher Erasmus using all of the best Byzantine manuscripts available to him at the time.

Secondly, the Geneva Bible was created by Calvinists and was, hence, thoroughly Protestant. Third, it was the first English Bible to use the chapter and verse divisions that we still use to this day. Fourth, it was mass produced and, therefore, was the first Bible to end up in the hands of the average English-speaking person.

THE BISHOP’S BIBLE (c. 1568)

Surprise, surprise. The Anglican bishops at the time were not happy about the Geneva Bible as they were worried that it might undermine their authority. They, therefore, produced the Bishop’s Bible just a few years later.

The Bishop’s Bible was authorized by Queen Elizabeth I. So, England ended up with a situation in which the Bishop’s Bible was the one being read from the pulpit, while the Geneva Bible was the one being read in the pews.

THE DOUAY-RHEIMS BIBLE (c. 1582)

When the Roman Catholic Church came to the realization that the Protestant Reformation, whose fire was kindled by Martin Luther in 1517, was a fait accompli, and the Church eventually resolved to the fact that an English translation of the Bible was an inevitability, they published a new translation of the Bible favorable to Catholic doctrines.

This version of the Bible, which was based on the Latin Vulgate, was called the Douay-Rheims (DRV) translation. It derived its name from the two cities, Douay and Reims in France, where the majority of work on it was conducted. The DRV was an early Counter-Reformation effort by the Roman Catholic Church.

THE KING JAMES VERSION (c. 1611)

With production of an authorized Bible that favors the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, there arose a need for an equivalent Bible translation that would be universally recognized in the English-speaking world for its scholarship, accuracy, literary beauty, and readability without partisan explanatory notes. The result was the Authorized Version of 1611, known today as the King James Version.

As the most famous English translation of all time, the KJV was the third Bible to be authorized by an English monarch, this time by James I, and it was based on both the Bishop’s Bible and the Geneva Bible. 

The KJV is still one of the best selling Bible translations to this day. In fact, there are some Christians who will only use this particular translation, claiming that it is the only one that is fully accurate.

ENGLISH REVISED VERSION (c. 1885)

For the next 250 years, the KJV was the Bible of the English-speaking world. The first and only authorized revision of the KJV was the English Revised Version, often simply referred to as the RV, or Revised Version. It came out in 1885.

AMERICAN STANDARD VERSION (c.1901)

The RV was quickly followed by the closely related American Standard Version, i.e., ASV, in the US in 1901.

TEXTUS RECEPTUS vs CRITICAL TEXT

The Textus Receptus (TR) and Critical Text (CT) are two distinct Greek New Testament textual traditions. The TR, compiled in the 1500s from late medieval Byzantine manuscripts, underlies the KJV/NKJV. The CT, developed by modern scholars, uses older, varied manuscripts, e.g., Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece (NA28) aka United Bible Society (UBS) text.

In the centuries that followed the publication of the KJV, many new manuscripts were found. This allowed scholars to create what’s called a Critical Version of the Greek New Testament – one that combined all of the available manuscripts together but in particular, relied heavily on the Alexandrian Text type, which represents the oldest and most accurate tradition.

Both the RV and ASV differ from the KJV in that the former used the new Critical Text, while the latter used the much older Textus Receptus. 

Following the release of the American Standard Version, the Bible translations family tree splits in a few different directions. And we will explore those next time.

PS: This commentary was borrowed from Useful Charts and Got Questions.