After Billions of hours of Intensive Study here are some of the Most important Translations.
1. Publications up to the time of Jesus.
A. The Dead sea Scrolls
During 1947, in a series of Caves near the Dead Sea, a discovery was made that would soon excite the entire Religious World. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.
Dr. William F. Albright says this find was “the most important discovery ever made concerning Old Testament Manuscripts.”
These Scrolls were probably hidden in these caves at Qumran some time about the second Century B.C. by a group known as the Essenes. They included fragments of every OT book in the Hebrew Bible with the exception of Esther. Willmington p.805
The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of 981 texts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at Khirbet Qumran in the West Bank. They were found inside caves about a mile inland from the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, from which they derive their name.[1] Nine of the scrolls were rediscovered at the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) in 2014, after they had been stored unopened for six decades following their excavation in 1952.[2][3] The texts are of great historical, religious, and linguistic significance because they include the earliest known surviving manuscripts of works later included in the Hebrew Bible canon, along with deuterocanonical and extra-biblical manuscripts which preserve evidence of the diversity of religious thought in late Second Temple Judaism.
The texts are written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Nabataean, mostly on parchment but with some written onpapyrus and bronze.[4] The manuscripts have been dated to various ranges between 408 BCE and 318 CE.[5]Bronze coins found on the site form a series beginning with John Hyrcanus (135–104 BCE) and continuing until the First Jewish-Roman War (66–73 CE).[6]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls#cite_note-6
The Psalms scroll, one of the Dead Sea scrolls. Hebrew transcription included. English translation available here. Israeli Antiquities Authority 1993
Especially exciting is the complete scroll of the Book of Isaiah. The reason this discovery is so important was that until this event, the earliest copy we had of Isaiah’s writings were made during the Twelfth Century A.D. Now scholars could move back over one thousand years closer to the time when the prophet Isaiah actually wrote about 700 B.C.
When a comparison was made between the Dead Sea Copy and the Twelfth century A.D. copy they were found to be almost identical. This reassures us that our copy of God’s Word today is indeed accurate and reliable. Willmington P. 805
B. The Greek Septuagint.
This is a Translation of the Old Testament Hebrew into Greek. This was done about 280 B.C. at the request of some Jewish leaders. The reason was because many Jews had moved into Egypt and other places and they were Greek speakers and did not know Hebrew. So a Translation was prepared by seventy Jewish Scholars thus it was called the Septuagint (Greek word for Seventy).
Fragment of a Septuagint: A column of uncial text from 1 Esdras in the Codex Vaticanus c. 325–350 CE, the basis of Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton's Greek edition and English translation.
A portion of the Grek Uncial MS. Codex Vaticanus, from the Vatican Library, containing 1 Esdras 2:1-8. Wikipedia.com
2. Publications up until the seventh century A.D.
A. The Egyptian Papyri.
This consisted of hundreds of sheets found in Central Egypt around 1895 A.D. Some were stuffed in embalmed mummy cases and others in embalmed crocodile bodies. Among the sheets was a 3and a half by 2 and a half inch fragment containing the Gospel of John 18:31-38. I has been shown to have been written around 125A.D.
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| http://papyri.tripod.com/ |
B. The Latin Vulgate.
The Vulgate is a late fourth-century Latin translation of the Bible that became, during the 16th century, the Catholic Church's officially promulgated Latin version of the Bible.
The translation was largely the work of St. Jerome, who, in 382, was commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Vetus Latina ("Old Latin") collection of Biblical texts in Latin then in use by the Church. Once published, it was widely adopted and eventually eclipsed theVetus Latina and, by the 13th century, was known as the "versio vulgata" [1] (the "version commonly-used") or, more simply, as the "vulgata" ("Vulgate").
It was made the Catholic Church's official Latin Bible as a consequence of the Council of Trent (1545–63), when, in the face of theProtestant Reformation, it became evident that an authoritative reference for scripture was needed. Wikipedia .com
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| The Latin Vulgate |
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Latin Vulgate Bible, manuscript on parchment copied in France, probably central France, ca. 1250, formerly in the library of the Dominican friars of Clermont-Ferrand
In 1228 AD the Vulgate was divided into chapters by Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was then divided into verses by Robert Stephens in 1551 and these verses were numbered by Montanus around 1571AD
The Vulgate was also the first Bible to be Printed by John Gutenburg in 1455 AD. Copies still exist of the Guetenburg's Bible and are worth over 300,000 dollars US. Willmington p. 806
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| Guetnburg's Printing Press |
C. Codex Sinaiticus
This was an ancient manuscript of the Greek Septuagint, written approx. 330 A.D. It was discovered by the German Scholar Tschendorf in the monestery fo St. Catherine on Mt Sinai in 1844. Tischendorf noted in a wastebasket, waiting to be burned, vellum pages with greek writing on them. The Codex Sinaiticus contained 199 leaves of the Old Testament. In 1933 this codex which was close to being burned was sold to the British Government by the Russians for $510,000 US, making it the most expensive book purchased for all time.Willmington p.806
The Codex Vaticanus (The Vatican, Bibl. Vat., Vat. gr. 1209; no. B or 03 Gregory-Aland, δ 1 von Soden), is said to be one of the oldest extant manuscripts of the Greek Bible (Old and New Testament), one of the four great uncial codices.[1]
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| The Book of Kells, c. AD 800, is lettered in a script known as "insular majuscule", a variety of uncial script that originated in Ireland.WIKIPEDIA. |
Uncial is a majuscule[1] script (written entirely in capital letters) commonly used from the 4th to 8th centuries AD by Latin andGreek scribes.[2] Uncial letters were used to write Greek, Latin, and Gothic.
The Codex is named after its place of conservation in the Vatican Library, where it has been kept since at least the 15th century.[2] It is written on 759 leaves ofvellum in uncial letters and has been dated palaeographically to the 4th century.[3][4]
The manuscript became known to Western scholars as a result of correspondence between Erasmus and the prefects of the Vatican Library. Portions of the codex were collated by several scholars, but numerous errors were made during this process. The Codex's relationship to the Latin Vulgate was unclear and scholars were initially unaware of the Codex's value.[5] This changed in the 19th century when transcriptions of the full codex were completed.[1] It was at that point that scholars realised the text differed significantly from the Vulgate and the Textus Receptus.[6]
Current scholarship considers the Codex Vaticanus to be one of the best Greek texts of the New Testament,[3] with the Codex Sinaiticus as its only competitor. Until the discovery by Tischendorf of the Sinaiticus text, the Codex was unrivaled.[7] It was extensively used by Westcott and Hort in their edition of The New Testament in the Original Greek in 1881.[3] The most widely sold editions of the Greek New Testament are largely based on the text of the Codex Vaticanus.[8]
E. The Codex Alexandrinus
This is dated around 450 AD and was written in Egypt. In 1708 it was given to the Patriarch of Alexandria (where it got its name). in 1757 it was transferred to the british Museum
The Four Great Unicals
Only four great codices have survived to the present day: Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, Codex Alexandrinus, and Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus.[1] Though they were discovered at different times and places, they share many similarities. They are written in a certain uncial style of calligraphy using only capital letters, written in scriptio continua (meaning without regular gaps between words).[1][2] Though not entirely absent, there are very few divisions between words in these manuscripts. Words do not necessarily end on the same line on which they start. All these manuscripts were made at great expense of material and labour, written on vellum by professional scribes.[3] They seem to have been based on the most accurate texts in their time.[citation needed] Wikipedia
F. The Coptic Version.
During the Second century AD a new kind of language came into being which was a sort of a cross between Greek and Egyptian. It became known as Coptic. Several translations were made at this time (A.D 350) from Greek into Coptic.
There have been many Coptic versions of the Bible, including some of the earliest translations into any language. Several different versions were made in the ancient world, with different editions of the Old and New Testament in all four of the major dialects of Coptic:Bohairic (northern), Fayyumic, Sahidic (southern), Akhmimic, and Mesokemic. Biblical books were translated from the Alexandrian Greek version.
The Sahidic was the leading dialect in the pre-Islamic period, after the 11th century Bohairic became dominant and only used dialect of the Coptic language.
Partial copies of a number of Coptic Bibles survive. A considerable number of apocryphal texts also survive in Coptic, most notably theGnostic Nag Hammadi library. Coptic remains the liturgical language of the Coptic Church and Coptic editions of the Bible are central to that faith. Wikipedia
G. The Ethiopic Versions.
Ethiopia was the Land south- East of Egypt in Africa. The Ethiopian Eunuch of Acts 8: 26-39 probably introduced Christianity there. This translation was a good verbal rendering of the Greek. It was fluent, readable and helpful, and dates around 350 A.D.
H. The Gothic Version.
The Land of the Goths was located north of the Danube River and West of the Black Sea.
Today it is Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria.
They were an extremely warlike people. During one of their raids in Asia Minor they captured a young man named Ulfilos.
He was a Christian and a scholar who later translated the Scriptures into Gothic - with t
he exception of 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. The reason for this was due to the many wars recorded in these OT books. Ulfilos did not want to encourage the Goths along this line.
The Gothic version is dated around AD 350, and thus became the first translation of the Scriptures into a barbarian language. One of Ulfilos versions still exists today as the Codex Argentus. It was written in gold and silver letters upon purple vellum. It now resides in the University Library in Upsala Sweden.
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| Wufilos Bibel Codex Argentus |
“During the third century, the Goths lived on the northeast border of the Roman Empire, in what is now Ukraine, Bulgaria and Romania. During the fourth century, the Goths were converted to Christianity, largely through the efforts of Bishop Wulfila, who invented theGothic alphabet and translated the Bible into the Gothic language in Nicopolis ad Istrum in today's northern Bulgaria. Portions of this translation survive, affording the main surviving text written in the Gothic language.
Gothic Christianity differed from Catholic doctrine as to the divinity of Jesus, with the Gothic Christians maintaining that Jesus was of a lesser creation than God. The Goths rejected the Holy Trinity (see Arianism).
During the fifth century, the Goths overran parts of the Western Roman Empire, including Italy, southern France, and Spain. Gothic Christianity reigned in these areas for two centuries, before the re-establishment of the Catholic Church, and, in Spain, the advent of Islam.
I. The Armenian Version.
Armenia is north of Mesopotamia, About A.D. 406 a great Missionary and writer named Mesrob began translating the Bible into Armanian after reducing the Language to an Alphabet. The Armenian Version has been called, “the most beautiful and accurate of all ancient versions the Queen of versions.”
“ The first sentence in Armenian written down by St. Mesrop after he invented the letters is said to be the opening line of Solomon’s Book of Proverbs:
Čanačʿel zimastutʿiwn ew zxrat, imanal zbans hančaroy.
"To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding."
Illustrated Armenian Bible from 1256
There are currently four commonly used version of the bible in Armenian. One in Western Armenian, mainly used by Armenians in the diaspora and three translations in Eastern Armenian, commonly used within Armenia, Iran, Russia, Georgia. These translations are "Ararat", published by Armenian Bible Society, "Etchmiadzin translation", published by Armenian Apostolic Church, and "The New World translation", published by Jehovah's Witnesses.Wikipedia.com
J. The Greek language Version Nestle- Aland
Novum Testamentum Graece is the Latin name of an original Greek-language version of the New Testament. The first printed edition was the Complutensian Polyglot Bible by Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, printed in 1514, but not published until 1520. The first published edition of the Greek New Testament was produced by Erasmus in 1516.
Today the designation Novum Testamentum Graece normally refers to the Nestle-Aland editions, named after the scholars who led the critical editing work. The text, edited by the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung (Institute for New Testament Textual Research) is currently in its 28th edition, abbreviated NA28. The Nestle-Aland text is the primary source for most contemporary New Testament translations, although most are translations of the edition that was available at the time of translation. The Nestle-Aland text is also the standard for academic work in New Testament studies.
The title Novum Testamentum Graece can also be applied to the United Bible Societies (UBS) edition which contains the same base text (the latest UBS 5th ed contains the text from the NA28). The primary difference between the Nestle-Aland and UBS editions is that the latter is aimed at translators and so the apparatus focus on variants that are important for the meaning whereas the former is aimed at textual critics and other scholars and so includes the relevant variants for that purpose. Wikipedia.Com
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