How Bible Came to Were it Is Today

Bible

The History of the Bible

Today's Bibles are the end product of a long process of transmission that involved diverse stages and many different communities. To understand how the various editions and translations of the Bible have come to us, one must first understand the vastness of the early the communities which copied and transmitted the work as well as the popularity of unauthorized translations and editions by unorthodox religious that compelled counter-editions to appear in later centuries. This paper will look at the transmission of the Bible from the early Greek/Hebrew editions to the standard Latin Vulgate edition of the Middle Ages and finally to the English and other language editions that appeared under Bede, Jean Wycliff, Martin Luther, Willam Tyndale, and in the Coverdale Bible, the Geneva Bible and the King James Version.

Because the Bible contains so much that is often interpreted in different ways, editions that have attempted to convey unorthodox ideas have almost always been in existence. The last of the books of the New Testament were written by 100 AD and within half a century, an unorthodox New Testament was already being spread by Marcion of Sinope. His version prompted the orthodox community to create an official canon. The early Church held councils in which elder churchmen discussed the matter and asked for guidance from the Holy Ghost. The official New Testament canon would not be recognized for another two centuries, culminating in the translations of Jerome of the Greek text, using the original Hebrew as well, of the New Testament into the Latin Vulgate in the second half of the 4th century AD.

For many centuries, the Latin Vulgate served as the official Scripture of the Church -- but that all changed when Jean Wycliffe began his crusade to bring the Bible to the laymen of England in their own mother tongue. Wycliffe began translating the Bible into English, the common language of his parishioners. He also began arguing points of doctrine that were deemed heretical by the Church. Wycliffe suddenly became a man of double-controversy, and it was suggested that his Bible reflected his controversial ideas regarding authority and grace.

Bede had also translated portions of the Bible for his English parishioners -- long before Wycliffe. But unlike Wycliffe, Bede did not enter into dispute with the teachings of the Church on matters of faith and morals. Nor did Bede proceed without authorization.

Wycliffe's Bible pre-figured the Bibles of the coming Protestant Reformation, when numerous unauthorized Bibles began to surface and circulate, thanks in large part to the invention of the printing press. The very first book printed by Gutenberg was the Gutenberg Bible, which set the precedent for placing Scripture into the hands of the people and getting it out of the sanctuary of the Churches.

Attempting to reclaim an authenticity believed to have been lost over the ages, Erasmus promoted the concept of restoring the New Testament in Greek, which he wrote in 1516. Six years later, Martin Luther produced a German translation of Erasmus' Greek. Martin Luther's German translation spread quickly and, like Wycliffe's, it argued points of doctrine that concerned faith and morals. Erasmus' Greek Bible continued to be used by other Protestants who sought a finer Scriptural-based religion, separate from that of the Church in Rome. William Tyndale translated the Greek Scripture into English. Neither his nor Luther's was approved by the Church.

The New Testament portion of the Coverdale Bible was based on Tyndale's translation while the Old Testament portion was based on translations done by Miles Coverdale himself. However, Coverdale was no Hebrew or Greek scholar, so he utilized the German and Swiss translations already produced by Luther and Zwingli. Thus, the Protestant trend of producing Bibles continued.

The Geneva Bible was produced thanks to the leading lights of Protestantism, many of whom gathered in Geneva. The annotations of this Bible were primarily Calvinist and Puritan (and for this reason, the Bible was taken with the Pilgrims to America). The Geneva Bible was up to that date the most popular mass-produced Bible in Europe.