History of Bible translations History of Bible translations
History of Bible translations
History of Bible translations 1. The books of the Bible 2. The Greek Septuagint 3. The Latin Vulgate 4. Latin translation of the Bible by St. Jerome 5. Vespasian Psalter 6. The Gothic Bible—A Remarkable Achievement. The first literary work produced in any Germanic tongue 7. Missionary endeavours 8. Old Church Slavic translation of the Bible 9. John Wycliffe’s Bible translation 10. Martin Luther's Bible 11. Bible translations of the Reformation. William Tyndale (c. 1494– 1536) 12. The English Reformation and the history of the English Bible 13. The Geneva Bible 14. King James version of the Bible 15. Contemporary English Translations 16. Church Slavonic, Russian and Ukrainian translations of the Bible in the 18 th-20 th centuries 17. Bible translations into Hungarian
1. The Bible – 73 Books Written over a period of 1500 years (1400 BC to 110 AD) by 40 writers Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) Christian Greek Scriptures (The New Testament) “Testament” - covenant / agreement The Old Covenant is an agreement that God made with the nation of Israel The New Covenant is an agreement that God has made for all nations Written before Jesus’ birth (1400 -80 BC) Of the 73 books, The Old Testament – 46 books were written before the birth of Jesus Of the 73 books, the New Testament – 27 books were written after the death of Jesus The Old Testament was written in Hebrew – the language of Israel The New Testament was written in Greek Written after Jesus’ death (48 -120 AD)
2. The Greek Septuagint The most ancient translation of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament The Old Testament was translated from Hebrew to Greek, the everyday language of the people, about 250 B. C. for the royal library of Alexandria As Jesus’ disciples progressively received the books of the Christian Greek Scriptures, they put them together with the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, and that came to be the complete Bible that we have today. Later, Greek translations were made in the early period by Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion The style of the translation is not uniform, because of the different translators involved and the different times of the various translations The Septuagint is noteworthy for its popular, limited, and simple vocabulary
Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible The Christian Fathers down to the late fourth century AD regarded the Septuagint as the standard form of the Old Testament and seldom referred to the Hebrew. Later Greek translations were made in the early period by Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. In the 2 nd c. AD a Jewish scholar named Aquila of Sinope undertook to produce a Greek rendering of the Hebrew Bible that would represent each Hebrew word with a corresponding Greek word. The result was a slavishly literal rendering which was often unintelligible to a reader who did not know Hebrew as well as Greek. Toward the end of the 2 nd c. AD another Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible was prepared by Symmachus, a Christian of Jewish background. His theory and method were the opposite of that of Aquila, as his aim was to make an elegant Greek rendering. He preferred idiomatic Greek constructions in contrast to other versions in which the Hebrew constructions are preserved. Generally, scholars remark on the purity and idiomatic elegance of Symmachus' Greek. The Septuagint rather than the original Hebrew Bible was the main basis for the Old Latin, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic, and some Arabic translations of the Bible.
3. The Latin Vulgate During the 1 st century Greek remains the language of the small Christian community, but with the spread of the faith through the Roman empire a Latin version of the Bible texts is needed in western regions. By the second century there is one such version in use in north Africa and another in Italy. Before A. D. 400 the Bible had been made available in Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, and Georgian. The succeeding centuries brought still other translations. In 382, about 300 years after the Bible was completed, Pope Damasus I commissions Jerome - the leading biblical scholar of the time - to provide a definitive Latin version of the Bible and he produced a Latin translation, which eventually came to be the Latin Vulgate, from Latin vulgata (editio(n-)) ‘(edition) prepared for the public’, from vulgus ‘common people’
4. Latin translation of the Bible by St. Jerome was a trilingual scholar, familiar with Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Jerome began by translating the New Testament and the Psalms, working from accepted Greek texts. After completing one translation of the Old Testament from Greek, he translated it anew from Hebrew. Jerome was the first to have translated the Old Testament into Latin directly from the original Hebrew, rather than from the Septuagint. Jerome left a substantial body of commentaries and other writings that have contributed to the tradition of biblical scholarship in the West. In over hundred prefaces, numerous letters and prologues to his translations of the Scriptures, he also set out well-developed ideas on translation. Not only do I admit, but I proclaim at the top of my voice, that in translating from Greek, except from Sacred Scripture, where even the order of the words is of God’s doing, I have not translated word by word, but sense for sense. (‘On the Best Method of Translating’ ) The Latin Vulgate. becomes established as the Bible of the whole western church until the Reformation
5. Vespasian Psalter The Vespasian Psalter is an early copy of a Latin revision of the Psalms (the Romanum or Roman version) associated with St Jerome (d. 420). The manuscript was made in southern England in the second quarter of the 8 th century. It is the earliest surviving biblical text in the English language. It contains the Book of Psalms together with letters of St. Jerome and hymns. The text was written on vellum in Latin and accompanied with an interlinear gloss in Old English, which is a literal, word-forword translation of the Latin text. It was incorporated into the British Museum when it was founded in 1753
6. The Gothic Bible—A Remarkable Achievement The first literary work produced in any Germanic tongue Ulfilas (Wulfila) — Missionary and Bible Translator Before 381 AD Ulfilas finished his translation. “To instruct and multiply his converts, ” says historian Will Durant, “he patiently translated, from the Greek into Gothic, all the Bible except the Books of Kings. ” (The Age of Faith) The famous Codex Argenteus, a 6 th century copy of a 4 th century Bible translation containing the four Gospels in the order Matthew, John, Luke, and Mark, was preserved unscathed. The Codex Argenteus was originally composed of 336 leaves, 187 of which are in Uppsala. It is the primary source of our knowledge of this extinct East Germanic language. Codex Argenteus
6. Exceptional ingenuity of Ulfilas Gothic was not a written language. Ulfilas therefore faced a translating challenge that called for exceptional ingenuity. Ulfilas is the first man known to have undertaken an extraordinarily difficult intellectual task - writing down, from scratch, a language which is as yet purely oral. He even devises a new alphabet to capture accurately the sounds of spoken Gothic, using a total of twenty-seven letters adapted from examples in the Greek and Roman alphabets. Ancient ecclesiastical historians credit him with the invention of the Gothic alphabet. The New Encyclopædia Britannica remarks that “he coined a Germanic Christian terminology, some of which is still in use. ” Since 1669 this codex has held a permanent place in the Uppsala University Library, Sweden.
7. Missionary endeavours After the collapse of the Western Empire, the people of Christian Europe speak varieties of German, French, Anglo-Saxon, Italian or Spanish. The text of Jerome's Vulgate is understood only by the learned, most of whom are priests. Translation into vulgar tongues is discouraged. Parts of the Bible are translated for the use of missionaries. These are missionary endeavours, promoted by rulers as an act of government when pagan Europe is being brought into the Christian fold. In the later fully Christian centuries there is no equivalent need to provide the holy texts in vernacular form. Any such impulse is now a radical demand on behalf of ordinary Christians against the church hierarchy.
8. Old Church Slavic translation of the Bible In 862 the Slavic prince Rastislav, ruler of Great Moravia, sent a delegation to Emperor Michael III, requesting that missionaries be sent to his realm who could teach the people Christianity in their own Slavonic tongue. In 863, two Greek Byzantine brothers, Saint Cyril and Methodius, missionaries and saints from Thessaloniki were sent by the Byzantine Emperor Michael III to Great Moravia to spread Christianity among the West Slavs. The prince also expressed the wish that, like the Greeks, Romans and Goths, his people have the sacred texts translated into their language. Rastislav was looking for Christian missionaries to replace those from the Germans. In the end this mission would continue for the rest of the brothers' lives, as the brothers were dedicated to the idea that Christianity should be presented to the people in their native languages as was the practice in the East.
8. Old Church Slavonic translation of the Bible Being raised in an area with both Greek and Slavic speakers endowed Cyril and Methodius with a good knowledge of the two languages. In 863, after a year or so of preparation during which they develop an alphabet for Slavic languages and translate the scriptures into the language now known as Old Church Slavonic from then. This leads the Scriptures being produced in Bulgarian, Serbian and Russian. For the purpose of this mission, they devised the Glagolitic alphabet, the first alphabet to be used for Slavonic manuscripts. "Cyrillic" alphabet was not invented by Cyril, but adapted from Glagolitic. Cyrillic alphabet is a simpler form of Glagolitic, consisting of 43 characters. The Glagolitic alphabet was suited to match the specific features of the Slavic language and its descendant alphabet, the Cyrillic Alphabet, is still used by many languages today. The Russian, Byelorussian, Macedonian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Serbian alphabets derive from Old Cyrillic. They also translated Christian texts for Slavs into the language that is now called Old Church Slavonic. and wrote the first Slavic Civil Code, which was used in Great Moravia. The language derived from Old Church Slavonic, known as Church Slavonic, is still used in liturgy by several Eastern Ortodox and Eastern Catholic churches.
8. Old Church Slavonic translation of the Bible The first complete collection of Biblical books in the Church Slavonic language originated in Russia in the last decade of the 15 th century. It was completed in 1499 under the auspices of Archbishop Gennady of Novgorod (1484 -1504), and the Old Testament was translated partly from the Vulgate, and partly from the Septuagint. The New Testament is based upon the old Church Slavonic translation. That Bible, called the Gennady Bible (Gennadievskaia Biblia) is now housed in the State History Museum in Moscow.
9. John Wycliffe’s Bible translation John Wycliffe (or Wyclif, c. 1320 -1384) and his followers the Lollards produced the first complete version of the Bible in English on the basis of the Latin Vulgate. Though relatively few people could read at this time, Wycliffe’s idea was to translate the Bible into the vernacular. Wycliffe's Bible appeared over a period from 1382 to 1395. It was the chief inspiration of the Lollard movement, a pre-Reformation movement that rejected many of the distinctive teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. John Wycliffe got the name of the "Morning Star of the Reformation". Although unauthorized, Wycliffe's Bible was popular. Over 250 manuscripts of the book survive. Wycliffe's Bible was probably the most important translated work of the 14 th century in England. This first complete translation of the Bible laid the basis for English Bible translation and left its mark on the English language in general. The Church prohibited the use of Wycliffe's Bible. In 1428, forty-five years after his death, Wycliffe's body was exhumed, burned and ashes thrown into the Swift River.
10. Martin Luther’s Bible Martin Luther (1483– 1546), Augustinian monk and theologian, was the German leader of the Reformation. A talented publicist and great writer of treatises, with a rugged popular style, Luther emphasized original writing in the vernacular. Luther studied languages intensively, not only Latin but also Greek and Hebrew, the two original languages of the Bible. In order to arrive at the most appropriate and effective renderings, he consulted experts in Greek, Hebrew and Latin, and also professional people such as foresters, game wardens and so on to solve specific terminological problems. Through his translation of the Bible (the New Testament, published in 1522, and the Old Testament, in 1534) he established a norm for written German, and had a radical and lasting influence on German language and literature. The mass distribution of Luther's Bible was facilitated by the movable printing type, developed by Gutenberg eighty years earlier.
10. Martin Luther’s Bible Luther's linguistic achievements were grounded in certain translation principles: 1) he advocated the return to the original languages of the Bible: Hebrew for the Old Testament and Greek for the New Testament (without, however, completely neglecting the Latin Vulgate). This was an innovative philological approach which resulted from the influence of humanist philosophers. 2) target-culture approach. Luther reformulated the text of the Bible as a German text, i. e. the historical text was rewritten to fit the mentality and spirit of his time. Luther recognized that semantic equivalents alone were not sufficient. 3) Luther tried to formulate his translation in accordance with the rules of the target language. 4) Luther believed that the word should follow the meaning of the text, and not the other way round. It required courage on Luther's part as he was dealing with a sacred text. He believed that translation was always interpretation, to some extent at least. 5) When translating, Luther always took the sound of the spoken language into account. In this he relied on his experience as a preacher. As a translator, Luther was distinctly readeroriented; his aim was to put together a Bible text for the general public. 6) His translation, characterized by a combination of popular speech and poetic dignity, became for many Northern Europeans a new ‘original’, and served as the basis of some Bible translations into the Scandinavian languages.
11. Bible translations of the Reformation William Tyndale (c. 1494– 1536) William Tyndale - the most influential Bible translator in English A humanist and theologian, educated at both Oxford and Cambridge, he was determined, in the spirit of the Reformation, to make the Bible widely available in the vernacular to both laymen and clergy. Tyndale was accused of heresy and after failing to get the support of the bishop of London in his plan to translate the Bible into English, Tyndale left England for the Continent and lived there as a fugitive. In 1524, Tyndale visited Luther in Wittenberg and worked on his translation of the New Testament. The work was completed in 1525. Tyndale worked from the Greek and Hebrew source texts. The first English New Testament to be printed, Tyndale’s translation was smuggled into England in 1526. Tyndale also began work on the Old Testament. Eventually he was betrayed to agents of Charles V, strangled and burned at the stake in 1536.
11. Bible translations of the Reformation William Tyndale (c. 1494– 1536) In Tyndale's time, Latin was still the language for anything serious or official. In 1600, only 30 of the 6, 000 volumes in the Oxford University Library were in English. Tyndale believed that both Hebrew and Greek translated much more easily into English than into Latin and that English better reflected the wide range of styles contained in the Old Testament. Tyndale translated into the language people spoke, not the way the scholars wrote. At a time when English was struggling to find a form that was neither Latin nor French, Tyndale gave the nation a Bible language that was English in words, word order and rhythm. The principal feature of Tyndale's language is its clarity.
11. Bible translations of the Reformation William Tyndale (c. 1494– 1536) By contrast with the enormous Bibles produced on the Continent, Tyndale's Bibles were pocket sized. This was important: the Bible could be easily smuggled (the English Church was still opposed to reading the Bible in the vernacular) and carried around and read by ordinary readers. The only complete surviving copy of his 1526 New Testament, newly acquired for the sum of one million pounds, was exhibited at the British Library in 1994, on the occasion of Tyndale's 500 th birthday. According to some modern scholars, Tyndale achieved for the English language what Newton did for physics.
12. The English Reformation and the history of the English Bible Erasmus printed the Greek New Testament for the first time in 1516. Luther made his German translation in 1522– 24, and William Tyndale in 1525 brought out his English New Testament—the first printed one to circulate in England. Making use of Tyndale’s material where available, in 1539 Coverdale, with the approval of King Henry VIII, brought out the Great Bible, named for its large size. From this point the history of the English Reformation and the history of the English Bible go hand in glove with each other. The Great Bible (or the Cromwell Bible) was prepared by Myles Coverdale, working under commission of Sir Thomas Cromwell, Secretary to Henry VIII. The Great Bible includes, with the objectionable features revised, the New Testament and the Old Testament portions that had been translated by William Tyndale. The remaining books of the Old Testament had been translated by Myles Coverdale, who used mostly the Latin Vulgate and German translations as sources rather than working from the original Greek and Hebrew texts.
13. The Geneva Bible During the reign of Queen Mary I of England (1553 – 1558), a number of Protestant scholars fled from England to Geneva in Switzerland, where John Calvin provided the primary spiritual and theological leadership. Among these scholars was William Whittingham, who began the translation of the Bible now known as the Geneva Bible. The first full edition of this Bible, with a further revised New Testament, appeared in 1560. The Geneva Bible was translated from scholarly editions of the Greek New Testament and the Hebrew Old Testament. The English rendering was substantially based on the earlier translations by William Tyndale and Myles Coverdale (80 -90% of the language in the Geneva New Testament is from Tyndale). However, the Geneva Bible was the first English version in which all of the Old Testament was translated directly from Hebrew.
13. The Geneva Bible is one of the most historically significant translations of the Bible into the English language. It was the primary Bible of the 16 th century Protestant movement and was the Bible used by William Shakespeare, Oliver Cromwell, John Milton, John Knox, and John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress. It was one of the Bibles taken to America on the Mayflower, and it was still respected by Oliver Cromwell's soldiers at the time of the English Civil War. For the very first time, a mechanically printed, massproduced Bible was made available directly to the general public.
14. King James version of the Bible In 1611 king James I authorizes a new translation of the Bible into English, the King James version quickly replaces the Latin Vulgate as the translation of choice among English James gave the translators instructions intended to guarantee that the new version would conform to theology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England. The translation was done by 47 scholars, all of whom were members of the Church of England all except one were the clergy. In common with most other translations of the period, the New Testament was translated primarily from Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic texts, although with secondary reference both to the Latin Vulgate, and to more recent scholarly Latin versions.
14. King James Bible The Authorized King James Version was completed in 1611. The main concern of the translators was to produce a Bible that would be appropriate and dignified in public reading. In a period of rapid linguistic change, they avoided contemporary idioms, tending instead towards forms that were already slightly archaic. The King James Version was heavily criticized in its early days, but in time, with official pressure, it won the field and became the Bible for English-reading people—a position it held for almost four hundred years. The King James Version has undergone numerous modifications, so the currently circulating book differs from that of 1611 in more than 75, 000 places
14. King James Bible The King James Version (KJV), also known as the King James Bible (KJB) or simply the Authorized Version (AV), is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Chirch of England, begun in 1604 and completed as well as published in 1611 under the sponsorship of James VI The Authorized Version is notably more Latinate than previous English versions, especially the Geneva Bible. Several translators admitted that they felt more comfortable writing in Latin than in English. By the first half of the 18 th century, the Authorized Version was unchallenged as the English translation used in Anglican and Protestant churches. Over the course of the 18 th century, the Authorized Version supplanted the Latin Vulgate as the standard version of scripture for English speaking scholars.
15. Contemporary English Translations Though a variety of other English Bible translations were produced in the 18 th and 19 th centuries, they were minimally used, and the Blaney Revision of the King James Version remained essentially the English translation from 1769 until the twentieth century. Among the most widely accepted were the New International Version (NIV), first published in 1978, the New American Standard Bible (NASB), first published in 1971. Like the KJV before them, these translations have both undergone revisions since their first publication, and will likely see more in the future. The New King James Version (NKJV) of 1982 has also proven a significant contribution to the contemporary development of English Translations and, in more recent years, the English Standard Version (ESV), Christian Standard Bible (CSB), New English Translation (NET), and many others have also attained notable usage.
16. Church Slavonic, Russian and Ukrainian translations of the Bible in the 18 th-20 th centuries In 1712, Tsar Peter the Great ordered the printed Slavonic text of the Bible to be carefully compared with the Greek of the Septuagint and to be made in every respect conformable to it. The revision was completed in 1724 and was ordered to be printed, but the death of Peter (1725) prevented the execution of the order.
16. Church Slavonic, Russian and Ukrainian translations of the Bible in the 18 th-20 th centuries Under the Empress Elizabeth the work of revision was resumed, and in 1751 a revised "Elizabeth" Bible, as it is called, was published. The Elizabeth Bible is the authorized version of the Russian Orthodox Church. First attempts to translate books of the Bible into modern Russian language of that time took place in 16 th and 17 th centuries The full-scale Bible translation into Russian language began in 1813 since the establishment of the Russian Bible Society. The full edition of the Bible with Old Testament and New Testament was published in 1876. This work is called Russian Synodal Bible. It is a Russian non-Church Slavonic translation of the Bible commonly used by the Russian Orthodox Church.
Church Slavonic, Russian and Ukrainian translations of the Bible in the 18 th-20 th centuries The translation was performed by four Orthodox theological academies, in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kazan and Kiev. The final editorship was performed by the Synod and personally by Filaret, Metropolitan of Moscow. The translation of the Old Testament is based on the Jewish text while that of the New Testament is based on the Greek printed editions of that time. This decision was grounded on Filaret's 1834 note "On the need of the Russian Church for a translation of the whole Bible from the original texts to the modern Russian language".
Church Slavonic, Russian and Ukrainian translations of the Bible in the 18 th-20 th centuries The known history of the Bible translation into Ukrainian began in 16 th century with Peresopnytsia Gospels, which included only four Gospels of the New Testament. The major translations of Holy Scripture into Ukrainian were performed by: Pylyp Morachevskyi; Panteleimon Kulish, Ivan Nechui-Levytskyi and Ivan Pulyui; and Metropolitan Ilarion (Ivan Ohienko).
16. Church Slavonic, Russian and Ukrainian translations of the Bible in the 18 th-20 th centuries Panteleimon Kulish (1819 -1897) was the first person known to translate the whole of the Bible into the modern Ukrainian language. The first unabridged Ukrainian version was published in 1903 — in Vienna, as all Ukrainian translations were then banned in the Russian Empire. Panteleimon Kulish and his co-workers translated from Old Church Slavonic, so the text preserves some Church Slavonic and Greek idioms, and even words absent from the modern Ukrainian language. Though there have been discussions about "modernization" of Ohienko's Bible with the aim of getting rid of archaisms without changing the meaning, some scholars insist that Ohienko's text should remain "untouched" as an important monument of the biblical translation literature of Ukraine of the 30 -40 s of the last century. Metropolitan Ilarion (Ivan Ohienko, 1882 -1972)
17. Bible translations into Hungarian The first Bible translations into Hingaria dates from the 15 -16 th century, as does the first Hussite Bible and Vizsoly Bible Hussite Bible was the first Hungarian Bible dates back to probably 1439 -1439. It was translated by two hussite Hungarian, former students in Prague, hidden for protection in Trotuș, Moldavia (Romania). Only fragments remained, but consists the first Hungarian translation of Lord's Prayer. Újszövetség (New Testament) is the first remained full New Testament in Hungarian translated by János Sylvester in 1541. It was also the first book printed in Hungary, at the domain of the Tamás Nádasdy in Sárvár.
17. Bible translations into Hungarian Vizsoly Bible is the first remained complete version in Hungarian, translated by Gáspár Károli Calvinist pastor in 1590. It is named after the village of Vizsoly and was printed in 700 -800 copy originally, gained wide popularity and occasionally used even today as the "classic" translation (similarly to the KJV in English). It was revised most recently in 2003. Káldi Bible was the first full Catholic version in Hungarian, translated by György Káldi in 1626 and printed in Vienna. It was revised several times, most recently in 1997. Szent István Társulati Biblia (Saint Stephen Society Bible): Catholic (1973)
Summary History of Bible translations 1. The books of the Bible The Bible – 73 Books (Written over a period of 1500 years (1400 BC to 110 AD) by 40 writers) The Old Testament was written in Hebrew – the language of Israel The New Testament was written in Greek 2. The Greek Septuagint The most ancient translation of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament The Old Testament was translated from Hebrew to Greek, the everyday language of the people, about 250 B. C. for the royal library of Alexandria 3. The Latin Vulgate In 382, about 300 years after the Bible was completed, Pope Damasus I commissions Jerome - the leading biblical scholar of the time - to provide a definitive Latin version of the Bible and he produced a Latin translation, which eventually came to be the Latin Vulgate, from Latin vulgata (editio(n-)) ‘(edition) prepared for the public’, from vulgus ‘common people’
History of Bible translations 3. The Latin Vulgate In 382, Pope Damasus I commissions Jerome - the leading biblical scholar of the time - to provide a definitive Latin version of the Bible and he produced a Latin translation, which eventually came to be the Latin Vulgate, from Latin vulgata (editio(n-)) ‘(edition) prepared for the public’, from vulgus ‘common people’ 4. Latin translation of the Bible by St. Jerome was the first to have translated the Old Testament into Latin directly from the original Hebrew, rather than from the Septuagint. He also set out well-developed ideas on translation. I have not translated word by word, but sense for sense. (‘On the Best Method of Translating’ ) The Latin Vulgate becomes established as the Bible of the whole western church until the Reformation.
History of Bible translations 5. Vespasian Psalter It is the earliest surviving biblical text in the English language. It contains the Book of Psalms together with letters of St. Jerome and hymns. The text was written on vellum in Latin and accompanied with an interlinear gloss in Old English, which is a literal, word-for-word translation of the Latin text. 6. The Gothic Bible—A Remarkable Achievement. The first literary work produced in any Germanic tongue Ulfilas (Wulfila) — Missionary and Bible Translator Before 381 AD Ulfilas finished his translation. He patiently translated, from the Greek into Gothic, all the Bible except the Books of Kings. The famous Codex Argenteus, a 6 th century copy of a 4 th century Bible translation was preserved unscathed. The Codex Argenteus was originally composed of 336 leaves, 187 of which are in Uppsala. It is the primary source of our knowledge of this extinct East Germanic language.
History of Bible translations 7. Missionary endeavours After the collapse of the Western Empire, the people of Christian Europe speak varieties of German, French, Anglo-Saxon, Italian or Spanish. The text of Jerome's Vulgate is understood only by the learned, most of whom are priests. Translation into vulgar tongues is discouraged. 8. Old Church Slavic translation of the Bible In 863, two Greek Byzantine brothers, Saint Cyril and Methodius, missionaries and saints from Thessaloniki were sent by the Byzantine Emperor Michael III to Great Moravia to spread Christianity among the West Slavs. In 863, after a year or so of preparation during which they develop an alphabet for Slavic languages and translate the scriptures into the language now known as Old Church Slavonic from then. This leads the Scriptures being produced in Bulgarian, Serbian and Russian. For the purpose of this mission, they devised the Glagolitic alphabet, the first alphabet to be used for Slavonic manuscripts. "Cyrillic" alphabet was not invented by Cyril, but adapted from Glagolitic. Cyrillic alphabet is a simpler form of Glagolitic, consisting of 43 characters.
History of Bible translations 9. John Wycliffe’s Bible translation John Wycliffe (or Wyclif, c. 1320 -1384) and his followers the Lollards produced the first complete version of the Bible in English on the basis of the Latin Vulgate. Though relatively few people could read at this time, Wycliffe’s idea was to translate the Bible into the vernacular. Wycliffe's Bible appeared over a period from 1382 to 1395. John Wycliffe got the name of the "Morning Star of the Reformation". Although unauthorized, Wycliffe's Bible was popular. Over 250 manuscripts of the book survive. 10. Martin Luther's Bible Martin Luther (1483– 1546), Augustinian monk and theologian, was the German leader of the Reformation. Through his translation of the Bible (the New Testament, published in 1522, and the Old Testament, in 1534) he established a norm for written German, and had a radical and lasting influence on German language and literature. The mass distribution of Luther's Bible was facilitated by the movable printing type, developed by Gutenberg eighty years earlier.
History of Bible translations 11. Bible translations of the Reformation. William Tyndale (c. 1494– 1536) William Tyndale - the most influential Bible translator in English. He was determined, in the spirit of the Reformation, to make the Bible widely available in the vernacular to both laymen and clergy In 1524, Tyndale visited Luther in Wittenberg and worked on his translation of the New Testament. The work was completed in 1525. Tyndale worked from the Greek and Hebrew source texts. Tyndale’s translation was smuggled into England in 1526. Tyndale translated into the language people spoke, not the way the scholars wrote. Tyndale gave the nation a Bible language that was English in words, word order and rhythm. The only complete surviving copy of his 1526 New Testament, was exhibited at the British Library in 1994, on the occasion of Tyndale's 500 th birthday. According to some modern scholars, Tyndale achieved for the English language what Newton did for physics.
History of Bible translations 12. The English Reformation and the history of the English Bible Erasmus printed the Greek New Testament for the first time in 1516. Luther made his German translation in 1522– 24, and William Tyndale in 1525 brought out his English New Testament—the first printed one to circulate in England. Making use of Tyndale’s material where available, in 1539 Coverdale, with the approval of King Henry VIII, brought out the Great Bible, named for its large size. From this point the history of the English Reformation and the history of the English Bible go hand in glove with each other. The Great Bible (or the Cromwell Bible) was prepared by Myles Coverdale, working under commission of Sir Thomas Cromwell, Secretary to Henry VIII. The Great Bible includes, with the objectionable features revised, the New Testament and the Old Testament portions that had been translated by William Tyndale.
History of Bible translations 13. The Geneva Bible During the reign of Queen Mary I of England (1553 – 1558), a number of Protestant scholars fled from England to Geneva in Switzerland. Among these scholars was William Whittingham, who began the translation of the Bible now known as the Geneva Bible. The first full edition of this Bible, with a further revised New Testament, appeared in 1560. The English rendering was substantially based on the earlier translations by William Tyndale and Myles Coverdale (80 -90% of the language in the Geneva New Testament is from Tyndale). However, the Geneva Bible was the first English version in which all of the Old Testament was translated directly from Hebrew For the very first time, a mechanically printed, mass-produced Bible was made available directly to the general public.
History of Bible translations 14. King James version of the Bible In 1611 king James I authorizes a new translation of the Bible into English, the King James version quickly replaces the Latin Vulgate as the translation of choice among English The main concern of the translators was to produce a Bible that would be appropriate and dignified in public reading. The King James Version was heavily criticized in its early days, but in time, with official pressure, it won the field and became the Bible for English-reading people—a position it held for almost four hundred years. The King James Version has undergone numerous modifications, so the currently circulating book differs from that of 1611 in more than 75, 000 places
History of Bible translations 15. Contemporary English Translations Though a variety of other English Bible translations were produced in the 18 th and 19 th centuries, they were minimally used, and the Blaney Revision of the King James Version remained essentially the English translation from 1769 until the twentieth century. Among the most widely accepted were the New International Version (NIV), first published in 1978, the New American Standard Bible (NASB), first published in 1971. The New King James Version (NKJV) of 1982 has also proven a significant contribution to the contemporary development of English Translations
History of Bible translations 16. Church Slavonic, Russian and Ukrainian translations of the Bible in the 18 th-20 th centuries In 1751 a revised "Elizabeth" Bible, the authorized version of the Russian Orthodox Church was published. The full edition of the Bible with Old Testament and New Testament was published in 1876. It is a Russian non-Church Slavonic translation of the Bible commonly used by the Russian Orthodox Church. The known history of the Bible translation into Ukrainian began in 16 th century with Peresopnytsia Gospels, which included only four Gospels of the New Testament. The major translations of Holy Scripture into Ukrainian were performed by: Pylyp Morachevskyi; Panteleimon Kulish, was the first person known to translate the whole of the Bible into the modern Ukrainian language.
History of Bible translations 17. Bible translations into Hungarian The first Bible translations into Hingaria dates from the 15 -16 th century, as does the first Hussite Bible and Vizsoly Bible Hussite Bible was the first Hungarian Bible dates back to probably 1439 -1439. It was translated by two hussite Hungarian, former students in Prague Vizsoly Bible is the first remained complete version in Hungarian, translated by Gáspár Károli Calvinist pastor in 1590. It is named after the village of Vizsoly and was printed in 700 -800 copy originally, gained wide popularity and occasionally used even today as the "classic" translation (similarly to the KJV in English). It was revised most recently in 2003.
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