Bible Translation

December 29, 2018

One of the arguments that I’ve heard over the years, and one that I ignorantly subscribed to many years ago, was that the Bible has been translated so many times and from old and ancient languages, that we really didn’t know if what we have now is a faithful rendering. This is completely false!

It’s interesting to realize that scholars know so much about the languages and translations of the Bible, that we can be sure we have a book that has been painstakingly copied and translated from the three original biblical languages. Because the text was regarded as sacred, copying by scribes was done with meticulous care. Existing today are some 5000 hand-copied documents of all or part of the Bible, and they agree in 98% of the text! No other ancient writing has this amount of underlying support with such a large percentage of agreement as to the text. The three original biblical languages are: Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.

The first human author to write down part of the biblical record was Moses. Moses wrote the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and possibly compiled and/or wrote the book of Job.  And what language did he use? He wrote in his native language, which was Hebrew. We have to remember that Moses was a well-educated man, for his time. Although he was a Jew, by birth, he was raised by the Pharaoh’s daughter as a member of the household. As such, he had the best education of the time.

The written Hebrew language, extending back to at least 1500 B.C., was a script composed of twenty-two consonants and was read from right to left. Eventually, vowels were added to the language. Hebrew is one of a group of languages known as the Semitic languages which were spoken throughout that part of the world, then called Mesopotamia, located today mainly in Iraq.

Almost the entire Old Testament was written in Hebrew. There are a few chapters in the books of Ezra and Daniel and one verse in Jeremiah that were written in Aramaic. Aramaic was closely related to the Hebrew language, although they were two separate languages. Aramaic became very popular and took the place of many other languages. It became the common language spoken in Israel in Jesus’ time, and it was likely the language that Jesus spoke day to day.   

The New Testament, however, was written in Greek. Greek was the language that was taught and used during the years when the New Testament was being compiled, from 50 to 100 AD. At that time many Jews could not even read Hebrew anymore. Around 300 BC a translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek was started, and it was completed around 200 BC. Gradually this Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, was widely accepted and was even used in many synagogues.

I hope that this helps to clear up some of the confusion about how the Bible was written and compiled. Volumes have been written on this subject. And I have not read them! But I would encourage you to do your homework if it is something that you are interested in. I’ll talk about more recent translations tomorrow.