bibles
bibles
Many Bibles
The Christian Bible of the West is a creation of the Western Catholic Church in the 4th century. Before that time there was not an assembled Bibles (called a Codex) but only individual manuscripts.
The first attempt at assembling these manuscripts into a Bible was a flop, because the Bishops who had to teach the Gospels could not understand what the Greek meant in biblical terms. (See example below.)
Pope Damasus commissioned Jerome to write a Bible that made sense. Jerome moved to Bethlehem to talk with the rabbis to understand the Hebrew Targums which were what they read in Synagogues. Jerome discarded the Septuagint Greek versions of the Old Testament because the rabbis explained to him that they were heretical.
For the translation of the New Testament Jerome studied the Greek manuscripts, but he based the meaning of the Greek texts on the understandings of the early Bishops who had created Gospels in Old Latin (Vetus Latinas.) These Gospels had been is use for some 200 years, each of them uniquely written and often in disagreement.
Pope Damasus had instructed Jerome to unify those documents.
Jerome took many years for the creation of his Bible in classical Latin in 382 AD. His work has been the basis for all Bibles until the 20th century.
The Church of England has chosen to base their Authorized KJV bible on the Bible written by Jerome in Classical Latin about 382 AD. The Latin was translated faithfully into English by Wycliffe in 1384.
•1 In the bigynnyng God made of nouyt heuene and erthe. 2 Forsothe the erthe was idel and voide, and derknessis weren on the face of depthe; and the Spiryt of the Lord was borun on the watris. 3 And God seide, Liyt be maad, and liyt was maad. 4 And God seiy the liyt, that it was good, and he departide the liyt fro derknessis; and he clepide the liyt, 5 dai, and the derknessis, nyyt. And the euentid and morwetid was maad, o daie. 6 And God seide, The firmament be maad in the myddis of watris, and departe watris fro watris. 7 And God made the firmament, and departide the watris that weren vndur the firmament fro these watris that weren on the firmament; and it was don so. 8 And God clepide the firmament, heuene. And the euentid and morwetid was maad, the secounde dai. 9 Forsothe God seide, The watris, that ben vndur heuene, be gaderid in to o place, and a drie place appere; and it was doon so.
•
•Wycliffe, John (2016-11-08T22:58:59). The Complete Wycliffe Bible: Old Testament, New Testament & Apocrypha: Text Edition (Kindle Locations 319-325). CrossReach Publications. Kindle Edition.
At that time there was no prohibition against making an English Version of the Vulgate Bible. After 1400 a law was made to prevent translation of the Vulgate without permission of the Church.
In 1485 Gutenberg press printed the first Bible. It was the Vulgate (in Latin.)
In 1526 Tyndale produced his New Testament in English without authorization from the Church. He was strangled to death and his body burned for his heresy. Nevertheless Tyndale's work was anonymously used for 87% of the words in the King James Version of 1611.
The Roman Catholic Church has chosen to base their modern bible on the Classical Latin gospels Bible of Jerome c. 382 called the Vulgate. It is still in service in the Vatican and Latin speaking countries. It was translated into English in 1582 - 1609 mostly by William Tyndale but was edited by Bp. Challoner to remove Protestant ideas, and this Bible called the Douay-Rheims or DRV is still in print today. But in America the Church has been allowed to rewrite the Bible into the vernacular tongue for the US Catholic community (55 million adults 2008.) These versions were based at first on the Revised Standard Version, the Jerusalem Bible from a French translation, and today there is the New American Bible.
The Protestant Mainstream churches have chosen to base their modern bibles on the Greek Bible in Constantinople c. 350. Here is an extract from it.
And here is the English transliteration.
“Upon-if-then-very much they-handed-uponunto
to-have-arranged-up to-a-leadingthrough
about of-the-ones of-having-hadcome-
to-be-fully-beareed-unto in unto-us
of-practicings-to, down-as they-had-givenbeside
unto-us, the-ones off of-afirsting,
self-beholders and under-rowers
having-had-became of-the-one of-a-forthee,
it-thought-unto unto-and-I unto-havinghad-
come-to-path-along-beside-unto upunto-
which-from unto-all unto-exacted ofheld-
down unto-thee to-have-scribed, Mostsecured
Deity-cared,
You can see why the Bishops of the 4th century objected to this text. A Cambridge scholar and a Bishop translated this into biblical Greek and made a standardized source document (UBS/N-A Greek New Testament) for the various religious groups to translate.
And here is what the translators of the New International Version made of it.
"Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eye-witnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus," (Lu 1:1 -3).
Which was mostly a copy of the Vulgate language as translated by Tyndale in 1526. Here it is in the language of the KJV.
"Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus," (Lu 1:1 -3).
Protestant religious groups have commissioned various translations (NIV, TNIV, NKJV, ESV, RSV, NRSV.) in order to get around copyright laws They had to change the wording of their Bible to avoid copyright infringement.
So, phrases such as 'most surely believed'in the KJV has been changed to 'been fulfilled.'in the NIV. And 'having had perfect understanding' in the KJV became 'carefully investigated everything,'in the NIV because the NIV translators didn't want to suggest that anyone needed to be perfect in order to understand 'everything.'
The word 'ministers' was changed to 'servants' in the NIV because ministers meant clergy, and Protestants did not want to suggest that clergy be in charge of teaching the gospel, as they had no clergy.
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Some Protestant Religious groups (Episcopals, Baptists, Mormons) have printed (illegally) an Americanized version of the King James Bible of 1769 which also omits 13 books from the original King James Bible used by the Church of England.
Copyright of the King James Bible
5.Copyrightabiliy of Religious Texts.
6. The crown has a perpetual copyright on the King James Bible, through "letters patent" originally issued to stop unofficial editions and then to protect the country from ranters, shakers, Quakers, nonconformity and popery. Thus today we can't freely reprint, circulate passages, write commentaries and draw upon the text in the way we might with other texts of the time, such as Shakespeare's plays. Bizarrely, these restrictions only apply in the UK.
Most Bibles have copying restrictions described in the front pages. Typically up to 1000 words can be copied for church bulletins, but if you want to put a quotation on the web you must copy only a few verses and must indicate the source book.
No publisher of a bible can use the words of another's.
No Christian bible contains the complete Hebrew scriptures of the OT which are called Talmud i.e. the “bible” of Orthodox Jews.
“The Talmud is the written record of an oral tradition. It became the basis for many rabbinic legal codes and customs, of which the most important are the Mishneh Torah and the Shulchan Aruch. Orthodox and, to a lesser extent, Conservative Judaism accept the Talmud as authoritative...” (from Wickipedia.)
The actual writing of the scriptures began c. 750 with Isaiah. Other prophets in the following century, until around 440 BCE Ezra wrote down the Law (five books of Moses) in a script of only consonants, which could not be spoken, as there no vowels in the Aramaic/Hebrew/Phoenician alphabets at that time. The letters (symbols) were reminders of what Laws the scribes should teach, and the actual details of the law were from memory. By the time of Jesus, the Pharisees had become responsible for memorizing the Law and making interpretations to deal with local/modern issues.
In the time of Jesus (30 CE,) “scripture” meant the written part of the Law, plus the writings of the Prophets. But as there was no alphabet at the time of Moses, and no writing before 750 BCE (only pictograms such as cuneiform markings and Egyptian hieroglyphs,) all that YHWH taught Moses (1450 BCE) had to memorized by him and later committed to the memories of his councilors and the tribe of Levi. All rabbinical Law was verbal until the 6th century CE. None of this Law made it into the Christian Old Testament which had been finalized too soon (382 AD) to include any of it Without this part of the Law, the Old Testament is impossible to understand (rabbis say so.)
During the centuries following the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (70-135 CE) the Pharisees committed their memories to writing. Students who studied these writings were called rabbis. These writings comprise the oral Laws remembered by the Levites and later the Pharisees. This is called Talmud. The primary Talmud is considered to be the Babylonian Talmud, the secondary is the Jerusalem Talmud. The Talmud contains the complete Law that YHWH is said to have dictated to Moses. It is a thick book, some three times thicker than our Christian Old Testament.
Christians are discouraged by rabbis from reading Talmud as they consider the Law to be strictly for the chosen people, not for Gentiles.
Strangely, the moral laws for the USA are supposedly based on some of the Talmudic laws written especially for non-Jews. (see PL102 of 1991 signed by H.W. Bush)
In the 4th. cent the choice of what to include in the bible was made by the Catholic Bishops. They chose four Gospels as being sufficient. The other Gospels, attributed to the Apostles Thomas, Philip, and Peter were banned to the Catholic Bishops (approx 1000 of them throughout the Empire in 325 AD) and all copies had to be destroyed. Some monks refused to destroy them and these gospels and some fifty other writings by disciples were hidden away. They were discovered in the 19th and 20th centuries and are now being released to the public. The Gospels of Thomas, Philip, Peter, Judas, and Mary, are available.)
At the Council of Carthage in 397, the Bishops specified which books should be in the Bible of the Roman Empire. When the time came to assemble The Bible, the Greek Bishops had a slightly different version from the Latin Bishops. The Eastern Bishops did not accept Revelation until the 6th century.
The History in summary
What has been included in English bibles is by tradition of the church. The content of the Bible is a result of the Bishops’ selection of the manuscripts to be included in the bible, i.e. it is by tradition that we have the bible with its 80 books.
When the center of Christianity moved to Rome, in the 5th. cent. Pope Damasus commissioned a Bible to be written in Latin. After the death of Damasus, Bp. Jerome went to the Holy Land to seek out the most ancient manuscripts for this Latin translation. Jerome, who was familiar with some of the Old Latin texts from North Africa (2nd - 4th. cents. known as Vetus Latina mss.) moved to Bethlehem so that he would have access to more reliable Hebrew texts.
His Latin Bible is different from the 4th. cent. Greek Bible of Constantine as it was based on a combination of the Hebrew texts of the OT, the Old Latin texts of the Psalter, the Greek texts for the sacred books, and Greek texts of the NT.
This Bible was eventually, adopted by the Latin Church (after many changes and called the “Vulgate”) and has been in use by the Vatican ever since, and is the preferred text used in the Vatican.
Up to the 16th. cent. the Western Church employed this Vulgate Bible throughout Europe, in England, and throughout North Africa. In the 16th. cent the English Church and the German Church split with Rome. Their new theology conflicted with Rome’s, so a new Bible had to be written to support this new theology. The Germans wrote the Lutheran Bible, and the English the King James Version. Both these Bibles were based on the Vulgate Latin.
I hope you are beginning to realize that the Gospels and writings in the NT have changed over the years.
Before the Reformation, No Bible was required for church. The Church produced a daily services book of readings, hymns and prayers. This was the Missal, or Prayer Book. It contained all the important readings from the Bible spread over a year. There was no need to consult the Bible except for academic purposes.
Each of the major branches of the catholic Church had their own “Missal” in their own language. There was the Eastern Orthodox, the Greek Orthodox, The Roman Catholic, the Syrian Orthodox. In the English Church it was called a Book of Common Prayer.
Bible translators have an 'Agenda.'
Every group of Bible translators have a specific agenda, given by their Church, to slant the translation towards a doctrine taught by that Church. That’s why we have Roman Catholic Bibles that differ from Protestant Bibles. There are even bible versions aimed at specific religious groups. In fact, these days, people pick a Bible for their specific Church ideology. For example: within the Episcopal Churches in America there are three or four different Bibles in use, each supporting the doctrine that a particular pastor wishes to emphasize.
There are now some 33,000 Christian denominations in the World, and hundreds of Bibles in various translations, written and published by people who have specific objectives.
Don’t think that what you have in your own Bible are the entire teachings of Jesusd. The Bible can be considered an aide memoir to lead you to the teachings of Jesus, as was intended from the beginning of the Church.
John said that there were not enough books in the entire world to contain the teachings of Jesus. What is contained in a modern Bible are two hours of His words. Paul’s words are twice as many as the Lord’s. The entire NT can be listened to in ten hours. Don’t hang your salvation on what you understand from the NT alone. You need to work with your Father by listening to your conscience as The Father reveals to you truth upon truth. Then you must live it.
The King James Bible had so many printing errors over the years that the English Parliament finally stopped the printers from making corrections because for every error they corrected they introduced another. The 1769 printing is the last one authorized by the Church. Almost all modern printings of the KJV are copies of this edition.
Recently, the Queen’s Printer, attempted to correct all the errors in the KJV and produce a bible that reflected what the original translators had intended -- i.e the first translation before the printing of the KJV in 1611. There were hundreds of corrections made. It is in print as the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible.
If you look at critical editions of the Greek manuscripts used for bible translations, you will see that there are many variations in the manuscripts. If you choose a KJV critical edition you can see which word the English Bishops of the Church of England have selected that best reflects what the CofE have traditionally believed about God and Jesus.
Scholars of other religions have different critical editions and selected words to reflect what their church teaches.
For a listing and timetable of Bible production click here to link to another page on this site
For a comparison of bible verses translated from different critical editions go here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_textual_variants_in_the_New_Testament
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