The Church of Our Lord Jesus the Christ

Welcome to Bible Study
This month we will be looking at that very thing.
The Bible.

The very word of GOD. Where did the Bible come from? Who wrote what we have today??
I will not make this very compliceted to understand. You will hear some people say,
” I wish life came with an instruction manual !!!”. Well, It does.
The Bible
The history of the Bible’s translation into English is a long and complicated one, and can only be summarized
briefly here. Parts of the Bible appear to have been translated into Old English by Alfred the Great
(died a.d. 901), including the Ten Commandments, parts of Exodus 21-23 and Acts 15, and a number of
Psalms. Later in the tenth century Abbot Aelfric and perhaps others translated significant parts of the Old
Testament into English, as well as the Gospels and some other New Testament books.

The most important translation concept

The most important translation of the Bible is not from the original languages to English, but from the printed
page into your life. If you have never read through a complete book of the Bible, we suggest you begin by
reading the Gospel of John. We encourage you to recognize that the Bible is not merely a book. It is God’s
message to us all, and God continues to speak through it today. There is, after all, a reason far more Bibles
have been produced than any book in history. Read it and see.

Scripture Study is important

By around 1300 parts of the Psalms and the New Testament were being translated into Middle English. These
were precursors of the famous versions associated with John Wycliffe (died a.d. 1384). The tradition that
Wycliffe himself translated the Bible into English is founded on a statement by his follower Jan Hus. Whether
he actually did the translation himself or it was carried out by his followers, he doubtless exerted a great
 influence over it. These translations were based on the Latin Vulgate, originally the work of Jerome, which
was finished at the beginning of the fifth century a.d. and which became the standard Bible of the Western
 church throughout the Middle Ages.

Several other events in Europe had a significant impact on the history of the English Bible at this point. First
was the general revival of learning in Europe known as the Renaissance, which brought about renewed interest
 in Hebrew and Greek, the original languages of the Bible. Second was the construction of an improved printing
 press with metal moveable type some time prior to 1450 by Johannes Gutenberg (the first volume book printed
 on this improved press was the Gutenberg Bible printed ca. 1455). This innovation launched an explosion in the
 availability of Bibles, which spread to England when the first printing press for English Bibles was established
in 1476. The third event occurred when Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of the church in
Wittenberg in 1517, setting in motion the Protestant Reformation. These events combined to give considerable
 momentum to the translation of the Bible into everyday language. Luther’s New Testament, translated from the
Greek into German, appeared in 1522, while William Tyndale’s, translated from the Greek into English, followed
in 1525. Tyndale was arrested in Antwerp in 1535 and executed for translating the Bible into the vernacular, and
his translation was vilified by the authorities. Yet almost every English translation for the next hundred years
borrowed heavily from Tyndale’s work, including in particular the King James Version of 1611. Before this
landmark in the history of English Bibles, however, there were other translations, like Coverdale’s in 1535 and
 the version called Matthew’s Bible in 1537. Both these Bibles received the royal license in 1537. The year
1539 saw the appearance of the so-called “Great Bible,” actually a revision of Matthew’s Bible by Coverdale,
which by royal decree of Henry VIII was placed in every church in England.

The reign of Elizabeth I saw the production of two more English Bibles, the Geneva Bible (published in 1560 in
Geneva, with a dedication to Elizabeth) and the Bishops’ Bible (1568, with a second edition in 1572). The
 former was the Bible used by Shakespeare, and was thoroughly Calvinistic in its translation and notes. It was
 so far superior in translation to the Great Bible that it became very popular, although the Anglican authorities
were not pleased with its Calvinistic leanings. The Bishops’ Bible was prepared as a response, and as a result
English-speaking Protestantism was left at the end of the sixteenth century with two competing Bibles. The
 problem was not resolved until the Hampton Court Conference of 1604, when King James authorized a new
translation of the Bible and specifically prohibited the use of marginal notes commenting on doctrine (notes
commenting on the sense of words were permitted, and the original King James Version contained thousands
of these). Gradually this translation established itself as the English Bible par excellence, and the last edition of
 the Geneva Bible appeared in 1644.

Until 1885, when the Revised Version was published in England, the King James Version (known in England as
 the Authorized Version) reigned supreme. An American version of the revision, known as the American
Standard Version, was published in 1901. The twentieth century saw the publication of a number of Bibles and
New Testaments, among them James Moffatt’s (NT 1913; OT 1924) and E. J. Goodspeed’s (NT 1923), which
combined with the Old Testament by A. Gordon, T. Meek, J. M. Powis Smith, and L. Waterman (1935) was
published the same year as The Bible: An American Translation. One of the most important English translations
 of the twentieth century was the Revised Standard Version (NT 1946; complete Bible, 1952). This was a
 thoroughgoing revision of the KJV and ASV which many consider to be the first of the “modern” translations.
The publication of the RSV was only the beginning of a flood of translations and paraphrases, including
(among others) J. B. Phillips’ The New Testament in Modern English (1958), the Amplified Bible (1965), the
Jerusalem Bible (1966), the New American Bible (1970), the New English Bible (1970), the New American
 Standard Bible (1971), The Living Bible (1971), and the New International Version (1973).
 
The history of the Bible is very interesting. They all agree on one thing. The BIBLE is the undisputable word of God. That through our Faith in Jesus all humanity can be saved. 
 We will continue on this topic next month, along with the books of the bible 

Rev. M Cohen

Rev. M Cohen