This post is a very brief summary of the early translation work of the Jewish faith and the early Church. I am indebted to Bruce M. Metzger’s The Bible in Translation. For a more in-depth study of this topic, I strongly recommend Dr. Metzger’s work along with others in our Suggested Helpful Readings.
We often think of Jewish communities as being rather closed off. Centuries of persecution will do this to a people. For many of us, what we know of Jewish people is what we see of them in the NT accounts. The Jewish religious leaders: scribes, lawyers, priests, Pharisees, and Sadducees, certainly were quite xenophobic. If you were Gentile, or worse Samaritans, you were to be avoided, even considered unclean. The general Jewish population was not too far from them.
The first century Jewish people we encounter in the NT had already been through great hardships. The Assyrians destroyed the northern Jewish kingdom, with most of the prominent people being taken to distant lands (c. 732 BC), the remaining portion of Israel—including Jerusalem and the Temple—was destroyed by the Babylonians in the late sixth century BC with substantial portions of the population being exiled to the area of the Euphrates River. These exiled Jews were finally able to return to the Promised Land and rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple in the early sixth, late fifth centuries BC.
Yet, hardship continued. The retaking of the land was exceedingly difficult. They rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem with a tool in one hand and a weapon in the other. They had limited time of real autonomy and freedom. First came the Greeks (4th century BC), a brief period of freedom for about a hundred years, then the Romans (1st century BC) occupied the land and controlled their lives. No matter the close-knit nature of their society and their aversion to outside stimuli, influences from these invading occupying powers and the world around them did seep into their culture.
This is especially true of the impact on the language of the Jewish people. During the period of the Exile, Hebrew was losing its place as the primary language of the common Israelite. Aramaic—a Semitic language from Syria—was becoming the new language of the people. This is even seen in the OT as sections of Daniel and Ezra were written in Aramaic. By the time of Jesus, Aramaic was the main language of the day. As we see with many people in the world today, the first century AD Jewish people would have been multilingual. The average person would have spoken Aramaic, had known Hebrew from religious observances and Hebrew school while Greek was making great headway around the world in becoming the common language of the Mediterranean cultures.
How does this impact Scripture? The Jewish religious leaders were naturally concerned to keep the faith alive among the younger people who were using Hebrew less and less. They were also concerned about the Jews living outside Judeah and Galilee. One of the main population centers of Jews outside of the Promised Land, was Alexandria, Egypt. These Jews were heavily influenced by the Hellenistic culture of the day. This is the Hellenistic Greek culture of the time of Alexander the Great and forward. Hellenism even had a massive influence on the Roman culture of the time of Jesus. The Greek language had become their primary language. As much as the Jewish leaders cherished their culture, they understood the need for change.
To tell a long and winding story succinctly, the Septuagint (3rd century BC) was a Greek translation of the OT to meet the needs of the Greek speaking Jews who had limited understanding Hebrew. The Septuagint is the first known translation of the Hebrew Scriptures: our OT. The word means “seventy.” You will see it abbreviated as LXX, the Roman numerals for 70. According to legendary accounts, 70 (or 72) scholars did the translation work. This Greek translation was done in Alexandria, Egypt.
There was also work done on what was called the Jewish Targum. The Targum was an Aramaic translation/commentary on the Hebrew Scriptures. At first they were oral works (1st century BC) but later were given a written form. In the synagogues, one to three lines would be read from the Hebrew text then the Aramaic Targum translation would be quoted along with the interpretive section of the Targum to instruct the people in their faith.
The early Church had this same desire of getting the Scripture in the language of the people. By the 5th century AD, the Bible or at least the NT had been translated into Syriac, Latin, Coptic, Gothic, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, Arabic, Sogdian, Nubian, and others. This would include maybe the most impactful translation of the Bible of all time: the Latin Vulgate. The vulgate was a translation into Latin in the late 4th century by Jerome. This Latin translation was to become the Bible in the Western Church until the 16th century and the basis of translation work within the Roman Catholic Church until the middle of the 20th century. The Latin Vulgate was the basis for the first printed translations into German (1466), Italian (1471), Catalan (1478), Czech (1488), and French (1530). The first English translation of the Bible—not a printed version but a manuscript from 1380’s—was done by John Wycliff (most likely his followers). Yet, it too was not done from the original language texts but from the Latin Vulgate.
This attitude of getting one’s religious writings into other languages is not true of all groups. Islam’s Quran was written in Arabic. Even today to read the Quran one must learn Arabic. I once asked a Muslim contractor where I worked about getting a copy of the Quran in English. I wanted to know what translation he would recommend. He explained to me the Quran is only in Arabic. Any work of translation of the Quran is not considered the Quran but a commentary of the Quran.
There are two points I think we should take away from this brief history. One, translation is what the Church does. The Church has always sought to get God’s Words into everyone’s hands. Our post Bible Primer: Part One contains a section of “Fun Facts,” giving information about the current state of translation work.
In summary as of 2020 of the 7,360 languages in the world the complete Bible has been translated into 704 languages, the NT into 1,551 languages, and at least a portion of the Bible into 1,160 languages. This means God’s word has been put into 3,415 languages being used by over 7 billion people. Work is being done on over 700 other languages used by 65.4 million people. There are 2,014 languages used by 167 million people on which work still needs to be started. The final 1,193 language used by 20.8 million are not used enough to plan translation work. It needs to be noted even in these languages which have not had a translation completed or even started most of the people using them are multilingual thus have a translation in another language they know.
Think about this point—the Gospel writers had to do translation just to write the Gospels. Jesus most likely spoke in Aramaic, Hebrew when reading in a synagogue or in the Temple and maybe some Greek the few times he traveled to more Greek areas. Yet, the Gospels were written in Greek. The biblical writers had to translate what Jesus said into the Greek we have in the text. Translation from the start, even in the first writing!
Wisdom is needed here! There are some who will teach we need to get “back” to the “original Aramaic” behind the Greek text. NO! We don’t need to go the Aramaic, for it was the Greek text which God inspired the writers to produce. The Holy Spirit led them in producing a Greek NT. Creating a translation of the supposed Aramaic text in English required double translation, from Greek to Aramaic, then from Aramaic to English. All this would accomplish is to be adding another large layer separating us from the original text.
The second point is the translations—no matter the language—are all the inspired Word of God. The Church has never taken the stance that only the copies of the original texts were inspired. Even when Rome said only the Latin Vulgate was acceptable, remember it was a Latin translation. From the Septuagint through the Latin Vulgate to the NASB2020 and the latest work done in an obscure language, they are all considered Scripture. It did not matter whether the translation was done with the Dynamic Equivalent method or the Essentially Literal Equivalent approach. The Bible is the Word of God!
It is true we look to the original language texts to solve issues with the various translations and to clarify interpretation. It is also true the closer the translation is to the original, the more they reflect its inspired nature, but we do not have lesser Bibles because they are in English or any other language.
From the start, both these points have been universally true in the Church: get the Word into as many hands as possible in as many languages as possible! We would encourage you to go to https://www.wycliffe.org/ to see more information about what they are doing to get God’s Word out to the nations and to learn how you can help.
Until the next time we see you here at CultivatingFaith.org, God Bless! #CultivatingFaithOrg
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