By Tim Lambert
The Bible is Written
The Bible has had a huge influence on Western Civilization for two thousand years. Whether you believe it or not its undoubtedly a very important book. It was written not by one person but by many people over hundreds of years.
Scholars believe that several people wrote Genesis. It was compiled into a single book sometime after 500 BC. The book of Daniel was probably written around 150 BC.
The four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John record the life of Jesus. It’s believed they were written between 70 and 100AD. Earlier Paul wrote letters that became part of the New Testament. The last book of the Bible is Revelation. It was written by a person called John about 95 AD.
Not all books about Jesus became parts of the Bible. Some books were rejected such as the Gospel of Thomas. Which books should be included in the New Testament was gradually settled. By the end of the 4th century the canon of the New Testament (which books were accepted as authorotive) was established.
The New Testament was written in Greek, which was the common language of people in the Eastern Mediterranean. In 405 a man named Jerome translated the Bible into Latin. His version is called the Vulgate. It became the standard version used by the Catholic Church. During the Middle Ages copies of the Bible were usually in Latin, a language that all educated people understood.
In the early 8th century a writer called The Venerable Bede translated the Gospel of John into English. In the late 14th century followers of a man named John Wycliffe translated the Bible from Latin into English. The Church disapproved and in 1408 the Synod of Oxford banned his translation. The Church banned any further translations of the Bible into English without permission.
The Reformation
In the 16th century Europe was rocked by the Reformation, which split the Church in two. The printing press made books much cheaper and the Bible became available to many more people. After the reformation was that the Bible was translated into several local languages for the first time.
In Germany, Martin Luther translated the New Testament into German in 1522 and the Old Testament in 1534. In 1526, the New Testament was translated into Swedish. The whole Bible was translated in 1541. The New Testament was first translated into Finnish in 1548. The whole Bible was translated in 1642.
The Bible was translated into French in the Middle Ages but in 1530 a translation from the original Hebrew was published. Antonio Brucioli translated the Bible into Italian. Casiodoro de Reina translated the Bible into Spanish in 1569.
A man named William Tyndale was refused permission to translate the Bible into English. So he moved abroad and in 1525 he translated the New Testament into English from Greek. Tyndale also translated part of the Old Testament. Copies of his translations were smuggled into England. However, Tyndale was strangled and burned in Antwerp in 1536 for heresy.
Another Englishman, Miles Coverdale translated the Bible into English in 1635. It was the first complete English translation of the Bible to be printed. Henry VIII made himself head of the Church of England. In 1638 he ordered that a copy of an authorised version of the Bible in English should be place in every church in England. In 1611 the King James Bible was published. It had a big influence of English culture. The Bible was first translated into Welsh in 1588.
A translation of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Dutch was published in 1637. In 1685 Ernst Gluck translated the New Testament into Latvian. In 1689 he translated the Old Testament into Latvian.
The New Testament was translated into Irish Gaelic in 1602. The Old Testament followed in 1685. The New Testament was first translated into Scottish Gaelic in 1747. The whole Bible was translated into Gaelic in 1801.
The Bible in Modern Times
Today there are many versions of the Bible available. In the 1950s J. B. Phillips wrote a version of the New Testament in modern English. The Living Bible was published in 1971. The New International Version was published in 1978.
Today the entire Bible has been translated into more than 740 languages. Parts of the Bible have been translated into more than 4,000 languages. The Bible is still a best selling book. The Bible is also available in electronic form on the internet.