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LESSONS

• The Bible
• The Canon of the Bible
• Four Writers of the Pent
• The Translations, etc.

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CALENDAR

July 2002

* 8-13 Prelims Week

August 2002

* 26 National Heroes Day
28-29 SU Founders Day

September 2002

October 2002

* 7-11 Finals Week

Dear Students,

Kindly take time to visit this site regularly as notes, readings, illustrations and pointers to exams and quizzes will be placed here soon. Thanks!

- Callum Tabada
Instructor, Rel. 11 Class

10. How Did Our Modern English Translations Come About?

Although none of his work has survived, the first man credited with translating the Bible into his native English was the Venerable Bede, a Benedictine monk and historian of Anglo-Saxon England. In the 730s, Bede rendered part of Jerome's Latine Vulgate into Old English. During the tenth and eleventh centuries, a few other Bible books, including the Psalms and Gospels, also appeared in English, but it was not until the fourteenth century that the entire Bible would be translated into that language. Except to Roman Catholic church leaders and a few scholars, Latin had by then become a dead language, and the Vulgate Bible was incomprehensible to most Christians. To make the Scripture accessible to the British, John Wycliffe, an English priest, translated both Old and New Testaments, completing the project around 1384. But the Roman Catholic church, fearing the effect of Bibles in the popular tongue, in 1408 condemned Wycliffe's version and forbade any future translations.

Two historical events, however, ensured that the Bible would find a larger reading public in English. The first was Johan Gutenberg's invention of the movable typ in 1455. The second was the Protestant Reformation, begun in 1517, when the German priest Martin Luther protested administrative corruption within the Roman Catholic church. A German translation of the Bible completed by Luther himself in the years 1522-1534 was the first version in a modern European language based not on the official Latin Vulgate Bible but on the original Hebrew and Greek.

The first English translator to work directly from Hebrew and Greek manuscripts was William Tyndale, who, under the threat of persecution, fled to Germany, where his translation of the New Testament was published in 1525 (revised 1534). Tyndale's version of the Pentateuch appeared in 1530 and his Jonah in 1531. But intense persecution prevented him from completing his translation of the Old Testament, and in 1535-1536 he was betrayed, tried for heresy, and burned at the stake. Although he did not live to finish translating the entire Bible, Tyndale's superb rendering of the New Testament and Pentateuch has influenced almost every English version since.

Although the Roman Catholic church for-translations, it nevertheless permitted free distribution of the first printed English Bible-the Coverdale Bible (1535), which relied heavily on Tyndale's work. Matthew's Bible (1537), containing additional sections of Tyndale's Old Testament, was revised by Coverdale and the result was called the Great Bible (1539). The Bishops' Bible (1568) was a revison of the Great Bible, and the King James Version was commissioned as a revision of the Bishop's Bible. The Geneva Bible (1560), which the English Puritans had produced in Switzerland, also significantly influenced the King James Bible.

By far the most popular English Bible of all time, the King James was authorized by James I, who appointed fifty-four scholars to make a new version of the Bishop's Bible for official use in the English Church. After seven years' labor, during which the oldest available manuscripts were diligently consulted, the King's scholars produced in 1611 the Authorized or the language was at its richest and most creative in vocabulary, rhythm, and style, the King James Version remains unsurpassed in literary excellence. Later English translations may be more accurate and have the advantage of being based on more recently discovered manuscripts, but none has phrased the Scriptures in so memorable or quotable a fashion.

The first Revised Version of the King James was published in England between 1881 and 1885; a slightly modified text of this edition, the American Standard Version, was issued in 1901. Using the (then) latest studies in archeology and linguistics, the Revised Standard Version (RSV) appeared between 1946 and 1952. Because modern scholarship continues to advance in understanding of biblical languages and textual history, an updated edition, The New Revised Standard, with Apocrypha, was published in 1991.

Readers can now choose from a wide selection of modern translations, most of which incorporate the benefits of experts in scholarship that draws on interdisciplinary fields of linguistic, historical, and literal studies. These include the Jerusalem Bible (JB) (1966), which transliterates several Hebrew names for God-notably Yahweh and El Shaddai-into the English text and which is the version of the Hebrew Bible quoted in this book. The New English Bible (NEB), the translation cited here in discussions of the New Testament, was published in 1976, using a fresh, colloquial wording of familiar passages. The Revised English Bible (1989) reflects the work of an ecumenical body of scholars, including representatives of Roman Catholic and major Protestant denominations, as well as smaller groups such as the Salvation Army and Moravian church. The New Jewish Version of the Hebrew Bible, published in 1960's and revised in the 1970's has been called "a monument to careful scholarship."

The widely used New International Version (NIV), completed in the 1970s, reflects a generally conservative Protestant viewpoint. A popular Roman Catholic translation, the New American Bible (NAB) (1970), is also highly readable. Like the Jerusalem Bible and the New (and Revised) English Bible, it includes fresh renderings of the deuterocanonical books (the Apocrypha). Most of these new translations are available in paperback editions, which contain extensive annotations, maps, and scholarly commentary.

Some translations favored by many students need to be used with caution. Whereas the Good News Bible offers a fluent paraphrase of the original languages in informal English, many shcolars think that the Liiving Bible strays so far from the original texts that it is unreliable and misleading. Some doctrinal oriented versions, such as The New World Translation published by the Watchtower Society (Jehovah's Witnesses), consistently tend to render controversial passages in a way that supports their particular beliefs.

The multi-volume Doubleday Anchor Bible is an excellent study aid. A cooperative effort by Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish Scholars, each volume in the series is the work of an individual translator, who provides extensive interpretative commentary. The Scholar Version is another in-progress multi-volume translation, beginning with a splendidly conversational rendition of the Gospel of Mark (Polebridge Press, 1991).

The Old Testament Canon

11. What is Meant by Canon?

The term "Canon" refers to a list of books officially approved for use in a given community; it also refers to the standard measurement by which books are included or excluded from the authoritative list. In Greek, canon means a "straight stick by which something is ruled or measured." The Hebrew word "qaneh" also refers to measurement or the norm by which something is judged.

12. How Did the Biblical Canon Come into Being, and Which Part of the Bible Were First Accepted as Canonical?

Bible scholars emphasize that canonization occurs as a historical process, not by arbitrary decrees of religious council or other authority. The Hebrew Bible grew by degrees, its contents expanding to incorporate new documents as Israel's writers over many generations recorded and interpreted their nation's political and spiritual experiences. The end result of a long period of development, canonication took place as the community of faith gradually accepted the religious authority of a book or books. As centuries passed, Israel's legal and prophetic writings grew ever more venerable and were quoted, debated, and read publicly in synagogues until familiarity with their teaching and their recognized consistency with the Mosaic tradition made them by use and habit part of the Hebrew Bible.

By about 400 B.C.E., the Jews regarded the first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch) as authoritative and binding. These five scrolls constituted the Torah, meaning the "law," "teaching," or "instruction" that Yahweh gave to Israel through Moses.

Next to be accepted were the prophetic books, which form the second major division of the Hebrew canon. By about 200 B.C.E. the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) and the Latter Prophets (the three Major Prophets, which occupy one scroll each, and the twelve Minor Prophets, which are encompassed on a single scroll) were regarded as sacred.

As early as the mid-second century B.C.E., a third category of Scripture was recognized. In the preface to his Greek translation of Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sirach), the translator speaks of "the Law and the Prophets and theother volumes of the fathers". These other volumes are the Writings (in Hebrew) whose contents were not clearly defined for many generations. Not until after the Romans had destroyed Jerusalem in 70 C.E. did the Jewish community attempt to set a precise limit on the number of books comprising the Writings. Then the problem was not so much what to include, considering the vast number of religious volumes available, as what to omit.

Following the Roman destruction of the Jewish state, a group of distinguished rabbis (teachers of the Law) founded the Academy of Jamnia on the Palestinian coast to define and consolidate the exxential teachings of the Jewish religion, including a statement about which books of the Hebrew Bible were to be accepted as sacred and the authoritative. The Jamnia assembly of about 90 C.E. was not the last such body to debate the issue, but it appears that the rabbis exercised their moral authority to favor usage of the following books and no others: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, the five scrolls to be read on major holy days (Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther), Daniel (the oly fully apocalyptic work to be included), and the work of the Chronicler (1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah). Some historians have suggested that the rabbis also acted to exclude the writings of the heretical new Christian sect as well as a number of books found in the Greek Septuagint Bible. Many of the latter were extremely popular among Greek-speaking Christians, however, and today are included in the Roman Catholic, Eastern, and Anglican canon as the Apocrypha.

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(13. What Are the Old Testament Apocrypha?) >>

>>1. What is the Bible?
>>2. What Does the Word "Bible" Mean?
>>3. Who Wrote the Bible?
>>4. When Was the Bible Written?
>>5. Is the Bible the World's Oldest Book?
>>6. In What Languages was the Bible Originally Written?
>>7. For Study Purposes, How Do Scholars Recommend That We Read the Bible?

Manuscripts and Translations
>>8. When Was the Bible First Translated?
>>9. In What Form Has the Bible's Text Been Preserved?
>>10. How Did Our Modern English Translations Come About?

The Old Testament Canon
>>11. What Is Meant by Canon?
>>12. How Did the Biblical Canon Come into Being, and Which Parts of the Bible Were First Accepted as Canonical?
>>13. What Are the Old Testament Apocrypha?
>>14. Is Inclusion of the Apocrypha the Only Difference Among Jewish, Protestant, and Roman Catholic Bibles?
>>15. Are There Any Other Jewish Writings That Were Not Received into the Bible?
>>16. What Are the Dead Sea Scrolls?