The Bible is one of the oldest known records of history in the world. If you thought the Bible was primarily a religious book, then you have never read it. It deals with the history of the world, the Jewish people, and the time of the early church. It contains prophecy about the future of the world, too.
It contains genealogies, heroism, conquests, failures, oppressions, and miracles. There's stories of ghosts, witches, giants, mutants, plagues, and destruction. It's written by poets, rebels, prophets, shepherds, kings, murderers, and slaves.
How did we get this book of history and prophecy? It took a divine hand, supernatural preservation, and the spiritual guidance of many different people in many different lands throughout time.
The oldest book in the Bible is Job, which is believed to be written some time after the flood, but before Moses wrote the Pentateuch, the first five books in the index of the Bible.
We are not entirely certain who wrote Job. Some believe it was written in the 5th Century BC. It could have been written and handed down through the generations, or it could have been told by God to Moses- it's a mystery, because only God Himself knows.
We do know that Moses is the author of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, with the exception of the last 8 verses (documenting his death). This was written in the Hebrew of his day.
From Joshua through Malachi, the Scriptures were written by leaders, scribes, seers or prophets, kings, and other men of God who were chosen by Him to record the important events of their day.
Because the lineage of the Jews copied, read, and often told stories from the Bible, their language has been the same since the time of Moses. Almost all of the books of the Old Testament originally were written in Hebrew, with the exception of Daniel.
Daniel was written in two languages- chapters 1–6, written mostly in Aramaic, and chapters 7–12, written mostly in Hebrew. Because Daniel was a captive in Babylon, he was forced to learn their language, and when writing the history of his experiences, he wrote in the language of the Babylonians- Aramaic. When he was writing the visions that he received of God in the last half of the book, however, he wrote them in his native tongue- Hebrew.
From the time of Daniel, the land of Israel went through many different foreign occupations. From Babylon, to Media-Persia, to the ancient Greek kingdom, the Jewish people had to accommodate many different peoples and a variety of languages. From the third century BC until the time of Christ it was the Roman Empire who held power.
Koine Greek was the common form of Greek spoken and written during the Hellenistic period (323 BC - 31 BC), the Roman Empire (31 BC - c 395 AD) and the early Byzantine Empire (395 AD - 1453 AD). It evolved from the spread of Greek following the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC.
Koine is also the language of the Septuagint (the 3rd century BC Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible), and is the original language in which the Christian New Testament and of most early Christian theological writing by the Church Fathers was written. In this context, Koine Greek is also known as "Biblical" Greek.
It is unclear whether Matthew and John, Hebrews, Peter, James, and Jude were originally written in Hebrew or Greek. But, the rest of the New Testament were written to Gentiles and therefore we know that they were written in the Koine Greek language.
Latin comes from the early people of Italy, who called their region Latium. By the 3rd century BC, Latin was the official language of the Roman Republic. It was used by the Roman administration as well as for law, politics, and religion. The location of the Roman Republic is currently known as Rome, Italy.
After the foundation of Rome in (753 BC) and its expansion, Latin prevailed as the main language in both speaking and writing within the limited borders of Italy and the surrounding areas, however most of the vast territory of the Roman Empire spoke Greek.
In AD 395, during Theodosius I reign, the split between the Western part of the Roman empire and the Eastern part officially created two different empires. This division changed Roman life and government. There were now two emperors in each empire, and they governed independently. The capital of the Western Empire was Rome, and the capital of the Eastern Empire was Constantinople (modern day Istanbul). Although they governed separately, their forms of government were similar and they enforced many of the same laws. However, as time went on their differences grew, mainly in the aspects of religion, language, and culture.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in AD 476, Greek became the language of administration in the Eastern Roman Empire (or Byzantine empire).
The Holy Roman Empire was an attempt to revive the Western Roman Empire, whose legal and political structure deteriorated during the 5th and 6th centuries. In AD 1054, The Holy Roman Empire was divided into Western Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
Latin eventually rises to replace Greek after the Byzantine Empire fell to the Turks in AD 1453. This was due largely to the control brought on by religious dominance. There was a good deal of appropriation, especially when the Roman Catholics. The need to control sacred writings and more that were all in Greek brought about the mass translation of the Greek civil and religious documents into Latin.
Ecclesiastical Latin refers to the styles used by the writers of the Roman Catholic Church; the term 'Vulgar Latin' was used to differentiate the common language of the people.
The Vulgate is largely the work of Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Old Latin gospels used by the Roman Church. Jerome chose to make a new translation of the Old Testament while working from Hebrew Masoretic text. However, he used the Old Latin, instead of the Greek to translate the New Testament. He finished in AD 405. The Vulgate was to become the Catholic Church's officially promoted version of the Bible declared at the Council of Trent (1545 - 1563 AD).
Jerome could not fully capture the participial nuances of the Koine Greek New Testament. Instead he resorted to using many more words than necessary that often complicated the text.
None of the original books of the Bible were ever written in Latin. They are written in the language of the people who would be reading them- Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
The Textus Receptus, or the “received text” as it is also known, was translated by Erasmus in the 15th Century AD. He compiled the New Testament books from Greek manuscripts which became the first published Greek New Testament.
Since all of Erasmus' Greek manuscripts dated from the 12th century or later, many modern scholars consider his text to be of subpar quality. But you have to consider that writings of the apostles would presumably have been written on papyrus or parchment, since they were the easiest and cheapest to acquire. These letters would be copied by others on the same readily available materials down through the centuries. The old, worn out copies would be disposed of and replaced with the new copies.
There are no original Hebrew scrolls written by Moses. The psalms of David are not the actual psalms written by his hand. Neither would you find the letters written by Paul himself anywhere in this present world. Everything we have in our Bibles today comes from copies of the originals, not the originals themselves, as they have been lost to time and history.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, which were found by an Arab shepherd boy in 1947 in the Qumran caves near Jericho, Israel, actually agree with the King James Bible translation. This fact makes them unattractive to scholars desiring to retard the KJV translation. So, other than commenting on the irony of the way in which they were found, they are largely ignored.
The KJV translation authorized by King James in 1604 was done by six committees composed of 47 scholar: three assigned to work on the Old Testament, two on the New Testament, and one on the Apocrypha.
Because we no longer possess the original biblical texts as written by authors like Moses, Jeremiah, John, and Paul, the scholars used all available materials to discern as accurately as possible what the originals said. They sifted through mountains papyri, scrolls, fragments on parchment and vellum, manuscripts, various translations in different languages, and literally millions of quotations from early church fathers who cited Scripture in their writings. These were mainly written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin, although early translations in ancient languages like Coptic, Syriac, Ge’ez, and Gothic must also be consulted.
The New Testament was guided by using the Textus Receptus Greek texts. For the Old Testament, the Masoretic Hebrew and Aramaic text was used, and for the Apocrypha, the Greek Septuagent text was used primarily.
Once the work of the committees was completed, two members from each committee met for the final review before publication. This work took them seven years from beginning to printing. Scholars agree, that this large group of men, with diverse resources, produced a better version of the English Bible in its entirety than had previously been available.
It is a book of history, prophecy, and power. Its pages reveal the creation of the world, the beginning of the Jewish nation, and the predictions of our future. It shows the state of humanity, the fate of our souls, and the presented choice that could change our futures. Its powerful, majestic style has made it a literary classic, and the only book in the world that can tell you where you come from, why you are here, and what will happen to you after you die.
