History

History of the Bible

God speaks in all languages. Trace the language heritage of the Bible.

Hebrew Bible with Masoretic pointing

- Old Testament

Bible Written in Hebrew and Aramaic

- New Testament

Koine Greek, the trade language of the first century

- 300AD

  • Latin began to replace Greek, as the common language. Several Latin translations, some pretty inaccurate, leaked into circulation. The Church decided that an official translation was in order.
  • This translation was called the Latin Vulgate (meaning vulgar or common) and became the Bible of the Middle Ages. The Vulgate was built to last, even outlasting its purpose.
  • Centuries passed. People could no longer understand the Church’s liturgy or Scripture reading because Latin was not used in everyday life anymore.
  • Clergy clung to the Vulgate because Latin was the language of the educated and it forced people to rely on their teaching.

John Wycliffe

John Wyclif (or Wycliffe) believed that the Bible should be for all people, not just the clergy and was the driving force behind the translation of the first complete Bible into English, using the Latin Vulgate as source text.

Wyclif’s Bibles, and later his bones, were burned, but he had sparked a Reformation.

Luther’s 1534 bible

- 1525

William Tyndale, a scholar fluent in 7 languages, left England to work on the first English translation based on the original Hebrew and Greek. In 1525, smuggled copies of his New Testament began circulating England.

Martin Luther later published about 100,000 copies of his German translation.

Translators across Europe made God’s Word available in every major language.

Missionaries then began to translate into non-European languages.

- 1629

Matthew’s Gospel in Malay appeared.

- 1662

John Elliot translated the first missionary Bible for America in the language of the Massachusetts Indians.

William Carey

1793 – 1834, William Carey, an English cobbler believed that the Bible was the most effective way to advance Christianity, and involved himself in translating Scripture into over 20 Indian languages. In total, he and his team, translated and printed Scripture in 45 languages and dialects in Asia – 35 for the first time.

- 1800

By 1800 there were 66 languages with some portion of Scripture, 40 with the whole Bible.

- 1804

Bible societies were formed for the translation, publication and distribution of the Scriptures.

Missionary efforts in our twentieth century have resulted in giant leaps in Bible translation. More translations were done in the last 100 years than in the entire previous history of the Church.

William Cameron Townsend:

Founder of Wycliffe

History of Wycliffe Bible Translaters

- 1917

William Cameron Townsend was challenged by a Cakchiquel man: ‘If your God is so great, why doesn’t He speak my language?’

- 1934

Towsend founded ‘Camp Wycliffe’ as a linguistics training school, which then became the Summer Institute of Linguistics.

- 1951

the first Wycliffe Bible translation, by Kenneth Pike and Donald Stark, was completed in the San Miguel Mixtec language of Mexico.

- 1978

The 100th was completed – in the Amuesha language of Peru.

- 1985

The 200th was completed – in the Hanga language of Ghana, Africa.

- 1989

The 300th was completed – the Cotabato Manobo of the Philippines.

- 1995

The 400th was completed – in the Barai language of PNG

- 2000

The 500th New Testament, the Suriname Javanese, was dedicated.

-2008

Today Wycliffe is involved in 1,998 language projects reaching an estimated 1.2 billion people.