Bible Versions Underlying Texts and Manuscripts
Bible Versions and Underlying Texts and Manuscripts
As a Bible Translator, this is obviously an important question for me.
I am not talking about which English translation(s) do we use in our translation work, but which underlying Hebrew or Greek text do we base our Angave translation upon.
Translations are made from underlying Hebrew and Greek texts.
In English we have the KJV, RSV, ASV, NIV, etc.; these are translations. The question I am addressing, is from which underlying Hebrew and Greek text should we translate?
And I am not addressing the degree of literalness to be used. There is a continuum from “word literal” to “literal equivalent” to “dynamic equivalent” to “paraphrase;” that is a wholly different subject.
I am addressing the underlying Hebrew and Greek text.
It is important to know that this issue only applies to the New Testament. Since there is only one text for the Old Testament, the Masoretic Text, all translations of the OT are based on that Text. That is the text used by the Jewish Publication Society, who publishes the OT for the Jewish Community in English here in America. The Masoretic Text is the “authoritative text of the Tanakh in Rabbinic Judaism”. Since there is only one text for the OT, any differences in the various English translations are due exclusively to different understandings of what the Hebrew word or grammar means, and since I think Jewish Scholars would have a good understanding of Hebrew, consulting the JPS is a good idea, and interestingly, the JPS translation (which is an English translation) and the King James Version, basically agree across the board.
The New Testament though is a different story. There are essentially two (2) Greek texts. When we say “texts”, think of it like this: there was an original book, and after some time two (2) different people made handwritten copies of that same original book. Those 2 copies, due to whatever reasons you can think of, have differences. One of those copies was used over and over again, so often that the copies kept wearing out; the original copies are no longer around, only copies of those copies. The other copy was not used much, was put in a “drawer,” and not discovered until 1500 years later.
Some people would say the copy that kept being used, and so needed to be continually re-copied was the better one (attested to the fact that people kept using it); while others would say the one put in the drawer was better, for even though it was put in drawer and never used, it is older than any of the re-copies of the other original hand-written copy, and so being closer in time to the author’s original book, must be better. That is what we mean by two (2) “texts”: one that kept getting copied over and over again, and one that was put in a drawer.
With the New Testament, one of the texts we have is called “The Majority Text”, “The Received Text”, in Latin the “Textus Receptus”, the “TR”. Over 90% of the documents which we have (whole books or parts of books) are of this text, which is why one of its names is “The Majority Text.” This is the one that kept being used, and needed to be copied over and over.
The other text is “The Nestles Text”, which is based on “The Westcott and Hort Text”, which is a compilation of two (2) Greek manuscripts, which are in fact the oldest manuscripts we have, but which had not been in use for 1500 years! The one, the Codex Vaticanus was stored in the Vatican Library, and not released for examination until 1889, when the Vatican allowed it to be examined and a photo-engraved facsimile printed. That alone should give Protestants concern: Do we want to use a text that was in the custody of the Roman Catholic Church, considered by the Reformers to be the Anti-Christ? The other text used by Westcott and Hort, the Codex Sinaiticus, was rescued by Constantin van Tischendorf in 1844, from a garbage pail, as the story goes, in the St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula.
There are many articles on the Internet regarding these documents.
These are the 2 texts which “were put in a drawer, and discovered later.”
In contrast with those 2 texts, which were “put in a drawer and not used for 1500 years” (they are dated as being written in the 300’s), the Majority Text was in continual use, known to all, and was THE Greek text of the Protestant Reformation. It was used by John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, William Tyndale, Martin Luther; by all of the Reformers. It was the only Greek text around at that time. It was the basis of all Reformation era New Testament translations; there was no other Greek Text around. The Italian Diodati, the Spanish Reina-Valera, Portuguese Almeia Recebida, the Dutch Statenvertaling, the Czech Bible of Kralice, Luther’s German Bible, and yes the King James Bible, are all based on the Textus Receptus, the Majority Text.
Again, there are many articles on the Internet regarding that, and separate articles on each of those translations as well.
Since this is a hot topic for English speakers, let me say, the KJV is a translation, it is not inspired, it is not “The God Preserved Text/Translation of the Bible”, but even though some of the words are out-dated, and word order may be old fashion, the translators basically translated one English word for each Greek word, and used italics to show additions that were needed to make the English a bit smoother; that is why it can be linked to Concordances and Lexicons: there is basically one English word for each Greek word.
In our translation work, we do consult other English translations, as they give insight into the meaning of the Greek words, and the inter-connectedness of the phrases, and the ordering of phrases within each sentence. But since all Concordances like Strong’s and Young’s and Cruden’s, and all Greek lexicons like Vines and Thayer are based on and linked to the Greek Textus Receptus, and therefore to the KJV, that is our main version.
You cannot have concordances and lexicons (fancy word for dictionary) that are not linked to individual words; lexicons for dynamic equivalent translations are of little help.
Now for a bit of history, to show that the Textus Receptus is the Greek Text of the Protestant Reformation. These are all quotes from Wikipedia, but again, there are many other articles to the same point.
Luther translated the bible, what is known as the Luther Bible from old Greek, old Hebrew and Aramaic sources - not the Latin translations that were widely used with the catholic church in Germany. He used Erasmus' second edition (1519) of the Greek New Testament, known as the Textus Receptus.
Giovanni Diodati was a Swiss born Italian. His translation of the Bible into Italian, called The 1607 Italian Diodati Bible, is based on Erasmus' Textus Receptus. This Bible was also adopted by the Waldenses. (They were the Protestants who lived on the southern side of the Alps in Italy, whose written history of upholding Reformation Truths, pre-dates the Reformation, going back to 1100 with their “Noble Lesson;” more than 400 years before the Reformation.) In 1618/9 Diodati attended the Synod of Dort, and took a prominent part, being one of the six divines appointed to draw up the Canons of Dort.
Pierre Robert Olivetan/Olivétan (c. 1506 – 1538), a Waldensian by faith, was the first translator of the Bible into the French language starting from the Hebrew (Masoretic Text) and Greek (Erasmus) texts. He was a cousin of John Calvin, who wrote a Latin preface for the translation, often called the Olivetan Bible. His work was based on that of his teacher Jacques Lefèvre d'Etaples. It was published in 1535 as La Bible Qui est toute la Saincte scripture at Neuchâtel. This translation has been considered the first French Protestant Bible.
The Spanish Reoma-Valera: Casiodoro de Reina, a former Catholic monk of the Order of St. Jerome, and later an independent Lutheran theologian, with the help of several collaborators, produced the Biblia del Oso, the first complete Bible printed in Spanish. It was first published on September 28, 1569, in Basel, Switzerland. The translation was based on the Hebrew Masoretic Text (Bomberg's edition of 1525) and the Greek Textus Receptus (Stephanus' edition of 1550).
The Almeida Recebida is a Portuguese Bible version based on the Received Text (Textus Receptus) manuscripts, as opposed to the Westcott and Hort revisions. The 1848 version of the Almeida Bible was also based on the Received Text, but its language was old. The language of the Almeida Recebida is updated to a more recent Portuguese.
The Statenvertaling: (Dutch: [ˈstaːtə(ɱ)vərˌtaːlɪŋ], States Translation) or Statenbijbel (States Bible) was the first translation of the Bible from the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek languages into Dutch. It was ordered by the Synod of Dordrecht in 1618, financed by the government of the Protestant Dutch Republic and first published in 1637. The first complete Dutch Bible had been printed in Antwerp in 1526 by Jacob van Liesvelt. Like other existing Dutch Bibles, however, it was merely a translation of other translations. Furthermore, the translation from Martin Luther was widely used, but it had a Lutheran interpretation. At the Synod of Dort in 1618/19, it was therefore deemed necessary to have a new translation accurately based on the original languages. The synod requested the States General of the Netherlands to commission it.[7]
The Bible of Kralice, also called the Kralice Bible: (Czech: Bible kralická), was the first complete translation of the Bible from the original languages into Czech. Translated by the Unity of the Brethren and printed in Kralice nad Oslavou, the first edition had six volumes and was published between 1579 and 1593. The third edition, from 1613, is classic and till this day widely known and used Czech translation. The New Testament had been translated from the Greek by Jan Blahoslav and published in 1564.
If the above facts are true, why would anyone use any other Greek text than the TR?
There are several logical arguments and several theological arguments involved when discussing the use of the Westcott and Hort / Nestle Greek text (the compilation of Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus) versus using the Textus Receptus.
Let me note here, the United Bible Society uses the Nestle text as the basis of all of its translation projects; I believe The Trinitarian Bible Society is the only bible society that uses the Textus Receptus.
The logical argument put forth by each side is:
We should use Nestles because it is based on the oldest Greek texts; oldest meaning closest to the original.
OR
We should use the Textus Receptus because people kept using it, which shows it was the correct text; they discarded the Codus Vaticanus and Codus Sinactius because they had mistakes.
Frankly, both of these arguments are used and argued successfully, but as Christians, we should not appeal to either of them; it degenerates to “I think, you think.”
There are, however, some theological arguments, which are:
If the Nestle text is the correct text, then the Church was without the true Scripture for 1500 years until the Vatican released its manuscript in the year 1889 and until the Text Sinaticus was found in a garbage pail in the year 1844; interestingly within a few years of each other.
The use of these texts coincides with the beginning of German Rationalism and Critical Text Analysis; or it could be German Rationalism and Critical Text Analysis grew out of the discovery of these texts. This produced an avalanche of doubt about the veracity (truthfulness) of the Bible, and therefore its authority; people asked the question, “Which text do WE think is best?” And the statement, “The Bible contains the word of God, but it is not the word of God,” began to appear. I would say this is a Theological argument, because it was, and continues to be, a coordinated attack by our enemy the devil to sow seeds of confusion regarding the Scriptures?
If the Nestle text is the correct one, then God was either unable or unwilling to preserve his word; that statement goes against ALL Protestant Confessions. The Westminster, the Baptist Confession of 1689, the Congregational Savoy Declaration, and the Belgic Confession all have clear and strong statements about the preservation of the Scriptures by God. If the Majority Text is not the correct text, then God did NOT protect and preserve his word, and those confessions are wrong! If you are a “Confessional Christian”, you need to consider that statement.
Here is what the Westminster Confession say, “The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which, at the time of the writing of it, was most generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and, by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical.”
Is that true?
It is the Theological arguments that cause me to use the Textus Receptus.
Shifting now to available English translations, I find it interesting that many of us who are Reformed, and who love the Puritans, who lived during the 1600s, do not like the English translation done by them – the KJV. We love their sermons and books, why do we doubt their translation? Granted some of the English words they used have become a bit out-dated, and the meanings of some words have changed a bit, and Elizabethan English sentence structure (syntax) is sometimes awkward, but why would we doubt their exegesis of the Greek words, which is the basis of translation?
We all read Shakespeare in high school. He wrote during the exact same time period when the KJV was translated, and the KVJ is 10 times clearer than Shakespeare! No metaphors or twisted sentences. The KVJ translators wanted a simple, straight forward, easily understandable English translation. How can it be that the “plow boy” living in the 1600s could read and understand it, but today we cannot? I read somewhere that 80% of the words in the KJV are 1 and 2 syllable words; they strove for simple and understandable!
The “plow boy” statement is from William Tyndale, who translated the Bible into English in the 1500s, and said to an opponent 'If God spare my life, ere many years, I will cause a boy who drives a plough to know more of the scriptures than you do.'
Tyndale’s philosophy of Bible translation greatly influenced the KJV translators, who did their work in the 1600s.
But again, the KJV is only a translation, it is not inspired! It is not the God preserved Bible! I am not a “KJV Only” person.
As far as I know, only the KJV and now the Modern English Version, are based on the Textus Receptus; all other English Versions are based on the United Bible Society Nestles text.
You will see statements like “based on the oldest and best manuscripts”; oldest means “Nestles” and best, means “what they think is best.”
And an interesting note, the Nestle Text has fewer words, and from what I have read, the verses effected mainly detract from the Deity of Jesus, so this is a very important issue, not to mention 2 very clear statements warning against tampering with God’s word:
“Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar.” Pro 30:6
“I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.” Rev 22:18-19
I hope this sheds a bit of light on the issue of texts and translations. I have tried to state the facts to inform those who are not aware of the issues. I am not looking to open up a debate.
28 June 2024