The Bible Translator Who Shook Henry Viii
Henry VIII, obviously the eighth king of England to bear the name of Henry, was a robust 33-year-old in 1524.
He had already excelled in many areas, had acquired a number of accolades, and could easily have felt that the world was at his feet. In fact, much of his surrounding world seemed to act as if it were lying at his feet.
With his impressive size, his impressive clothes, his impressive pomp and ceremony, his Renaissance education and his unflagging self-confidence, he appeared larger than life to most of his subjects, and was seen as a major force to be reckoned with in the European balance of power. He was at least what our age would call an achiever, probably even an over-achiever. He could play multiple musical instruments, dance, hunt game, lead an army, win at a joust, control his nobles and spend money like it grew on trees. Whatever constituted the stage, Henry VIII dominated it.
Although today, post-Reformation, we might question the Defensess effectiveness in combatting the Lutheran heresy, the pope at the time was apparently impressed with it. At least he was quite effusive in his praise of it (but of …
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Which Bible Version Is Best
New King James Version. The New King James Version is an update to the one of the most popular versions of the bible available and just includes simple
What is the true Bible translation?
Many Christians today believe erroneously that the King James Version of the Bible is the true translation. The KJV, as its known, was created for King James I of England in 1604.
The Scholars Who First Translated The Bible Into English
Today, many versions of the Bible exist in English. But for centuries, the ability to read the Bible was only in the hands of the educated few who were literate and understood Latin. In Medieval England, the church acted as arbiters of what their members learned about the Bible and offered up its own interpretations of God’s teachings. This was not a time of religious tolerance. In fact, anyone who opposed or questioned the church faced being labeled a heretic . And the church often dealt out vicious punishments to heretics.
Risking their own lives, some learned scholars stepped up to make the Bible more widely accessible. John Wycliffe and later William Tyndale, who lived in different times in English history, used their incredible language skills to create English translations of the Bible. Both men made discoveries about what they saw as differences between the church’s teachings and the actual text of the Bible. Wycliffe became an outspoken critic of the church, while Tyndale paid the ultimate price for his work.
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William Tyndale Follows God’s Will To Germany
Tyndale went to the Bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, to seek permission to translate the Bible into English. Tunstall refused. But while in London Tyndale came into contact with several merchants who were smuggling into England some of Martin Luther’s writings from Germany. They encouraged Tyndale to go to Europe to translate. They would help smuggle the Bibles back into England.
In 1524 Tyndale sailed for Germany. In Hamburg, he worked on the New Testament, and in Cologne, he found a printer who would print the work. However, news of Tyndale’s activity came to an opponent of the Reformation who had the press raided. Tyndale himself managed to escape with the pages already printed and made his way to the German city Worms where the New Testament was soon published. Six thousand copies were printed and smuggled into England. The bishops did everything they could to eradicate the Bibles — Bishop Tunstall had copies ceremoniously burned at St. Paul’s the archbishop of Canterbury bought up copies to destroy them. Tyndale used the money to print improved editions!
How The King James Bible Came To Be
When King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England in 1603, he was well aware that he was entering a sticky situation.
For one thing, his immediate predecessor on the throne, Queen Elizabeth I, had ordered the execution of his mother, , who had represented a Catholic threat to Elizabeths Protestant reign. And even though Elizabeth had established the supremacy of the Anglican Church , its bishops now had to contend with rebellious Protestant groups like the Puritans and Calvinists, who questioned their absolute power.
For the new king, the Geneva Bible posed a political problem, since it contained certain annotations questioning not only the bishops power, but his own. So in 1604, when a Puritan scholar proposed the creation of a new translation of the Bible at a meeting at a religious conference at Hampton Court, James surprised him by agreeing.
Over the next seven years, 47 scholars and theologians worked to translate the different books of the Bible: the Old Testament from Hebrew, the New Testament from Greek and the Apocrypha from Greek and Latin. Much of the resulting translation drew on the work of the Protestant reformer William Tyndale, who had produced the first New Testament translation from Greek into English in 1525, but was executed for heresy less than a decade later.
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Thank you your generosity is making a significant difference in the lives of so many people, churches and communities around the world .
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Its great to join in with brothers and sisters who weve never met, yet together our prayers and giving are helping the task of Bible translation.
We recognise what God has done in our lives through his word, so its very motivating to play our part so that others can experience that too.
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Bible Translations Into English
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Partial Bible translations into languages of the English people can be traced back to the late 7th century, including translations into Old and Middle English. More than 100 complete translations into English have been written.
In the United States, 55% of survey respondents who read the Bible reported using the King James Version in 2014, followed by 19% for the New International Version, 18% for the three next most popular versions combined, and less than 10% for all other versions.
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Best Selling Bible Translations
The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association provides a monthly snapshot of Bible readers using their Bible Translations Bestsellers List. This image tells the story of the church, based on what Bibles people are buying and, one would hope so, using.
This snapshot shows the ongoing story between Scripture and the modern church. When you look at the Bible Translations Bestsellers list, there are four stories worth noting:
The Protestant Reformation Begins
Tyndale would obviously be in danger of the Church hierarchy solely on the basis of his producing an unauthorized English translation. However, Tyndale had two strikes against him because he was also enmeshed in the Protestant Reformation, which was in full swing by the time he completed his New Testament in English in 1526. The first shot of the Reformation had been fired nine years earlier, when Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517.
Tyndale had thrown in his lot with the Reformers and was highly critical of the Church structure in England. We could concede that the established church in England had no real case for objecting to a Bible in English, except perhaps on the traditional view that it was unhealthy for people to actually read the Bible for themselves. However, church officials also objected to the virulent commentary that Tyndales New Testament contained. This gave the high clergy the rationale to condemn Tyndale and seize copies of his translation.
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The King James Version Is Corrupt
The source New Testament Greek texts used to produce the KJV were mainly dependent on manuscripts of the late Byzantine text-type. With the later identification of much earlier manuscripts, most modern textual scholars value the evidence of manuscripts which belong to the Alexandrian family as better witnesses to the original text of the biblical authors, without giving it automatic preference. The 16th Century Greek text compiled by Desiderius Erasmus, later known as the Textus Receptus, was a major influence over the King James Version. Erasmus was a Catholic priest, who remained a member of the Catholic Church all his life. He also enjoyed the nickname Prince of the Humanists. His third edition of 1522 was based on less than a dozen Greek manuscripts dating from the 12th to 16th centuries yet served as the source text of the KJV translation. The later manuscripts of the Textus Receptus exhibited the cumulative effect of scribal changes over at least a millennium and vary widely with the earliest manuscripts dated within the first five centuries after Christ.
William Tyndale Executed For Heresy
Tyndale might have been able to complete his ambitious project had he not been betrayed by someone he thought shared his views. Living in Antwerp at the time, he met up with another Oxford graduate, Henry Phillips . Tyndale believed that Phillips was an ally, but Phillips was actually working undercover to help capture him. Phillips asked Tyndale to go out for a meal, but he simply aided in getting Tyndale arrested. Tyndale was taken to Vilvoorde Castle in Brussels, where he was held prisoner for months.
While a prisoner, Tyndale requested a Hebrew Bible, dictionary, and grammar text because he wanted to “pass my time in study” . He was eventually convicted of heresy and sentenced to death. His final words were reportedly “Lord! Open the King of England’s eyes!” Tyndale was strangled to death, and then his body was burned at the stake in October 1536. Two years later, King Henry VIII ordered an English language edition of the Bible be made, and Myles Coverdale relied heavily on Tyndale’s translations for his own version.
While Tyndale never completed his translation of the Bible, his work continues to live on to this day. It is believed that about 80% of the King James Bible comes from Tyndale’s translation.
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Holy Bible From The Ancient Eastern Text Of The Aramaic Peshitta
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The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts was published by George M. Lamsa in 1933. It was derived from the Syriac Peshitta, the Bible used by the Assyrian Church of the East and other Syriac Christian traditions. Lamsa, following the tradition of his church, claimed that the Aramaic New Testament was written before the Greek version. This contrasts with the academic consensus that the language of the New Testament was Greek. While Lamsas claims of Aramaic primacy are rejected by the academic community, his translation remains the best known of Aramaic to English translations of the New Testament and is a valuable reference for comparison of the Aramaic tradition to translations from other soruces. The Lamsa Bible is especially useful as a witness of the Aramaic Old Testament tradation. The Lamsa Old Testament is based on Codex Ambrosianus which has been identifed as fifth century AD and predates any existing OT text in Hebrew by about 500 years.
William Tyndale: The Man Who Died For Translating The Bible
Nearly 500 years ago, William Tyndale who is today called the Father of the English Bible was strangled and burned at the stake after being tried and convicted of heresy and treason for translating the Bible into English. He was burnt alive at the ridiculous young age of 42 years old, for his efforts in translating the Greek Bible into English.
A graduate of Oxford and Cambridge, Tyndale had a powerful desire to make the Bible available to the common people in England. This desire was also birthed in order to correct the Biblical ignorance of the priests. According to the records at one point in his life, Tyndale told a priest, If God spares my life, and many years pass, I will cause that a boy that driveth the plow shall know more of the Scriptures than thou dost.
Today, 90% of the King James Version of the Holy Bible and 75% of the Revised Standard Version are from the translations made by Tyndale, a man to whom Christianity owes so much thanks to. The fact that today, there is a Bible in almost every language of communication on earth and through which believers can read is largely due to his labour. Surprisingly, the bulk of the very phrases still retain the flavour of his understanding of Greek and Hebrew.
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As he burnt to death, Tyndale reportedly said Lord, open the king of Englands eyes.
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The King James Version
Tyndales powerful and idiomatic translation had a profound effect on English versions that followed, including the Coverdale Bible , Matthews Bible , the Great Bible , and the Authorized, or King James Version , the most influential English version of all time. The KJV arose in the context of two competing versions, the Bishops Bible , the official Bible of the Church of England, and the Geneva Bible , which was the favorite of the Puritans. King James I, who had recently ascended to the throne of Britain, despised the Geneva Bible because of its anti-monarchial notes. When the Puritans proposed a new translation of the Biblewithout theological notesJames enthusiastically endorsed the idea. From his perspective, a new translation endorsed by both the Puritans and Anglicans would likely result in the demise of the Geneva Bible.
The KJV was commissioned in 1604 and produced in seven years by forty-seven biblical scholars. It was first published in 1611. Although quickly accepted by many and destined to become the most enduring English version of all time, the KJV at first face a mixed reception. For example, the Pilgrims refused to take it on the Mayflower, preferring the Geneva Bible. Hugh Broughton, a leading biblical scholar of his day, wrote, Tell His Majesty that I had rather be rent in pieces with wild horses, than any such translation by my consent should be urged upon poor churches .
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What Is A Bible Translation
The Bible is a complex book. In fact, its not even a single book rather its a compilation of multiple books. It was written by many authors over thousands of years in several different ancient languages. The Bible you read today is a translation from the original language into a modern language.
Im not going to go into all the details of manuscripts, textual reliability, and all that other stuff. It gets pretty technical pretty quick. But if you are interested in learning about that check out this article: How We Got The Bible
On the surface that might seem simple. But it gets complicated quickly because many of the words dont have a one for one equivalent in modern languages.
For example, love in the English language is used very broadly. I love my wife. I love ice cream. I love football. I love my son. I love my friends. I love traveling. I do in fact love all those things, but I love them all very differently. So, the word love gets twisted and shoved to fill multiple meanings.
Now, much of the New Testament was written in Greek. In the Greek language, there are many words for love. Heres a few: Eros , Storge , Philia , and Agape . Not all those words appear in the Bible, but I think you get the point. If you were to just translate the word love from ancient Greek to modern English you would be missing a lot. Thats why translating from one language to another is so complicated.
Lets take a look at the spectrum where some of the most popular English versions fall.
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Into How Many Languages The Bible Has Not Been Translated
The Bible is the most translated book in the world. This is not only impressive but proves the longevity of Gods Word. The Scripture is continually translated not only to continue the spread of the Gospel but because it is the Living Word that is still applicable today, just as it was in when penned through the inspiration of God. The Bible has been translated into numerous languages from the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek versions. As of late 2019, 698 full translations have occurred. In addition, the New Testament has been translated into additional 1,548 languages. Beyond this, portions of the Bible or stories have been translated into additional 1,138 languages.
While this is wonderful and has provided numerous people with access to at least part of the Bible, there are still over 5,000 languages that do not have a full copy of the Bible. As of 2020, there are over 6,500 languages spoken around the world. If less than 1,000 have full copies of the Bible then there is a great number that does not. Part of the Great Commission is to spread the Gospel to all corners of the earth which mean the Word still has a great deal of translation to be completed. For some, a copy of the entire Bible may not be available for many years as lengthy book translations take a great deal of time, but as they wait, translation of Bible-related texts can offer hope and share parts of the Gospel.
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