An English Bible version is a translation of the Bible into English. There have been many translations of the Bible into English over time.
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The following English Bible versions are discussed in this article:
Other Early Versions: Lindisfarne Gospels, Shoreham’s Psalms, Rolle’s Psalms
The English Revised Version and the American Standard Version
The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text, A New Translation
Early Translations: Caedmon’s, Bede’s, Alfred the Great’s
The gospel spread and churches multiplied in the early centuries of the Christian era. Christians in many countries wanted to read the Bible in their own language. As a result, many translations were made in several different languages. This happened as early as the second century.
For example, the Bible was translated into Coptic for the Egyptians. It was translated into Syriac for those whose language was Aramaic. It was translated into Gothic for the Germanic people called the Goths. It was translated into Latin for the Romans and Carthaginians.
Around AD 400, Jerome made the most famous Latin translation. This translation is known as the Latin Vulgate. Vulgate means “common." The Latin translation was used for the common person. It was used extensively in the Roman Catholic Church for centuries and centuries.
The gospel was brought to England by missionaries from Rome in the sixth century. The Bible they carried with them was the Latin Vulgate. The Christians living in England at that time needed monks for any kind of teaching from the Bible. The monks read and taught the Latin Bible.
After a few centuries, more monasteries were founded. The need arose for translations of the Bible into English. As far as we know, the earliest English translation is from the seventh century. It was translated by a monk named Caedmon. He made a metrical version of parts of the Old and New Testaments.
Another English churchman, named Bede, is said to have translated the Gospels into English. Tradition has it that he was translating the Gospel of John on his deathbed in AD 735. Another translator was Alfred the Great. He reigned from 871 to 899. He was regarded as a very literate king. He included in his laws parts of the Ten Commandments translated into English. He also translated the Psalms.
Other Early Versions: Lindisfarne Gospels, Shoreham’s Psalms, Rolle’s Psalms
All translations of the English Bible prior to the work of Tyndale (discussed later) were done from the Latin text. Some Latin versions of the Gospels were made with word-for-word English translations written between the lines. These are called interlinear translations. The oldest of these are from the 10th century.
The most famous translation of this period is called the Lindisfarne Gospels (AD 950). In the late 10th century, Aelfric (around AD 955–1020) made idiomatic translations of various parts of the Bible. Aelfric was the head of the monastery of Eynsham. Eynsham is near Oxford. Two of these translations still exist. Later, in the 1300s, William of Shoreham translated the Psalms into English. Richard Rolle also translated the Psalms into English. Richard's editions of the Psalms included a verse-by-verse commentary. Both of these translations were metrical and therefore called Psalters. They were popular when John Wycliffe was a young man.
Wycliffe’s Version
John Wycliffe, who lived from around 1329 to 1384, was the most famous and respected Oxford theologian of his day. The people who worked with him were the first to translate the entire Bible from Latin into English.
Wycliffe has been called the “Morning Star of the Reformation” because he boldly questioned the authority of the pope. He criticized the sale of indulgences. These were supposed to release a person from punishment in purgatory. He denied the reality of transubstantiation. This is the belief that the bread and wine are changed into Jesus Christ’s body and blood during Communion. He spoke out against church hierarchies.
The pope criticized Wycliffe for his “heretical” teachings and asked that Oxford University dismiss him. Oxford and many government leaders stood with Wycliffe. He was able to survive the pope’s assaults.
Wycliffe believed that if people had the Bible available in their own language the church would not be able to abuse its authority. Then they could read for themselves about how each one of them could have a personal relationship with God through Christ Jesus. This can be done apart from any church authority.
Wycliffe and his partners completed the New Testament around 1380 and the Old Testament in 1382. Wycliffe concentrated his labors on the New Testament, while a partner, Nicholas of Hereford, did a major part of the Old Testament. Wycliffe and his coworkers were unfamiliar with the original Hebrew and Greek. They translated the Latin text into English.
After Wycliffe finished the translation work, he organized a group of poor Christians to go throughout England preaching Christian truths and reading the Scriptures in their mother tongue to all who would hear God’s Word. They were known as Lollards.
As a result, the Word of God became available to many Englishmen through Wycliffe’s translation. He was loved and yet hated. His church enemies did not forget he fought to their power. They did not like that he translated the Scriptures so everyone could read them. Several decades after he died, they condemned him for heresy. They took his body from the grave and burned it. They threw his ashes into the Swift River.
One of Wycliffe’s close associates was John Purvey (around 1353–1428). Purvey continued Wycliffe’s work by producing a revision of his translation in 1388. Purvey was an excellent scholar. His work was very well received by his generation and the following generations. Within less than a century, Purvey’s revision had replaced the original Wycliffe Bible.
As was stated before, Wycliffe and his associates were the first Englishmen to translate the entire Bible into English from Latin. Therefore, their Bible was a translation of a translation. It was not a translation of the original languages. With the coming of the Renaissance came the recovery of the study of the classics. The study of Greek as well as Hebrew also returned because of the Renaissance.
Latin was the main language for scholarship, except in the Greek church from 500–1500. For the first time in nearly 1,000 years, scholars began to read the New Testament in its original language, Greek. By 1500, Greek was being taught at Oxford.
Tyndale’s Translation
William Tyndale was born in the age of the Renaissance. He graduated in 1515 from Oxford, where he had studied the Scriptures in Greek and in Hebrew. By the time he was 30, Tyndale had committed his life to translating the Bible from the original languages into English. His heart’s desire is exemplified in a statement he made to a clergyman when arguing against the view that only the clergy were qualified to read and correctly interpret the Scriptures. Tyndale said, “If God spares my life, over many years, I will cause a boy that drives the plow to know more of the Scripture than you do.”
In 1523, Tyndale went to London seeking a place to work on his translation. The bishop of London would not give him a place to work. He was provided a place by Humphrey Monmouth. Humphrey was a cloth merchant.
In 1524, Tyndale left England for Germany because the English church tried to stop the Bible from being given to common church members. The English church was still under the authority of the pope in Rome. Tyndale first settled in Hamburg, Germany. He may have met Luther in Wittenberg soon thereafter. Even if he didn’t meet Luther, he knew Luther’s writings and Luther’s German translation of the New Testament. Luther's translation was published in 1522. Throughout his lifetime, Tyndale was attacked for continuing Luther’s ideas. Both Luther and Tyndale used the same Greek text in making their translations. The Greek text was compiled by Erasmus in 1516.
Tyndale completed his translation of the New Testament in 1525. Fifteen thousand copies, in six editions, were smuggled into England between the years 1525 and 1530. Church authorities did their best to take copies of Tyndale’s translation and burn them. They could not stop the flow of Bibles from Germany into England. Tyndale himself could not return to England because his life was in danger since his translation had been banned.
However, he continued to work outside of England. He corrected, revised, and reissued his translation until his final revision appeared in 1535. Later in May of 1535, Tyndale was arrested and carried off to a castle near Brussels. After being in prison for over a year, he was tried and sentenced to death. He was strangled and burned at the stake on October 6, 1536. His final words were so very touching: “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.”
After finishing the New Testament, Tyndale began work on a translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. He did not live long enough to complete his task. He translated the Pentateuch or the first five books of the Old Testament, Jonah, and some historical books.
While Tyndale was in prison, his associate completed an entire Bible in English. His name was Miles Coverdale. He lived from 1488–1569. Coverdale's Bible was based largely on Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament and other Old Testament books. In other words, Coverdale finished what Tyndale had begun.
Coverdale’s Version
Miles Coverdale was a Cambridge graduate. Like Tyndale, Coverdale was forced to flee England because he had been strongly influenced by Luther. He was boldly preaching against Roman Catholic beliefs. While he was outside of England, Coverdale met Tyndale and then served as his assistant. Coverdale helped Tyndale translate the Pentateuch.
By the time Coverdale produced a complete translation in 1537, the king of England, Henry VIII, had broken all ties with the pope. Henry VIII was ready to see the appearance of an English Bible. Perhaps Tyndale’s prayer had been answered in an unplanned way. The king gave his royal approval to Coverdale’s translation. This translation was based on the work done by Tyndale who Henry VIII had earlier killed.
Thomas Matthew’s Version: The Great Bible
In 1537, when Coverdale’s Bible was endorsed by the king, another Bible was published in England. Thomas Matthew produced this Bible. Thomas Matthew is a false name for John Rogers. Matthew's lived from around 1500 to 1555. He was a friend of Tyndale.
Rogers used Tyndale’s unpublished translation of the Old Testament historical books, other parts of Tyndale’s translation, and still other parts of Coverdale’s translation, to form an entire Bible. This Bible also received the king’s approval. Matthew’s Bible was revised in 1538 and printed for distribution in the churches throughout England. This Bible is called the Great Bible because of its size and costliness. It became the first English Bible authorized for public use.
Many editions of the Great Bible were printed in the early 1540s. However, its spread was limited. King Henry’s attitude about the new translation changed. As a result, the English government passed a law in 1543 limiting the use of any English translation. It was a crime for any unlicensed person to read or explain the Scriptures in public. Many copies of Tyndale’s New Testament and Coverdale’s Bible were burned in London.
English Bibles were limited even more in the following years. After a short period of mercy during the reign of Edward VI, from 1547 to 1553, severe attacks came from the hands of Queen Mary. She was a Roman Catholic who planned to bring back Catholicism to England and stop Protestantism. Many Protestants were killed, including John Rogers, the Bible translator. Coverdale was arrested and then released. He fled to Geneva. It was a safe place for English Protestants.
The Geneva Bible and the Bishops’ Bible
The English exiles in Geneva chose William Whittingham to make an English translation of the New Testament for them. Whittingham lived around 1524 to 1579. He used Theodore Beza’s Latin translation and checked the Greek text.
This Bible became very popular because it was small and moderately priced. The introduction to the Bible and its many notes had a strong evangelical influence. It was also influenced by the teachings of John Calvin. Calvin was one of the greatest thinkers of the Reformation. He was a well-known biblical commentator and the main leader in Geneva during those days.
The Geneva Bible was popular among many English men and women. It was not acceptable among many leaders in the Church of England because Calvin influenced it. Leaders recognized that the Great Bible was not as good as the Geneva Bible in style and scholarship. They started a revision of the Great Bible.
This revised Bible was published in 1568. It became known as the Bishops’ Bible. It continued in use until it was replaced by the King James Version of 1611.
The King James Version
After James VI of Scotland became the king of England, he became known as James I. He invited many clergymen from Puritan and Anglican groups to meet together. He hoped that differences could be solved.
The meeting did not achieve this. During the meeting one of the Puritan leaders, John Reynolds asked the king to authorize a new translation. Reynolds was president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Reynolds wanted to see a translation that was more accurate than previous translations.
King James liked this idea because the Bishops’ Bible had not been successful. He also liked it because he considered the notes in the Geneva Bible to be dangerous. The king started the work and took an active part in planning the new translation.
He suggested that university professors work on the translation to ensure the best scholarship. He strongly urged that they should not have any marginal notes besides those about literal renderings from Hebrew and Greek. The translation would have a better chance of being accepted by all the churches in England without interpretive notes.
More than 50 scholars began the work in 1607. They were trained in Hebrew and Greek. The translation went through several committees before it was finalized. The scholars were told to follow the Bishops’ Bible as the basic version, as long as it stuck to the original text. They were also told to use the translations of Tyndale, Matthew, Coverdale, the Great Bible, and the Geneva Bible when they seemed to better reflect the original languages.
This use of other versions is stated in the introduction to the King James Version. “Truly, good Christian reader, we never thought from the beginning that we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one… but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones one principal good one.”
The King James Version is known in England as the Authorized Version. This is because it was authorized by the king. It captured the best of all the prior English translations and easily passed all of them. It was the top of all the previous English Bible translations. It united high scholarship with Christian devotion and devotion.
It was translated when the English language was healthy and beautiful. This was the English of Queen Elizabeth and William Shakespeare. This version has justifiably been called “the noblest monument of English prose.” The King James Version has become an enduring monument of English writing because of its style, language, and rhythms.
No other book has had such a major influence on English literature. No other translation has touched the lives of so many English-speaking people for centuries and centuries, even until the present day.
The 18th and 19th Centuries: New Discoveries of Earlier Manuscripts and Increased Knowledge of the Original Languages
The King James Version became the most popular English translation in the 17th and 18th centuries. It became the standard English Bible. The King James Version had faults that certain scholars recognized:
Knowledge of Hebrew was limited in the early 17th century. The Hebrew text was adequate. They used the Masoretic Tex. Their understanding of the Hebrew vocabulary was not good enough. It would take many more years of language studies to strengthen and sharpen my understanding of the Hebrew vocabulary.
The Greek text underlying the New Testament of the King James Version was not as good as we have today. The King James translators used a Greek text known as the Textus Receptus. This is also called the “Received Text.” It came from the work of Erasmus. He compiled the first Greek text to be produced on a printing press. When Erasmus compiled this text, he used five or six very late manuscripts dating from the 10th to the 13th centuries. These manuscripts were far inferior to earlier manuscripts.
The King James translators had done well with the resources that were available to them. Those resources were lacking. The resources for the New Testament text were very poor compared to the years that followed.
After the King James Version was published, earlier and better manuscripts were discovered. Around 1630, Codex Alexandrinus was brought to England. A fifth-century manuscript containing the entire New Testament, it provided a fairly good witness to the New Testament text, especially the original text of Revelation.
Two hundred years later, a German scholar named Constantin von Tischendorf discovered Codex Sinaiticus in St Catherine’s Monastery. The manuscript is dated around AD 350. It is one of the two oldest manuscripts of the Greek New Testament.
The earliest manuscript, Codex Vaticanus had been in the Vatican’s library since at least 1475. It was not made available to scholars until the middle of the 19th century. This manuscript dates to AD 325. It is one of the most reliable copies of the Greek New Testament.
As these manuscripts and others were discovered and made public, certain scholars worked to compile a Greek text that would more closely represent the original text than did the Textus Receptus. Around 1700 John Mill produced an improved Textus Receptus. In the 1730s, Johannes Albert Bengel published a text different than the Textus Receptus according to the evidence of earlier manuscripts. Bengel is known as the father of modern textual and philological studies in the New Testament.
In the 1800s, certain scholars began to abandon the Textus Receptus. Karl Lachman, a classical philologist, produced a fresh text in 1831. Lachman's text represented the fourth-century manuscripts. Samuel Tregelles published a Greek text, which came out in six parts, from 1857 to 1872. Tragelles was self-taught in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, laboring throughout his entire lifetime.
Tischendorf spent a lifetime of work discovering manuscripts and producing accurate editions of the Greek New Testament. In addition to discovering Codex Sinaiticus, he had many other major discoveries. He interpreted the palimpsest Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus. A palimpsest is a manuscript that has been reused. He compared countless manuscripts. He also produced several editions of the Greek New Testament. The eighth edition is considered the best.
The work of these scholars helped two British men to produce a volume called The New Testament in the Original Greek (1881). Brooke Westcott and Fenton Hort worked together for 28 years to produce the book. This edition of the Greek New Testament was based largely on Codex Vaticanus. It became the standard text that was responsible for bringing down the Textus Receptus.
The English Revised Version and the American Standard Version
By the latter part of the 19th century, the Christian community had been given three very good Greek New Testament texts. These texts are those by Tregelles’s, Tischendorf’s, and Westcott and Hort’s. They were very different from the Textus Receptus.
As was mentioned earlier, the scholarly community had gathered more knowledge about the meaning of various Hebrew words and Greek words. Therefore, there was a great need for a new English translation based on a better text. There was a need for more accurate renderings of the original languages.
A few individuals attempted to meet this need. In 1871, John Nelson Darby produced a translation called the New Translation. John Nelson Darby was the leader of the Plymouth Brethren movement. His translation was largely based on Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus.
In 1872, J. B. Rotherham published a translation of Tregelles’s text. Rotherham tried to show the basic emphasis in the Greek text. This translation is still being published under the title The Emphasized Bible. In 1875, Samuel Davidson produced a New Testament translation of Tischendorf’s text.
The first major collective effort began in 1870 by the Convocation of Canterbury. They decided to sponsor a major revision of the King James Version. Sixty-five British scholars worked in different groups to make major changes to the King James Version.
The Old Testament scholars corrected bad translations of Hebrew words and changed the format of poetic passages into poetic form. The New Testament scholars made thousands of changes. They had better textual evidence to use. Their goal was to make the New Testament revision reflect the texts of Tregelles, Tischendorf, and Westcott and Hort.
When the complete Revised Version appeared in 1885, it was received with great excitement. Over three million copies were sold in the first year of its publication. Unfortunately, its popularity did not last long. Most people continued to prefer the King James Version over all other translations.
A few American scholars were invited to join the revision work. They were told any of their ideas not accepted by the British scholars would appear in an appendix. The American scholars had to agree not to publish their own American revision until after 14 years. When the time came in 1901, the American Standard Version was published by several surviving members of the original American committee. This translation is viewed as better than the English Revised Version. It is an accurate literal translation of two trustworthy texts, the Old Testament and New Testament texts.
The 20th Century: New Discoveries and New Translations
The 19th century was a fruitful era for the Greek New Testament and following English translations. It was also a century in which Hebrew studies were greatly developed. The 20th century has also been fruitful for textual studies.
Those living in the 20th century have witnessed the discovery of many ancient texts of the Bible. These include the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, the Chester Beatty Papyri, and the Bodmer Papyri. These amazing discoveries provided scholars with hundreds of ancient manuscripts. They have greatly improved the effort to recover the original wording of the Old and New Testaments.
At the same time, other archaeological discoveries have supported the historical accuracy of the Bible. They help Bible scholars understand the meaning of certain ancient words. For example, the Greek word parousia is usually translated as “coming.” It was found in many ancient documents dated around the time of Christ. Very often the word meant the visitation of royalty. This word was used in the New Testament about Christ’s return. The readers would think of his coming as being the visitation of a king.
Another example is that in koine Greek. The expression entos humon literally means “inside of you.” It often meant “within reach.” Jesus’s statement in Luke 17:21 could mean “the kingdom is within reach.”
As earlier and better manuscripts of the Bible have emerged, scholars continue to update the Bible texts. Old Testament scholars have still used the Masoretic Text. They note significant differences found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The current edition used by Old Testament scholars is called Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia.
New Testament scholars, for the most part, have come to rely upon an edition of the Greek New Testament known as the Nestle-Aland text. Eberhard Nestle used the best editions of the Greek New Testament made in the 19th century to compile a text that represented the majority consensus. The work of making new editions was carried on by his son for several years. Then it came under the care of Kurt Aland. The latest edition is the 27th. This edition of the Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece appeared in 1993. The same Greek text appears in another popular volume published by the United Bible Societies. This text is called the Greek New Testament. The fourth edition was published in 1983.
Early 20th-Century Translations in the Language of the People
The thousands and thousands of papyri were discovered in Egypt around the turn of the century. They displayed a form of Greek called koine Greek. Koine means “common.” It was the common language of almost everybody living in the Graeco-Roman world from the second century BC to the third century AD. In other words, it was the lingua franca or trade language of the Mediterranean world.
Every educated person back then could speak, read, and write in Greek just like every educated person in modern times can speak a little English, read some English, and perhaps write in English. Koine Greek was not literary Greek. Literary Greek was the kind written by Greek poets and authors of the Greek tragedies. Koine Greek was the kind of Greek used in personal letters, legal documents, and other nonliterary texts.
New Testament scholars began to discover that most of the New Testament was written in Koine Greek. It was written in the language of the people. As a result, there was a strong desire to translate the New Testament into the language of the people.
Various translators chose to separate themselves from the formal English of Queen Elizabeth found in the King James Version. This same language was used in the English Revised Version and the American Standard Version. These translators wanted to produce fresh translations in the language of the people.
The Twentieth Century New Testament
The first of these new translations was The Twentieth Century New Testament (1902). The introduction to a new edition of this translation published in 1961 by Moody Press provides an excellent description of the work:
"The Twentieth Century New Testament is a smooth-flowing, accurate, easy-to-read translation that captivates its readers from start to finish. Born out of a desire to make the Bible readable and understandable, it is the product of the labors of a committee of twenty men and women who worked together over many years to construct, we believe under divine surveillance, this beautifully simple rendition of the word of God."
The New Testament in Modern Speech
A year after the publication of The Twentieth Century New Testament, Richard Weymouth published The New Testament in Modern Speech (1903). Weymouth received the first doctor of literature degree from the University of London. He was headmaster of a private school in London. During his life, he spent time producing an edition of the Greek text. It was published in 1862. It was more accurate than the Textus Receptus. He then labored to produce an English translation of this Greek text in modern speech. His Greek text was called The Resultant Greek Testament. His translation was very well received. It has gone through several editions and many printings.
The New Testament: A New Translation
Another new and fresh translation to appear in the early twentieth century was written by James Moffatt. Moffatt was a brilliant Scottish scholar. In 1913, he published his first edition of The New Testament: A New Translation. This was actually his second translation of the New Testament. His first was done in 1901. It was called The Historical New Testament. In his New Translation, Moffatt’s goal was “to translate the New Testament exactly as one would translate any piece of contemporary Hellenistic prose.”
His work was brilliant and independent from other versions. Unfortunately, it was based on Hermann von Soden’s Greek New Testament, which scholars now know is quite defective.
The Complete Bible: An American Translation
The earliest American modern speech translation was produced by Edgar J. Goodspeed. He was a professor of New Testament at the University of Chicago. He had criticized The Twentieth Century New Testament, Weymouth’s version, and Moffatt’s translation. As a consequence, he was challenged by some other scholars to do better. He took accepted the challenge. In 1923, he published The New Testament: An American Translation.
When he made this translation, he said he wanted to give his “version something of the force and freshness that reside in the original Greek.” He said, “I wanted my translation to make on the reader something of the impression the New Testament must have made on its earliest readers. I wanted to invite the continuous reading of the whole book at a time.” His translation was a success. An Old Testament translation followed. It was produced by J. M. Powis Smith and three other scholars. The Complete Bible: An American Translation was published in 1935.
The Revised Standard Version
The English Revised Version and the American Standard Version gained a reputation of being accurate study texts but very “wooden” or rigid in their construction. The translators who worked on the Revised Versions attempted to translate words consistently from the original language regardless of their context and sometimes even followed the word order of the Greek. This made for bad English and called for a new revision.
The demand for revision was strengthened by the fact that many important biblical manuscripts had been discovered in the 1930s and 1940s. These manuscripts are the Dead Sea Scrolls for the Old Testament and the Chester Beatty Papyri for the New Testament. It was felt that the fresh evidence displayed in these documents should be reflected in a revision.
The revision showed some textual changes in the book of Isaiah due to the Isaiah Scroll. It showed many changes in the Pauline Letters based on the Chester Beatty Papyrus, P46. There were other significant revisions. The story of the woman caught in adultery found in John 7:52–8:11 was not included in the text. It was placed in the margin because none of the early manuscripts contain this story. Similarly, the ending to Mark found in 16:9–20 was not included in the text. It is not found in the two earliest manuscripts, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus.
The International Council of Religious Education held the copyright to the American Standard Version. It authorized a new revision in 1937. The New Testament translators generally followed the 17th edition of the Nestle Text from 1941. The Old Testament translators followed the Masoretic Text. Both groups followed readings from other ancient sources when they were considered to be more accurate. The New Testament was published in 1946. The entire Bible with the Old Testament in 1952.
The principles of the revision were specified in the preface to the Revised Standard Version:
"The Revised Standard Version is not a new translation in the language of today. It is not a paraphrase which aims at striking idioms. It is a revision which seeks to preserve all that is best in the English Bible as it has been known and used throughout the years."
This revision was well received by many Protestant churches. It soon became their “standard” text. The Revised Standard Version was later published with the Apocrypha of the Old Testament in 1957, in a Catholic Edition (1965). It also appeared in what is called the Common Bible, which includes the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Apocrypha, and the deuterocanonical books.
It had international endorsements by Protestants, Greek Orthodox, and Roman Catholics. Evangelical and fundamental Christians did not receive the Revised Standard Version very well. This was primarily because of one verse, Isaiah 7:14. It reads, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” Evangelicals and fundamentalists contend that the text should read “virgin,” not “young woman.” As a result, the Revised Standard Version was avoided by many evangelical and fundamental Christians.
The New English Bible
The New Testament of the Revised Standard Version was published in 1946. The Church of Scotland suggested to other churches in Great Britain that it was time for a completely new translation of the Bible to be done. Those who began this work asked the translators to produce a fresh translation in the modern language of the original languages. This was not to be a revision of any foregoing translation. It was not to be a literal translation.
C. H. Dodd led the translators. They were instructed to translate the meaning of the text into modern English. The Introduction to the New Testament was published in 1961. It was written by C. H. Dodd. It explains this more fully:
"The older translators, on the whole, considered that faithfulness to the original demanded that they should reproduce, as far as possible, characteristic features of the language in which it was written, such as the syntactical order of words, the structure and division of sentences, and even such irregularities of grammar as were indeed natural enough to authors writing in the easy language of popular Hellenistic Greek, but less natural when turned into English. The present translators were enjoined to replace Greek constructions and idioms by those of contemporary English."
"This meant a different theory and practice of translation, and one which laid a heavier burden on the translators. Fidelity in translation was not to mean keeping the general framework of the original intact while replacing Greek words by English words more or less equivalent. . . . Thus we have not felt obliged (as did the Revisers of 1881) to make an effort to render the same Greek word everywhere by the same English word. We have in this respect returned to the wholesome practice of King James’s men, who (as they expressly state in their preface) recognized no such obligation. We have conceived our task to be that of understanding the original as precisely as we could (using all available aids), and then saying again in our own native idiom what we believed the author to be saying in his."
The entire New English Bible was published in 1970. It was well received in Great Britain and in the United States. The expressions used in the translation are extremely British. It was praised for its good literary style. The translators were very experimental, producing renderings never before printed in an English version. They adopted certain readings from various Hebrew and Greek manuscripts never before adopted. As a result, The New English Bible was both highly praised for its ingenuity and severely criticized for its liberty.
The Good News Bible: Today’s English Version
The New Testament in Today’s English Version is also known as Good News for Modern Man. It was published by the American Bible Society in 1966. The translation was originally done by Robert Bratcher and then further refined by the American Bible Society. Bratcher was a research associate of the translations department of the American Bible Society.
The translation was heavily promoted by several Bible societies and very affordable. It sold more than 35 million copies within six years of the time of printing. The New Testament translation was based upon the first edition of the Greek New Testament. This was published by the United Bible Societies in 1966.
The translation is a natural version in modern and simple English. The translation was greatly influenced by the linguistic theory of dynamic equivalence. Dynamic equivalence is a translation method that is more thought-for-thought rather than a literal translation. It was quite successful in providing English readers with a translation that accurately reflects the meaning of the original texts. This is explained in the preface to the New Testament:
"This translation of the New Testament has been prepared by the American Bible Society for people who speak English as their mother tongue or as an acquired language. As a distinctly new translation, it does not conform to traditional vocabulary or style, but seeks to express the meaning of the Greek text in words and forms accepted as standard by people everywhere who employ English as a means of communication. Today’s English Version of the New Testament attempts to follow, in this century, the example set by the authors of the New Testament books, who, for the most part, wrote in the standard, or common, form of the Greek language used throughout the Roman Empire."
Because of the success of the New Testament, the American Bible Society was asked by other Bible societies to make an Old Testament translation following the same principles used in the New Testament. The entire Bible was published in 1976. It is known as the Good News Bible: Today’s English Version.
The Living Bible
In 1962, Kenneth Taylor published a paraphrase of the New Testament letters in a volume called Living Letters. This new dynamic paraphrase was written in common language. It became well-received and widely celebrated. It was praised for its ability to communicate the message of God’s Word to the common man.
In the beginning, it was distributed widely because of the endorsement of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. The association actively publicized the book and distributed thousands of free copies.
Taylor continued to paraphrase other portions of the Bible and publish successive volumes.
Living Prophecies (1965)
Living Gospels (1966)
Living Psalms (1967)
Living Books of Moses (1969)
Living History of Moses (1970).
The entire Living Bible was published in 1971. The Living New Testament was printed in 1966.
Using the American Standard Version as his working text, Taylor rephrased the Bible into modern speech. Taylor wanted anyone even a child to understand the message of the original writers. In the preface to The Living Bible, Taylor explains his view of paraphrasing:
To paraphrase is to say something in different words than the author used. It is a restatement of the author’s thoughts, using different words than he did. This book is a paraphrase of the Old and New Testaments. Its purpose is to say as exactly as possible what the writers of the Scriptures meant and to say it simply, expanding where necessary for a clear understanding by the modern reader.
Many modern readers have greatly appreciated the fact that The Living Bible made God’s Word clear to them. Taylor’s paraphrase has been criticized for being too interpretive. That is the nature of paraphrases. It is also the danger as well. Taylor was aware of this when he made the paraphrase. Again, the preface clarifies:
"There are dangers in paraphrases, as well as values. For whenever the author’s exact words are not translated from the original languages, there is a possibility that the translator, however honest, may be giving the English reader something that the original writer did not mean to say."
The Living Bible has been very popular among English readers worldwide. More than 40 million copies have been sold by the publishing house Taylor specifically created to publish The Living Bible. The company is called Tyndale House Publishers. It is named after William Tyndale. He is the father of modern English translations of the Bible.
The New American Standard Bible
Two modern translations are both revisions of the American Standard Version (1901). They are the Revised Standard Version (1952) and the New American Standard Bible (1971).
The Lockman Foundation is a nonprofit Christian corporation committed to evangelism. It promoted this revision of the American Standard Version because “the producers of this translation were filled with the belief that interest in the American Standard Version 1901 should be renewed and increased” (from the preface).
Indeed, the American Standard Version was a major work of scholarship and a very accurate translation. However, its popularity was shrinking. It was fast disappearing from the scene. So the Lockman Foundation organized a team of 32 scholars to prepare a new revision. These scholars were all committed to the inspiration of Scripture. They wanted to produce a literal translation of the Bible. They believed that such a translation “brings the contemporary reader as close as possible to the actual wording and grammatical structure of the original writers” (from the preface).
The translators of the New American Standard Bible were told by the Lockman Foundation to follow the original languages of the Holy Scriptures as closely as possible. They were also told to obtain a fluent and readable style according to current English usage. After the New American Standard Bible was published in 1963 for the New Testament and in 1971 for the entire Bible. It received a mixed response. Some critics liked its literal accuracy, while others sharply criticized its language for hardly being contemporary or modern.
On the whole, the New American Standard Bible became respected as a good study Bible that accurately reflects the wording of the original languages yet is not a good translation for Bible reading. Additionally, this translation was originally supposed to follow the 23d edition of the Nestle text. It tends to follow the Textus Receptus. This is true in its inclusion of passages considered fake by most modern scholars.
The New International Version
The New International Version is a completely new rendering of the original languages. It was completed by an international group of more than 100 scholars. These scholars worked many years and in several groups to produce an excellent thought-for-thought translation. It was translated into contemporary English for private and public use.
The New International Version is called “international” because it was prepared by distinguished scholars from English-speaking countries such as the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. It is also called international because the translators sought to use vocabulary common to the major English-speaking nations of the world.
The translators of the New International Version sought to make a version that was midway between a literal rendering as in the New American Standard Bible and a free paraphrase such as in The Living Bible. Their goal was to communicate in English the thought of the original writers. This is succinctly explained in the original preface to the New Testament:
"Certain convictions and aims guided the translators. They are all committed to the full authority and complete trustworthiness of the Scriptures. Therefore, their first concern was the accuracy of the translation and its fidelity to the thought of the New Testament writers. While they weighed the significance of the lexical and grammatical details of the Greek text, they have striven for more than a word-for-word translation. Because thought patterns and syntax differ from language to language, faithful communication of the meaning of the writers of the New Testament demanded frequent modifications in sentence structure and constant regard for the contextual meanings of words."
"Concern for clarity of style—that it should be idiomatic without being idiosyncratic, contemporary without being dated—also motivated the translators and their consultants. They have consistently aimed at simplicity of expression, with sensitive attention to the connotation and sound of the chosen word. At the same time, they endeavored to avoid a sameness of style in order to reflect the varied styles and moods of the New Testament writers."
The New Testament of the New International Version was published in 1973 and the entire Bible in 1978. This version has been phenomenally successful. Millions and millions of readers have adopted the New International Version as their “Bible.” Since 1987 it has outsold the King James Version. The King James Version was the best-seller for centuries. This is a major sign of its popularity and acceptance in the Christian community.
The New International Version was sponsored by the New York Bible Society. The New York Bible Society is now the International Bible Society. It is published by Zondervan Publishing House. It has become a standard version used for private reading and pulpit reading in many English-speaking countries.
Two Modern Catholic Translations: The Jerusalem Bible and The New American Bible
In 1943, Pope Pius XII issued the famous encyclical encouraging Roman Catholics to read and study the Scriptures. At the same time, the pope recommended that the Scriptures should be translated from the original languages. Previously, all Catholic translations were based on the Latin Vulgate. This includes Knox’s translation. This translation began in 1939. The New Testament was published in 1944 and the whole Bible in 1955.
The first complete Catholic Bible to be translated from the original languages is The Jerusalem Bible. It was published in England in 1966. The Jerusalem Bible is the English counterpart to a French translation entitled La Bible de Jerusalem. The French translation was “the result of decades of research and biblical scholarship” (from the preface to The Jerusalem Bible), published by the scholars of the Dominican Biblical School of Jerusalem.
This Bible, which includes the Apocrypha and deuterocanonical books, contains many study helps. These include introductions to each book of the Bible, extensive notes on various passages, and maps. The study tools are an intricate part of the whole translation. It is the belief of Roman Catholic leadership that laypeople should be given interpretive tools in their reading of the sacred text.
The study tools in The Jerusalem Bible were translated from the French. The Bible text itself was translated from the original languages with the help of the French translation. The translation of the text was produced under the editorship of Alexander Jones. It is considerably freer than other translations, such as the Revised Standard Version. The translators sought to capture the meaning of the original writings in a “vigorous, contemporary literary style” (from the preface to The Jerusalem Bible).
The first American Catholic Bible to be translated from the original languages is The New American Bible. This is not to be confused with the New American Standard Bible. Although this translation was published in 1970, work had begun on this version several decades before. Prior to Pope Pius’s letter, an American translation of the New Testament based on the Latin Vulgate was published. It was known as the Confraternity Version. After the pope's letter, the Old Testament was translated from the Hebrew Masoretic Text and the New Testament. It was based on the 25th edition of the Greek Nestle-Aland text. The New American Bible has short introductions to each book of the Bible and textual notes. Kubo and Specht provide a just description of the translation itself (So Many Versions? p 165):
"The translation itself is simple, clear, and straightforward and reads very smoothly. It is good American English, not as pungent and colorful as the N.E.B. [New English Bible]. Its translations are not striking but neither are they clumsy. They seem to be more conservative in the sense that they tend not to stray from the original. That is not to say that this is a literal translation, but it is more faithful."
Jewish Translations
In the 20th century, some very important Jewish translations of the Bible were published. The Jewish Publication Society created a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures called The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text, A New Translation (published in 1917). The preface to this translation explains its purpose:
"It aims to combine the spirit of Jewish tradition with the results of biblical scholarship, ancient, medieval and modern. It gives to the Jewish world a translation of the Scriptures done by men imbued with the Jewish consciousness, while the non-Jewish world, it is hoped, will welcome a translation that presents many passages from the Jewish traditional point of view."
In 1955, the Jewish Publication Society appointed a new committee of seven respected Jewish scholars to make a new Jewish translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. The translation called the New Jewish Version was published in 1962. A second, improved edition was published in 1973. This work is not a revision of The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text. It is a completely new translation in modern English. The translators attempted to produce a version that would carry the same message to modern man as the original did to the world of ancient times.
Revisions of the Late 20th Century
In the 1980s, several significant revisions appeared:
The New King James Version (1982)
The New Jerusalem Bible (1986)
The New American Bible, revised New Testament (1986)
The Revised English Bible (1989), which is a radical revision of The New English Bible.
Other translations, such as the New International Version and Today’s English Version, were also revised in the 1980s but not publicized as such. Two other important revisions in the late 1980s and 1990s are the New Revised Standard Version and the New Living Translation.
One reason for this continual influx of new revisions and translations is the ever-changing consensus regarding the original text of the Bible. Most contemporary translators of the Old Testament use the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible because it is generally considered the most authoritative standard text of the Old Testament. At the same time, they make use of the findings of the Dead Sea Scrolls and a few other important versions, including the Septuagint. The Masoretic Text is published in an edition called Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (1967, 1977) with up-to-date textual notes.
Most translators of the New Testament use two standard editions of the Greek New Testament. These are the Greek New Testament published by the United Bible Societies (fifth revised edition, 2014) and Novum Testamentum Graece, edited by Nestle and Aland (28th edition, 2012). These two volumes have the same text. They differ in punctuation and textual notes. They represent the latest in modern textual scholarship.
Most contemporary translators and revisers also make it their goal to reflect the changes that have occurred in the English language. One of the most obvious recent changes has been in the area of gender-inclusive language. Today’s English readers have come to expect that translations will not employ unnecessarily male-dominant language. This creates problems for modern translators of the ancient biblical text. It was originally written in a male-oriented culture. Modern translators must respect both the ancient milieu and the modern audience. Often the original language itself allows a rendering that is gender-inclusive.
For example, the Greek word anthropos, traditionally rendered “man,” really means “human being” or “person.” A different Greek word, aner, specifically refers to a male. Likewise, in Hebrew the word ’adam, traditionally translated “man” usually means “human being,” while ’ish specifically designates an adult male.
There are other occasions where the original language is male-oriented primarily because there is no neutral gender to be used. In these cases, the biblical writers defaulted to the masculine gender. For example, in the Pentateuch most of the laws are stated in language that is replete with masculine pronouns. Since it is clear that the recipients of these laws were both males and females, many translators generally use gender-neutral language.
The New King James Version
The New King James Version (NKJV) was published in 1982. It is a revision of the King James Version, which is itself a literal translation. As such, the New King James Version follows the historic precedent of the Authorized Version in maintaining a literal approach to translation. The revisers have called this method of translation “complete equivalence.” This means that the revisers sought to provide a complete representation of all the information in the original text with respect to the history of usage and etymology of words in their contexts.
The most distinctive feature of the New King James Version is its underlying original text. The revisers of the NKJV New Testament have chosen to use the Textus Receptus rather than modern critical editions. This includes the Majority Text and the Nestle-Aland text. By way of concession, they have footnoted any significant textual variation from the Majority Text and modern critical editions. The Majority Text is the text supported by the majority of all known New Testament manuscripts. It hardly differs from the Textus Receptus.
Thus, there are few significant differences noted. There are well over a thousand differences footnoted regarding the Nestle-Aland/United Bible Societies’ text. This means that there are at least that many significant differences between the Textus Receptus and these modern critical editions.
Though exhibiting an antiquated text, the language of the NKJV is modern. The English of Queen Elizabeth of the original King James Version has been replaced with contemporary American English. Though much of the sentence structure of the NKJV is still dated and Stiff. Contemporary readers like the King James Version but can’t understand its old language will appreciate this revision.
The Revised English Bible
The Revised English Bible was published in 1989. It is a revision of The New English Bible (NEB). The New English Bible was published in 1971. The NEB gained such popularity in British churches and was being regularly used for public reading. Several British churches decided there should be a revision of the NEB to keep the language current and the text up-to-date with modern biblical scholarship.
For the Old Testament, the revisers used the Masoretic Text as it appears in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (1967, 1977). They also made use of the Dead Sea Scrolls and a few other important versions, including the Septuagint.
The revisers of the New Testament used Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece (27th edition, 1993) as their base text. This choice resulted in several textual changes from The New English Bible text, which followed a very eclectic text. The Greek text used by the NEB was produced by R. V. G. Tasker after the English translation had been published. This Greek text was decided upon by the translation committee on a verse-by-verse basis.
The resulting Greek text was very uneven and yet very interesting. The translators of the NEB adopted readings never before put into print by English translators. The scholars working on The Revised English Bible eliminated many of these readings. They did so in hopes of providing a more balanced text.
New Revised Standard Version
The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) was published in 1989. It is an excellent example of the current trend to publish revisions rather than new translations. Bruce Metzger was the chair of the original revision committee. In the preface to this revision, he wrote:
"The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible is an authorized revision of the Revised Standard Version, published in 1952, which was a revision of the American Standard Version, published in 1901, which, in turn, embodied earlier revisions of the King James Version, published in 1611."
The need for issuing a revision of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible arises from three circumstances:
The acquisition of still older Biblical manuscripts
Further investigation of linguistic features of the text
Changes in preferred English usage
Metzger’s three reasons for producing the New Revised Standard Version are essentially the same reasons behind all revisions of Bible translations.
Of all the translations, the NRSV most closely follows the text of NA26/UBS3. No doubt this is due to Bruce Metzger’s involvement in both editorial committees—a leading member of the NA26/UBS3 committee and the chair for the NRSV committee.
Perhaps the most notable feature of the NRSV is its attention to gender-inclusive language. The translators respected the historicity of the ancient texts. They also attempted to make this new revision more palpable to readers who prefer gender-inclusive language. They did this by avoiding unnecessarily masculine renderings wherever possible.
For example, in the New Testament letters, the believers are referred to with a word that is traditionally rendered “brothers” (adelphoi). It is clear that these letters were addressed to all the believers including both male and female. Thus, the NRSV translators have used such phrases as “brothers and sisters” or “friends” and including a footnote saying “Greek, brothers." The translators did this in order to represent the historical situation while remaining sensitive to modern readers.
Metzger and the other translators were careful not to overemphasize the gender-inclusiveness principle. Some readers had been hoping for a more radical revision regarding gender-inclusiveness. Many of these readers were hoping that the revision would incorporate this principle with language about God. Such readers wanted phrases such as “God our father” to be changed to “God our parent.” The NRSV revisers, under the leadership of Metzger, decided against this approach. They considered it an inaccurate reflection of the original text’s intended meaning.
New Living Translation
With over 40 million copies in print, The Living Bible has been a very popular version of the Bible for more than 30 years. But various criticisms motivated the translator of The Living Bible to produce a revision of his paraphrase. Kenneth Taylor was the translator. Under the sponsorship of Tyndale House Publishers, Taylor’s company, The Living Bible underwent a thorough revision. More than 90 evangelical scholars from various theological backgrounds and denominations worked for seven years to produce the New Living Translation (NLT). As a result, the NLT is a version that is exegetically accurate and idiomatically powerful.
The scholars carefully revised the text of The Living Bible according to the most reliable editions of the Hebrew and Greek texts. For the Old Testament, the revisers used the Masoretic Text as it appears in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (1967, 1977). They also made use of the Dead Sea Scrolls and a few other important versions, including the Septuagint. The revisers of the New Testament used the text of NA27/UBS4 as their base text.
The translation method behind the NLT has been described as “dynamic equivalence” or “functional equivalence.” The goal of this kind of translation is to produce in English the closest natural equivalent of the message of the Hebrew and Greek texts. Translators attempt to produce this in both in meaning and in style.
Such a translation should attempt to have the same impact upon modern readers as the original had upon its audience. To translate the Bible this way requires that the text be interpreted accurately and then rendered in understandable, current English. In doing this, the translators attempted to enter into the same thought pattern as the author.
They sought to present the same idea, connotation, and effect in the receptor language. The translators wanted to guard against personal subjectivism and ensure the messages accuracy. The NLT was produced by a large group of scholars who were each well-studied in his or her particular area. To ensure that the translation would be extremely readable and understandable, a group of stylists adjusted the wording to make it clear and fluent.
A thought-for-thought translation created by a group of capable scholars has the potential to represent the intended meaning of the original text even more accurately than a word-for-word translation. This is illustrated by the various renderings of the Hebrew word hesed. This term cannot be adequately translated by any single English word because it can connote love, mercy, grace, kindness, faithfulness, and loyalty. The context must determine which English term is selected for translation not the lexicon.
The value of a thought-for-thought translation can be illustrated by comparing 1 Kings 2:10 in the King James Version, the New International Version, and the New Living Translation.
“So David slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David” (KJV).
“Then David rested with his fathers and was buried in the City of David” (NIV).
“Then David died and was buried in the City of David” (NLT).
Only the New Living Translation clearly translates the intended meaning of the Hebrew idiom “slept with his fathers” into contemporary English (from the introduction to the New Living Translation).