Training the Teacher

by A. F. Schauffler; Martin Grove Brumbaugh; Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux; Marion Lawrance

3. The Hebrew language of the Old Testament is full of picture-thoughts. It is simple in construction, and has a very small number of words in actual use. It was the language of the Hebrew peoples during the time of their national existence, but degenerated into Aramaic some time after their return from the exile. The tremendous expressive power of the language is seen in the great sermons of the prophets, especially Isaiah, and in the poetry of Job and the Psalms.

4. The founding and the growth of Alexandria under Greek influence led to an epoch in the history of the Bible. Facilities for trade and other reasons made this city attractive to the Jews. Greek, however, was the prevailing language of the community. Early in the third century B. C. the proportion of Greek-speaking Jews became so large that there was a call for their Scriptures in their adopted tongue. To supply this religious need of the Jews, the Hebrew Bible was translated (about 280-130 B. C.) into the Greek language. This Greek Bible contained all the books of the Hebrew Bible, and several other small books now called "the Apocrypha."

5. This Greek Bible, now called the Septuagint ("Seventy"), so named because it was thought to have been translated from the Hebrew by "seventy" men, became the Bible of the Old Testament for the Greek-speaking world. In the time of our Lord it was largely used by the New Testament writers. It was quoted by them, and especially by Paul, almost everywhere. It was the Bible of the early Christian church until the conquest of Rome and the Latin tongue required a translation into Latin. These early Latin translations of the Old Testament were all made from the Septuagint. There were also some scholars in the church who, not being satisfied with the translation of the Septuagint, made translations of their own. These were of some value to scholars, such as that most famous of all Biblical students, Origen (186-254 A. D.) who were trying to construct the best Greek text of the Bible.

6. The many and differing Latin translations that were current in the second, third, and fourth centuries led Jerome, a fully equipped and competent scholar, to translate the whole Bible from the original languages into good idiomatic Latin (384-405). His translation differed so much from those versions in general use that it was sharply and bitterly criticized by the less scholarly and more hostile enemies of progress. But the faithfulness of his translation to the original text commended it to the most thoughtful men of the Christian church, and before many centuries it became the Bible of the Latin-speaking and Latin-using world. That was the Bible adopted by the Council of Trent, April 8, 1546, as the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. With the exception of the Psalms, which is simply a revision of an old Latin Psalter, and the apocryphal books included in the collection, this is Jerome's translation, made 384-405, which was so drastically condemned when it first appeared.

7. In northern Syria there was a body of Christians who used the Syrian language. Somewhere in the second century they made, or had made for them, a translation of the Bible to aid them in their Christian growth. The translation from Hebrew Old Testament into Syriac was a translation from one sister tongue into another, and was thus quite freely rendered. If one should to-day translate from Dutch into German, he would feel free to vary from the literal if thereby he thought he could help bring out the meaning of the original language. This Syriac translation, while a beautiful piece of work, was most too freely done to be of much value to scholars who are to-day trying to find out what the text could have been from which it was made. There are none of the Latin Bible apocryphal books in the Syriac version.

8. These facts show us that the early Christian church in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and Europe used the Bible mainly in three versions, viz.: Septuagint Greek, Latin Vulgate, and the Syriac—all valuable, prominent texts. Of Greek texts there were several translations current among different branches of the early church.

9. When the peoples on the outskirts of civilization became Christianized they also were provided with the Scriptures, translated into their tongues from one of the three or four great versions of that day. Thus we have the Bible in Arabic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Gothic, Slavonic and a lot of other border languages.

10. The Bible was introduced into England very early in the Christian centuries, and it was one of the Latin versions current in the Western world. This was succeeded by the Vulgate Latin. Preachers and teachers were obliged to interpret this in the language of the native peoples. Some fragments of these interpretations, paraphrases, and translations remain to the present day, preserved in the Anglo-Saxon or early English tongue. In the fourteenth century, Wycliffe (1320-1384) gave us the first English Bible, translated, not from the original Hebrew and Greek, but from the Latin Vulgate,—a translation of a translation. This was received with slight favor by the churchmen of that day.

11. Not until the sixteenth century do we have an English Bible translated out of the original languages of the Bible. After great opposition and severe trial Tyndale succeeded in printing in Germany and distributing in England an English New Testament translated from the Greek. But his books were confiscated, and burned in London by the church officials. Remaining on the continent and prosecuting his translation of the Old Testament he was finally kidnapped, imprisoned, strangled, and burned at the stake October 6, 1536—all because he translated the Bible into English so that the common people could read it. Within one year after his martyrdom his translation was published under another name by royal authority, the authority of Henry VIII. For several years English Bibles flowed from the presses of England and the continent in several editions, most prominent of which were "Matthew's," Coverdale's, and the Great Bible. A revulsion against Protestantism cut off Cromwell's head and gave Bible-popularity a setback. Edward VI (1547-3) espoused the cause of the Protestants, while Mary Tudor (1553-8) burned at the stake many of the best men of the times, such as Ridley, Latimer, and John Rogers. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603) Bible translation and publication, both Protestant and Catholic, made rapid progress. There were published the Geneva version (1560), the Bishops' Bible (1568), and the Rheims New Testament (Roman Catholic, 1582). Of all these the Geneva Bible became the most popular.

12. Early in the reign of James I (1603-25) a movement was set on foot to provide a new and better English translation of the Bible. Most of the eminent Biblical scholars of England set to work and produced in 1611 the Authorized Version of the Bible; it is a model of good English and a very faithful translation of the original texts known at that time.