Here are some notes for the class on the History of the English Bible that I taught at Salem Alliance Church.

Sorry, no puns - well, not many - are included!

It's hard to proofread your own stuff, so I invite all editors to let me know what spelling, grammar and content errors they find. Click here and Email away!

The scriptural quotes usually come from the New International Version - not because it's better than any other, but because it's the one I have on my desk!

Lesson 1 - So What's the "Bible" Anyway?

• So what's the "Bible" anyway?
• How did things get into the Bible in the first place?
• What's this about translations?

Just so you know "where I'm coming from," as they say (whoever "they" is) - I'm concentrating on the history of the book itself, not the historical events it describes. I'm also not looking at issues of "who wrote what when."

I identify myself as a conservative evangelical Christian (I'll bet - I mean - wager that you had already figured that out!) and I have no problem with the traditional answers to the questions of inspiration, revelation, and Biblical authority. If you're curious about these issues, check out the introductory notes in, the New International Version (NIV) Study Bible.

Besides - no matter what answers you give to these questions, they have no important bearing on the history of the English Bible! So on with the story. By the way -

The little girl is always popping up to tell you something unusual, surprising, or funny. I don't know where she gets this stuff, but I sure like it!

So what's the "Bible" anyway?

Great first question! I know it looks like a single book - one cover and lots of pages. Many times people talk about it as the "Good Book," the best-selling "book" of all time and things like that. In a sense, of course, it is one book - you know, one cover, lots of pages.

Technically, that isn't the case. The Bible is a collection of different writings by many individuals separated by more than 1500 years. In it we find personal letters, national histories, poems, and official correspondence. Authors include kings and farmers, fishermen and religious leaders, prophets and politicians. Interesting enough, the most familiar Biblical character of all, Jesus Christ, didn't write anything!

The English word "Bible" comes from the Greek "Biblios" or "book." It's the word that we use to describe this collection. Many church-oriented people, me included, also use the word "book" to describe the individual parts of this collection, such as the Book of Psalms or the Book of Galatians.

When you think about it, it's rather funny to use the term "Book" for a document that's only a page or two long, like the Book of Nahum or the Book of Jude!

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How'd these "books" get into the Bible?

Another great topic that I'm going to side-step! Even today Protestants and Roman Catholics do not agree on the contents of the Bible. Generally speaking, Roman Catholic editions of the Bible contain more books (there's that word again) than those used by Protestants. These books are known as the "apocrypha," or "hidden writings."

Again, this is a wonderful and important study in its own right, but I'm going leave it behind for one very good reason - the answer has no direct bearing on our main topic! If, however, your're curious, check out the Reference section.

The earliest translations of the Bible into German, French, English, and Greek all contained "apocryphal" books! The first printed copies of the English Bible - the Geneva Bible, the Great Bible, the Bishops Bible, and (believe it or not) the King James Bible - also contained the apocrypha. Printers stopped including them in editions of the King James Bible mainly for practical, not theological reasons. More on this later!

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What's this about translations?

Ah, you're a sharp-eyed reader, aren't you! Yes, the two main parts of the Bible, the Old and New Testaments, were written in three languages -

• Hebrew - most of the Old Testament
• Aramaic - parts of Ezra and Daniel
• Greek - the New Testament.

Now, written documents in any language are fine, provided you know the language. Written documents are also static, and language is dynamic - it's always changing due to gentle shifts in culture and major cultural upheavals.

After a while old books, like the Bible, have to be translated for the majority of people to read them. The Old Testament went from Hebrew to Greek, and the entire Bible went from Greek and Hebrew to Latin.

Here's the story -

Around 600 BC most Jews used Hebrew. By 300 BC most Jews read and spoke Greek. Captivity, deportation, and the influence of Alexander the Great had for the most part limited Hebrew to the religious leaders. Most Jews were as ignorant of Hebrew as Roman Catholics are of Latin today.

Some time in the third century BC (around 250 BC) Jewish scholars in Alexandria, Egypt, translated the Old Testament into Greek. This translation became known as the Septuagint or "Seventy" because according to tradition (legend) 70 (or 72) scholars labored 70 (or 72) days to produce 70 (or 72) individual translations, all of which were identical. Yeah, right!

Whatever the truth behind the translations, and there are no accurate records, the Septuagint or LXX is an important milestone in Biblical translation.

One fascinating thing about the LXX is that the translators evidently had Hebrew texts that differed from what we have today. Check out the NIV footnote on Psalm 22:16. In some cases New Testament authors quote from the LXX rather than the traditional Hebrew text! Hebrews 1:7 is an example of this. No, I'm not heading in this direction, either!

By 400 AD people spoke more Latin than Greek, so a monk named Jerome translated the Bible into Latin. Today we call this translation the Vulgate from the term "vulgar." No, not in the bad sense, but "vulgar" as in common. Jerome was putting the Bible into the common language of the people.

Where do we go from here?

We're off to the year 1300 and merry, olde England! There we'll find an England unlike anything we know today. We'll meet John Wycliffe, an Oxford scholar who wrote some 40 published works in scholastic Latin and a lesser number in English. In his day he was called "Doctor Evangelicus." We now call him the "Father of the English Bible" and "Morning Star of the Reformation."

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