The different versions

from the Bible

Historical versions

We do not possess any of the original manuscripts of the 66 books of the Bible (73 for the Catholic editions and two more for the Orthodox, (see the Books of the Bible page), but only copies of copies.

Image opposite: a bust of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (c. 309/308 - 246 BC) on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. Marie-Lan Nguyen.

For the Old Testament (or First Covenant), however, in addition to manuscripts copied from generation to generation with extreme meticulousness by the massoretes (faithful transmitters of the textual form of the Hebrew Bible), Targoums, translations into Aramaic after the Exile. Hebrew had become an incomprehensible language for the Jews returning from the Babylonian exile (6th century BC).
In the 3rd/4th century BC, the Old Testament was translated into Greek. Septuagint version, which was generally used by early Christians. According to a tradition (legend?) reported in the Letter from Aristée (2nd century BC), the translation of the Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible) is said to have been carried out by 72 (seventy-two) translators in Alexandria, around 270 BC, at the request of King Ptolemy II Philadelphus for his Library of Alexandria.

Image below : Hand-copied New Testament by John Wycliffe, circa 1400 © Van Kampen Collection. On view at the Holy Land Experience in Orlando (Florida). Photo Paolo Verzone.

By the 2nd century CE, the entire Bible had been translated into Latin on several occasions. In the 4th century, Jerome of Stridon redid the entire translation: most of the Old Testament from the Hebrew, the Psalms from the Septuagint version and the New Testament from various manuscripts. This version took half a century to become established, and is known as the Vulgate. Jerome himself indicates which books are not inspired and should not be included in the Canon. The Roman Catholic Church would later include them under the name of «deuterocanonical» (i.e. admitted secondarily into the canon, as opposed to «protocanonical», which refers to books that have never been disputed), whereas Jerome already referred to them as ’apocryphal« (apókryphos, a writing «whose authenticity is not established» (Littré).
In the following centuries Vulgate and not the originals, which served as the basis for translations into various languages (French, Provençal, etc.). Some 60 translations are held by the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris.
Visit Vulgate became the official version throughout the Middle Ages. It remained authoritative in the Catholic Church until the 20th century.

At the time of the Reformation

Around thirty translations of the Bible into German were known before Luther's.. He began with the New Testament, basing his work mainly on the Greek text by Erasmus (Dutch Humanist, c. 1466-1536), a hasty compilation of various manuscripts. This translation was a great success, because instead of a word-for-word translation, his concern was to render the meaning of the text, so that the message could be understood by all. For the next 12 years, he worked on the translation of the Old Testament with the help of a team of specialists, once again focusing on the meaning of the sentence.

Image opposite: a period engraving depicting John Wycliffe (c. 1330 -1384), English theologian and precursor of the English Reformation, and more generally of the Protestant Reformation. Morphart Creation.

In the late Middle Ages, portions of the Bible were translated into English several times. John Wycliffe, forerunner of the English Reformation, translated the entire Bible around 1380, and hundreds of copies were sold. In the 16th century, eight major translations were published, including that of William Tyndale, who was martyred in 1536. The famous King James 1611 version (translation produced under the reign of James VI of Scotland and King of England) uses 9/10ths of Tyndale's text. Here too, the Hebrew or Greek word is not always rendered by the same English word, to preserve the meaning of the text. This version was violently attacked and took 40 years to establish itself, but then remained in force for almost two centuries.