BIBLE, TEXTS AND VERSIONS OF Ancient manuscripts and translations of the Bible which exist as important witnesses to the text of the Old and New Testaments. Ancient translations into other languages provide important evidence in establishing the text of the Bible.
Importance
The books of the Old Testament were originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic and then copied and transmitted from generation to generation. Similarly, the New Testament was written in Greek and then copied as it began to spread throughout the Church. The vast majority of our English versions of the Bible today are based upon texts that resulted from this transmission in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
Faith communities going back to 250 BC were also translating the Bible into their own languages so that they could read and understand it:
• Greek-speaking Jews in Alexandria, Egypt translated the Old Testament into Greek.
• Christian converts in Edessa, Syria translated the entire Bible into Syriac.
• The New Testament was translated into Latin, Gothic, and Armenian.
These ancient translations of the Bible in different languages are very important in two essential ways:
1. They provide additional witnesses to the text of the Bible.
2. The ancient versions provide examples of ancient exegesis and interpretation of the Bible.
The available Hebrew and Greek manuscripts are late and come from the latter part of the transmission process. Although the copying of texts was done very carefully, scribes would often commit some errors, including:
• misreading handwritten letters
• smudging the ink
• accidentally omitting a word
• repeating a word they had already written
Once an error was introduced into a text, the copies of that text would also repeat the error. The ancient versions present a “snapshot” of the biblical text at an earlier time. In the process of textual criticism, Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible are compared to the ancient versions in an attempt to determine which readings most accurately reflect the original documents.
Additionally, translation is essentially a form of interpretation; translators come to an understanding of the source text and then convert it into a different language system. The ancient translator was required to interpret the Bible in order to communicate it to his audience. Therefore, in addition to explicit interpretive texts demonstrating how faith communities understood the Bible, translations provide insights into Jewish and Christian opinions of biblical interpretation and passages of significance. Some ancient versions, such as the Aramaic Targumim (plural), intentionally expanded and interpreted the text. Other versions, such as the Greek Septuagint, attempted to give a more literal rendering of the text; the translator still interpreted, but in a less obvious manner. The versions are also helpful in interpreting the minutia of the biblical text. When translation of a particular Hebrew or Greek word or idiom is difficult, the versions demonstrate how ancient exegetes understood it. Many of these exegetes were near-native speakers of Hebrew and Greek and who lived closer in culture and time to the original authors of the Bible.
Old Testament
Hebrew Texts
The biblical texts found at Qumran, near the Dead Sea, in 1947 are extremely important. Dating from the middle of the second century BC to the middle or late first century AD, they were likely created by a Jewish religious sect called the Essenes (Vanderkam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 97ff). These “Dead Sea Scrolls” are significant early texts in Hebrew. They provide direct evidence from the turn of the era—almost 1,000 years earlier than the oldest complete Hebrew manuscript possessed before their discovery.
A number of additional Hebrew texts with fragments of biblical material have also been discovered. The oldest known fragments are the “Silver Scrolls,” which date to the seventh century BC and contain part of the priestly blessing in Num 6:22–27. Other texts include:
• Nash Papyrus—first century AD: a damaged copy of the Decalogue or “Ten Commandments”
• Manuscripts from Masada—first century AD: fragments of Psalms, Leviticus, and Ezekiel
• Nahal Hever manuscripts—first century BC—first century AD: fragments of the Pentateuch
• Biblical manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza—AD 1000–1400 (Wegner, Textual Criticism, 148–55)
The absence of vowels or punctuation in Hebrew texts until about AD 500 resulted in certain ambiguity in some readings. Between AD 500 and 1000, Masoretes—Jewish scribes—in Palestine and Babylon began updating the text of the Old Testament so that it contained accents, vowels, and other annotations designed to remove uncertainty and preserve a vocalization tradition. The Aleppo Codex was completed about AD 930, but 1/4 of it was destroyed in a later fire during persecutions of Jews in Syria. The Leningrad Codex, completed about 50 years later, is the best complete surviving manuscript of the Old Testament in Hebrew. It is the main source for most recent critical editions of the Hebrew Old Testament and the basis for most English translations.
For further details, see these articles: Codex Leningradensis; Masoretic Text; Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, History of Text; and Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Methodology.
Versions in Other Languages
Significant versions in other languages include:
• The Septuagint (from Latin Septuaginta, often abbreviated “LXX”)—created for Jews living in Alexandria, Egypt who needed a copy of the Torah in their own language—Greek. According to the Epistle of Aristeas, the Torah was translated in the third century BC with the Prophets and Writings following in stages by the end of the second century BC (Tov, Textual Criticism, 136–37). This translation was influential on the writers of the New Testament who worked in Greek. It is the basis for many of their quotations and references to concepts in the Old Testament.
• Targum (תַּרְגּוּם, targum, plural Targumim), “interpretation” or “translation” (Jastrow, Dictionary of the Targumim, 1695)—Translations into Aramaic to enable Jews in Palestine and abroad to understand the Bible once they began to lose their knowledge of Hebrew. The Aramaic Targum was read alongside the Hebrew liturgical reading as an interpretive guide in the synagogue or personal study.
• Peshitta (ܦܫܝܛܬܐ), “simple”—Translations of the Old and New Testaments into Syriac, a late dialect of Aramaic. The translation was made in Edessa (modern-day Syria) in the second century AD, probably by Jews who had converted to Christianity (Weitzman, The Syriac Version, 258–59).
• Vulgate—(Vulgata), “common”—A translation of the Bible into Latin made at the end of the fourth century AD. The church father Jerome undertook to translate the Old Testament, with help from Jewish scholars, directly from the Hebrew. The name “Vulgate” probably reflects the version’s everyday language and popularity.
• Other minor versions of the Old Testament are of limited value except to understand the transmission of the Greek Septuagint (Tov, Textual Criticism, 134):
• Coptic (the final stage of Egyptian) in the third and fourth centuries AD
• Ethiopic in the fourth century AD
• Arabic in the eighth and ninth centuries (Wegner, Textual Criticism, 139)
For further details, see these articles: Aquila’s Version; Greek Versions of the Hebrew Bible; Hexapla of Origen; Masorah; Masoretes; Masoretic Text; Pentateuch, Samaritan; Peshitta; Septuagint; Symmachus’ Version; Syriac Language; Targum; Theodotion’s Version; and Vulgate.
New Testament
Greek Manuscripts
Many more manuscripts and texts exist for the New Testament than for the Old Testament. The Greek manuscripts of the New Testament have traditionally been divided into four categories (Black, New Testament Textual Criticism, 18–20):
1. Papyri—the oldest and most fragile type of manuscript. They are notated with a “p” followed by a number. For example, p45 in the Chester Beatty collection comprises portions of the Gospels and Acts, and it dates to the beginning of the third century (Wegner, Textual Criticism, 257).
2. Uncials—There are approximately 274 known uncials, named for their style of Greek letters which might be compared to capital letters in English. They are designated with either a capital letter taken from Hebrew, Latin and Greek, or by a number. Significant uncials include (Black, New Testament Textual Criticism, 19):
• Codex Sinaiticus (א, ') dating to the fourth century AD,
• Codex Alexandrinus (fourth century and designated with the letter “A”)
• Codex Vaticanus (fourth century and designated with the letter “B”)
3. Minuscules—Named for their small letters. By the end of the 10th century, miniscules had essentially replaced uncials (Black, New Testament Textual Criticism, 20). Denoted by a number, there are presently 2,555 minuscules on record.
4. Lectionaries—Contains biblical text in a liturgical sequence rather than in a canonical order. All the books of the Bible except Revelation are found at least partially in lectionaries, which date from the fifth to the 10th centuries or later. Lectionary manuscripts are denoted with the letter “l” or the abbreviation “Lect” (Black, New Testament Textual Criticism, 20–21). There are presently about 2,300 lectionary manuscripts (Wegner, Textual Criticism, 264).
For further details, see these articles: Bodmer Papyri; Chester Beatty Papyri; Codex Alexandrinus; Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis; Codex Ephraemi Syri; Codex Sinaiticus; Codex Vaticanus; Codex Washingtonensis; Elephantine Papyri; New Testament Manuscripts; Oxyrhynchus; Papyri, Early Christian; and Textual Criticism of the New Testament.
Versions in Other Languages
Early translations also provide a witness to the text of the New Testament. As is the case for the Old Testament versions, translations must be used with care as all translators must interpret their source text. The target languages themselves may also be fundamentally different than Greek, which introduces obligatory shifts and changes into the text.
The early versions of the New Testament can be divided into eastern and western. The eastern versions include translations in Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, and Ethiopic. The western versions include Latin, Gothic, and Old Church Slavonic. There are also many minor eastern and western versions of more limited value.
Bibliography
Black, David Alan. New Testament Textual Criticism: A Concise Guide. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994.
Fernández Marcos, Natalio. The Septuagint in Context: Introduction to the Greek Version of the Bible. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009.
Hurtado, Larry W. The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2006.
Jastrow, Marcus. Dictionary of the Targumim, Almud Bavli, Talmud Yerushalmi, and Midrashic Literature. New York: Judaica Treasury, 2004.
Metzger, Bruce Manning. The Early Versions of the New Testament: Their Origin, Transmission, and Limitations. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
Shanks, Hershel. Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Reader from the Biblical Archaeology Review. 1st Vintage Books ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.
Talmon, Shemaryahu. “The Old Testament Text.” Pages 159–99 in The Cambridge History of the Bible. Edited by P.R. Ackroyd and C.F. Evans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Tov, Emanuel. Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001.
VanderKam, James C. The Dead Sea Scrolls Today. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010.
Wegner, Paul D. A Student’s Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2006.
Weitzman, Michael. The Syriac Version of the Old Testament. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1999.
ERIC TULLY
Eric Tully, “Bible, Texts and Versions of,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).
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