From: pharvey@quack.sac.ca.us (Paul Harvey)
Subject: On the History of Bible Translation
Organization: The Duck Pond public unix: +1 408 249 9630, log in as 'guest'.
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1992 04:54:22 GMT

Ref: JPS:Tanakh,1985,ISBN:0-8276-0252-9

Bible translation began about 2,200 years ago, in the third century BCE,
as the large Jewish population of Alexandria, Egypt, came under the
influence of Hellenism. When the Greek language replaced Hebrew and
Aramaic as their vernacular, and the Torak in its Hebrew original was no
longer commonly understood, a translation into Greek was made for the
Jewish community of Alexandria. This translation came to be known as the
Septuagint, Latin for "seventy", because of the legend that the
committee of translators numbered seventy-two, six elders from each of
the twelve tribes of Israel.
In the last few centuries BCE, the Jews who lived to the north and east
of Judea also found the Hebrew Bible difficult to understand, for their
spoken language had become largely Aramaic. Translations into Aramaic,
first of the Torah and then of the rest of the Bible, became known as
the Targums.
The Septuagint and Targums are not only the oldest translations of the
Bible but also the most influential. Down to our own day, virtually
every Christian translation has followed the methods of the Jewish
translators who created the Septuagint, and generally followed their
renderings of the Hebrew as well. The Christian translators also were
influenced by the interpretation of the Hebrew text set forth in the
Targums (much of it in oral form at the time) and by the writings of the
Jewish philosopher-interpreter Philo of Alexandria (died about 45 CE)
The forerunners and leaders of the Renaissance and the Reformation
(14-15 centuries), and especially Martin Luther and William Tyndale (16
century), made use of Latin translations of the classic Jewish
commentators Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Kimhi (11-13 centuries), whose works
were imbued with the direct knowledge of the Targums. Luther was greatly
indebted to Nicholas of Lyre (1270-1349), who had adapted Rashi's
exegesis for his Latin Bible commentary. Rashi's influence on all
authorized and most unofficial English translations of the Hebrew Bible
becomes evident when Tyndale's dependence on Luther is considered.
Tyndale is central to many subsequent English translations: the King
James Version of 1611, the (British) Revised Version of 1881-1885, the
American Standard Version of 1901, and especially the Revised Standard
Version of 1952.
Alongside the close, literal method of Bible translation, the earliest
Jewish translators were also influenced by the widely held view that,
along with the Written Law (torah she-biktav), God had given Moses on
Mount Sinai an Oral Law (torah she-be`al peh) as well; so that to
comprehend God's Torah fully and correctly, it was essential to make use
of both. Thus when a translation of the Hebrew Bible into the
Judeo-Arabic vernacular was deemed necessary for Jewry in Moslem
countries toward the end of the first millennium, the noted philologian,
philosopher, and community leader Saadia Gaon (882-942) produced a
version that incorporated traditional Jewish interpretation but was not
based on word-for-word translation; at the same time, it was a model of
clarity and stylistic elegance.
With the growth of Christianity in the first century, the Church adopted
the Septuagint as its Bible, and the Septuagint was translated into the
languages of the various Christian communities. As Greek began to give
way to Latin in the Roman Empire, it was only a matter of time before a
Latin translation of Scripture became the recognized Bible of the
Church. The Church father Jerome (c.340-420) produced the official Latin
version. Drawing on Jewish tradition and consulting Jewish teachers, he
achieved what became to be known as the Vulgate, the Bible in the
language of the common people. The Vulgate, the Bible of European
Christianity until the Reformation, is clearly the most significant
Bible translation after the Septuagint.
With the rise of Protestantism in Europe, scholars within this movement
set themselves the task of making the Bible available in the various
vernaculars of the time. By 1526 the first parts of two notable
translations began to appear: Martin Luther's in German and William
Tyndale's in English. The latter, by way of several subsequent
revisions, became the KJV of 1611. The more modern English versions -
such as The Holy Scriptures by the American rabbi Isaac Leeser (1885),
the (British) Revised Version (1881-1885), the American Standard Version
(1901), the Jewish Publication Society's The Holy Scriptures (1917), and
the (American) Revised Standard Version (1952) - made extensive use of
the King James.