Johnstown weekly Democrat. (Johnstown, Cambria County, Pa.) 1889-1916, 1889-11-15
THE BIBLES HISTORY
WONDERFUL FACTS AND FIGURES
ABOUT THE DIVINE BOOK.

phe Fairly CompiIers-St. jerome and His
Work-The Translators and the Many
Bibles They Published-When the Divis-
ion Into Verses Took Place.
Two thousand one hundred and seven
ty-four years ago, in the year ESQ B. c.,
seventy of the wise men of Alexandria
engaged themselves in compiling and
collating the Hebrew Scriptures into
their present united form and further
simplifying the works by translating
them into Greek for the benefit of tho
Jews then in Egypt The results of their
ahors have since bees, known collective.
ly ~ the Sieptuaglnt Tom the fact that
it Is the work OF the seventy translators.
About 4W wears later, in the Second
century \ D.. the books of the New
Testament wcSe added and the whole
translated nh> Latin
" Italia, ~ Latin version. soon be-
c;,.-. the standard of the primitive
Christians and was used to the exclu-
sion OF both the Hebrew and Greek YER
hions tor two centuries until the st.
jerome revision of A. ID. 4O5 A fter st
jerome had finished his crowning work,
n great deal of which he performed in
the village of Bethlehem. almost in sight
of the birthplace of Jesus, the Dalmatiar
and PaHnnnian monks bid away theiJ
old Versions 0f the Bible and would use
no other except the one which had beei
given them by tIIeir patron. Jerome. him
self
Tho Jerome revision was superior to
She work Of the severity al their work
Eas to the old scmi-barbarie work which
sKiBted prior To the translation Of 285
r. e.
ST. JEROME.
The most carefully written copies of
the Hiole obtainabe were consulted by
the scholarly saint and compared with
the Arabic. Hebrew and Syriac versions,
in all of which he made cancellations
and corrections which have stood the
test of all subsequent time The hercu-
lean task undertaken 10y St. jerome will
be better understood when the reader
has been informed that over 900 versions
of the Evangelists each differing from
the other in many of its essential de-
tails were presented for the considera.
ton OF the sages ut the council of Nice,
IN 395 =. D. For hundreds of years
ropyists had added to and taken from
eip Scriptures To such an extent as to
make it extremely difficult for even the
most learned 20 decide what should re-
atoms or what should be eliminated from
the sacred pages as spocryphal
The word "bible," meaning book, or
as applied by the early writers, 1.-The
book" was first used by Chrysostom as
early as the Gfsh century. where he
speaks of the ~acred writings collective.
ly as the i}ibl.a. or 1.-THE Books" The
infinite variations which occurred in the
manuscripts written by the early Chris
tian fathers have caused great deal of
contention among churchmen, some adj
mitting certain books as scanonical which
are rejected by others as apocryphal
This you can find illustrated by compar-
ing Douay and King james Bible Of
today; the formcr admits several bookn
which the King James translators would
not, as they considered them uncanoni
sal
The several books as arranged and ac-
,epted at present are the results Of years
Of labor and of countless councils and
revision assemblagcs. For | 200 years
after the Saviour of Men ended his brief
career on the rugged heights of Calvary,
tie touching details of which are known
20 over 700 100000 of people and in every
land on the globe, each book of the Bible
was one continued story, undivided into
chapters, paragraphs or verses.
DIVISIONS OF THE BIBLE
Prior to the time OF the Spanish rabbi,
rhe jew had employed a system of divid-
ing the chapters into verses in the Old
Testament a system which had never
been adopted by the Christians, and
which was discarded for that of the
learned Spaniard by the Jews themselves.
The New Testament was not divided
'nto verses until after the invention of
the art of printing, by the Robert Steph-
ems Greek edition in 1851
OF the early translations of the Bible
the most important, aside from the Sept
uagint and the st. Jerome versions, are
the threefold Egyptian translation of the
fourth century. This remarkable work
of the copyist was in three languages,
and was intended for all parts of Egypt:
the Versio Figurata, collated by Jacob,
of Edessa, in the eighth century; that of
Paul, bishop of Tela, in 617, and the
eighth, ninth and tenth century transla-
tions, made respectively by Bede, Alfred
and Elfric.
During the dark ages, and on down to
the time Luther gave his masterpiece to
the world, several translations were
made, including that of Notker-Labeo,
$50 A. d.; that prepared under the super.
vision of Fetrus Waldus, ITO; the inn
portant work of Louis the Pious, 1927;
that of Charles the Wise, 1890; the
3uyars version of 1886; the thirteenth
century version in Spanish during the
reign of Alphonso V, and the two excel