When did the first translations take place? (and into which languages)
At some point somebody had to have decided that we needed another Bible written in some other language other than Greek or Hebrew. When did that happen? Well, to answer that, we need to split our answer in two. Obviously, the Bible is divided into Old and New Testaments. And translating into other languages happened at different times for the Old and New Testament. The Old Testament was principally written in Hebrew and Aramaic. The New Testament principally in Greek.
But, several centuries before the New Testament was even written, the Old Testament had already begun to be translated into other languages as Jewish communities spread throughout the Mediterranean world. After the Babylonian exile and especially during the Hellenistic period following the conquests of Alexander the Great, Greek became the common language of much of the eastern Mediterranean. Large numbers of Jews lived outside the land of Israel, particularly in Alexandria, where many Jews no longer spoke Hebrew fluently.
To make the Scriptures accessible to these Greek-speaking Jews, Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek in the third and second centuries B.C. This translation became known as the Septuagint, often abbreviated LXX, and it quickly became the Bible used by many Jews throughout the Greek-speaking world.
In fact, Jesus used both the Hebrew and Greek translation of the Old Testament. The disciples primarily used the Greek translation in their letters. Thus, long before the New Testament was written, the Old Testament had already been translated and circulating in Greek in addition to the Hebrew original.
But what about the New Testament? When did it get translated from Greek to other languages? Here’s how it happened. In the early centuries after the time of Jesus, Christianity spread rapidly beyond the Greek-speaking world, and believers began translating the Old and New Testament Scriptures so people could read them in their own languages. And they translated both the Old and New Testaments.
One of the earliest translations was into Old Latin, which appeared by the second century A.D. as churches in the western Roman Empire needed the Bible in Latin rather than Greek. In the eastern regions, the Scriptures were translated into Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic used by churches in Syria and Mesopotamia. In Egypt, where Greek and local Egyptian languages were spoken, the Bible was translated into Coptic, during the third and fourth centuries.
As the gospel spread further, translations were also made into Armenian in the early fifth century, Georgian shortly afterward in the Caucasus region, and Gothic, a Germanic language. In North Africa and parts of the eastern Mediterranean, portions of Scripture were also translated into languages such as Ethiopic and other regional dialects.
Among all these translations, one of the most influential was the Latin Vulgate, translated by Jerome between A.D. 382 and 405, which became the standard Bible of the Western church for more than a thousand years. By the fourth and fifth centuries, therefore, the Bible had already been translated into numerous languages—including Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Gothic, Armenian, Georgian, and Ethiopic—demonstrating how widely the Scriptures had spread across the Roman Empire and surrounding regions, allowing diverse peoples to read the Word of God in their own languages.
So, 400 to 500 years after Christ, the Bible was being translated from its original languages into other languages. Well, that gets me to another question.
What text did they translate from?
So, this question helps me paint a picture of how all this is happening. We said that people had copies of copies of the originals. When people decided to translate from the original languages into other languages, where did they get the Greek, and Hebrew text from which to translate?
Well, as I said earlier, copies were being made. Each Jewish synagogue would have copies of some or all of the books of the Old Testament in Hebrew. Churches, monasteries, and private owners would have copies of the whole or part of the Bible. There would have been thousands of these copies. So, let’s tell the story of Jerome to illustrate.
By the late 300s AD, the Christian world had a problem. The Bible was widely used in Latin-speaking regions, but there wasn’t just one Latin Bible—there were many different versions. Over time, as copies were made and translated from Greek into Latin again and again, the wording had become inconsistent. In some places, the differences were small. In others, they were confusing.
So, the bishop of Rome asked Jerome—a brilliant scholar fluent in Latin, Greek, and eventually Hebrew—to fix it. Jerome quickly saw that the existing Latin texts were copies of translations of copies, and instead of simply editing them, he made a bold decision: “Let’s go back to the original languages.” That was not the easy path.
He began by collecting Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, which were not neatly printed books but handwritten scrolls and codices found in churches, libraries, and private collections. He compared different copies, different wordings, and different regions, then revised the Latin text to match what he believed was the most accurate Greek reading.
For the Old Testament, Jerome did something even more radical. Instead of relying only on the Greek Septuagint, which most Christians used, he moved to Bethlehem and began studying Hebrew from Jewish teachers. This was controversial, as many Christians asked why he would not simply use the Greek Bible they already trusted, but Jerome insisted that if accuracy was the goal, he had to go to the source.
He gathered Hebrew manuscripts from Jewish communities, compared them carefully, and asked questions about meaning, idioms, and cultural context. One can imagine him sitting with Jewish rabbis, carefully working through ancient texts word by word. He did not translate mechanically but compared Hebrew and Greek differences, deciding which reading was original and which wording best conveyed the meaning in Latin, sometimes even writing notes explaining his choices. The result was the Latin Vulgate, a translation from Greek for the New Testament and Hebrew for the Old Testament, which became the standard Bible of the Western church for over a thousand years.
Now don’t get me wrong, there is legitimate criticism for the Latin Vulgate from a conservative perspective, the Latin Vulgate is criticized because it is not consistently based on the best or earliest original Hebrew and Greek texts, making it a step removed from the inspired sources. In addition, certain translation choices appear to reflect or reinforce later Roman Catholic doctrines—such as rendering “repent” as “do penance” or describing Mary as “full of grace”—which are seen as theologically interpretive rather than strictly faithful to the original languages. Finally, the inclusion of the Apocrypha as part of Scripture is rejected, since these books were not part of the Hebrew canon and contain teachings viewed as inconsistent with the rest of Scripture.
Now, other scholars who translated into Coptic, Syriac, or other languages probably didn’t have the resources available that Jerome did. But the process would have been the same; gather Hebrew and Greek texts, compare and translate into your language.
This is how it was done.
Well, here we come to a next question about translation.
What is the overall history of Bible translation after the fifth century and before the printing press?
After the fifth century and before the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, the Bible continued to be copied and translated primarily by hand, often in monasteries and church centers. In the Western church, the Latin Vulgate remained the standard Bible throughout most of Europe, and monks carefully copied its text generation after generation.
At the same time, missionaries translating the gospel for new peoples produced Scriptures in additional languages. In the ninth century, the missionaries Cyril and Methodius translated the Bible into Old Church Slavonic for the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe. Portions of Scripture also appeared in early forms of Old English in England and in other local European languages as Christianity spread.
By the fourteenth century, John Wycliffe and his followers produced the first complete English Bible, translated from the Latin Vulgate and copied by hand for distribution. During this long period—from about the sixth to the early fifteenth century—the Bible was preserved and circulated through careful handwritten copying and occasional translation into emerging European languages, preparing the way for the dramatic expansion of Bible distribution that would follow the invention of the printing press.
You should also note that during this time the Jewish community, and the Church saw the need for there to be a standard “original text” of Hebrew and Greek.
For the first few centuries after the Scriptures were written, there was no single, centralized “master copy” of the Hebrew or Greek text. Instead, the Scriptures existed as thousands of handwritten copies spread across synagogues and churches throughout the ancient world. These copies were remarkably consistent, but as they were copied and recopied over time, small variations naturally appeared—differences in spelling, word order, or occasional copying mistakes. As the faith spread geographically, these manuscripts developed into recognizable regional traditions.
Over time, both the Jewish community and the early Church began to recognize the importance of preserving the text with even greater precision. For the Jewish people, this concern became especially urgent after major disruptions like the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD and the scattering of the people. Without a centralized temple or national structure, the Scriptures themselves became the unifying anchor of their identity. Jewish scribes devoted themselves to carefully preserving the Hebrew text, developing meticulous copying practices and eventually standardizing what would become the authoritative Hebrew tradition. Generations later, these efforts would be formalized by scholars known as the Masoretes, who added vowel markings, pronunciation guides, and detailed notes to ensure that the text would be transmitted accurately and consistently.
At the same time, the Christian church was facing a similar need. As the gospel spread into Greek-speaking regions and beyond, the New Testament writings were copied and circulated widely among churches. Different regions preserved different manuscript traditions, and while the message remained consistent, the Church recognized the importance of identifying the most accurate form of the original writings. Scholars and leaders began comparing manuscripts, noting differences, and seeking to preserve the wording that most faithfully reflected what the apostles had written. This process did not happen in a single moment or by a single decision, but gradually, through careful comparison and widespread agreement, the Church came to recognize a stable and reliable Greek text tradition.
So rather than a single council inventing an “official text,” what happened was a slow, careful process of recognition and preservation. Both the Jewish community and the Church were not creating Scripture—they were safeguarding it. Over time, through comparison, consistency, and reverence for the text, a standard form of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures emerged, not by decree, but by faithful transmission and agreement across generations.
The Hebrew Masoretic Text was well established as the standard by 1000 A.D. and in the Christian world the Byzantine text tradition 600 A.D.
So, these translators were attempting to be faithful to the original texts written in the original languages when they produced a translation into a modern languages. That is an important point when discussing which English translation is best. If we are going to select a “best translation” it has to be one in which the translators work with the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic texts.
Why is that important for our discussion? Well, consider this. In the fourteenth century, John Wycliffe and his followers produced the first complete English Bible, translated from the Latin Vulgate and copied by hand for distribution. Although this was the first English Bible, it was translated from the Latin Version of the Bible, which was translated from the original languages. In other words, it was two steps away from the original, rather than one. It was a translation into English from a Latin translation of Greek and Hebrew. John Wycliffe did not go back to the original languages to translate his English Bible.
That is not the most accurate way to preserve the Bible. It’s like making a copy of a copy. With each step removed from the original, you lose detail.
Here is a simple illustration translating the Spanish proverb “en boca cerrada no entran moscas.”
A literal translation into English would read: “In closed mouth no they enter flys.” In translating it into English word order it would read “Flys don’t enter a closed mouth.” Now, if translator A wants to be faithful to the original text, that’s exactly what he will write in an English translation. Well, then translator B comes along, he decides that his English readers won’t understand that. So, instead of translating “Flys don’t enter a closed mouth” he translates it, “think before you speak.” But then, the readers of his translation apply it to their own context and effectively translate it “choose your words carefully.”
By the time we get the phrase to the readers we’ve lost entirely part of the meaning which was “keep your mouth shut.” We’ve also lost the colorful, picture the original idea of flies entering your mouth that the original had.
It means that Wycliffe's first English Bible, translated from Latin which was translated from the original languages, would also have lost some meaning and color.
So, in sum, the overall history of Bible translation after the fifth century and before the printing press was a time of translating into languages that involved a tedious process of gathering original sources.
So, what is the next question?
What did the Protestant Reformation and the printing press do for the work of translation?
The invention of the printing press and the rise of the Protestant Reformation dramatically accelerated the work of Bible translation and distribution. When Johannes Gutenberg introduced the movable-type printing press in the mid-fifteenth century, it made it possible to produce large numbers of identical copies of the Bible much faster and far more cheaply than the slow process of copying manuscripts by hand.
A few decades later, the Protestant Reformation was a time where people began seeing that the Roman Catholic church had created doctrines that significantly departed from Scripture. So, Reformers like Martin Luther emphasized the belief that Scripture should be available to ordinary people in their own language rather than only in Latin; a language that many common people didn’t understand.
Reformers like Luther began the work of translating the Bible into German directly from the Hebrew and Greek. William Tyndale began translating the Bible into English from the original languages as well. And they stressed going back to the original languages because they wanted to remain faithful to what the original said.
And because the printing press could rapidly reproduce these translations, the Scriptures could now be widely distributed among the public. Together, the printing press and the Reformation transformed Bible translation from a slow, limited process into a widespread movement that placed the Bible into the hands of millions of people in their own languages.
And because there was a newfound interest in the original languages, just 60 years after Gutenberg invented the printing press, Desiderius Erasmus was commissioned to put together a single Greek manuscript of the New Testament. He compiled this work from just 5 to 7 Byzantine Greek texts he had available. He finished it rather quickly, in a year, because of the rush to get it printed. It became the standard Greek text of the New Testament for centuries. It was from this Greek text that the King James Version was translated.
Now, I don’t want to cast dispersions on the “Textus Receptus.” But as we consider the question, “which Bible is the best?” we need to understand where each Bible originated. The King James Version was translated in 1611. It was translated from the best available Greek manuscript at the time; “the Textus Receptus.” And again, there is a 98 to 99% agreement between the “Textus Receptus” and the “Modern Critical Text” more often used today.
But what we notice from this period is a movement to get the Word of God into the hands of the people, and a movement to translate from the original languages to ensure that the translation was as close to the original as could be.
So that brings us out of the topic of general translation, into the translation into English. Since my parishioners are English speakers, when they ask about the best Bible, they are asking about the myriad of English translations available today. Well, we just looked at how the King James Version came to be. And there were other English translations from the Textus Receptus. But the King James ended up dominating them all, from the 1600’s to the 1800’s. But in the 1800’s, a new Greek text compilation came to be that became part of an explosion of new English Bible versions; the “Modern Critical Text.”
How did the “Modern Critical Text” come to be?
Beginning in the 1600s and accelerating into the 1700s and 1800s, scholars began to discover and gain access to much older Greek manuscripts than those used for the Textus Receptus, some of them over a thousand years earlier. They gained access because of modern improvements in transportation and communication.
Important examples include Codex Vaticanus, Codex Alexandrinus, and Codex Sinaiticus. These manuscripts sometimes contained slightly different readings and, because of their age, were considered closer in time to the original writings. As more of these manuscripts became available, scholars started comparing them systematically, gathering copies from different regions, examining them line by line, and identifying patterns of agreement and variation.
This careful process became known as textual criticism—not criticism in a negative sense, but a disciplined effort to evaluate and understand the text. With this growing body of evidence, the goal began to shift. Instead of simply printing the text that had been received, scholars aimed to reconstruct the earliest recoverable wording of the original writings. This marked a significant turning point in how the New Testament text was approached.
In the late 1800s, Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort produced a groundbreaking Greek New Testament that reflected this new approach. They gave priority to earlier manuscripts such as Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, argued that older readings were often closer to the original, and compared evidence across many sources, laying much of the foundation for what would become the modern critical text. Today you can find the Modern Critical Text under the titles; Nestle-Aland (NA) and UBS Greek New Testament.
And that’s how we got the “Modern Critical Text”.
What sources are used for our Modern English translations?
Let’s again divide our discussion into the Old and New Testament. For English Bibles today, for the Old Testament, the primary source used for translation is the Masoretic Text, carefully copied by Jewish scholars called Masoretes between about A.D. 500–1000. Scholars also compare this text with the Dead Sea Scrolls (dating from about 250 B.C. to A.D. 70), which contain portions of nearly every Old Testament book and confirm the antiquity of the Hebrew text. Another important witness is the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced beginning around the third century B.C., which sometimes preserves readings that help clarify difficult Hebrew passages.
Now, concerning the New Testament, which texts are used?
For the New Testament, translators usually start with one of the compiled Greek texts; Nestle-Aland (NA), UBS Greek New Testament or a few still use “Greek New Testament (Textus Receptus).” But when they encounter difficult translations, or variant passages, they go back to the older manuscripts for clarification. Now, when I say that, I don’t think you get a thorough picture of what I’m talking about. You may get the idea that translators have this Greek Bible in front of them, and they only depart from it when they are maybe confused about something. Let me show you how Nestle-Aland, one of the Greek compilations, works.
Here’s the text for John 1:1. Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος
If you don’t read Greek, the English typically says, “In the beginning was the Word.” That is the first phrase in John 1:1, in the Nestle-Aland compiled Greek text of the New Testament. But the book doesn’t stop there. Next, you’ll see this.
ἀρχῇ] αρχη D it(a,b,d)
ἦν] om. 𝔓66* ℵ*
λόγος] λογος ℵ B C L W Θ f¹ f¹³ 33 𝔐 lat sy co
The book then breaks down, word by word, the Greek words in the text. Go back and look at that first line.
ἀρχῇ] αρχη D it(a,b,d)
The first part before the ] is theGreek word. (For example; ἀρχῇ) the next Greek word, αρχη, is a variant reading. That means that some of the copies were different than other copies. In this case some of the ancient manuscripts left off accents. After αρχη you see D it(a,b,d). These are abbreviations for the manuscripts that contain the variant.
In other words, they tell you exactly the different variations in the text, and which texts have those variations. And that is just one word in one verse. The Nestle text doesn’t just give you what they think is the best Greek translation, based on a study of the 5000 plus manuscripts they studied. The book tells you exactly any variants, or differences in those 5000 manuscripts, and tells you which manuscripts to look at if you have further questions.
Now, the Textus Receptus, on which the King James is based, does not break down the verses like that. It would simply look like this for John 1:1 Εν αρχη ην ο λογος
So, when might a translator look further than the compiled Greek text?
So, this is what I am asking. Say you have someone making a new English translation. They have in front of them two main books; the Nestle-Aland, based on the Modern Critical text, and the Textus Receptus. What happens if both of these texts leaves them confused about what word to use in their translation?
Well, let me give you an example. One well-known example is Matthew 19:24, where Jesus says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Some early manuscripts actually have the Greek word for “rope” instead of “camel.”
Here’s what you would see in Nestle’s.
As you can see from the two words, they are only one letter apart, which probably means that a scribe just miscopied. So, the note in Nestle’s tells us where to find that variant. So, the translator could look up the variant texts and determine that the earliest Syriac and Latin translations clearly translate the word as “camel,” showing that early readers closest to the Greek text understood it as camel, not rope.