The Strand Study Bible

How We Got OUR Bible (our English Bible) I t all started with Erasmus, a great Greek scholar and friend of Sir Thomas More, who set himself to the study of these now available “ancient manuscripts,” and so gave to the world in 1516 his famous Greek New Testament. Then came Erasmus’ student; a man who was to use these new powers with such marvelous effect in the service of the English Bible. His name… William Tyndale. It was said of Tyndale that of all the heroes of the Reformation there was none worthier than him. Note the progression of the English Bible: * Tyndale (1525) – William Tyndale (1483-1536) was born a year after Martin Luther, and a hundred years after the death of Wycliffe. Tyndale was a master of seven languages: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, English, and French. He revised his first New Testament (1525) nine years later in 1534, and again in 1535. * Coverdale (1535 – a revised edition of Tyndale’s version) – J. Paterson Smyth in How We Got our Bible notes: * Matthews’ Bible (1537 – a revised edition of Tyndale’s; prepared by John Rogers) * The Great Bible (1539 – a revised edition of Coverdale’s and Matthews’ version, which came from Tyndale’s) – J. Paterson Smyth in How We Got our Bible notes: Yet this “Great Bible,” the Authorized Version of the nation, was virtually Tyndale’s! 3 * Taverner’s Bible (a revised edition of Matthews’ Bible, which of course came from Tyndale’s version; prepared by Cranmer) * The Geneva Bible (1560) – The Reformers who had fled to Geneva returned to their homes (1556), bearing with them a new version of the Bible, the work of the best years of their banishment. The Geneva Bible was more a revision than a translation, being chiefly based on Tyndale. NOTE – The Geneva Bible was the first to recognize the divisions into verses, the first to omit the Apocrypha , the first to omit Paul’s name from the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the first to use italics for all words not occurring in the original. T he Textus Receptus is used generically to apply to all editions of the Greek New Testament, which follow the early printed editions of Erasmus. There were approximately thirty distinct editions of the Textus Receptus made over the years, each differing slightly from the others. In fact, there are less than 300 minor differences between the thirty editions. The first edition of the Greek text ( Textus Receptus ) to be published was that of Desiderius Erasmus. It was printed in Basle in 1516 and was used by Martin Luther for his German translation and William Tyndale for his English translation (1525). Erasmus also published editions in 1522, 1527, and 1535. Fifteen years later in 1550 Robert Stephens published his edition, known as the “royal edition,” which followed the text of the 1527 and 1535 editions of Erasmus. Fifteen years after that in 1565 Theodore Beza published his edition in Geneva, which followed the text of Stephens. The editions of Erasmus, Stephens, and Beza (particularly that of 1598) were the chief sources used for the translation of the King James Version in 1611. Thus, from the 1580s to the 1880s there was little if any bickering amongst Christians concerning the Greek text ( Textus Receptus ) that was used to translate the English Bible. Then came the discovery of the Critical Text in the late 1800s. The History of the Critical Text ( Alexandrian Text ) I n the latter part of the 19th century, a few Greek texts, which had disappeared for over 1500 years, were discovered in Alexandria, Egypt. Because those who discovered them dated them a hundred years earlier than the Byzantine (Antioch) texts, they were thought to be more accurate. Thus, all your newer versions of the English Bible: American Standard Version (1901), Revised Standard Version (1952), Anchor Bible (1964), Amplified Bible (1965), Jerusalem Bible (1966), New English Bible (1970), New American Standard Bible (1971), The Living Bible (1971), Good News for Modern Man Bible (1976), New International Version (1978), New Century Bible (1988), The Message Bible (1994), and The New Living Translation (1996), come from these texts. The only problem, however, is that the Alexandrian Texts differ with the Textus Receptus in over 6,000 places. So the question you have to ask yourself is: “Which of the two Greek texts that are used to print English Bibles today will I choose? Will I choose a Bible (KJV and NKJV) whose roots go back to Antioch ( Received Text ), from where the Church was sent to evangelize the world (Acts 13-28), or will I choose a Bible (ASV, RSV, NASB, TLB, NIV, etc.) that was hidden for 1500 years and goes back to Alexandria, Egypt ( Critical Text )?” Reese Currie in The Reliability of the New King James Version notes: * The Bishop’s Bible (1568) – a very inferior production * The King James Version (1611 – Authorized Version) I believe that the Byzantine text-type is superior to the modern critical text for a few reasons. First, the text is geographically closest to the storehouse of the originals, Antioch. Second, for all the charges that “additions” were made to the Byzantine majority text, no one can point to any significant additions in the 1500-year known history of the type, from 500AD to 1500AD. Third, the Alexandrian texts suffer drop-out errors due to the distance from Antioch; they were receiving copies of copies with no originals to compare to. Fourth, the Alexandrian text fell out of use around 600AD, probably because it was recognized to be inferior to the Byzantine text. 4 1 Thomas, W.H. Griffith. How We Got Our Bible , Dallas, TX, Dallas Seminary Press, 1984. Print. 2 The King James Study Bible . Nashville, TN, Thomas Nelson Pub., 1988. Print. 3 Smyth, J. Paterson. How We Got our Bible , NY, NY, Harper & Brothers Pub., 1899. Print. 4 Currie, Reese. The Reliability of the New King James Version (Internet Article) < http://tinyurl.com/kcyrf7a>. Web.. Coverdale was a man of sympathetic nature and fine literary instinct and the attractive English of his translation has considerably influenced the language of the Authorized Version. His Bible makes no pretence to be an original translation; it is “translated out of Douche and Latin into English,” with the help of “five sundry interpreters” ( i.e., translators), and the chief of these “interpreters” is evidently William Tyndale, whom, in the New Testament especially, he closely follows. 3

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