An overview of premodern New Testament translations takes us back to the ancient period when writings of the first Apostles and their immediate followers began to be collected and circulated as the authentic record of Jesus Christ, his teachings, and his Church.
The New Testament Emerges
The first time that extant sources mention the four Gospels together as “the Scriptures, . . . each of [their authors] equally being in possession of the gospel of God,” appears to be in book 3 of Against Heresies by Irenaeus (c. AD 130–202).1 Therein, this early church father began to lay a scriptural foundation for refuting the popular but misguided Marcion and other teachers of his time who were in error.2
The process of canonization seems to have proceeded fairly rapidly. The oldest known list of New Testament books deemed authoritative that matches most closely to our current canon is the Muratorian Fragment, sometimes referred to as the Muratorian Canon and named after its discoverer, Father Ludovico Muratori (1672–1750), who worked in the Ambrosian Library in Milan, Italy. It is a seventh-century AD Latin translation of a likely Greek original manuscript (c. AD 180–200). In it we see which writings were deemed authentic or canonical by the end of the second century and their order in the collection.
When first composed, the Muratorian Fragment mentioned all the books in our current New Testament except Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, and 3 John. In its current state, the beginning of the fragment is mutilated so that it begins midway through a sentence that refers to Mark’s Gospel and implies the author knew of Matthew. Interestingly, the document also includes a couple of books not in our present canon, the Wisdom of Solomon and the Apocalypse of Peter, but clearly states that the Shepherd of Hermas was not canonical because of its recent date of composition.3
The Muratorian Fragment reveals much about the process of canonization and shows us that the second century was a time of fluidity, when the church and its postapostolic leaders were in the middle of determining which books were authoritative and which were not. Many factors played a role in determining authority, including the date of composition relative to the time of the actual occurrence of events; verifiable authorship; doctrinal and historical soundness when compared with eyewitness testimony (the Apostles) or with those who knew well what the eyewitnesses believed and taught; and traditional appeal or acceptability. B. F. Westcott’s summary of the Muratorian Fragment is most instructive: “The writer speaks throughout of a received and general opinion. He does not suggest a novel theory about the Apostolic books, but states what was held to be certainly known. He does not hazard an individual judgment, but appeals to the practice of ‘the Catholic [universal] Church.’ There was not indeed complete unanimity with regard to all the writings claiming to be apostolical.”4
By AD 200, the canonical picture was becoming clearer. The great theologian from Carthage, Tertullian (c. 160–220), was one of the first to call the Christian books of scripture “the New Testament.” This is significant because he “placed the New Testament Scripture on a level of inspiration and authority with the Old Testament.”5 Tertullian’s canonical list specifically mentions every New Testament book except Philemon, 2 Peter, and 3 John. He also included in his list the now-extracanonical books Wisdom of Solomon and Shepherd of Hermas.
During the first half of the third century, the towering intellect, theologian, biblical critic, and exegete Origen (c. 185–253)
traveled widely throughout the Christian world (e.g., Rome, Athens, Syria, Cappadocia, and Arabia) and acquainted himself with the biblical material used at each location. About 230 he formulated a list of New Testament books accepted universally (homologoumenoi) by Christians: the four Gospels, Acts, Paul’s thirteen epistles, 1 Peter, 1 John, and Revelation. He then cited those books held in dispute by some (antilegomenoi): Hebrews (he accepts), 2 Peter (he accepts), 2 and 3 John (he questions), James (he accepts), and Jude (he accepts). Noncanonical books [or what we now consider noncanonical] included in his canon are the Didache, Epistle of Barnabas, Shepherd of Hermas, and possibly 1 Clement and the Acts of Paul.6
The first church leader to include all twenty-seven books of our present New Testament in his canonical list was Athanasius (c. 296–373), bishop of Alexandria. He described them in an Easter letter addressed to his parishioners in 367.7 During the fourth and fifth centuries, several councils and synods addressed questions surrounding New Testament books that were deemed authoritative and those that were deemed questionable.8 “While the majority of New Testament books were accepted as canonical by the middle of the second century, uncertainty regarding mainly the General Epistles remained well into the fourth century.”9 But by the time of the Damasine Council of 382 held at Rome, we find a list promulgated with exactly the same twenty-seven books as in the Letter of Athanasius and as we now find in modern Bibles, though in a different order. The Damasine order is the four Gospels, Pauline Epistles (with Hebrews), Revelation, Acts, and the other Epistles.10
It is important to remember that most of the canon’s critical pieces were already in place by the middle of the second century. The seminal discussions and consensus-based decisions about which writings should be accorded scriptural status first occurred at the local church level, not the council or synod level. By the end of the apostolic era, the Holy Spirit was operating among branches and congregations of the Christian community to help church members recognize the work of the authorized servants and witnesses of the Lord. F. F. Bruce reminds us:
One thing must be emphatically stated. The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognizing their innate worth and generally apostolic authority, direct or indirect. The first ecclesiastical councils to classify the canonical books were both held in North Africa—at Hippo Regius in 393 and at Carthage in 397—but what these councils did was not to impose something new upon the Christian communities but to codify what was already the general practice of those communities.11
Some may want to disagree that the Holy Spirit was felt during this period. But the Apostle Paul declared that no one could even say Jesus is the Lord except through the influence of the Holy Ghost (1 Cor. 12:3). It seems logical that that same influence would also be present with those involved in determining which books should be part of the sacred canon—which books were authentic representations of the doctrine of Christ and which were not. The Spirit of inspiration has rested upon good men and women in all ages. To believe that the Holy Spirit was not present with any of the early Christian scholars during the critical two or three hundred years when the New Testament was being formed is to believe that God completely abandoned the canon to the adversary or the forces of secularism during one of the Bible’s critical formative stages. Of course mistakes were made. Of course plain and precious parts of the Bible were lost. Of course it is true that less-than-able translators and copyists introduced corruptions into the texts.12 But Latter-day Saints do not believe that there has ever been a time in the earth’s history when humankind has been left totally to the cunning wiles, trickeries, and deceits of the adversary.
The Testaments Combined
As early church fathers and Christian historians recognized, the Church of Jesus Christ in the meridian dispensation emerged in a complex cultural milieu. This is exemplified by the titulus fastened to the cross on which Jesus was crucified: “And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, This is the King of the Jews” (Luke 23:38). Though the Church arose in the Latin-speaking Roman Empire, the Greek language predominated in many areas, while Aramaic remained the primary language for many Jews. Except for the case of Matthew’s Gospel, which Eusebius says was first written in Hebrew13 (most scholars agree that this was actually Aramaic), the New Testament writers wrote in Greek. Quotations in the New Testament taken from the Old Testament do not follow the Hebrew text but the Septuagint—the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures.
In fact, so powerful a hold did Greek have in the Mediterranean Basin—the cradle of Christianity—that the Christians adopted the Septuagint as their own, as F. F. Bruce describes: “For the Church did not, in spite of the breach with Judaism, repudiate the authority of the Old Testament, but, following the example of Christ and His apostles, received it as the Word of God. Indeed, so much did they make the Septuagint their own that, although it was originally a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek for Greek-speaking Jews before the time of Christ, the Jews left the Septuagint to the Christians, and a fresh Greek version of the Old Testament was made for Greek-speaking Jews.”14
No one knows exactly when the Old and New Testaments were combined into a single volume; evidence seems to suggest that exemplars existed by the mid-third century. However, the two oldest surviving complete (or almost complete) Christian Bibles date from the mid-fourth century. They are known today as the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus.
They contain most of the text of the Septuagint (the first Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible), including the books later eliminated by the Jews and considered the Apocrypha by the Protestants, although the Codex Vaticanus is missing the books of the Maccabees. In addition, both codices contain all 27 books of the New Testament. The Codex Sinaiticus also includes the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. The Codex Vaticanus was probably put together in Egypt around AD 350 and eventually ended up in the Vatican Library in Rome. The Codex Sinaiticus has a more exciting history. It was written in Egypt in the late fourth century and kept at St Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Jebel Musa (Mount of Moses), the peak believed to be Mount Sinai, where Moses received the ten commandments. It remained there unknown until 1844, when a visiting German scholar, Constantin von Tischendorf spotted it in a pile of trash that was waiting to be burned for fuel. When he realized what he had discovered, von Tischendorf managed to salvage most of the manuscript. Because of their antiquity and near completeness, these two fourth-century codices are of invaluable help to biblical scholars today.15
Scholars estimated that in its complete form the Codex Sinaiticus was composed of at least 730 parchment leaves, each 13 × 15 inches in size, and that the skins of approximately 360 sheep would have been needed to supply enough parchment.16 Today, the Codex Sinaiticus is preserved in the British Museum in London, alongside another important codex named Codex Alexandrinus. The latter dates from the middle of the fifth century and came to England in 162717 after Cyril Lucar, patriarch of Constantinople, offered the manuscript to the English ambassador to Turkey as a gift for the monarch, James I. Lucar had obtained the codex in Alexandria, where he had been patriarch earlier, and he brought it with him to his post in Constantinople.18
The Codex Vaticanus, like Sinaiticus, has some parts missing. It got its name from being housed in the Vatican so long. Although its presence was known since 1475, Vatican officials discouraged work on it, and it was carried off to Paris by Napoleon but eventually returned (after 1815). Von Tischendorf also worked on it and published an edition in 1867.19
Latin Versions of the Bible
As Christianity spread to all quarters of the Roman Empire, the empire began to become Christianized. But, in its turn, Christianity began to be influenced by the various cultures and the official language of the empire—Latin. It may well be the case that the Lord raised up and established the Roman Empire (and emperors like Octavian) with a relatively stable political, social, and economic foundation so that the gospel could put down roots and spread, just as the Lord undoubtedly established the American nation and Constitution to provide a stable base for allowing the restored gospel to flourish in the dispensation of the fullness of times. Even non-Latter-day Saints recognize that the Romans united several regions “under a single language and this paved the way for the spread of the gospel throughout the Roman Empire.”20 In a sense, the Pax Romana, “Roman peace,” was Rome’s gift to Christianity.
Although the Greek language prevailed over Latin throughout most of the empire until the third century, by about AD 250, Latin emerged as the major language, displacing Greek even in the church. As a concurrent development, the preeminent position of the bishop of Rome over all of Christendom was also beginning to take shape. By the last half of the third century, Latin was the language spoken by most theologians and writers. Therefore, the need for a Latin translation of the Bible from the Greek was inescapable, even though Greek manuscripts of the Bible continued to be produced and many scholars continued to work in Greek. The earliest Latin biblical texts emerged in North Africa, which had long been a center of Christianity. Cyprian (died 258), bishop of Carthage, is credited with being the first to adopt a Latin text for his work.21
Evidence suggests that a number of Latin versions of the Bible arose independently. There seems to have been no single standard version of the Latin (even though scholars refer to it that way for convenience). This increased the opportunities for corruptions to be introduced into the text. Thus the Old Latin versions are “not written in the polished literary language of that time but in the didactic, vernacular idiom of the cult, often reflecting the dialect of the common people. This colloquial flavor is colored also by the Greek idiom, seen in its transliteration of Greek terms.”22 Bruce Metzger believes the evidence suggests that early translations were interlinear renditions with the Latin words being written above the Greek in each line.23 All Bibles at this time were handwritten.
As the strength and population of Christianity increased within the Roman Empire, so did its influence with the emperors. In AD 313, Constantine the Great signed an edict of toleration, instantly changing Christianity from a banned religion to a favored one. Christians were no longer persecuted as they had been under Constantine’s predecessor, Diocletian (ruled 284–305). Christian writings were no longer destroyed. Instead, Constantine ordered fifty Bibles for churches that he planned to build in the new capital city of the empire, Constantinople, which was old Byzantium, a long-established Greek-speaking town. Naturally, Christian observance and liturgy continued in the Greek language.24
In AD 332, two years after the founding of Constantinople, the emperor commissioned the renowned Christian scholar Eusebius of Caesarea to oversee the creation of these Bibles. The emperor’s letter to Eusebius states that the manuscripts were to be written “on well-prepared parchment by copyists most skilful [sic] in the art of accurate and beautiful writing.” This letter is the earliest surviving official statement on Bible-making.25 None of Constantine’s Bibles are known to have survived. However, two “exquisitely crafted Bibles from that era” did survive: Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, as discussed above. Scholars generally believe that it is unlikely that these codices are among the fifty Bibles produced by Eusebius.26 But they provide biblical text scholars with helpful information regarding the history of the Bible and the period that saw Greek and Latin Bible manuscripts vying for predominance.
Jerome and the Vulgate
Into this environment came the man the world would know as St. Jerome, one of the most famous biblical scholars in history and certainly the most capable of his day. Born about AD 345 in modern Yugoslavia to Christian parents, Eusebius Hieronymus Sophronius (Jerome) went to Rome at age twelve to study classical Latin writers under the famous grammarian Donatus. Jerome devoted himself diligently to the task and, after a few years, traveled throughout the empire continuing his studies. He learned Greek while in Antioch for a year in 373–74. But during this time, he fell ill (almost to the point of death) and had his now-famous dream that changed his life forever. His own recollections tell the story best:
Meantime preparations for my funeral went on; my body grew gradually colder, and the warmth of life lingered only in my throbbing breast. Suddenly I was caught up in the spirit and dragged before the judgment seat of the Judge; and here the light was so bright, and those who stood around were so radiant, that I cast myself upon the ground and did not dare to look up. Asked who and what I was I replied: “I am a Christian.” But he who presided said: “Thou liest, thou art a follower of Cicero and not of Christ. For ‘where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also.’” Instantly I became dumb, and amid the strokes of the lash—for He had ordered me to be scourged—I was tortured more severely by the fire of conscience, considering with myself that verse, “In the grave who shall give thee thanks?” . . . At last the bystanders, falling down before the knees of Him who presided, prayed that He would have pity on my youth, and that He would give me space to repent of my error. He might still, they urged, inflict torture on me, should I ever again read the works of the Gentiles. . . . Accordingly I made oath and called upon His name, saying: “Lord, if ever again I possess worldly books, or if ever again I read such, I have denied Thee.” . . . I profess that my shoulders were black and blue, that I felt the bruises long after I awoke from my sleep, and that thenceforth I read the books of God with a greater zeal that I had previously given to the books of men.27
After his dream, Jerome became a zealous Christian and proved his diligence in bringing an improved version of the Bible to the world. For the next several years (374–79), he lived an ascetic life in the Syrian Desert studying Hebrew. In 382, he became secretary to Pope Damasus, “which proved to be his date with destiny.”28 Jerome contemplated the great biblical problem of his day: the poor quality of the Old Latin manuscripts of the Bible that often differed from one another. In a letter to Pope Damasus in 383, Jerome described the problem with the existing Latin manuscripts of just the New Testament alone. In language reminiscent of Joseph Smith, Jerome said, “For if we are to pin our faith to the Latin texts, it is for our opponents to tell us which; for there are almost as many forms of texts as there are copies. If, on the other hand, we are to glean the truth from a comparison of many, why not go back to the original Greek and correct the mistakes introduced by inaccurate translators, and the blundering alterations of confident but ignorant critics, and further all that has been inserted or changed by copyists more asleep than awake?”29
Thus the pope commissioned Jerome to make a new translation of the Bible, one that would establish a standard Latin text, correcting the inaccuracies and rectifying the corruptions in the Old Latin texts. It would be called the Vulgate because it was in the “vulgar,” or common, tongue of the Latin people. Another motive to create the Vulgate was to ensure that the western Roman Catholic Church would be clearly Latin in orientation. With the publication of Jerome’s Vulgate, it seems the Lord gave to the people of medieval Christendom that which they were ready to possess and what best served his purposes at the time. That the Lord’s hand was involved during the different phases of the Bible’s history seems evident. President M. Russell Ballard said, “It is not by chance or coincidence that we have the Bible today.”30
Jerome’s rendition of the four Gospels appeared in AD 383. The entire Bible was completed in 404 or 405. All totaled, Jerome labored for twenty-three years to produce his masterpiece.31 In the midst of his work, two things happened. First, shortly after Pope Damasus’s death in 384, Jerome abandoned Rome and went to the Holy Land to live. He settled in Bethlehem, living in a cave complex traditionally associated with the Grotto of the Nativity, where he wrote, studied, translated, oversaw a monastery, and advised those who had followed him from Rome.32 Second, Jerome was dealt a severe blow when he was passed over to succeed Pope Damasus. Still he labored on, driven by some invisible force that some are inclined to call the Holy Spirit.
Though there are issues for which Jerome may be justly criticized and though some thoughtful historians do not like his personality very much, some believe his sacrifice to be a worthy and acceptable one. It is the judgment of modern writers that Jerome was a brilliant scholar and a good linguist, with a firm grasp of Latin, Greek, and, to a lesser extent, Hebrew. The longer one studies Jerome, the more one develops an appreciation for the work Jerome undertook and can imagine the trials, tribulations, and hardships that came to him, as he himself described—sitting month after month, by dim light, wrestling with poor eyesight, toiling sometimes day and night to give Christians a better rendition of the word of God. Jerome recognized the monumental, even presumptuous nature of his task, but he undertook it as a genuine labor of love. In his preface to the four Gospels, he wrote the following to Pope Damasus:
You urge me to revise the old Latin version, and, as it were, to sit in judgment on the copies of the Scriptures which are now scattered throughout the whole world; and, inasmuch as they differ from one another, you would have me decide which of them agree with the Greek original. The labour is one of love, but at the same time both perilous and presumptuous; for in judging others I must be content to be judged by all; and how can I dare to change the language of the world in its hoary old age, and carry it back to the early days of its infancy? Is there a man, learned or unlearned, who will not, when he takes the volume into his hands, and perceives that what he reads does not suit his settled tastes, break out immediately into violent language, and call me a forger and a profane person for having the audacity to add anything to the ancient books, or to make any changes or corrections therein?33
The Vulgate gradually won acceptance in the Western world and, by the eighth or ninth century, replaced all Old Latin versions. The climax of its acceptance came at the Council of Trent in 1546, when the Vulgate was declared to be the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church.34
Jerome chose to translate in a sense-for-sense manner rather than in a word-for-word manner. However, it must be recognized that the text of the Vulgate is not uniform in all its sections; when he first started out, ironically, he relied too heavily on Old Latin manuscripts of the New Testament—some of the very texts he was attempting to correct. And, frankly, he became a better translator over time as he gained more experience. Therefore, it is difficult to determine the value of the Vulgate New Testament, especially the Gospels, for textual studies.
Yet, ultimately, the Vulgate was of tremendous value. It has exercised significant influence on the language and thought of Western Christendom. It was foundational in the preparation of other premodern translations of the Bible. The Vulgate was the direct precursor to the Wycliffe Bible, which was the first Bible translated completely into English from the Latin version. Wycliffe’s Bible played a key role in both the Protestant Reformation and the efforts to arrive at the King James Version.
Gothic Version
Another translation of the Bible that appeared in Europe shortly before the Vulgate, but which was far less influential, was the Gothic Version. The ancient Goths founded an empire between the Danube River and the Black Sea and were split into groups on either side of the Dniester River—the Visigoths on the west and Ostrogoths on the east. They converted to Christianity and, by AD 325, had a Gothic bishop named Theophilus representing them at the Council of Nicea. More important, however, was Wulfilas (c. 311–383), who “was ordained to the episcopate by Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia” and became known as the “Apostle to the Goths.”35
Wulfilas (or probably Ulfilas, Gothic for “Little Wolf”) labored to produce the Gothic translation of the Bible by first creating the Gothic alphabet. About two-thirds of the alphabet is composed of Greek letters, and the rest of it is a combination of Latin characters and old Germanic runes. Wulfilas made his translation of the Old Testament from the Septuagint. The New Testament was rendered from the Greek text established at Byzantium (Constantinople) around AD 350.36
The value of the Gothic Version appears to be mixed. Only a few fragments of the Old Testament have been preserved. “According to Philostorgius (c. 368–430), Wulfilas left out Samuel and Kings when he translated the Old Testament because he felt its war stories would encourage the warring Goths to continue to fight.”37 In terms of the New Testament, there are only nine extant manuscripts, which are fragmentary in nature. “The most famous Gothic manuscript, known as Argentius ([that is,] the Silver Codex), from the fifth or sixth century, contains the four Gospels arranged in Western order (Matt., John, Luke, Mark) and written in silver letters on purple vellum.”38 Wulfilas was, according to Bruce Metzger, “hospitable to Arianism,”39 a heresy that denied Christ’s eternally divine existence and nature and was condemned at the Council of Nicea in AD 325. How much Wulfilas’s theological views influenced his translation of the New Testament has been debated. But, as Metzger notes, “perhaps the only certain trace of the translator’s dogmatic bias is found in Phil[ippians] ii. 6, where reference is made to the pre-existent Christ in terms of being galeiko guda (= ‘similar to God’), whereas the Greek ἴσα θεῷ should have been rendered ibna guda [= ‘being in very nature God’].”40
Old Slavonic Version
During the early Middle Ages, the Slavs of eastern Europe began to be converted to Christianity. According to tradition (some say legend), the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (c. 575–641) was among the first to evangelize the region, bringing priests from Rome, and “baptized the Croats.”41 More certain is the account of an attempt to Christianize the Moravian Empire (the area of the modern Czech Republic) formed three centuries later: “The founder of the empire, Rostislav, in order to check the growth of Frankish influence in his realm, asked, in 863, for Slavonic priests to be sent from Byzantium who should conduct the services and preach in the Slavonic language of the people.”42 Before this time, Frankish church leaders had been preaching in the Germanic tongue of the Franks and conducting the liturgy in Latin.43
In response to Rostislav, eastern Emperor Michael III in Constantinople (ruled 842–867) sent two brothers, Constantine (826–869, also known as Cyril) and Methodius (815–885), who became the “apostles to the Slavs.”44 They preached in the Slavonic language, began training Moravian clergy, and created the Glagolitic alphabet, which was based on biblical alphabetic elements. We note Bruce Metzger’s description: “It appears that Cyril [Constantine’s monastic name], taking as a model the increasingly flamboyant Greek minuscule script of the ninth century, and perhaps adopting also several Latin and Hebrew (or Samaritan) signs, used his inventive powers to devise an assortment of stylized and symmetrical characters made up of little quadrangles, triangles, and circles, with appendages.”45
It should also be noted that there have been divergent opinions expressed about which alphabet Cyril actually created. Again, Bruce Metzger wrote,
The difficulties that the modern philologist faces, however, arise from the fact that the extant Old Church Slavonic manuscripts present us with two distinct alphabets, the Glagolitic and the Cyrillic. Which of the alphabets Cyril invented, the relationship of the two alphabets to each other, and their antecedents, are questions to which widely divergent answers have been given. Today, however, there is widespread agreement that the alphabet invented by Cyril to take to the Moravian Slavs was that now called Glagolitic. . . .
The Cyrillic alphabet is, most scholars agree, of later provenance than the Glagolitic. . . . This alphabet, which is considerably less individualistic than the Glagolitic, may have been devised by St. Kliment, a pupil of Cyril and Methodius and an active missionary in Bulgaria.46
With a new, user-friendly alphabet in place for the writing of Slavonic, Cyril began the work of translating the New Testament. Purposely, he started with John 1:1, “In the beginning was the word,”47 as his preparatory work (creating a new alphabet) to bring forth the new translation had demonstrated. When Cyril died in 869, he and his brother had translated probably only the Psalms, the four Gospels, and Acts from Greek manuscripts into Slavonic. Methodius was then joined by a group of priests to help him finish the task of translating the rest of the Bible, which they accomplished by the latter part of the ninth century. Unfortunately, no Old Slavonic manuscripts from this early period have survived; the oldest manuscripts date from the tenth or eleventh century.48
The Old Slavonic Version is of value in helping us understand the spread of Christianity and its influence on native cultures. It also helps us flesh out the history of the transmission of the biblical texts in premodern times, a period of tremendous evangelization.
Early Eastern Versions—the Diatessaron
Acts 2:9–11 lists those visitors from foreign lands in Jerusalem during the first Christian celebration of Pentecost: “Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judæa, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.” As mentioned here, some of these attendees came from the East, beyond the borders of the Roman Empire, and surely were converted to the gospel, taking the message of salvation through Jesus Christ back to their homelands. We know that Christianity spread to Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt very early and that it continued to spread farther east. Eusebius mentions Pantaenus, head of the catechetical school in Alexandria, who took the gospel message as far as India:
For indeed there were until then many evangelists of the word who had forethought to use inspired zeal on the apostolic model for the increase and building up of the divine word. One of these was Pantaenus, and it is said that he went to the Indians, and the tradition is that he found there that among some of those there who had known Christ the Gospel according to Matthew had preceded his coming; for Bartholomew, one of the apostles, had preached to them and had left them the writing of Matthew in Hebrew letters, which was preserved until the time mentioned.49
Bible versions and translations followed soon after Christianity reached these various regions.
One of the earliest versions of the four Gospels to circulate in the East was Tatian’s Diatessaron. Tatian (110–172) came from Mesopotamia, was converted to Christianity, became a father of the Syriac church, and founded a group of ascetic Christians called Encratites. It is not known whether Tatian’s masterwork was originally composed in Greek or Syriac. The name diatessaron is Greek, meaning “through four,” and weaves all four Gospels into one continuous narrative, essentially making it the earliest known harmony of the Gospels. But the Diatessaron was circulating in Syriac sometime after AD 150 and gained its popularity in large measure owing to Ephraem (c. 306–73), a Syrian church father from Edessa who wrote a commentary on the work.50
Syriac Peshitta
Translations of the whole Bible into Old Syriac appeared by the end of the third or beginning of the fourth century AD. “Syriac” is the general name given to Christian Aramaic, a distinctive cursive variation of the Aramaic alphabet. At the beginning of the fifth century, a new version appeared—the Syriac Peshitta. Around AD 400, early church father Theodore of Mopsuestia noted that no one really knew who its translator(s) had been. Also in the fifth century, the Syriac church split into two factions—the Nestorians (East Syriac) and the Jacobites (West Syriac)—which resulted in two major editions of the Syriac Peshitta.51
The earliest Old Syriac edition of the Old Testament seems to have been translated from the Hebrew but subsequently revised in accordance with the Septuagint. Regarding the New Testament, scholars have identified five different Syriac versions. But from the fifth century onward, the Peshitta became established as the standard version. At first, the Peshitta New Testament included only twenty-two books, omitting four Epistles (2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude) and the book of Revelation. “But Philoxenus of Mabbug added these books to the version of the New Testament he commissioned in 507–508.”52
The Syriac Peshitta is a valuable tool for Old Testament textual criticism because it represents a fairly early version from a different Jewish tradition of texts. The importance of the Peshitta New Testament has at times been exaggerated, as F. F. Bruce explained: “Because the Syriac Bible is written in a variant dialect of the language that Jesus spoke, extreme views are sometimes expressed about the forms in which his sayings appear in the Syriac Gospels, as though his actual words in the language in which they were uttered might be found there. The ordinary reader, for example, may readily infer from the writings of Mr. George Lamsa that the Peshitta Gospels preserve the very words of our Lord better than the Greek Gospels do. This, of course, is quite wrong; the Peshitta New Testament is simply a translation of the Greek.”53
Coptic Versions
Egypt was another region into which the Gospels quickly spread by the mid- to late first century AD (see Acts 2:10), and it is where papyrus fragments of the Greek New Testament have been discovered, dating to the early second century. However, the language written by native Egyptians was undoubtedly Coptic, which is the latest phase in the long history of the evolving ancient Egyptian language. Until the Christian era, Egyptian had been written in hieroglyphs and their derivatives: the hieratic and demotic scripts. The Coptic language used by Egyptian Christians is a combination of twenty-four Greek letters plus seven signs taken from a cursive variety of demotic to express sounds not found in spoken Greek. As Bruce Metzger points out, “Coptic literature is almost exclusively religious.”54
Though six different dialects are spoken up and down the Nile River valley, the two main dialects are Sahidic (found in Upper Egypt) and Bohairic (spoken in Lower Egypt). This accounts for two extant Coptic versions of the Bible in Egypt. Sahidic was the earlier dialect in Egypt, and this version of the Bible dates to the third century AD and is rooted in the Alexandrian text-type, though it contains some unusual textual variants not found in other versions of the New Testament. For example, “Matthew 6:13 ends with ‘for yours is the power and the glory forever,’ instead of the more common ‘for yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever.’ . . . In Acts 15, the Golden Rule is stated in the negative, namely, ‘do not do unto others what you would not want them to do unto you.’”55 The Bohairic dialect of Coptic, spoken in the Delta region of Egypt, became the most developed and in time superseded the other dialects. For a time, it was the only known version of the New Testament in Egypt that was also Alexandrian in type. Both Coptic versions of the New Testament are valuable for text-critical studies and transmission history.56
Nubian Version
Nubia is south of Egypt and north of Ethiopia. Christian influence probably entered Nubia from the time that the Coptic church became firmly established in Upper Egypt during the third and fourth centuries AD. Assigned missionaries arrived in Nubia during the mid-sixth century. In succeeding centuries, churches in Nubia multiplied and numbered in the hundreds. Exactly when the Bible was translated into Nubian is not known. However, if the pattern of evangelization observed in other countries was followed in Nubia, a vernacular version appeared perhaps as early as the second half of the sixth century. The reason for such tenuous conclusions comes from the fact that evidence for the Nubian version only came to light in the early twentieth century. In 1906, sixteen mutilated pages from a parchment codex originating in Upper Egypt were purchased in Cairo. They contained a portion of a lectionary for Christmastide that included passages from the New Testament in Nubian. Toward the end of the twentieth century, other biblical fragments in Nubian came to the attention of scholars: the Gospel of John and the book of Revelation.57
Armenian Version
Armenia is situated directly north of Mesopotamia. It boasts of being the first nation to officially adopt Christianity as its state religion, which occurred when King Tiridates III (c. 287–314), who had formerly persecuted Christians, was converted by Gregory the Illuminator (c. 257–331) sometime around 300.58 King Tiridates then issued a royal edict commanding all his subjects to adopt Christianity. Up to this point, the Armenian people only had books written in Syriac or Greek.59
There are differing traditions as to how the first Armenian version of the Bible came into existence. One source ascribes it to “St. Mesrop (d. 439), a soldier who became a missionary, who created a new alphabet, and, with the help of one Catholicus Sahak (Isaac the Great, 390–439; [Catholicus is a title meaning Primate of the Armenian Church]),” translated the Bible into Armenian from the Greek texts of both the Old and New Testaments. Another tradition comes from Moses of Chorion, St. Mesrop’s nephew and disciple, who states that only Sahak translated the Syriac text of the Bible into Armenian.60 The significant element of the story is the creation (again) of a new alphabet to serve a people who needed the Bible in their own language.
The earliest attempt to construct an Armenian alphabet was made by a certain Bishop Daniel. Since he was a Syrian, he probably took the Aramaic alphabet as a pattern. According to the historian Koriun, the alphabet was found to be unsuitable for representing the sounds of the Armenian language. . . .
At length and with the help of a Greek hermit and calligrapher, Rufanos of Samosata, about A.D. 406 Mesrop succeeded in producing an Armenian alphabet of thirty-six letters, twenty letters coming directly from Greek, twelve others being formed according to a Greek model, and four being taken from Syriac.61
Thus the foundation of all Armenian literature came about as the result of the quest for a Bible written in their language.
The Armenian version of the Bible is a fairly early translation of the Bible when compared with all the rest, and thus some of the readings may be early—which is helpful to students of the biblical text. “The Armenian version contains several books outside the standard canon; for example, . . . the Epistle of the Corinthians to Paul and the Third Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians are included in some of the New Testament manuscripts.” The final official Armenian Bible is dependent on the readings of the Septuagint and the Peshitta.62
Armenian New Testament manuscripts present some interesting characteristics (the General Epistles appear immediately following the book of Acts) and some richer variant readings. For example, in John 5:7, the lame man at the Pool of Bethesda remarks, “While I drag myself, another steps in before me” instead of the common reading, “while I am coming.” In Mark 7:25, the usual reading states that the little girl “had” an unclean spirit, while “the Armenian version says the little girl ‘was pressed’ or ‘was squeezed’ by an unclean spirit.”63 What does all this tell us about the New Testament canon in the East during the fifth century?
Georgian Version
Georgia is north of Armenia in the Caucasus Mountains. Christianity was introduced in Georgia during the fourth-century AD reign of Constantine the Great, but when or how the Bible first came into the country is not known with any certainty. Like other versions we have discussed, an alphabet had to be developed before Georgians could have the scriptures in an understandable tongue since the Georgian language is unrelated to any of those around it. Bruce Metzger believes that at least the Gospels were translated by the mid-fifth century, while other scholars, especially Sidney Jellicoe, propose that an original Georgian version appeared by the sixth century, translated from the Armenian version and later revised by comparing it with a Greek text.64 The oldest Georgian manuscript, the Adysh manuscript of 897, contains only the four Gospels. Paul Wegner asserts that the “Georgian version is a tertiary version from either the Syriac or Armenian versions, and thus its primary value is its corroboration of the Old Syriac versions.65
Ethiopic Version
It is not known when Ethiopia (Abyssinia is the older name) received Christianity. The tradition that the Ethiopian official baptized by Philip (Acts 8:26–39) took the gospel back to his homeland cannot be corroborated, according to Metzger.66 Both literary and inscriptional evidence points to the establishment of Christianity in Ethiopia by the fourth century AD. It is believed that portions of the Bible were translated into Ge’ez or Old Ethiopic by the fifth or sixth century, probably by Monophysite monks, who accepted the belief that Christ possessed only one nature and who were escaping persecutions by Byzantine rulers. The oldest extant Ethiopic text is a copy of the Gospels dating from the tenth century. The Ethiopic New Testament is different in that it includes two apocryphal books: 1 Enoch and Jubilees.67
Arabic Versions
Beyond a couple of references in the New Testament, little is known about early Christian contacts with Arabia. The Christian historian, Eusebius, describes the appointment of a man named Moses as bishop in the region during the fourth century AD and the miraculous peace that resulted: “All the regions of the East therefore were at that time ravaged by the Saracens: but a certain divine Providence repressed their fury in the manner I am about to describe. A person named Moses, a Saracen by birth, who led a monastic life in the desert, became exceedingly eminent for his piety, faith, and miracles. Mavia the queen of the Saracens was therefore desirous that this person should be constituted bishop over her nation, and promised on this condition to terminate the war.”68 At this time, Christians from Ethiopia also began moving into the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula.
The first mention of a version of the Bible in Arabic comes from the Midrash Sifre on Deuteronomy 34:3, which states that the Torah came to Israel in four languages: Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, and Aramaic. But nothing else is mentioned, and the assertion is uncorroborated. The arrival and spread of Islam in the seventh century AD forced Jews and Christians living in Arabia to adopt the Arabic language, but translation of the Bible into Arabic was outlawed by Islamic law. However, it was translated secretly and sometimes reflected the influence of Docetism. (From the Greek dokein, “to seem or appear,” Docetism is the heretical belief that Jesus possessed only a heavenly, immaterial nature and only appeared to be incarnate, only seemed to possess a physical body, and that the material world and thus one’s physical body were inherently evil.) F. F. Bruce explained, “The Scriptures do not seem to have been extant in an Arabic version before the time of Muhammad (570–632), who knew the gospel story only in an oral form, and mainly from Syriac sources. These Syriac sources were marked by Docetism, which explains the statement in the Qur’an that Jesus was only apparently crucified, but did not really die.”69
According to the latest New Testament scholarship, the translations into Arabic were made from conglomerate versions: Greek, Old Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and the Syriac Peshitta. Professor Metzger summarized the evidence regarding the Arabic versions of the four Gospels:
According to an analysis by Ignazio Guidi of more than seventy-five Arabic manuscripts, the Arabic versions of the Gospels existing in manuscripts fall into six basic groups: (1) those made directly from the Greek; (2) those made directly from or corrected from the Syriac Peshitta; (3) those made directly from or corrected from the Coptic (usually the Bohairic dialect); (4) those made from Latin; (5) manuscripts of two distinct eclectic recensions produced by the Alexandrian Patriarchate during the thirteenth century; and (6) miscellaneous manuscripts, some of which are characterized by being cast in the form of rhymed prose made classic by the Koran. Furthermore, more than one Arabic version has been corrected from others derived from a different basic text.70
The oldest known manuscript of the Arabic Bible is the Codex Vaticanus Arabicus 13, which contains a portion of the Gospels and Pauline Epistles, dating to the eighth or ninth century AD.71
Sogdian Version
Sogdian is an Iranian language which became the lingua franca of an extensive area in Persia and Central Asia. In the early twentieth century, a variety of Sogdian documents came to light in northwest China, including fragmentary copies of passages from Matthew, Luke, and John as well as several verses of 1 Corinthians and Galatians. These biblical texts are believed to date from the time of the Nestorian mission to Central Asia during the seventh century AD.72
Summary
It would be hard to overestimate the importance of endeavors to translate the Bible into the vernacular tongues of Christians in the premodern period. First, these labors were usually preceded by proselytizing work to establish the Christian church in regions not always favorable to the gospel, thus underlining the determination and bravery of those Christian translators.
Second, sometimes great effort was expended to create vernacular alphabets where none had previously existed in order to render new translations in the language of the common people. These new alphabets were impressive achievements in and of themselves. Often translations of the Bible into the vernacular significantly affected the cultures of those native inhabitants because it featured commandments to love one’s neighbors and to do good continually.
Third, when people had a Bible in their own language, they were better able to withstand those times when persecution and heresy beset them. Paul Wegner noted, “Church history confirms that in areas such as Egypt and Syria, where the Bible was translated into the languages of the common people at an early stage, the Muslim conquest in the seventh century was not able to wipe out Christianity. But in areas where there were no translations (as with the Berber peoples in North Africa) hardly a trace of Christianity is left. The early church realized the importance of translating the Bible into other languages.”73
Fourth, though vernacular translations were made long ago, they are of great advantage to those who seek to understand the history of interpretation of scripture as well as the history of the transmission of the Bible. Again, Paul Wegner informs us that “primary translations (those translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek texts) are most important, but secondary and tertiary translations have at least a limited value. . . . The most important primary translations are the Septuagint, Syriac Peshitta, and Latin Vulgate because they have been translated directly from some form of the Hebrew or Greek texts. Secondary translations are often helpful in determining the text that they have been translated from; for example, Old Latin texts are quite helpful in determining the text of the Septuagint since they were translated from some form of it.”74
We marvel at the work of early Christians to spread the word of God far and wide into new regions among people who spoke different languages (Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Gothic, and Slavic—to name some). We pay tribute to those who gave so much of themselves to give others of varied cultures the word in their own tongues, especially considering the difficulty of transferring meaning from one language to another (Latin has no definite article, Syriac cannot distinguish between the Greek aorist and perfect verb tenses, Coptic lacks the passive voice,75 and so on). Despite stiff challenges, the creation of many vernacular Bible translations was accomplished well before our modern age of ease, convenience, and technological advances.
