What Bible Translation Is Good?

[Quietfire]

The Bible as it stands today is composed of 73 books.
46 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New.
The Old Testament is divided into 3 parts. the Law,the Prophets, and the Writings.
The Law is the nucleus, the earliest substantial part, which at one time formed the sole Book of Scripture that the Jews possessed. A copy was place in the Ark, that was about 3300 years ago.
Long afterwards, the Prophets and Writings were added.
At what date precisely the volume or 'canon' of the OT was finally closed and recognised as completed for ever is not absolutely certain.

Some feel the OT was compiled around 430 BC under Esdras and Nehemiah, resting upon the authority of the famous Jew, Josephus, who lived immediately after Our Lord, and who declared that since the death of Ataxerxes, BC 424, 'no one had dared to add anything to the Jewish Scriptures, to take anything from them, or to make any change in them'.

Others contend it was done as late as 100 BC.
But one thing is for certain either way. That by this last date-that is, for 100 years before the birth of Our Blessed Lord-the OT existed precisely as we have it now.

The OT was written by Jewish authority in the Jewish language, namely, Hebrew, for Jews, God's chosen people. But after what is called the 'Dispersion' of the Jews, when that people was scattered abroad and settled in many other lands outside Palestine, and began to lose their Hebrew tongue and gradually became familiar with Greek, which was then a universal language, it was necessary to furnish them with a copy of their Sacred Scriptures in the Greek language. Hence arose that translation of the Hebrew OT into Greek known as the Septuagint.
In Latin this means 70.
Begun about 280 to 250 years before Christ, we may safely say that it was finished in the next century. It was the acknowleged Bible of all the 'Jews of the Dispersion' in Asia, as well as in Egypt, and was the Version used by Our Lord, His Apostles and Evangelists, and by Jews and Gentiles and Christians in the early days of Christianity. It is from this Version that Jesus Christ and the NT writers and speakers quote when referring to the OT.

Christians in other lands who could not understand Greek did have Scripture supplied with copies in their own tongues. Hence we have Armenian and Syriac, Coptic and Arabic and Ethiopic all for the benefits for Christians in these lands.

For Christians in Africa, where Latin was best understood, there was a translation of the Bible made into Latin about 150 AD, and later, another and better for the Christians in Italy; but all these were finally superseded by the grand and most important version made by St. Jerome in Latin called the 'Vulgate'-that is, the common, or current or accepted Version. This was in the forth century,

Hope this helps.
Peace.

Edited September 10, 2004 by Quietfire

[ironmonk]

[quote name='flip' date='Sep 9 2004, 09:44 PM'] is that true?

was the masoretic text translated from hebrew to greek then back to hebrew?

is that true???
that makes no sense to me... please enlighten me [/quote]
Yes, it's true.

The oldest known translation of the OT is the Septuagint (293 BC).

The Jews took the Septuagint, then translated it to Hebrew in 90 AD.

The Jews did not like the fact that the Christians used the exact same book as they did. So they took books out... and translated it to Hebrew from the Greek.

Check out Britannica.com, you should be able to get some info off of there.

Check out some of these audio files, one or two of them cover the topic nicely, but I don't remember which one... maybe the Sola Scriptura?

[url="http://www.maxbrackett.com/audio01.asp"]http://www.maxbrackett.com/audio01.asp[/url]


God Bless,
ironmonk