History Of The Bible

Traditional Interpretation

Fundamentalism

Modern Interpretation

History Of The Bible (cont.)

The reign of Queen Mary (Bloody Mary) was the next obstacle to the printing of the Bible in English. Queen Mary was sought to return England to the Church of Rome. In 1555, John Rogers and Thomas Cranmer were burned at the stake. She went on to burn protestants at the stake. During her reign, many people fled England, never to return.

The Church at Geneva (Switzerland) was sympathetic to these reformers exiled from England. Led by Myles Coverdale, John Foxe, Thomas Sampson, and William Whittingham, many of them met in Geneva. There, under the protection of John Calvin and John Knox, the Church of Geneva decided to produce a Bible in the English language.

They completed the New Testament in 1557, and the complete Bible was published in 1560. Although it was officially known as the Geneva Bible, due to a passage in Genesis describing the clothing that God fashioned for Adam and Eve upon expulsion from the Garden of Eden as "breeches", some people referred to it as the Breeches Bible.

The Geneva Bible was the first to add numberings to the chapters, so that it would be easier to reference specific passages of Scripture. Each chapter also included extensive margin notes and references, making it the first Study Bible. The Geneva Bible was the English-language Bible of choice for more than a century, and greatly influenced the King James Version, published in 1611, and remained more popular than the version authorized by King James for many decades. The Geneva Bible was the first Bible taken to America.

With the death of Queen Mary, the reformers were free to return to England. Under Queen Elizabeth I, the Anglican Church tolerated the printing and distribution of the Geneva Bible, but reluctantly. The margin notes, in particular, some of which proclaimed the Pope to be the Antichrist, did not rest well with Church authorities. In 1568, another version was printed, without the inflammatory margin notes. Despite 19 printings, the Bishop's Bible never gained popularity among people.

By 1580, the Church at Rome dispensed with its insistence on Latin only. Using the Latin Vulgate as a source, they published an English Bible. As the New Testament was translated at the Catholic College at Rheims, and the Old Testament at its College at Doway, this official Roman Church translation of the Bible was known as the Doway/Rheimes Version. The NT was published in 1582, the OT in 1609.

Queen Elizabeth I was succeeded by King James I. Seeking to produce a Bible that had the popularity of the Geneva Bible but without the controversy associated with it, King James I authorized work on what was intended to be the translation to end all translations. Using each of the available English translations as a source, combined with the private research of more than 50 scholars, the King James Version went to press in 1611.

It took years for the King James Version to overtake the Geneva Bible in popularity, but eventually the KJV became the English Bible of choice. For 250 years, until the publication of the Revised Version in 1881, the KJV was unrivaled. Even today, there are huge numbers of people (including several entire churches) who will insist upon the use of the King James Version.

Unity of the Bible

Despite the diversity of the Bible books and their separation in time, there are several unifying themes that run through both the Old and New Testaments:

There is only one true God. He created all that is the universe and takes an active, ongoing and loving role in its maintenance.

God loves His people of all races, nationalities and religions, and seeks their love in return.

God created men and women with the power to choose between good and evil. We are called to do good by serving God and respecting our fellow human beings of the world. Evil is a constant temptation that we must do our best to resist.

God seeks the salvation of all people, individually and collectively, from the power of sin and evil. God has intervened directly in human affairs and has also sent the prophets and, finally, His Son Jesus, the Messiah or Christ, to help us with that salvation.

Bible Interpretation

The Bible never tells the details of exactly how God inspired the human authors of the Bible, and this has led to much debate and differences of opinion about interpretation.

Throughout most of the Christian era, Bible reading and Bible interpretation were confined to religious professionals. Until the fifteenth century, the Bible was available only in Latin. Even when the Bible was translated into other languages, the scarcity and high cost of Bibles kept them out of the hands of ordinary people. During this era, the Bible was interpreted according to church beliefs and traditions. There was little or no attempt made to determine the original meanings of the Scripture. Difficult passages "were interpreted as having a figurative meaning, so that they convey, through a kind of code, deeper truths about God, the spiritual life, or the church1."

Scientific discoveries, beginning in the seventeenth century, seemed to contradict some parts of the Bible. Galileo's study of the universe, Darwin's theories about evolution of species and fossil evidence of the age of the earth were particularly troubling. At the same time, the Bible was often being studied and critiqued as ordinary literature rather than as the Word of God. Some Christians felt their faith was threatened by these apparent challenges to the authority of the Bible. In reaction, the fundamentalist movement asserted the inerrancy of Scripture: Everything in the Bible must be absolutely, literally, scientifically and historically true. Anything less would be unworthy of God. Any apparent conflict between the Bible and another source (science, history, etc.) should be resolved in favor of the Bible because of its divine origin.

Outstanding

The mainstream of Bible interpretation today is based on hermeneutics [her meh NEWT icks], the science and art of Bible interpretation. Hermeneutics attempts to determine what message the author intended to convey and how it would have been understood in its original historical and cultural setting. This involves a lot of specialized knowledge of the original Bible languages, literary styles and figures of speech, as well as the history, culture, and current events and issues of the time and place where it was written. Rather than forcing Bible interpretation to fit into a particular theological framework, such as church doctrine or strict literalism, hermeneutics attempts to draw out the true meaning as it was originally intended. Once we know what a Bible passage originally meant, we can prayerfully apply that knowledge to our lives in the modern world.

Bible Translations

During the first centuries A.D., Latin replaced Greek as the language of the Roman Empire. In 405 a Latin translation of the Old and New Testaments was completed. This version, known as the Vulgate, became the standard Bible of Christianity for many centuries. The first English version of the full Bible was John Wycliffe's translation of the Vulgate in 1384. Several other English versions followed, and the beloved King James Version was published in 1611.

None of the original manuscripts of the Old Testament or New Testament are known to exist; the best available sources are hand-made copies of copies. However, developments in archaeology and Biblical scholarship have made possible a number of modern, more accurate English translations of the scriptures. These newer versions are translated from the best available ancient Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, rather than from the King James Version or the Latin Vulgate.

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