English Bible Translations History

The Bible is one of the most printed and read books in the world. The Bible
originally was not in written format, but passed down orally by people. But many
devoted believers will say that the written Bible was handed down to Moses by
God on Mount Sinai. Although there is no direct evidence, it is a matter of faith
for you to decide. It is claimed that Moses wrote down the scriptures in his native
language, Hebrew. Today, the Bible has been translated into about two thousand
languages. Just within the English language, there are more than twenty versions
of the Bible. However, not all of them have been translated at the same time.
Instead, they can be viewed as improvements through later versions.

I will try to outline several key versions of the English Bible later on so that we
can see how different they are. In 1604, King James I of England initiated the
translation of the Bible to English. When the translation was completed in 1611,
it became the standard version for most English speaking Protestants. Since
then, a second edition has been published in 1994. It is called the 21st Century
King James Version. This revised version updated and eliminated obsolete words
by referring to the Webster’s New International Dictionary. However, the Biblical
English has been retained where words such as “thee” and “thou” are still used,
so it is quite different from the colloquial language that you and I use today.

In around 1965, the Lockman foundation published their first Amplified Bible.
The foundation of the Amplified Bible was laid down by Frances Siewert, who
dedicated her life in familiarising the Hebrew Bible. The end result is an English
Bible that defines and expands key words right in the original text with a unique
system of brackets, parentheses and italics. So verse by verse, the reader will
get the full translated meaning as they read. The Amplified Bible also provides
considerable amounts of footnotes making references to historical, archeological
and devotional insights.

Next up is the Contemporary English Version Bible. It was first published by the
American Bible Society in 1995. This version was translated with one aim in mind
that is to make it very easy to understand by primary school students and people
who do not speak English as their first language. The translators worked very
hard to make the English text accurate and still faithful to the original text in the
Bible.

To date, there is one version that is widely recognised as the most accurate - the
Today’s New International Version. This Bible translation was published in 2005
and it is suitable for public or private reading, preaching and teaching. The
translators laid down simple guidelines before they embarked on this massive
translation project. They wanted to produce an accurate and readable translation
in contemporary English, which you and I use every day. Their translation
approach can be said to be in between the word-for-word (literal translation)
approach and thought-for-thought (attempt to convey hidden meanings)
approach. The end result is a balanced mediating version.
All in all, although the Bible has been translated into many different versions in
the English language, each of them is aimed to serve a slightly different
audience but still remaining faithful to the original manuscript.