The Hebrew
Bible is often known among Jews as TaNaKh, an acronym derived from
the names of its three divisions: Torah (Instruction, or Law, also called
the Pentateuch), Nevi`im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings).
The Torah
contains five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
The Nevi`im comprise eight books subdivided
into the Former Prophets, containing the four historical works, Joshua,
Judges, Samuel, and Kings, and the Latter Prophets, the oracular discourses
of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve (Minor--i.e.,
smaller) Prophets--Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum,
Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. The Twelve were all
formerly written on a single scroll and thus reckoned as one book. The
Ketuvim consist of religious poetry and wisdom literature--Psalms, Proverbs,
and Job, a collection known as the "Five Megillot"
("scrolls"; i.e., Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther,
which have been grouped together according to the annual cycle of their
public reading in the synagogue)--and the books of Daniel, Ezra and
Nehemiah, and Chronicles.
The number of books in the Hebrew
canon is thus 24, referring to the sum of the separate scrolls on which
these works were traditionally written in ancient times. This figure is
first cited in II Esdras in a passage usually dated c.
100 CE and is frequently mentioned in rabbinic (postbiblical)
literature, but no authentic tradition exists to explain it. Josephus,
a 1st century CE Jewish historian, and some of the Church Fathers, such as Origen
(the great 3rd-century Alexandrian theologian), appear to have had a 22-book
canon.
English Bibles list 39 books for the
Old Testament because of the practice of bisecting Samuel, Kings, and
Chronicles, and of counting Ezra, Nehemiah, and the 12 Minor Prophets as
separate books.
The threefold nature of the Hebrew
Bible (the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings) is reflected in the
literature of the period of the Second Temple (6th-1st centuries BCE) and
soon after it. The earliest reference is that of the Jewish wisdom writer Ben
Sira (flourished 180-175 BCE), who speaks of "the law of the
Most High . . . the wisdom of all the ancients and . . . prophecies."
His grandson (c. 132 BCE) in the
prologue to Ben Sira's work mentions "the law and the prophets and the
others that followed them," the latter also called "the other
books of our fathers." The same tripartite division finds expression in
II Maccabees, the writings of Philo, a
Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, and Josephus, a Hellenistic Jewish
historian, as well as in the Gospel According to Luke. The tripartite canon
represents the three historic stages in the growth of the canon.
Because no explicit or reliable
traditions concerning the criteria of canonicity, the canonizing
authorities, the periods in which they lived, or the procedure adopted have
been preserved, no more than a plausible reconstruction of the successive
stages involved can be provided. First, it must be observed that sanctity
and canonization are not synonymous terms. The first condition must have
existed before the second could have been formally conferred. Next, the
collection and organization of a number of sacred texts into a canonized
corpus (body of writings) is quite a different problem from that of the
growth and formation of the individual books themselves.
No longer are there compelling
reasons to assume that the history of the canon must have commenced very
late in Israel's history, as was once accepted. The emergence in
Mesopotamia, already in the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE, of a
standardized body of literature arranged in a more or less fixed order and
with some kind of official text, expresses the notion of a canon in its
secular sense. Because Babylonian and Assyrian patterns frequently served as
the models for imitation throughout the Near East, sacred documents in
Israel may well have been carefully stored in temples and palaces,
particularly if they were used in connection with the cult or studied in the
priestly or wisdom schools. The injunction to deposit the two tables of the
Decalogue (Ten Commandments) inside the ark of the covenant and the book of
the Torah beside it and the chance find of a book of the Torah in the Temple
in 622 BCE tend to confirm the existence of such a practice in Israel.
The history of the canonization of
the Torah as a book must be distinguished from the process by which the
heterogeneous components of the literature as such developed and were
accepted as sacred.
The Book of
the Chronicles, composed c. 400
BCE, frequently refers to the "Torah of Moses" and exhibits a
familiarity with all the five books of the Pentateuch. The earliest record
of the reading of a "Torah book" is provided by the narrative
describing the reformation instituted by King Josiah of Judah in 622 BCE
following the fortuitous discovery of a "book of the Torah" during
the renovation of the Temple. The reading of the book (probably
Deuteronomy), followed by a national covenant ceremony, is generally
interpreted as having constituted a formal act of canonization.
Between this date and 400 BCE the
only other ceremony of Torah reading is that described in Nehemiah as having
taken place on the autumnal New Year festival. The "book of the Torah
of Moses" is mentioned and the emphasis is on its instruction and
exposition. The Samaritans, the descendants
of Israelites intermarried with foreigners in the old northern kingdom that
fell in 722 BCE, became hostile to the Judaeans in the time of Ezra and
Nehemiah (6th-5th centuries BCE). They would not likely have accepted the
Torah, which they did, along with the tradition of its Mosaic origin, if it
had only recently been canonized under the authority of their arch-enemies.
The final redaction and canonization of the Torah book, therefore, most
likely took place during the Babylonian Exile
(6th-5th centuries BCE).
The model of the Pentateuch probably
encouraged the assemblage and ordering of the literature of the prophets.
The Exile of the Jews to Bablylonia in 587/586 and the restoration half a
century later enhanced the prestige of the prophets as national figures and
aroused interest in the written records of their teachings. The canonization
of the Nevi`im could not have taken place before the Samaritan schism that
occurred during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, since nothing of the
prophetical literature was known to the Samaritans. On the other hand, the
prophetic canon must have been closed by the time the Greeks had displaced
the Persians as the rulers of Palestine in the late 4th century BCE. The
exclusion of Daniel would otherwise be inexplicable, as would also the
omission of Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah, even though they supplement and
continue the narrative of the Former Prophets. Furthermore, the books of the
Latter Prophets contain no hint of the downfall of the Persian Empire and
the rise of the Greeks, even though the succession of great powers in the
East plays a major role in their theological interpretation of history.
Their language, too, is entirely free of Grecisms.
These phenomena accord with the
traditions of Josephus and rabbinic sources limiting the activities of the
literary prophets to the Persian era.
That the formation of the Ketuvim
as a corpus was not completed until a very late date is evidenced by the
absence of a fixed name, or indeed any real name, for the third division of
Scripture. Ben Sira refers to "the other books of our fathers,"
"the rest of the books"; Philo speaks simply of "other
writings" and Josephus of "the remaining books." A widespread
practice of entitling the entire Scriptures "the Torah and the
Prophets" indicates a considerable hiatus between the canonization of
the Prophets and the Ketuvim. Greek words are to be found in the Song of
Songs and in Daniel, which also refers to the disintegration of the Greek
Empire. Ben Sira omits mention of Daniel and Esther. No fragments of Esther
have turned up among the biblical scrolls (e.g.,
the Dead Sea Scrolls) from the Judaean Desert. Rabbinic sources betray
some hesitation about Esther and a decided ambivalence about the book of Ben
Sira. A third generation Babylonian amora
(rabbinical interpretive scholar; pl. amoraim)
actually cites it as "Ketuvim," as opposed to Torah and Prophets,
and in the mid-2nd century CE, the need to deny its canonicity and prohibit
its reading was still felt. Differences of opinion also are recorded among
the tannaim (rabbinical scholars
of tradition who compiled the Mishna, or Oral Law) and amoraim (who created the Talmud, or Gemara) about the canonical
status of Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Esther.
All this indicates a prolonged state
of fluidity in respect of the canonization of the Ketuvim. A synod at Jabneh
(c. 100 CE) seems to have ruled on
the matter, but it took a generation or two before their decisions came to
be unanimously accepted and the Ketuvim regarded as being definitively
closed. The destruction of the Jewish state in 70 CE, the breakdown of
central authority, and the ever widening Diaspora (collectively, Jews
dispersed to foreign lands) all contributed to the urgent necessity of
providing a closed and authoritative corpus of sacred Scriptures.
As has been mentioned, the
Samaritans accepted the Pentateuch from the Jews. They know of no other
section of the Bible, however, and did not expand their Pentateuchal canon
even by the inclusion of any strictly Samaritan compositions.
The Old Testament as it has come
down in Greek translation from the Jews of Alexandria via the Christian
Church differs in many respects from the Hebrew Scriptures. The books of the
second and third divisions have been redistributed and arranged according to
categories of literature--history, poetry, wisdom, and prophecy. Esther and
Daniel contain supplementary materials, and many noncanonical books, whether
of Hebrew or Greek origin, have been interspersed with the canonical works.
These extracanonical writings comprise I Esdras, the Wisdom of Solomon,
Ecclesiasticus (Ben Sira), Additions to Esther, Judith, Tobit, Baruch, the
Epistle of Jeremiah, and additions to Daniel, as listed in the manuscript
known as Codex Vaticanus (c. 350
CE). The sequence of the books varies, however, in the manuscripts and in
the patristic and synodic lists of the Eastern and Western churches, some of
which include other books as well, such as I and II Maccabees.
It should be noted that the contents
and form of the inferred original Alexandrian Jewish canon cannot be
ascertained with certainty because all extant Greek Bibles are of Christian
origin. The Jews of Alexandria may themselves have extended the canon they
received from Palestine, or they may have inherited their traditions from
Palestinian circles in which the additional books had already been regarded
as canonical. It is equally possible that the additions to the Hebrew
Scriptures in the Greek Bible are of Christian origin.
In the collection of manuscripts
from the Judaean Desert--discovered from the 1940s on--there are no lists of
canonical works and no codices (manuscript volumes), only individual
scrolls. For these reasons nothing can be known with certainty about the
contents and sequence of the canon of the Qumran sectarians. Since
fragments of all the books of the Hebrew Bible (except Esther) have been
found, it may be assumed that this reflects the minimum extent of its canon.
The situation is complicated by the presence in Qumran of
extracanonical works--some already known from the Apocrypha
(so-called hidden books not accepted as canonical by Judaism and the church)
and pseudepigrapha (books falsely ascribed to
biblical authors) or from the Cairo Geniza (synagogue storeroom), and others
entirely new. Some or all of these additional works may have been considered
canonical by the members of the sect. It is significant, however, that so
far pesharim (interpretations)
have been found only on books of the traditional Hebrew canon. Still, the
great Psalms scroll departs from the received Hebrew text in both sequence
and contents. If the Psalms scroll were a canonical Psalter and not a
liturgy, then evidence would indeed be forthcoming for the existence of a
rival canon at Qumran. (see also Index:
Qumran community)
The Christian Church received its
Bible from Greek-speaking Jews and found the majority of its early converts
in the Hellenistic world. The Greek Bible of Alexandria thus became the
official Bible of the Christian community, and the overwhelming number of
quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures in the New Testament are derived from
it. Whatever the origin of the Apocryphal books in the canon of Alexandria,
these became part of the Christian Scriptures, but there seems to have been
no unanimity as to their exact canonical status. The New Testament itself
does not cite the Apocryphal books directly, but occasional traces of a
knowledge of them are to be found. The Apostolic Fathers (late 1st-early 2nd
centuries) show extensive familiarity with this literature, but a list of
the Old Testament books by Melito, bishop of
Sardis in Asia Minor (2nd century), does not include the additional writings
of the Greek Bible, and Origen (c.
185-c. 254) explicitly
describes the Old Testament canon as comprising only 22 books.
From the time of Origen on, the
Church Fathers who were familiar with Hebrew differentiated, theoretically
at least, the Apocryphal books from those of the Old Testament, though they
used them freely. In the Syrian East, until the 7th century the Church had
only the books of the Hebrew canon with the addition of Ecclesiasticus, or
the Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sira (but without Chronicles, Ezra, and
Nehemiah). It also incorporated the Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch, the Letter of
Jeremiah, and the additions to Daniel. The 6th-century manuscript of the
Peshitta (Syriac version) known as Codex Ambrosianus also has III and IV
Maccabees, II (sometimes IV) Esdras, and Josephus' Wars
VII.
Early councils of the African Church
held at Hippo (393) and Carthage (397, 419) affirmed the use of the
Apocryphal books as Scripture. In the 4th century also, Athanasius,
chief theologian of Christian orthodoxy, differentiated "canonical
books" from both "those that are read" by Christians only and
the "Apocryphal books" rejected alike by Jews and Christians. In
the preparation of a standard Latin version, the biblical scholar Jerome
(c. 347-419/420) separated
"canonical books" from "ecclesiastical books" (i.e.,
the Apocryphal writings), which he regarded as good for spiritual
edification but not authoritative Scripture. A contrary view of Augustine
(354-430), one of the greatest Western theologians, prevailed, however, and
the works remained in the Latin Vulgate version. The Decretum
Gelasianum, a Latin document of uncertain authorship but recognized as
reflecting the views of the Roman Church at the beginning of the 6th
century, includes Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, and
I and II Maccabees as biblical.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the
Apocryphal books were generally regarded as Holy Scripture in the Roman and
Greek churches, although theoretical doubts were raised from time to time.
Thus, in 1333 Nicholas of Lyra, a French
Franciscan theologian, had discussed the differences between the Latin
Vulgate and the "Hebrew truth." Christian-Jewish polemics, the
increasing attention to Hebrew studies, and, finally, the Reformation kept
the issue of the Christian canon alive. Protestants
denied canonical status to all books not in the Hebrew Bible. The first
modern vernacular Bible to segregate the disputed writings was a Dutch
version by Jacob van Liesveldt (Antwerp,
1526). Luther's German edition of 1534 did
the same thing and entitled them "Apocrypha" for the first time,
noting that while they were not in equal esteem with sacred Scriptures they
were edifying.
In response to Protestant views, the
Roman Catholic Church made its position clear
at the Council of Trent (1546) when it
dogmatically affirmed that the entire Latin Vulgate enjoyed equal canonical
status. This doctrine was confirmed by the Vatican Council of 1870. In the
Greek Church, the Synod of Jerusalem (1672)
had expressly designated as canonical several Apocryphal works. In the 19th
century, however, Russian Orthodox theologians agreed to exclude these works
from the Holy Scriptures.
The history of the Old Testament
canon in the English Church has generally reflected a more restrictive
viewpoint. Even though the Wycliffite Bible
(14th century) included the Apocrypha, its preface made it clear that it
accepted Jerome's judgment. The translation made by the English bishop Miles
Coverdale (1535) was the first English version to segregate these
books, but it did place Baruch after Jeremiah. Article VI of the Thirty-nine
Articles of religion of the Church of England (1562) explicitly
denied their value for the establishment of doctrine, although it admitted
that they should be read for their didactic worth. The first Bible in
English to exclude the Apocrypha was the Geneva
Bible of 1599. The King James Version
of 1611 placed it between the Old and New Testaments. In 1615 Archbishop
George Abbot forbade the issuance of Bibles without the Apocrypha, but
editions of the King James Version from 1630 on often omitted it from the
bound copies. The Geneva Bible edition of 1640 was probably the first to be
intentionally printed in England without the Apocrypha, followed in 1642 by
the King James Version. In 1644 the Long Parliament actually forbade the
public reading of these books, and three years later the Westminster
Confession of the Presbyterians decreed them to be no part of the canon. The
British and Foreign Bible Society in 1827 resolved never to print or
circulate copies containing the Apocrypha. Most English Protestant Bibles in
the 20th century have omitted the disputed books or have them as a separate
volume, except in library editions, in which they are included with the Old
and New Testaments.
The text of the Hebrew printed Bible
consists of consonants, vowel signs, and cantillation (musical or tonal)
marks. The two latter components are the product of the school of Masoretes
(Traditionalists) that flourished in Tiberias (in Palestine) between the 7th
and 9th centuries CE. The history of the bare consonantal text stretches
back into hoary antiquity and can be only partially traced. (see also Index:
biblical translation, Hebrew
Bible)
The earliest printed editions of the
Hebrew Bible derive from the last quarter of the 15th century and the first
quarter of the 16th century. The oldest Masoretic codices stem from the end
of the 9th century and the beginning of the 10th. A comparison of the two
shows that no textual developments took place during the intervening 600
years. A single standardized recension enjoyed an absolute monopoly and was
transmitted by the scribes with amazing fidelity. Not one of the medieval
Hebrew manuscripts and none of the thousands of fragments preserved in the
Cairo Geniza (synagogue storeroom) contains departures of any real
significance from the received text.
This situation, however, was a
relatively late development; there is much evidence for the existence of a
period when more than one Hebrew text-form of a given book was current. In
fact, both the variety of witnesses and the degree of textual divergence
between them increase in proportion to their antiquity.
No single explanation can
satisfactorily account for this phenomenon. In the case of some biblical
literature, there exists the real possibility, though it cannot be proven,
that it must have endured a long period of oral transmission before its
committal to writing. In the interval, the material might well have
undergone abridgement, amplification, and alteration at the hands of
transmitters so that not only would the original have been transformed, but
the process of transmission would have engendered more than one recension
from the very beginning of its written, literary career.
The problem is complicated further
by the great difference in time between the autograph (original writing) of
a biblical work, even when it assumed written form from its inception, and
its oldest extant exemplars. In some instances, this may amount to well over
a thousand years of scribal activity. Whatever the interval, the possibility
of inadvertent and deliberate change, something that affects all manuscript
copying, was always present.
The evidence that such, indeed, took
place is rich and varied. First there are numerous divergences between the
many passages duplicated within the Hebrew Bible itself--e.g., the parallels between Samuel-Kings and Chronicles. Then there
are the citations of the Old Testament to be found in the books of the
Apocrypha and apocalyptic literature (works describing the intervention of
God in history in cryptic terms), in the works of Philo and Josephus, in the
New Testament, and in rabbinic and patristic (early Church Fathers)
literature. There are also rabbinic traditions about the text-critical
activities of the scribes (soferim)
in Second Temple times. These tell of divergent readings in Temple scrolls
of the Pentateuch, of official "book correctors" in Jerusalem, of
textual emendations on the part of scribes, and of the utilization of sigla
(signs or abbreviations) for marking suspect readings and disarranged
verses. The Samaritan Pentateuch and the
pre-Masoretic versions of the Old Testament made directly from Hebrew
originals are all replete with divergences from current Masoretic Bibles.
Finally, the scrolls from the Judaean Desert, especially those from the
caves of Qumran, have provided, at least, illustrations of many of
the scribal processes by which deviant texts came into being. The variants
and their respective causes may be classified as follows: aurally
conditioned, visual in origin, exegetical, and deliberate. (see also Index:
Qumran community)
Aural conditioning would result from
a mishearing of similar sounding consonants when a text is dictated to the
copyist. A negative particle lo`, for
example, could be confused with the prepositional lo, "to him," or a guttural het with spirant kaf so
that ah "brother" might
be written for akh "surely."
The confusion of graphically similar
letters, whether in the paleo-Hebrew or Aramaic script, is another cause for
variations. Thus, the prepositions bet
("in") and kaf ("like")
are interchanged in the Masoretic and Dead Sea Scroll texts of Isaiah.
The order of letters also might be
inverted. Such metathesis, as it is called, appears in Psalms, in which qirbam
("their inward thoughts") stands for qibram
("their grave").
Dittography,
or the inadvertent duplication of one or more letters or words, also occurs,
as, for example, in the Dead Sea Scroll text of Isaiah and in the Masoretic
text of Ezekiel.
Haplography,
or the accidental omission of a letter or word that occurs twice in close
proximity, can be found, for example, in the Dead Sea Scroll text of Isaiah.
Homoeoteleuton
occurs when two separate phrases or lines have identical endings and the
copyist's eye slips from one to the other and omits the intervening words. A
comparison of the Masoretic text I Samuel, chapter 14 verse 41, with the
Septuagint and the Vulgate versions clearly identifies such an aberration.
This third category does not involve
any consonantal alteration but results solely from the different
possibilities inherent in the consonantal spelling. Thus, the lack of vowel
signs may permit the word DBR to
be read as a verb DiBeR ("he
spoke," as in the Masoretic text of Hosea) or as a noun DeBaR
("the word of," as in the Septuagint). The absence of word
dividers could lead to different divisions of the consonants. Thus, BBQRYM
in Amos could be understood as either BaBeQaRYM
("with oxen," as in the Masoretic text) or as BaBaQaR
YaM ("the sea with an ox"). The incorrect solution by later
copyists of abbreviations is another source of error. That such occurred is
proved by a comparison of the Hebrew text with the Septuagint version in,
for example, II Samuel, chapter 1 verse 12; Ezekiel, chapter 12 verse 23;
and Amos, chapter 3 verse 9. (see also Index:
exegesis)
Apart from mechanical alterations of
a text, many variants must have been consciously introduced by scribes, some
by way of glossing--i.e., the
insertion of a more common word to explain a rare one--and others by
explanatory comments incorporated into the text. Furthermore, a scribe who
had before him two manuscripts of a single work containing variant readings,
and unable to decide between them, might incorporate both readings into his
scroll and thus create a conflate text.
The situation so far described poses
two major scholarly problems. The first involves the history of the Hebrew
text, the second deals with attempts to reconstruct its "original"
form.
As to when and how a single text
type gained hegemony and then displaced all others, it is clear that the
early and widespread public reading of the Scriptures in the synagogues of
Palestine, Alexandria, and Babylon was bound to lead to a heightened
sensitivity of the idea of a "correct" text and to give prestige
to the particular text form selected for reading. Also, the natural
conservatism of ritual would tend to perpetuate the form of such a text. The
Letter of
Aristeas, a document
derived from the middle of the 2nd century BCE that describes the origin of
the Septuagint, recognizes the distinction between carelessly copied scrolls
of the Pentateuch and an authoritative Temple scroll in the hands of the
high priest in Jerusalem. The Rabbinic traditions (see above) about the
textual criticism of Temple-based scribes actually reflect a movement
towards the final stabilization of the text in the Second Temple period.
Josephus, writing not long after 70 CE, boasts of the existence of a
long-standing fixed text of the Jewish Scriptures. The loss of national
independence and the destruction of the spiritual centre of Jewry in 70,
accompanied by an ever-widening Diaspora and the Christian schism within
Judaism, all made the exclusive dissemination of a single authoritative text
a vitally needed cohesive force. The text type later known as Masoretic is
already well represented at pre-Christian Qumran. Scrolls from Wadi
al-Murabba'at, Nahal Ze`elim, and Masada from the 2nd century
CE are practically identical with the received text that by then had gained
victory over all its rivals.
In regard to an attempt to recover
the original text of a biblical passage--especially an unintelligible
one--in the light of variants among different versions and manuscripts and
known causes of corruption, it should be understood that all reconstruction
must necessarily be conjectural and perforce tentative because of the
irretrievable loss of the original edition. But not all textual difficulties
need presuppose underlying mutilation. The Hebrew
Bible represents but a small portion of the literature of ancient
Israel and, hence, a limited segment of the language. A textual problem may
be the product of present limited knowledge of ancient Hebrew, because
scholars might be dealing with dialectic phenomena or foreign loan-words.
Comparative Semitic linguistic studies have yielded hitherto unrecognized
features of grammar, syntax, and lexicography that have often eliminated the
need for emendation. Furthermore, each version, indeed each biblical book
within it, has its own history, and the translation techniques and stylistic
characteristics must be examined and taken into account. Finally, the number
of manuscripts that attest to a certain reading is of less importance than
the weight given to a specific manuscript.
None of this means that a Hebrew
manuscript, an ancient version, or a conjectural emendation cannot yield a
reading superior to that in the received Hebrew text. It does mean, however,
that these tools have to be employed with great caution and proper
methodology.
A Greek translation of the Old
Testament, known as the Septuagint because there allegedly were 70 or 72
translators, six from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, and designated LXX,
is a composite of the work of many translators labouring for well over 100
years. It was made directly from Hebrew originals that frequently differed
considerably from the present Masoretic text. Apart from other limitations
attendant upon the use of a translation for such purposes, the
identification of the parent text used by the Greek translators is still an
unsettled question. The Pentateuch of the Septuagint manifests a basic
coincidence with the Masoretic text. The Qumran scrolls have now
proven that the Septuagint book of Samuel-Kings goes back to an old
Palestinian text tradition that must be earlier than the 4th century BCE,
and from the same source comes a short Hebrew recension of Jeremiah that
probably underlies the Greek.
The importance of the recension
known as the Samaritan Pentateuch lies in the
fact that it constitutes an independent Hebrew witness to the text written
in a late and developed form of the paleo-Hebrew script. Some of the Exodus
fragments from Qumran demonstrate that it has close affinities with a
pre-Christian Palestinian text type and testify to the faithfulness with
which it has been preserved. It contains about 6,000 variants from the
Masoretic text, of which nearly a third agree with the Septuagint. Only a
minority, however, are genuine variants, most being dogmatic, exegetical,
grammatical, or merely orthographic in character.
The Samaritan Pentateuch first
became known in the West through a manuscript secured in Damascus in 1616 by
Pietro della Valle, an Italian traveler. It
was published in the Paris (1628-45) and London Polyglots (1654-57), written
in several languages in comparative columns. Many manuscripts of the
Samaritan Pentateuch are now available. The Avisha' Scroll, the sacred copy
of the Samaritans, has recently been photographed and critically examined.
Only Numbers chapter 35 to Deuteronomy chapter 34 appears to be very old,
the rest stemming from the 14th century. A new, definitive edition of the
Samaritan Pentateuch is being prepared in Madrid by F. Pérez Castro.
Until the discovery of the Judaean
Desert scrolls, the only pre-medieval fragment of the Hebrew Bible known to
scholars was the Nash Papyrus (c. 150
BCE) from Egypt containing the Decalogue and Deuteronomy. Now, however,
fragments of about 180 different manuscripts of biblical books are
available. Their dates vary between the 3rd century BCE and the 2nd century
CE, and all but 10 stem from the caves of Qumran. All are written on
either leather or papyrus in columns and on one side only. (see also Index:
Qumran community)
The most important manuscripts from
what is now identified as Cave 1 of Qumran are a practically complete
Isaiah scroll (1QIsaa), dated c.
100-75 BCE, and another very fragmentary manuscript (1QIsab)
of the same book. The first contains many variants from the Masoretic text
in both orthography and text; the second is very close to the Masoretic type
and contains few genuine variants. The richest hoard comes from Cave 4 and
includes fragments of five copies of Genesis, eight of Exodus, one of
Leviticus, 14 of Deuteronomy, two of Joshua, three of Samuel, 12 of Isaiah,
four of Jeremiah, eight of the Minor Prophets, one of Proverbs, and three of
Daniel. Cave 11 yielded a Psalter containing the last third of the book in a
form different from that of the Masoretic text, as well as a manuscript of
Leviticus.
The importance of the Qumran
scrolls cannot be exaggerated. Their great antiquity brings them close to
the Old Testament period itself--from as early as 250-200 BCE. For the first
time, Hebrew variant texts are extant and all known major text types are
present. Some are close to the Septuagint, others to the Samaritan. On the
other hand, many of the scrolls are practically identical with the Masoretic
text, which thus takes this recension back in history to pre-Christian
times. Several texts in the paleo-Hebrew script show that this script
continued to be used side by side with the Aramaic script for a long time.
Of quite a different order are
scrolls from other areas of the Judaean Desert. All of these are practically
identical with the received text. This applies to fragments of Leviticus,
Deuteronomy, Ezekiel, and Psalms discovered at Masada
(the Jewish fortress destroyed by the Romans in CE 73), as well as to the
finds at Wadi al-Murabba'at, the latest date of which is CE
135. Here were found fragments of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Isaiah in
addition to the substantially preserved Minor Prophets scroll. Variants from
the Masoretic text are negligible. The same phenomenon characterizes the
fragments of Numbers found at Nahal Hever.
No biblical manuscripts have
survived from the six centuries that separate the latest of the Judaean
Desert scrolls from the earliest of the Masoretic
period. A "Codex Mugah," frequently referred to as an authority in
the early 10th century, and the "Codex Hilleli," said to have been
written c. 600 by Rabbi Hillel ben
Moses ben Hillel, have both vanished.
The earliest extant Hebrew Bible
codex is the Cairo Prophets written and punctuated by Moses ben Asher in
Tiberias (in Palestine) in 895. Next in age is the Leningrad Codex of the
Latter Prophets dated to 916, which was not originally the work of Ben
Asher, but its Babylonian pointing--i.e.,
vowel signs used for pronunciation purposes--was brought into line with
the Tiberian Masoretic system.
The outstanding event in the history
of that system was the production of the model so-called Aleppo Codex, now
in Jerusalem. Written by Solomon ben Buya'a, it was corrected, punctuated,
and furnished with a Masoretic apparatus by Aaron ben Moses ben Asher c. 930. Originally containing the entire Old Testament in about 380
folios, of which 294 are extant, the Aleppo Codex remains the only known
true representative of Aaron ben Asher's text and the most important witness
to that particular Masoretic tradition that achieved hegemony throughout
Jewry.
Two other notable manuscripts based
on Aaron's system are the manuscript designated as BM or. 4445, which
contains most of the Pentateuch and which utilized a Masora (text tradition)
c. 950, and the Leningrad complete
Old Testament designated MSB 19a of 1008. Codex Reuchliana of the Prophets,
written in 1105, now in Karlsruhe (Germany), represents the system of Moses
ben David ben Naphtali, which was more faithful to that of Moses ben Asher.
The earliest extant attempt at
collating the differences between the Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali Masoretic
traditions was made by Mishael ben Uzziel in his Kitab
al-Hulaf (before 1050). A vast amount of Masoretic information, drawn
chiefly from Spanish manuscripts, is to be found in the text-critical
commentary known as Minhath Shai, by
Solomon Jedidiah Norzi, completed in 1626 and printed in the Mantua Bible of
1742. Benjamin Kennicott collected the variants of 615 manuscripts and 52
printed editions (2 vol., 1776-80, Oxford). Giovanni Bernado De Rossi
published his additional collections of 731 manuscripts and 300 prints (4
vol., 1784-88, Parma), and C.D. Ginsburg did the same for 70 manuscripts,
largely from the British Museum, and 17 early printed editions (3 vol. in 4,
1908-26, London).
Until 1488, only separate parts of
the Hebrew Bible had been printed, all with rabbinic commentaries. The
earliest was the Psalms (1477), followed by the Pentateuch (1482), the
Prophets (1485/86), and the Hagiographa (1486/87), all printed in Italy.
The first edition of the entire
Hebrew Bible was printed at Soncino (in Italy) in 1488 with punctuation and
accents, but without any commentary. The second complete Bible was printed
in Naples in 1491/93 and the third in Brescia in 1494. All these editions
were the work of Jews. The first Christian production was a magnificent Complutensian
Polyglot (under the direction of Cardinal Francisco
Jiménez of Spain) in six volumes, four of which contained the
Hebrew Bible and Greek and Latin translations together with the Aramaic
rendering (Targum) of the Pentateuch that has been ascribed to Onkelos.
Printed at Alcala (1514-17) and circulated about 1522, this Bible proved to
be a turning point in the study of the Hebrew text in western Europe.
The first rabbinic Bible--i.e.,
the Hebrew text furnished with full vowel points and accents,
accompanied by the Aramaic Targums and the major medieval Jewish
commentaries--was edited by Felix Pratensis and published by Daniel Bomberg
(Venice, 1516/17). The second edition, edited by Jacob ben Hayyim ibn
Adonijah and issued by Bomberg in four volumes (Venice, 1524/25), became the
prototype of future Hebrew Bibles down to the 20th century. It contained a
vast text-critical apparatus of Masoretic notes never since equalled in any
edition. Unfortunately, Ben Hayyim had made use of late manuscripts and the
text and notes are eclectic.
In London, Christian David Ginsburg,
an emigrant Polish Jew and Christian convert, produced a critical edition of
the complete Hebrew Bible (1894, 1908, 1926) revised according to the Masora
and early prints with variant readings from manuscripts and ancient
versions. It was soon displaced by the Biblica
Hebraica (1906, 1912)
by Rudolf Kittel and Paul Kahle, two German biblical scholars. The third
edition of this work, completed by Albrecht Alt and Otto Eissfeldt
(Stuttgart, 1937), finally abandoned Ben Hayyim's text, substituting that of
the Leningrad Codex (B 19a). It has a dual critical apparatus with textual
emendations separated from the manuscript and versional variants. Since 1957
variants from the so-called Judaean Desert scrolls have been included. In
progress at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the early 1970s was the
preparation of a new text of the entire Hebrew Bible based on the Aleppo
Codex to include all its own Masoretic notes together with textual
differences found in all pertinent sources. A sample edition of the Book of
Isaiah appeared in 1965.
In the course of the 5th and 6th
centuries BCE, Aramaic became the official language of the Persian Empire.
In the succeeding centuries it was used as the vernacular over a wide area
and was increasingly spoken by the postexilic Jewish communities of
Palestine and elsewhere in the Diaspora. In response to liturgical needs,
the institution of a turgeman (or meturgeman, "translator"), arose in the synagogues. These
men translated the Torah and prophetic lectionaries into Aramaic. The
rendering remained for long solely an oral, impromptu exercise, but
gradually, by dint of repetition, certain verbal forms and phrases became
fixed and eventually committed to writing. (see also Index:
Aramaic language)
There are several Targums
(translations) of the Pentateuch. The Babylonian Targum is known as
"Onkelos," named after its reputed author. The Targum is
Palestinian in origin, but it was early transferred to Babylon where it was
revised and achieved great authority. At a later date, probably not before
the 9th century CE, it was re-exported to Palestine to displace other,
local, Targums. On the whole, Onkelos is quite literal, but it shows a
tendency to obscure expressions attributing human form and feelings to God.
It also usually faithfully reflects rabbinic exegesis. (see also Index:
"Targum of Onkelos")
The most famous of the Palestinian
Targums is that popularly known as "Jonathan," a name derived from
a 14th-century scribal mistake that solved a manuscript abbreviation
"TJ" as "Targum Jonathan" instead of "Targum
Jerusalem." In contrast with two other Targums, which are highly
fragmentary (Jerusalem II and III), Pseudo-Jonathan (or Jerusalem I) is
virtually complete. It is a composite of the Old Palestinian Targum and an
early version of Onkelos with an admixture of material from diverse periods.
It contains much rabbinic material as well as homiletic and didactic
amplifications. There is evidence of great antiquity, but also much late
material, indicating that Pseudo-Jonathan could not have received its
present form before the Islamic period.
Another extant Aramaic version is
the Targum to the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is less literal than the Jewish
Targums and its text was never officially fixed.
The Targum to the Prophets also
originated in Palestine and received its final editing in Babylonia. It is
ascribed to Jonathan ben Uzziel, a pupil of Hillel, the famous 1st century
BCE-1st century CE rabbinic sage, though it is in fact a composite work of
varying ages. In its present form it discloses a dependence on Onkelos,
though it is less literal.
The Aramaic renderings of the
Hagiographa are relatively late productions, none of them antedating the 5th
century CE.
The story of the Greek translation
of the Pentateuch is told in the Letter of Aristeas, which
purports to be a contemporary document written by Aristeas, a Greek official
at the Egyptian court of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246 BCE). It recounts
how the law of the Jews was translated into Greek by Jewish scholars sent
from Jerusalem at the request of the king.
This narrative, repeated in one form
or another by Philo and rabbinic sources, is full of inaccuracies that prove
that the author was an Alexandrian Jew writing well after the events he
described had taken place. The Septuagint Pentateuch, which is all that is
discussed, does, however, constitute an independent corpus within the Greek
Bible, and it was probably first translated as a unit by a company of
scholars in Alexandria about the middle of the 3rd century BCE.
The Septuagint, as the entire Greek
Bible came to be called, has a long and complex history and took well over a
century to be completed. It is for this reason not a unified or consistent
translation. The Septuagint became the instrument whereby the basic
teachings of Judaism were mediated to the pagan world and it became an
indispensable factor in the spread of Christianity.
The adoption of the Septuagint as
the Bible of the Christians naturally engendered suspicion on the part of
Jews. In addition, the emergence of a single authoritative text type after
the destruction of the Temple made the great differences between it and the
Septuagint increasingly intolerable, and the need for a Greek translation
based upon the current Hebrew text in circulation was felt.
About 130 CE, Aquila,
a convert to Judaism from Pontus in Asia Minor, translated the Hebrew Bible
into Greek under the supervision of Rabbi Akiba. Executed with slavish
literalness, it attempted to reproduce the most minute detail of the
original, even to the extent of coining derivations from Greek roots to
correspond to Hebrew usage. Little of it has survived, however, except in
quotations, fragments of the Hexapla (see Origen's
Hexapla, below), and palimpsests (parchments erased and used again) from
the Cairo Geniza.
A second revision of the Greek text
was made by Theodotion (of unknown origins)
late in the 2nd century, though it is not entirely clear whether it was the
Septuagint or some other Greek version that underlay his revision. The new
rendering was characterized by a tendency toward verbal consistency and much
transliteration of Hebrew words.
Still another Greek translation was
made toward the end of the same century by Symmachus, an otherwise unknown
scholar, who made use of his predecessors. His influence was small despite
the superior elegance of his work. Jerome did utilize Symmachus for his
Vulgate, but other than that, his translation is known largely through
fragments of the Hexapla.
The multiplication of versions
doubtless proved to be a source of increasing confusion in the 3rd century.
This situation the Alexandrian theologian Origen,
working at Caesarea between 230 and 240 CE, sought to remedy. In his Hexapla
("six-fold") he presented, in parallel vertical columns, the
Hebrew text, the same in Greek letters, and the versions of Aquila,
Symmachus, the Septuagint, and Theodotion, in that order. In the case of
some books, Psalms for instance, three more columns were added. The Hexapla
serves as an important guide to Palestinian pre-Masoretic pronunciation of
the language. The main interest of Origen lay in the fifth column, the
Septuagint, which he edited on the basis of the Hebrew. He used the obels (-
or {division}) and asterisk (*) to mark respectively words found in the
Greek text but not in the Hebrew and vice versa.
The Hexapla was a work of such
magnitude that it is unlikely to have been copied as a whole. Origen himself
produced an abbreviated edition, the Tetrapla, containing only the last four
columns. The original manuscript of the Hexapla is known to have been extant
as late as c. 600 CE. Today it
survives only in fragments.
The manuscripts are conveniently
classified by papyri uncials (capital letters) and minuscules (cursive
script). The papyri fragments run into the hundreds, of varying sizes and
importance, ranging from the formative period of the Septuagint through the
middle of the 7th century. Two pre-Christian fragments of Deuteronomy from
Egypt are of outstanding significance. Although not written on papyrus but
on parchment or leather, the fragments from Qumran of Exodus,
Leviticus, and Numbers, and the leather scroll of the Minor Prophets from Nahal
Hever from the first pre-Christian and post-Christian centuries,
deserve special mention among the earliest extant. The most important papyri
are those of the Chester Beatty collection, which contains parts of 11
codices preserving fragments of nine Old Testament books. Their dates vary
between the 2nd and 4th centuries. During the next 300 years papyri texts
multiplied rapidly, and remnants of about 200 are known.
The uncials are all codices written
on vellum between the 4th and 10th centuries. The most outstanding are
Vaticanus, which is an almost complete 4th-century Old Testament,
Sinaiticus, of the same period but less complete, and the practically
complete 5th-century Alexandrinus. These three originally contained both
Testaments. Many others were partial manuscripts from the beginning. One of
the most valuable of these is the Codex Marchalianus of the Prophets written
in the 6th century.
The minuscule codices begin to
appear in the 9th century. From the 11th to the 16th century they are the
only ones found, and nearly 1,500 have been recorded.
The first printed Septuagint was
that of the Complutensian Polyglot (1514-17).
Since it was not released until 1522, however, the 1518 Aldine Venice
edition actually was available first. The standard edition until modern
times was that of Pope Sixtus V, 1587. In the 19th and 20th centuries
several critical editions have been printed.
The spread of Christianity among the
non-Greek speaking peasant communities of Egypt necessitated the translation
of the Scriptures into the native tongue ( Coptic). These versions may be
considered to be wholly Christian in origin and largely based on the Greek
Bible. They also display certain affinities with the Old Latin. Nothing
certain is known about the Coptic translations except that they probably
antedate the earliest known manuscripts from the end of the 3rd and the
beginning of the 4th centuries CE. (see also Index:
Coptic language)
The Armenian version is an
expression of a nationalist movement that brought about a separation from
the rest of the Church (mid-5th century), the discontinuance of Syriac in
Greek worship, and the invention of a national alphabet by St.
Mesrob, also called Mashtots (c.
361-439/440). According to tradition, St. Mesrob first translated
Proverbs from the Syriac. Existing manuscripts of the official Armenian
recension, however, are based on the Hexaplaric Septuagint, though they show
some Peshitta (Syriac version) influence. The Armenian Bible is noted for
its beauty and accuracy. (see also Index:
Armenian literature)
According to Armenian tradition, the
Georgian version was also the work of Mesrob, but the Psalter, the oldest
part of the Georgian Old Testament, is probably not earlier than the 5th
century. Some manuscripts were based upon Greek versions, others upon the
Armenian. (see also Index: Georgian
literature)
The Ethiopic version poses special
problems. The earliest Bible probably was based on Greek versions, after
Ethiopia had been converted to Christianity during the 4th and 5th
centuries. The earliest existing manuscripts, however, belong to the 13th
century. Most manuscripts from the 14th century on seem to reflect Arabic or
Coptic influence, and it is not certain whether these represent the original
translation or later ones. Many readings agree with the Hebrew against the
Septuagint, which may have been caused by a Hexaplaric influence. (see also Index:
Ethiopian literature)
The Gothic version was produced in
the mid-4th century by Ulfilas, a Christian
missionary who also invented the Gothic alphabet. It constitutes practically
all that is left of Gothic literature. The
translation of the Old Testament has entirely disappeared except for
fragments of Ezra and Nehemiah. Though a Greek base is certain, some
scholars deny the attribution of these remnants to Ulfilas.
The existence of a Latin translation
can be attested in North Africa and southern Gaul as early as the second
half of the 2nd century CE, and in Rome at the beginning of the following
century. Its origins may possibly be attributed to a Christian adoption of
biblical versions made by Jews in the Roman province of Africa, where the
vernacular was exclusively Latin. Only portions or quotations from it,
however, have been preserved, and from these it can be assumed that the
translation was made not from Hebrew but from Greek. For this reason, the
Old Latin version is especially valuable because it reflects the state of
the Septuagint before Origen's revision. By the 3rd century, several Latin
versions circulated, and African and European recensions can be
differentiated. Whether they all diverged from an original single
translation or existed from the beginning independently cannot be
determined. The textual confusion and the vulgar and colloquial nature of
the Old Latin recension had become intolerable to the church authorities by
the last decade of the 4th century, and c.
382 Pope Damasus decided to remedy the situation. (see also Index:
Latin literature)
The task of revision fell to
Eusebius Hieronymus, generally known as St. Jerome
(died 419/420), whose knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew made him the
outstanding Christian biblical scholar of his time.
Jerome produced three revisions of
the Psalms, all extant. The first was based on the Septuagint and is known
as the Roman Psalter because it was incorporated into the liturgy at Rome.
The second, produced in Palestine from the Hexaplaric Septuagint, tended to
bring the Latin closer to the Hebrew. Its popularity in Gaul was such that
it came to be known as the Gallican Psalter. This version was later adopted
into the Vulgate. The third revision, actually a fresh translation, was made
directly from the Hebrew, but it never enjoyed wide circulation. In the
course of preparing the latter, Jerome realized the futility of revising the
Old Latin solely on the basis of the Greek and apparently left that task
unfinished. By the end of 405 he had executed his own Latin translation of
the entire Old Testament based on the "Hebrew truth" (Hebraica
veritas).
Because of the canonical status of
the Greek version within the church, Jerome's version was received at first
with much suspicion, for it seemed to cast doubt on the authenticity of the
Septuagint and exhibited divergences from the Old Latin that sounded
discordant to those familiar with the traditional renderings. Augustine
feared a consequent split between the Greek and Latin churches. The innate
superiority of Jerome's version, however, assured its ultimate victory, and
by the 8th century it had become the Latin Vulgate ("the common
version") throughout the churches of Western Christendom, where it
remained the chief Bible until the Reformation.
In the course of centuries of rival
coexistence, the Old Latin and Jerome's Vulgate tended to react upon each
other so that the Vulgate text became a composite. Other corruptions--noted
in over 8,000 surviving manuscripts--crept in as a result of scribal
transmission. Several medieval attempts were made to purify the Vulgate, but
with little success. In 1546 the reforming Council
of Trent accorded this version "authentic" status, and the
need for a corrected text became immediate, especially because printing
(introduced in the mid-15th century) could ensure, at last, a stabilized
text. Because the Sixtine edition of Pope Sixtus V (1590) did not receive
widespread support, Pope Clement VIII
produced a fresh revision in 1592. This Clementine text remained the
official edition of the Roman Church. Since 1907, the Benedictine
Order, on the initiative of Pope Pius X, has been preparing a comprehensive
edition. By 1969 only the Prophets still awaited publication to complete the
Old Testament. A year later, a papal commission under Cardinal Augustinus
Bea of Germany was charged with the task of preparing a new "revision
of the Vulgate," taking the Benedictine edition as its working base.
(see also Index: Roman
Catholicism)
The Bible of the Syriac Churches is
known as the Peshitta ("simple"
translation). Though neither the reason for the title nor the origins of the
versions are known, the earliest translations most likely served the needs
of the Jewish communities in the region of Adiabene (in Mesopotamia), which
are known to have existed as early as the 1st century CE. This probably
explains the archaic stratum unquestionably present in the Pentateuch,
Prophets, and Psalms of the Peshitta, as well as the undoubtedly Jewish
influences generally, though Jewish-Christians also may have been involved
in the rendering. (see also Index:
Syriac literature)
The Peshitta displays great variety
in its style and in the translation techniques adopted. The Pentateuch is
closest to the Masoretic text, but elsewhere there is much affinity with the
Septuagint. This latter phenomenon might have resulted from later Christian
revision.
Following the split in the Syriac
Church in the 5th century into Nestorian
(East Syrian) and Jacobite (West Syrian) traditions, the textual history of
the Peshitta became bifurcated. Because the Nestorian Church was relatively
isolated, its manuscripts are considered to be superior.
A revision of the Syriac translation
was made in the early 6th century by Philoxenos,
bishop of Mabbug, based on the Lucianic recension of the Septuagint. Another
(the Syro-Hexaplaric version) was made by Bishop Paul of Tella in 617 from
the Hexaplaric text of the Septuagint. A Palestinian Syriac version, extant
in fragments, is known to go back to at least 700, and a fresh recension was
made by Jacob of Edessa (died 708).
There are many manuscripts of the
Peshitta, of which the oldest bears the date 442. Only four complete codices
are extant from between the 5th and 12th centuries. No critical edition yet
exists, but one is being prepared by the Peshitta Commission of the
International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament.
There is no reliable evidence of any
pre-Islamic Arabic translation. Only when large Jewish and Christian
communities found themselves under Muslim rule after the Arab conquests of
the 7th century did the need for an Arabic vernacular Scripture arise. The
first and most important was that of Sa'adia ben
Joseph (892-942), made directly from Hebrew and written in Hebrew
script, which became the standard version for all Jews in Muslim countries.
The version also exercised its influence upon Egyptian Christians and its
rendering of the Pentateuch was adapted by Abu al-Hasan to the
Samaritan Torah in the 11th-12th centuries. Another Samaritan Arabic version
of the Pentateuch was made by Abu Sa'id (Abu al-Barakat)
in the 13th century. Among other translations from the Hebrew, that of the
10th-century Karaite Yaphith ibn 'Ali is the most noteworthy.
(see also Index: Arabic
literature)
In 946 a Spanish Christian of Córdova,
Isaac son of Velásquez, made a version of the Gospels from Latin.
Manuscripts of 16th-century Arabic translations of both testaments exist in
Leningrad, and both the Paris and London polyglots of the 17th century
included Arabic versions. In general, the Arabic manuscripts reveal a
bewildering variety of renderings dependent on Hebrew, Greek, Samaritan,
Syriac, Coptic, and Latin translations. As such they have no value for
critical studies. Several modern Arabic translations by both Protestants and
Catholics were made in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Knowledge of the pre-Wycliffite
English renditions stems from the many actual manuscripts that have survived
and from secondary literature, such as booklists, wills, citations by later
authors, and references in polemical works that have preserved the memory of
many a translation effort. (see also Index:
English language)
For about seven centuries after the
conversion of England to Christianity
(beginning in the 3rd century), the common man had no direct access to the
text of the Scriptures. Ignorant of Latin, his knowledge was derived
principally from sermons and metrical prose paraphrases and summaries. The
earliest poetic rendering of any part of the Bible is credited to Caedmon
(flourished 658-680), but only the opening lines of his poem on the Creation
in the Northumbrian dialect have been preserved. (see also Index: Old English language)
An actual translation of the Psalter
into Anglo-Saxon is ascribed to Aldhelm,
bishop of Sherborne (died 709), but nothing has survived by which its true
character, if it actually existed, might be determined. Linguistic
considerations alone rule out the possibility that the prose translation of
Psalms 1-50 extant in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris is a
7th-century production. In the next century, Bede
(died 735) is said to have translated parts of the Gospels, and, though he
knew Greek and possibly even some Hebrew, he does not appear to have applied
himself to the Old Testament.
The outstanding name of the 9th
century is that of King Alfred the Great. He
appended to his laws a free translation of the Ten Commandments and an
abridgment of the enactments of Exodus 21-23. These actually constitute the
earliest surviving examples of a portion of the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon
prose.
An important step towards the
emergence of a true English translation was the development of the
interlinear gloss, a valuable pedagogic device for the introduction of
youthful members of monastic schools to the study of the Bible. The
Vespasian Psalter is the outstanding surviving example of the technique from
the 9th century. In the next century the Lindisfarne
Gospels, written in Latin c. 700,
were glossed in Anglo-Saxon c. 950.
The last significant figure
associated with the vernacular Bible before the Norman Conquest was the
so-called Aelfric the Grammarian (c. 955-1020). Though he claimed to have rendered several books into
English, his work is more a paraphrase and abridgment than a continuous
translation.
The displacement of the English
upper class, with the consequent decline of the Anglo-Saxon tradition
attendant upon the Norman invasion, arrested
for a while the movement toward the production of the English Bible. Within
about 50 years (c. 1120) of the
Conquest, Eadwine's Psalterium
triplex, which contained the Latin version accompanied by Anglo-Norman
and Anglo-Saxon renderings, appeared. The contemporary Oxford Psalter
achieved such influence that it became the basis of all subsequent
Anglo-Norman versions. By 1361 a prose translation of most of Scripture in
this dialect had been executed.
By the middle of the 13th century
the English component in the Anglo-Norman amalgam had begun to assert itself
and the close of the century witnessed a Northumbrian version of the Psalter
made directly from Latin, which, because it survived in several manuscripts,
must have achieved relatively wide circulation. By the next century, English
had gradually superseded French among the upper classes. When the first
complete translation of the Bible into English emerged, it became the object
of violent controversy because it was inspired by the heretical teachings of
John Wycliffe. Intended for the common man,
it became the instrument of opposition to ecclesiastical authority. (see
also Index: Wycliffite
Bible)
The exact degree of Wycliffe's
personal involvement in the Scriptures that came to bear his name is not
clear. Because a note containing the words "Here ends the translation
of Nicholas of Hereford" is found in a
manuscript copy of the original (and incomplete) translation, it may be
presumed that, though there must have been other assistants, Hereford can be
credited with overall responsibility for most of the translation and that
his summons before a synod in London and his subsequent departure for Rome
in 1382 terminated his participation in the work. Who completed it is
uncertain.
The Wycliffite translations
encountered increasing ecclesiastical opposition. In 1408 a synod of clergy
summoned to Oxford by Archbishop Arundel forbade the translation and use of
Scripture in the vernacular. The proscription was rigorously enforced, but
remained ineffectual. In the course of the next century the Wycliffite
Bible, the only existing English version, achieved wide popularity as is
evidenced by the nearly 200 manuscripts extant, most of them copied between
1420 and 1450.
Because of the influence of printing
and a demand for scriptures in the vernacular, William Tyndale began working
on a New Testament translation directly from the Greek in 1523. The work
could not be continued in England because of political and ecclesiastical
pressures, and the printing of his translation began in Cologne (in Germany)
in 1525. Again under pressure, this time from the city authorities, Tyndale
had to flee to Worms, where two complete editions were published in 1525.
Copies were smuggled into England where they were at once proscribed. Of
18,000 copies printed (1525-28), two complete volumes and a fragment are all
that remain.
When the New Testament was finished
Tyndale began work on the Old Testament. The Pentateuch was issued in
Marburg in 1530, each of the five books being separately published and
circulated. Tyndale's greatest achievement was the ability to strike a
felicitous balance between the needs of scholarship, simplicity of
expression, and literary gracefulness, all in a uniform dialect. The effect
was the creation of an English style of Bible translation, tinged with
Hebraisms, that was to serve as the model for all future English versions
for nearly 400 years.
A change in atmosphere in England
found expression in a translation that, for all its great significance,
turned out to be a retrograde step in the manner of its execution, although
it proved to be a vindication of Tyndale's work. On October 4, 1535, the
first complete English Bible, the work of Miles Coverdale, came off the
press either in Zürich or in Cologne. The edition was soon exhausted. A
second impression appeared in the same year and a third in 1536. A new
edition, "overseen and corrected," was published in England by
James Nycholson in Southwark in 1537. Another edition of the same year bore
the announcement, "set forth with the king's most gracious
license." In 1538 a revised edition of Coverdale's New Testament
printed with the Latin Vulgate in parallel columns issued in England was so
full of errors that Coverdale promptly arranged for a rival corrected
version to appear in Paris.
In the same year that Coverdale's
authorized version appeared, another English Bible was issued under royal
license and with the encouragement of ecclesiastical and political power. It
appeared (Antwerp?) under the name of Thomas Matthew, but it is certainly
the work of John Rogers, a close friend of
Tyndale. Although the version claimed to be "truly and purely
translated into English," it was in reality a combination of the
labours of Tyndale and Coverdale. Rogers used the former's Pentateuch and
1535 revision of the New Testament and the latter's translation from Ezra to
Malachi and his Apocrypha. Rogers' own contribution was primarily editorial.
In an injunction of 1538, Henry VIII
commanded the clergy to install in a convenient place in every parish
church, "one book of the whole Bible of the largest volume in
English." The order seems to refer to an anticipated revision of the
Matthew Bible. The first edition was printed in Paris and appeared in London
in April 1539 in 2,500 copies. The huge page size earned it the sobriquet
the Great Bible. It was received with immediate and wholehearted enthusiasm.
The first printing was exhausted
within a short while, and it went through six subsequent editions between
1540 and 1541. "Editions" is preferred to "impressions"
here since the six successive issues were not identical.
The brief efflorescence of the
Protestant movement during the short reign of Edward VI (1547-53) saw the
reissue of the Scriptures, but no fresh attempts at revision. The repressive
rule of Edward's successor, Mary, a Roman Catholic, put an end to the
printing of Bibles in England for several years. Their public reading was
proscribed and their presence in the churches discontinued.
The persecutions of Protestants
caused the focus of English biblical scholarship to be shifted abroad where
it flourished in greater freedom. A colony of Protestant exiles, led by
Coverdale and John Knox (the Scottish
Reformer), and under the influence of John Calvin,
published the New Testament in 1557.
The editors of the Geneva Bible (or
"Breeches Bible," so-named because of its rendering of the first
garments made for Adam and Eve in chapter three, verse seven of
Genesis)--published in 1560--may almost certainly be identified as William
Whittingham, the brother-in-law of Calvin's wife, and his assistants Anthony
Gilby and Thomas Sampson. The Geneva Bible was not printed in England until
1576, but it was allowed to be imported without hindrance. The accession of
Elizabeth in 1558 put an end to the persecutions and the Great Bible was
soon reinstated in the churches. The Geneva Bible, however, gained
instantaneous and lasting popularity over against its rival, the Great
Bible. Its technical innovations contributed not a little to its becoming
for a long time the family Bible of England, which, next to Tyndale,
exercised the greatest influence upon the King James Version.
The failure of the Great Bible to
win popular acceptance against the obvious superiority of its Geneva rival
and the objectionable partisan flavour of the latter's marginal annotations
made a new revision a necessity. By about 1563-64 Archbishop Matthew Parker
of Canterbury had determined upon its execution and the work was apportioned
among many scholars, most of them bishops, from which the popular name was
derived.
The Bishops' Bible came off the
press in 1568 as a handsome folio volume, the most impressive of all
16th-century English Bibles in respect of the quality of paper, typography,
and illustrations. A portrait of the Queen adorned the engraved title page,
but it contained no dedication. For some reason Queen Elizabeth never
officially authorized the work, but sanction for its public use came from
the Convocation (church synod or assembly) of 1571 and it thereby became in
effect the second authorized version.
The Roman Catholics addressed
themselves affirmatively to the same problem faced by the Anglican Church: a
Bible in the vernacular. The initiator of the first such attempt was
Cardinal Allen of Reims (in France), although
the burden of the work fell to Gregory Martin,
professor of Hebrew at Douai. The New Testament appeared in 1582, but the
Old Testament, delayed by lack of funds, did not appear until 1609,
when it was finally published at Douai under the editorship of Thomas
Worthington. In the intervening period it had been brought into line
with the new text of the Vulgate authorized by Clement VIII in 1592.
Because of changing conditions,
another official revision of the Protestant Bible in English
was needed. The reign of Queen Elizabeth had succeeded in imposing a high
degree of uniformity upon the church. The failure of the Bishops' Bible to
supplant its Geneva rival made for a discordant note in the quest for unity.
A conference of churchmen in 1604
became noteworthy for its request that the English Bible be revised because
existing translations "were corrupt and not answerable to the truth of
the original." King James I was quick to appreciate the broader value
of the proposal and at once made the project his own.
By June 30, 1604, King James had
approved a list of 54 revisers, although extant records show that 47
scholars actually participated. They were organized into six companies, two
each working separately at Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge on sections of
the Bible assigned to them. It was finally published in 1611.
Not since the Septuagint
had a translation of the Bible been undertaken under royal sponsorship as a
cooperative venture on so grandiose a scale. An elaborate set of rules was
contrived to curb individual proclivities and to ensure its scholarly and
nonpartisan character. In contrast to earlier practice, the new version was
to preserve vulgarly used forms of proper names in keeping with its aim to
make the Scriptures popular and familiar.
The impact of Jewish sources upon
the King James Version is one of its noteworthy features. The wealth of
scholarly tools available to the translators made their final choice of
rendering an exercise in originality and independent judgment. For this
reason, the new version was more faithful to the original languages of the
Bible and more scholarly than any of its predecessors. The impact of the
Hebrew upon the revisers was so pronounced that they seem to have made a
conscious effort to imitate its rhythm and style in the Old Testament. The
English of the New Testament actually turned out to be superior to its Greek
original. (see also Index: Hebrew Bible)
Two editions were actually printed
in 1611, later distinguished as the "He" and "She"
Bibles because of the variant reading "he" and "she" in
the final clause of chapter 3, verse 15 of Ruth: "and he went into the
city." Both printings contained errors. Some errors in subsequent
editions have become famous: The so-called Wicked Bible (1631) derives from
the omission of "not" in chapter 20 verse 14 of Exodus, "Thou
shalt commit adultery," for which the printers were fined £300;
the "Vinegar Bible" (1717) stems from a misprinting of
"vineyard" in the heading of Luke, chapter 20.
