Page 109 - Doctrine and History of the Preservation of the Bible revised
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Chapter 15: Methods of Translating the Bible
Connect…
Look at the above paragraph. Can you read it? It is in English. It is a long paragraph written with no
spaces between the words and at the end of a line, the word may continue to the next line. The first
copies of the New Testament were written just like this one, only in Greek. For almost 800 years, every
Bible was written in all capital letters and the words had no spaces between them. They were called
Uncials. Can you see the difficulty that the copyists had when making a copy of the Bible? Then, if you
had to turn the original uncials into English, you would have even a greater challenge. Today we are
going to look at the challenges facing translating the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts into
English.
When you purchase a Bible, the translator approached his translation using one of two methods of
translation. We will see which method is best, and based on that, decide what translations would be
best to use in the pulpit or for personal study. Let’s get started….
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