Page 72 - Doctrine and History of the Preservation of the Bible revised

Luther, John Calvin, John Hus, John Wycliff, and others paid the price to make a copy of God’s word
available to every human being in their own language.

When Alexander conquered the Middle East, he brought with him the culture and language of Greece.
As time passed, the language of most people in Israel and the surrounding nations was Greek. Very few
Jews in Israel spoke Hebrew. Hebrew was mainly the language spoken among the religious leaders.
People also spoke Aramaic, related to Hebrew. It is very possible that Jesus spoke Hebrew, Aramaic, and
Greek while he ministered on earth. Because few read or spoke Hebrew, most Jews could not read the
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Old Testament Scriptures. Sometime between the 3 and 1 centuries BCE, the Old Testament was
translated into Greek by 72 men. A legend contained in the Letter of Aristeas claimed
that Ptolemy Philadelphus commissioned a translation to be made into Greek by six men from each of
the twelve tribes of Israel, sent by the high priest in Jerusalem. It was called the Septuagint (250 BC –
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150 BC) and was translated in Alexandria, Egypt. Perhaps Christ read from this translation.

By the fifth century, the world was under the domination of the Roman Catholic Church. Jerome, a
church officer, translated the Bible to Latin, however, in doing so, inserted some major doctrinal errors,
including transubstantiation, purgatory, mediatorial office of the priest, and the purchasing of
indulgences. The Latin Vulgate, as it was called, was the called “Everyone’s Bible”
As mentioned before, in 1512, Desiderius Erasmus, a priest of the Roman Catholic Church, and
contemporary of Martin Luther, began work on a Greek translation which would best reflect a return to
the original doctrines of the scriptures. While He was critical many of the practices of the church,
nevertheless, He remained faithful to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic priesthood. He dedicated his
new translation to Pope Leo X, the pope that excommunicated Martin Luther.

Erasmus traveled Europe studying various manuscripts and finally settled
in Geneva where he wrote his Greek translation. He had only five
Byzantine manuscripts to use, none of which contained the entire book of
Revelation. He borrowed a commentary on the book of Revelation, and
used it to obtain the Greek, however, the commentary did not contain the
entire book, so Erasmus used the Vulgate and translated back to Greek
from the Latin. His Greek translation was rather controversial. It was also
revised seven times before his death to correct errors.

His translation of the Greek became known as the Textus Receptus.
The Textus Receptus is the Greek family of manuscripts from which the KJV
Bible was translated and is a Byzantine text-type family. We will come
back to this subject shortly…

To recap, copies of the Bible were written on papyrus or vellum. Until the
9 Century, the copyists used all capital letters with no spaces between
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words, called uncials. In the late 9 Century, Minuscules appeared which used capital and lower-case
letters and divided the words with spaces.

The differences between the families can easily be resolved. The vast majority of the Biblical text is
without question when it comes to the original text. The disputes over versions center mainly on two
areas:

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