Page 108 - Doctrine and History of the Preservation of the Bible Student Textbook
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Study Section 15: Methods of Translating the Bible
15.1 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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