Page 47 - Bible Doctrine Survey I (3)

great multitude, so that he entered into a ship, and sat in the sea” (KJV - translated exactly as Mark
wrote it). Did Jesus sit down in the boat or in the water? Admittedly, this matter would be irrelevant for
a translation following the methodology of Dynamic Equivalent or Paraphrase (discussed below)
because each would predictably discard the troublesome phrase and make the sentence convey the
meaning that Jesus sat down in the boat.

To highlight these questions even further, another troublesome passage which has plagued scholars,
commentators, and translators for centuries is Isaiah 15:5 where the Hebrew words “...Eglath-
shelishiyah” are simple to understand yet make absolutely no sense in the context of the passage. There
is no linking adverb or preposition or conjunction nor general syntax, or anything else that even
attempts to suggest how they should be translated - nothing! The words simply mean a female cow that
is three years old.

The Rule of thumb: If the literal sense makes sense, seek no other sense.”

Writing the Words down…

In translating the Bible, the translators had to write on some sort of material. The OT was written
mainly on animal skins which were sewed together in long strips and rolled up to form scrolls. The
scrolls were read from back to front. This is what Jesus read in the temple when reading from Isaiah.
The scrolls were kept in the synagogues or temples and very few people had possession of a copy.

The New Testament was written on papyrus using the book style (codex) we are used to today. Papyrus
was relatively inexpensive, but did not last long as it easily decayed as most plant material does. Copies
of the original manuscripts and letters were made on papyrus and distributed among the churches.
People of means sometimes had a copy made for their library, however, most Christians were poor and
so most all copies were made on papyrus. The church was persecuted for almost 200 years by Rome.

In the 4 century, things changed. Christianity was
th
recognized as the state religion of Rome and
became more affluent. While Vellum, mostly made
of animal skin, was expensive, it was the material of
choice and the books would last hundreds of years.

For almost 800 years, the copies of the NT were
written in “Uncial” (Un’ she el) format. That is, the
copyist used all Upper Case letters and did not
divide the words with spaces, as we do in English.
To the right is an example of an uncial of Book of
nd
John from the early 2 century. It’s called papyrus
66 (P66).

In 1844 Constantine von Tischendorf embarked on a
journey to the Middle Ease searching for
manuscripts. While visiting the monastery of St.
Catherine on Mt. Sinai, he noticed that the monks
were burning scraps of the Septuagint. He

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