Translating God’s Word – Early New Testament Translations

As we saw in previous posts, the Old Testament was being translated long before the time of the New Testament. But what about the New Testament? When did it begin to be translated into other languages?

As we have seen before, the New Testament was written in Greek, which was a very widespread language in the time of the early church. However, in many locations, Greek was a second or third language for many people, and some did not read it at all. Consequently, the need for translating the New Testament arose early. To meet this need, the New Testament writings were translated into several languages.

At a very early date, the New Testament documents were translated into Syriac. The Syriac language is very similar to Aramaic and was spoken in many areas around Israel. This version eventually became known as the Peshitta. This ancient version of the New Testament is still considered an important witness in discovering the original text of the New Testament.

Another early translation was into the Coptic language. This language was used in Egypt and parts of Ethiopia. Interestingly, in Acts 8 we read of the Ethiopian eunuch hearing and believing the Gospel as he was going back to his home country! We don’t know his later story, but we do know the church in Ethiopia and Egypt is ancient, and the Coptic translations have survived down to our day.

The last early translation I will mention is into Latin. There were early translations of the New Testament into Latin, but these were not considered to be of the highest quality. To standardize the improve the Latin Bible being used, the Bishop of Rome wanted a new translation. Therefore Jerome, who was an expert in both Greek and Hebrew, was commissioned to translate the whole Bible, both Old and New Testament, into a new Latin translation. This translation became known as the Vulgate (from the Latin word for ‘common’). This translation was done for the Latin speakers, especially in the Western half of the Roman Empire. It was the dominant translation of the Western Church – eventually becoming so dominant that even the original Greek text was eventually lost to the Western Church!

The Vulgate was an important and amazing work of translation. It was a great gift to the Western Church. However, as we will see in the next post, over time problems arose as the Church in the West neglected to continue the rich tradition of Bible translation.

In Christ,

Bret