6.7 Bible Translations and Why Christian Bibles Differ
The Old Testament was written primarily in Hebrew, with small portions in Aramaic. The New Testament was written in Koine Greek.
Unless a reader knows these ancient languages, the words on the page have already passed through a process of translation before they are read.
Therefore, almost all Christians today read the Bible in translation.
Translation requires decisions.
Languages do not correspond perfectly word-for-word. A single Hebrew or Greek word may have several possible meanings. An ancient expression may sound unnatural when translated literally into English. Grammar, idioms, word order, cultural references, and figures of speech may work differently across languages.
Translators therefore have to consider questions such as:
- What did the original author mean?
- What English words communicate that meaning most accurately?
- Should the translation preserve the original wording as closely as possible, or should it communicate the meaning in more natural modern language?
These decisions help explain why two Bible translations can say slightly different things while translating the same ancient text.
However, translation is only part of the story.
Before scholars can ask how a Hebrew or Greek passage should be translated, they sometimes have to answer an even earlier question:
What did the earliest recoverable text actually say?
That question requires looking at the history of biblical manuscripts.
There Is No Single Original Bible Manuscript
The original handwritten manuscripts produced by the biblical authors are no longer known to survive.
These original documents are sometimes called the autographs.
Instead, the Bible has been preserved through manuscripts copied by hand across many centuries.
Before printing technology existed, every new copy had to be produced manually. A scribe copied a manuscript. Another scribe might later copy that copy. Eventually another manuscript might be copied from that one. This process occurred across different countries, languages, centuries, and religious communities.
As a result, scholars today possess many ancient biblical manuscripts rather than one surviving original copy. These manuscripts are often remarkably similar, but they are not identical.
For example, a scribe might accidentally skip a word. Or, a line might be copied twice. Spelling might change. Words might appear in a different order. A familiar expression might replace a less familiar one. Occasionally, explanatory words or phrases appear in some manuscripts but not others.
These differences lead to an important field of biblical scholarship known as textual criticism.
Textual Criticism
Textual criticism is the study and comparison of manuscripts in an attempt to determine, as closely as possible, the earliest recoverable wording of a text.
The word criticism here does not mean attacking or criticizing the Bible. It refers to carefully evaluating evidence.
For example, suppose ten manuscripts preserve the same sentence: Eight contain one wording, but two contain a slightly different wording.
Which version came first?
Simply counting manuscripts may not answer the question.
The two manuscripts might be much older. The eight manuscripts might all descend from a common later ancestor. One wording might also provide a more plausible explanation for how the other wording developed through a copying mistake.
Scholars therefore consider several kinds of evidence, including things like:
- The age of a manuscript
- The geographical distribution of a reading
- Relationships among manuscripts
- Known patterns of scribal copying
- The author’s vocabulary and writing style
- The context of the passage
- Which reading best explains how the alternatives may have arisen
Older does not necessarily mean more correct. The majority reading also does not automatically mean correct. Various evidence must be evaluated.
The goal of textual criticism is to reconstruct the earliest recoverable text from the surviving evidence.
Many modern Bibles include footnotes showing readers where significant manuscript differences exist.
A footnote might say:
“Some manuscripts read…”
“Other ancient authorities add…”
or
“The earliest manuscripts do not include…”
These notes allow readers to see where textual questions remain.
The Masoretic Text
For the Old Testament, one of the most important textual traditions is known as the Masoretic Text.
The Masoretic Text is the traditional Hebrew text preserved by Jewish scribes known as the Masoretes.
The Masoretes worked especially between roughly the sixth and tenth centuries AD, although the Hebrew textual tradition they preserved is much older.
Ancient Hebrew was originally written primarily with consonants.
The Masoretes carefully preserved the consonantal text while also developing systems of vowel markings, pronunciation signs, accents, and notes designed to preserve how the text should be read and copied.
Their work became very influential.
Most modern Protestant Old Testaments are translated primarily from editions based on the Masoretic Hebrew tradition while also consulting other ancient textual witnesses.
If the major surviving Masoretic manuscripts come from centuries after the time of Jesus, how can scholars investigate how accurately the Hebrew text had been preserved?
One important source of evidence comes from the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Dead Sea Scrolls
Beginning in 1947, ancient manuscripts were discovered in caves near the Dead Sea, particularly around Qumran.
These manuscripts became known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
They include biblical manuscripts, religious writings, community documents, and other ancient texts dating from approximately the third century BC through the first century AD.
The biblical manuscripts are especially important because they are roughly a thousand years older than many of the medieval Hebrew manuscripts previously available to scholars.
Fragments or copies representing every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther have been identified among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
One of the most famous discoveries was a nearly complete scroll of Isaiah.
When scholars compared the Dead Sea Scrolls with the later Masoretic Text, they found substantial continuity.
Large portions of the Hebrew Bible had been transmitted with remarkable stability across many centuries.
At the same time, the Dead Sea Scrolls revealed that ancient Jewish communities sometimes possessed somewhat different textual forms of biblical books.
Some Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts closely resemble the later Masoretic Text.
Others sometimes agree more closely with readings reflected in the Greek Septuagint or other ancient textual traditions.
The Dead Sea Scrolls therefore provide evidence both for substantial preservation of the biblical texts and for the existence of textual variation in antiquity.
The Septuagint
Another extremely important witness to the Old Testament is the Septuagint.
The Septuagint is the name traditionally given to ancient Greek translations of Jewish Scripture whose production began several centuries before Jesus.
It is commonly abbreviated LXX, the Roman numeral for seventy, because of an ancient tradition that seventy or seventy-two Jewish translators participated in translating the Torah into Greek.
The Septuagint became especially important because Greek had become a common language throughout much of the eastern Mediterranean world.
Many Jews living outside Judea spoke Greek more comfortably than Hebrew.
For them, Greek translations made Jewish Scripture accessible in a widely understood language.
The Septuagint was also extremely influential in early Christianity.
The New Testament was written in Greek, and many Old Testament quotations in the New Testament resemble the wording of the Septuagint.
Sometimes the Greek wording differs from the wording preserved in the later Masoretic Hebrew tradition.
Several explanations are possible for these changes.
- The New Testament author may have been quoting a Greek translation available to him.
- Different Hebrew textual forms may have existed.
- The writer may have paraphrased the passage.
- Or the quotation may have been adapted to its new context.
Various possibilities have to be examined passage by passage.
The Samaritan Pentateuch
Another ancient witness to the text of the Old Testament is the Samaritan Pentateuch.
The Samaritan community preserves its own textual tradition of the Torah—the five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
The Samaritan Pentateuch is closely related to the Jewish Hebrew Torah but contains numerous differences, many of them minor, alongside a smaller number of more substantial variations.
In some places it agrees with the Masoretic Text. In others it agrees with readings found in other ancient witnesses. It also contains readings reflecting distinctive Samaritan religious traditions.
The Samaritan Pentateuch is important because it provides another textual witness that scholars can compare with the Masoretic Text, Septuagint, and Dead Sea Scrolls.
Together, these sources show that the textual history of the Old Testament contains both substantial continuity and genuine variation.
The Manuscripts of the New Testament
The New Testament has its own manuscript history.
No original manuscript of a New Testament book is known to survive.
Instead, scholars possess thousands of Greek manuscript witnesses, ranging from small fragments containing portions of individual passages to manuscripts containing large sections or nearly all of the New Testament.
Some of the earliest surviving witnesses are written on papyrus. Later manuscripts were commonly written on parchment.
Scholars also possess ancient translations of the New Testament into languages such as Latin, Syriac, and Coptic.
Early Christian writers frequently quoted New Testament passages as well.
These sources provide additional evidence for studying how the text circulated and changed over time.
The large number of witnesses is valuable because manuscripts can be compared with one another.
At the same time, having many manuscripts means having many textual variants. Most variations are relatively minor—for example, spelling differences, changes in word order, or the presence or absence of small words. Others are more significant and require careful examination.
Which reading most likely represents the earliest recoverable wording of the text?
Manuscript Traditions: Alexandrian and Byzantine
As scholars compared New Testament manuscripts, they noticed that certain manuscripts frequently shared patterns of readings.
Historically, scholars have grouped some of these patterns into what are commonly called textual traditions or text types.
Two especially important terms are Alexandrian and Byzantine.
Several very early surviving New Testament manuscripts contain readings traditionally associated with the Alexandrian textual tradition.
The Byzantine tradition became especially widespread in the medieval Greek-speaking world and is represented by a very large number of later manuscripts.
These categories are useful, but the history is more complicated than imagining two completely separate versions of the New Testament.
Manuscripts can contain mixtures of readings, and modern textual criticism evaluates individual passages using evidence from across the manuscript tradition.
A manuscript is therefore not automatically correct because it is older. Nor is a reading automatically correct because it appears in the greatest number of surviving manuscripts. Scholars examine the total evidence.
The Textus Receptus and the Modern Critical Text
An important difference between some older and newer English Bibles comes from the Greek texts available to their translators.
During the early age of printing, European scholars produced printed editions of the Greek New Testament from the manuscripts available to them.
One enormously influential early edition was produced by the scholar Desiderius Erasmus in 1516. Several related printed Greek editions developed over the following century. This textual tradition eventually became known as the Textus Receptus, meaning “Received Text.”
The King James Version of 1611 was translated using Greek editions belonging broadly to this tradition.
The editors who produced these early printed texts had access to a much smaller collection of Greek manuscripts than scholars possess today.
During the centuries following the publication of the King James Version, additional manuscripts were discovered, catalogued, photographed, and studied. Some were substantially older than many of the manuscripts available to early modern European scholars.
Modern scholars therefore developed critical editions of the Greek New Testament using a much broader body of evidence.
Two important modern editions are associated with the Nestle-Aland and United Bible Societies and are often abbreviated NA and UBS.
These editions do not simply choose the oldest manuscript or the most common reading. They compare manuscript evidence and evaluate individual textual variants in an attempt to reconstruct the earliest recoverable text.
This difference in manuscript evidence helps explain why the King James Version and many modern translations sometimes contain different wording.
The history of the King James Version will be examined more closely in Section 6.8.
Why Some Verses Appear in One Bible but Not Another
Readers sometimes notice that certain verses or passages appear in older Bible translations but are missing, bracketed, or placed in footnotes in newer translations.
This usually involves textual criticism rather than modern translators simply deciding to remove teachings they dislike.
Three famous examples illustrate the issue.
The Longer Ending of Mark
Mark 16:9–20 appears in many manuscripts and has a long history of use within Christianity.
However, some important early Greek manuscripts end Mark at 16:8, and the textual history of the ending is complicated.
Modern translations therefore commonly include Mark 16:9–20 while adding a note or brackets explaining the manuscript evidence.
The question is not whether Christians like or dislike what the passage teaches. It is whether or not this longer ending was part of the earliest recoverable form of Mark.
The Woman Caught in Adultery
Another famous example is the story of the woman caught in adultery, traditionally found in John 7:53–8:11.
The story includes the famous statement:
“Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
The passage has had enormous influence on Christian teaching and culture.
However, it is absent from many early Greek manuscripts, and manuscripts that contain the story sometimes place it in different locations. Modern translations therefore frequently include the passage while informing readers about the textual uncertainty.
Again, the question on how to include it as part of the Bible is not about whether the story contains valuable teaching. The textual question is whether it originally belonged at this location in the Gospel of John.
The Comma Johanneum
Another important example occurs in 1 John 5:7–8. The King James Version contains an expanded statement referring to the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost and saying:
“and these three are one.”
This expanded wording became known as the Comma Johanneum.
It became especially significant because it appears to provide an unusually explicit statement that can be used in discussions of the Trinity. However, the expanded wording has extremely limited support among Greek manuscripts and is absent from the earliest Greek witnesses. It appears much more prominently in the later Latin textual tradition.
For this reason, modern critical editions of the Greek New Testament generally do not regard the expanded wording as part of the earliest recoverable Greek text, and most modern English translations omit it from the main text or mention the textual issue in a footnote. This example is particularly useful because the disputed wording has theological significance. It illustrates an important principle that a theological conclusion should be established from the strongest available evidence rather than requiring a disputed textual reading to support it.
The Hebrew Bible and the Greek Old Testament
The relationship between Hebrew and Greek textual traditions also helps explain why Christian Bibles do not all contain exactly the same Old Testament books. As previously discussed, early Christians frequently used Greek Jewish Scriptures containing or circulating alongside writings that later Christian traditions treated differently.
Catholics recognize several additional Old Testament writings as Deuterocanonical books.
Protestant traditions generally classify these writings as Apocrypha rather than part of the Old Testament canon.
Eastern Orthodox traditions generally recognize a somewhat broader collection, although exact contents can vary.
During the Protestant Reformation, Protestant Old Testaments increasingly followed the boundaries of the Jewish Hebrew canon, while Catholic and Orthodox traditions continued to recognize broader collections inherited through their respective traditions. This is one reason Protestant, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox Bibles can contain different numbers of books.
The primary differences concern the Old Testament. All major Christian traditions recognize the same twenty-seven books of the New Testament.
The Latin Vulgate
As Christianity spread throughout the Western Roman Empire, Latin became increasingly important. In the late fourth and early fifth centuries, the Christian scholar Jerome produced major Latin translations and revisions of biblical books.
The resulting biblical tradition became known as the Vulgate.
Jerome translated much of the Old Testament directly from Hebrew rather than relying entirely on the Greek Septuagint, an approach that generated controversy in his own time.
The Vulgate eventually became the dominant Bible of Western Christianity for many centuries. For medieval Christians in Western Europe, Scripture was therefore encountered largely through Latin.
The Vulgate profoundly influenced Christian theology, worship, art, literature, and later European Bible translations. Its history illustrates that a translation does more than communicate an ancient text. Over time, its particular vocabulary can shape the theological language of entire cultures.
Two Different Questions
The history of Bible translation becomes much easier to understand when two questions are kept separate.
- The first question is textual: What did the earliest recoverable Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek text say? This is primarily the work of textual criticism.
- The second question is translational: How should that text be expressed accurately in another language? This is the work of translation.
Disagreement at the first stage can produce different underlying texts. Disagreement at the second stage can produce different translations of the same underlying text.
Suppose, for example, that one Bible contains a sentence that another Bible places in a footnote. That difference may have nothing to do with how the Greek was translated. The translators may be working from different judgments about whether the sentence belonged to the earliest recoverable Greek text in the first place.
On the other hand, suppose both translation committees agree about the underlying Greek sentence but translate one Greek word differently. That is primarily a translation question.
Translating Meaning Between Languages
Once scholars determine which underlying text they believe should be translated, another problem begins. Since languages organize meaning differently, translation is not simply replacing one word with another.
Consider an English expression such as: “It’s raining cats and dogs.”
A translator could preserve every individual English word while completely failing to communicate what the expression means.
Biblical translation involves similar decisions. Ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek contain idioms, wordplay, grammatical structures, and cultural expressions that do not always have direct English equivalents.
Sometimes one original word requires several English words. Sometimes several possible English words could translate the same original term.
For example, the Hebrew word ruach can mean wind, breath, or spirit depending on context.
Likewise, a Greek word may have a range of possible meanings that cannot be represented perfectly by a single English word in every passage. The translator must therefore interpret before translating.
Grammar, context, vocabulary, historical usage, and comparison with other ancient texts place significant constraints on what a word can reasonably mean, but translation inevitably involves judgment.
Word-for-Word and Thought-for-Thought Translation
Bible translations are sometimes described as existing along a spectrum.
At one end are translations that attempt to preserve the wording and grammatical structure of the original languages as closely as reasonably possible. This approach is often called formal equivalence or, more casually, “word-for-word” translation.
At the other end are translations that prioritize communicating the meaning of the original text in natural modern language. This approach is often called dynamic equivalence or “thought-for-thought” translation.
Neither description should be taken too literally.
A perfectly word-for-word translation is impossible because languages do not correspond exactly. Likewise, every thought-for-thought translation must still be based on actual words. Most Bible translations therefore exist somewhere between the two approaches.
Translations leaning toward formal equivalence may preserve more of the structure and ambiguity of the original language but can sometimes sound less natural in English. Translations leaning toward dynamic equivalence may be easier to understand but require translators to make more interpretive decisions about what the original author meant.
Neither approach automatically produces the best Bible for every purpose. Someone conducting detailed textual study may prefer a more formally equivalent translation. Someone reading long passages for general comprehension may prefer more natural English.
Comparing several translations can sometimes reveal places where the original language permits more than one reasonable interpretation.
Translation Is Interpretation
Suppose a Greek sentence could reasonably be understood in two different ways. A translator cannot always reproduce that ambiguity perfectly in English. Choosing one English sentence may require choosing one interpretation. This is why comparing translations can be useful.
If several translations use noticeably different wording, the disagreement may indicate an underlying question involving:
- Vocabulary
- Grammar
- Manuscript evidence
- Idiom
- Theology
- Literary style
- Cultural context
Readers should not immediately assume that one translation is dishonest and another is correct. Instead, differences among translations can alert the reader that something interesting is happening in the underlying text.
Doctrinal Bias and Translation
Because translation involves interpretation, translators are not completely free from theological assumptions. A translator’s religious tradition can influence how an ambiguous passage is rendered. This does not mean every translation deliberately manipulates Scripture. Many major modern translations are produced by committees of scholars rather than by one individual, sometimes including experts from multiple Christian traditions. Committee translation can help reduce the influence of one person’s preferences. Nevertheless, no human translation is completely independent of interpretation.
This provides another reason to compare translations, examine footnotes, and consult the original languages or serious scholarly resources when a major theological argument depends heavily on a particular word or phrase.
A doctrine should be approached cautiously if it can survive only when one disputed translation is treated as unquestionably correct.
Truth should always remain defensible when the underlying evidence is examined.
Why Bible Translations Change Over Time
- Languages change.
- The English spoken today is not the same English spoken five hundred years ago.
- Words change meaning. Grammar changes.
- Expressions become obsolete.
- New archaeological discoveries are made.
- Additional manuscripts become available.
- Scholars learn more about ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, history, geography, and culture.
For these reasons, Bible translation is not a task completed once for all time.
New translations and revisions appear because translators attempt to communicate ancient texts accurately to new generations of readers.
Sometimes revisions are minor. Sometimes advances in manuscript evidence lead to different wording. Sometimes translators update language that has become confusing or misleading.
A translation can therefore be extremely important historically while still benefiting from revision as language and scholarship develop.
Which Translation Is the Best?
There is no single best translation for every purpose. A good translation should be based on strong manuscript evidence, serious knowledge of the original languages, careful scholarship, and transparent translation principles.
Readers also benefit from using more than one translation. If several independent translations communicate essentially the same meaning, that provides useful confirmation. If they differ significantly, the difference may identify a passage worth investigating more carefully.
Readers should use translations without pretending that translation removes the need for thought.
Additionally, the existence of different translations does not mean that every possible translation is equally valid.
Language places limits on interpretation. Some translations are better supported by grammar, historical context, and manuscript evidence than others. Nor does the existence of manuscript variations mean that the biblical text is unknowable.
The existence of many manuscripts allows readers to compare their differences. In many cases, having multiple manuscripts is precisely what allows scholars to identify copying variations in the first place.
Conclusion
The modern Bible is the result of a long history of writing, copying, preservation, comparison, and translation.
For the Old Testament, important textual witnesses include the Masoretic Text, the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Samaritan Pentateuch.
For the New Testament, scholars compare thousands of Greek manuscript witnesses alongside ancient translations and quotations preserved in early Christian writings.
Textual criticism attempts to determine the earliest recoverable wording of these texts.
Translation then asks how that wording and meaning can best be communicated in another language.
Different Christian Bibles can therefore differ for several reasons, such as:
- Christian traditions do not all recognize exactly the same Old Testament canon.
- Ancient manuscripts sometimes preserve different textual readings.
- Different editions of the underlying Hebrew or Greek texts may make different textual decisions.
- Translators sometimes make different judgments about Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek vocabulary and grammar.
- Translation philosophies differ.
- Languages change over time.
- New manuscript discoveries and advances in scholarship can affect later translations.
These differences invite readers to investigate deeper.
- When translations differ, readers can ask why.
- When manuscript evidence is uncertain, readers can examine the evidence.
- When an English word carries theological importance, readers can investigate the Hebrew or Greek behind it.
- And when a particular verse differs among Bibles, readers can determine whether the disagreement comes from textual evidence, translation, or both.
Translation therefore reminds us that human beings participate in the transmission and interpretation of claims about communication from God. And that such participation requires knowledge, judgment, honesty, and humility.
In section 6.8, we will examine one of the most influential translations in the English-speaking world: the King James Version.