Updated American Standard Version
Giving Bible readers what God said not what translators think God meant
We have a young man, who has been on the run from the Catholic Church for many years, all the while working as a printer and a translator of the English Bible. Many times, there was a pounding at the door, only to find that this translator and his apprentice has left moments earlier.
The Hebrew text was like the Greek NT; it had accumulated copyist errors, a few intentional, a good number accidental, between the Malachi days of 440 BCE and Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi (135 to 217 CE). The same thing happened to the Greek New Testament from about 400 CE to 1550 CE, a period of copyist errors.
The Old Testament, the inspired Word of God, how was it copied, maintained as to the textual reliability, and handed down throughout the past three thousand years?
Jesus had told his followers, “‘a slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will keep yours also.’” (John 15:20)
The Bible has been translated into many languages from the biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. As of September 2020, the full Bible has been translated into 704 languages, the New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,551 languages and Bible portions or stories into 1,160 other languages. How did the Bible come down to us? Can it be trusted?
William Tyndale (c. 1490-1536) devoted himself early to Scripture studies, and by the time he had reached the age of about thirty, he had taken for the work of his life the translation of the Bible into English.
In Britain, as elsewhere, missionary work proceeded almost entirely by means of the spoken word. Any translation of the Scriptures consisted of a free and extemporaneous rendering of the Latin text into the vernacular speech.
The Bible has a unique record of preservation, restoration, translation, and distribution. It has faced many enemies and yet it is the bestselling book of all time many times over. How did our English Bible come down to us?
We must face the reality that while the original 39 OT manuscripts and 27 NT manuscripts were inspired by God [Lit. “God-breathed”] (1 Tim. 3:16), as the authors were moved along by the Holy Spirit (1 Peter 1:21), this was not the case with the copyists thereafter. Yes, hundreds of thousands of scribal errors crept into our manuscripts.