LANGUAGES ON THE MOVE

How the Bible Was Translated

Biblical texts have been translated for more than two thousand years. Following that history shows how they moved from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into the languages of later readers.

Translation begins inside the Bible’s own ancient world

The Hebrew Bible is primarily Hebrew with portions in Aramaic. The New Testament is written in Greek. Long before modern English Bibles, biblical texts were already moving between languages.

Hebrew & AramaicLanguages of the Hebrew Bible

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Ancient GreekTranslations commonly grouped under “Septuagint”

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Latin & other ancient versionsTexts spread through new linguistic communities

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Vernacular translationsPrinting and later translation movements multiply access

SEE THE JOURNEY

Four moments in translation history

These are not the only important translations. They are visual waypoints showing the Bible moving through Greek, Latin, and English textual worlds.

Greek text of 1 Esdras in a historical reproduction of Codex Vaticanus — **The Bible in Ancient Greek**Codex Vaticanus preserves most of the Old Testament in Greek, including 1 Esdras. This fourth-century manuscript is a major witness to the Septuagint tradition, not the original act of translation.Codex Vaticanus, 1 Esdras via Wikimedia Commons — public-domain historical reproduction ↗

Latin text of 1 Corinthians in the Codex Amiatinus — **The Latin Vulgate Tradition**The eighth-century Codex Amiatinus is the earliest surviving complete manuscript of the Latin Vulgate. This folio preserves 1 Corinthians 1:1–21 and makes the Vulgate’s manuscript life visible centuries before Gutenberg.Codex Amiatinus, folio 950r via Wikimedia Commons — public-domain mark ↗

Title page of the first edition of the King James Bible, 1611 — **The King James Bible, 1611**The first-edition title page says the translation was made from the “Originall tongues” while earlier English translations were also “diligently compared and revised.”Wikimedia Commons — public-domain 1611 title page ↗

Why translations differ

A translation can differ because translators understand a Hebrew or Greek word differently, construe the grammar differently, choose different English styles, or occasionally follow different textual readings found in ancient manuscripts. Translation differences are not simply a matter of one version being more “literal” and another more “free.”

TRY THIS LIKE A SCHOLAR

When two translations disagree, ask four questions.

Is the underlying manuscript reading different? Is the grammar ambiguous? Does the original word have a wider semantic range than one English word? Is the translation choosing clarity, form, idiom, or traditional wording differently?

PEOPLE ALONG THE JOURNEY

Individuals whose work left a trace

These are not the whole story. Each appears here because a specific, documentable contribution helps illuminate one stage in the Bible’s transmission, study, translation, printing, or navigation.

c. 347–420 CE

Jerome

Translator and biblical scholar

Worked intensively with Greek, Hebrew, and earlier Latin forms of Scripture; his translations and revisions became central to the Latin biblical tradition later called the Vulgate.

Explore the source →1460s–1536

Desiderius Erasmus

Humanist textual scholar

Prepared the influential 1516 printed Greek-and-Latin New Testament, bringing Greek textual study into the center of early-modern biblical scholarship.

Explore the source →c. 1494–1536