Part 3: The New Testament: Transmission and Textual Criticism

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Wycliffe and Tyndale
Due to the language that this paper is being written in, the development of the English translations are the ones that will be covered in detail. The first English translation was made by Wycliffe in 1380, and updated in 1388. Wycliffe faced a great deal of persecution during the making of his translation. The church wanted to keep power in the hands of the priests and keep the common people in the dark.


Tyndale faced many of the same problems that Wycliffe encountered. He wrote his first translation in 1526, and the second version in 1530. Tyndale is talked about much more frequently than Wycliffe due to two reasons: Wycliffe wrote in middle English, Tyndale wrote in modern English; and Wycliffe translated from the Latin Vulgate, Tyndale translated from the Hebrew and Greek. The main point of interest are the manuscripts that they translated from. Since Tyndale translated from the original languages, his version was significantly more authoritative. The text was only translated once instead of twice.

After the Tyndale Bible, there were three more versions that came in rapid succession: the Coverdale Bible, the Matthew Bible, and the Great Bible. It is believed that the head translators for the Coverdale and Matthew Bibles were contributing translators under Tyndale. Coverdale was very influential in creating many different translations of the Bible. The Great Bible was made on request of the king at that time, because he wanted a very big Bible. Just a little later in 1960, the Geneva Bible came out, and this translation became very, very popular. It was the main Bible of choice all the way up until the Authorized Version of 1611.


The King James Version and the Majority Text
The Authorized Version is known today as the King James Version of the Bible. At the time, the King James Version was a very good translation. It was the most commonly used Bible for almost 400 years, and as such, made a very huge impact on the Christian world.

Measured on today’s standards, however, the KJV has one major flaw. The KJV was translated from what is called the “majority text,” which is a small collection of 12 texts from the medieval era. Today, there are so many more manuscripts that have been discovered, many of them predating the medieval documents by many hundreds of years. The NKJV and KJII as well as the KJV still use the majority text to this day. To do so when there are so many manuscripts which are more authoritative is not a wise decision.

Versions Based on the Eclectic Text
The majority of the modern versions today use what is called the “eclectic text.” The eclectic text is based on a greater number of manuscripts, most of which are significantly older than those used in the majority text. A popular example of an eclectic text is the USB Greek New Testament.

Several of the other popular examples of recent translations based on the eclectic text are the NASB and the NIV. I personally have grown up using the NIV, and it most definitely has its pros and cons. The version with the second highest sales (after the KJV), the NIV is an excellent version if you wish to read a Bible with language that flows really well and that can be used for study as well.

However, the NIV is what is called a dynamic equivalent. Unlike the KJV and the NASB, it is not translated word-for-word. The translators worked the version to make it flow better, and during that process, there are many instances of where the NIV is not very faithful to the literal understanding of the Greek text. The more time that I spend in Bible college, the more errors are becoming painfully obvious in the NIV.

Sometime in the near future I am going to invest in an NASB. The NASB is considered by many to be one of the most accurate literal translations of the Bible in existence today. The KJV is a very literal translation, but it is in a language that, ultimately, no longer exists, and is based on documents that are not as authoritative as those the NASB is translated from.

However, what the NASB gains in accuracy, it loses in flow. From the passages that I have read from it and what I have heard from others, in its extreme efforts to correctly mirror the original texts, it has become very choppy in the English.

So what translation is best? That is more-or-less a matter of personal opinion, but I personally am tending to think that owning both the NASB and the NIV (and possibly the Message) would be the best combination available; but to each his own.

Conclusion
In conclusion, this paper is not nearly an exhaustive look at the Bible. On the contrary, it hardly scratches the surface of whether or not the Bible can be trusted. However, the inerrancy of scriptures due to divine inspiration is a major argument in favor of Biblical trustworthiness.

There is an overwhelming amount of evidence to support the view of 39 books in the Old Testament canon, as are included in the Protestant Bible. Due to the processes that were involved, and the number of copies that have been uncovered, we can be quite certain that both the Old and New Testaments have been transmitted down to modern times in a very reliable fashion.

Due to the fact that textual criticism is no longer an absolute mystery, it is possible to determine with reasonable certainty whether or not the readings provided by modern translations do justice to the original documents.

Finally, the evolution of the current English versions leave us confident in the fact that today there are more accurate translations of the Bible in existence than in any other time in history. In actual fact, the Bible can indeed be trusted!

Your Turn: In light of this series, do you agree that the Bible can indeed be trusted? What other facts, statistics, or insights would you like to add to what I've written?