Post by JEM on Aug 23, 2010 1:48:39 GMT
FAITH RELEVANT FOR TODAY
##########################
Christian faith is learnt by experience, by being exercised, by trusting in God and the foundation for our faith is the Word of God.
Recorded in the Books of the Bible, - the Written Word of God.
Lived out by Jesus Christ, and by Holy Spirit empowered Christians today who together are the body of Christ on Earth today - the Living Word of God.
So today the Bible is the source of the Christian’s authority which we have to apply to the needs of our world today.
The Books of the Bible were finally agreed upon, in the 4th century AD by the Christian Council of Carthage They were then published in the universal language of the time - Greek. All copies were hand written for about 1200 years until printing was established in Europe.
As copies wore out they were replaced by new copies by experts in handwriting. Great efforts were made to ensure accuracy
although some mistakes may have crept in, to be sorted out later.
Later the Bible was translated into the ordinary everyday language of the Roman Empire - Latin .
Later still the Greek Bible was rediscovered and from it the German, French , Dutch, Swedish, Spanish, Italian, Danish and English Bibles were translated,
and into many other languages since.
Attempts at a Bible in English go back to the reign of Alfred the Great in Anglo- Saxon England, and most notably to John Wycliff 1329 - 1384 who came from the North of England to serve at Oxford University. His English translation was from the Latin Bible and served in it’s time to open up God’s Word to ordinary people who did not understand Latin.
A flurry of translation activity got underway in the 16th century using the Greek Bible produced from newly recovered ancient Greek manuscripts from the library of Constantinople smuggled out when that city fell to the Moslem Turks that, were spread around Europe
Two scholars competed to create from them a complete Greek Bible that would be printed, to be used to translate into their national languages. A Spaniard and a Dutchman.
Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam [ 1467 - 1536 ] A Roman Catholic theologian humanist and satirist who spent some time in England, wrote many books but his great claim to fame was his Greek New Testament published at Basle in 1516.
That was the year before The Reformation of the Church in Europe began in an obscure province in one German conscience, stung into protest against the self satisfaction and errors of the Roman Catholic Church the man – Martin Luther .
Desiderius Erasmus recorded this message
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I wish that the Scriptures [ the Bible ] might be translated into all languages
so that not only the Scots and the Irish but also the Turks and the Saracens might read and understand them.
I long that the farm labourer might sing them as he follows his plough,
the weaver hum them to the tune of his shuttle and the traveller beguile the weariness of his journey with their stories”.
The pioneer of the English Bible was William Tyndale who published his first translation of the New Testament in 1525. He was persecuted and executed on the orders of the Pope as the Roman Catholic Church, at that time, wanted to ban the Bible getting into the hands of the uneducated masses of the nations.
.
Tyndale translated part of the Old Testament, and this was completed by his colleague Miles Coverdale translating from Martin Luther’s German translation. who published the complete English Bible in 1535.
Then came the Matthew’s Bible in 1537 which was revised to become The Great Bible in 1539 chained up in major cathedrals and parish churches and ordered by King Henry the Eighth to be read to congregations.
During the short reign of Henry’s son, England’s first truly Protestant King the young Edward the Sixth, 1546 -1553 Protestant Reformed Christianity became established in our land.
During the reign of Roman Catholic Queen Mary 1553 - 1558 Protestant Reformed Christians were persecuted, over 300 were burnt at the stake across the land on the orders of this cruel prejudiced queen, and many leading Protestants went into exile on the Continent.
A group of 4 scholars led by Coverdale produced a revised English translation that was then printed and smuggled into England where the Bible was banned This was in 1560 and called The Geneva Bible, and was detested by the clergy of the Catholic and later Puritan Church of England who in 1568 produced their own translation The Bishops Bible for use of the clergy and to be read in church services.
The Geneva Bible was widely popular amongst the non-clergy and all those who attended other illegal Independent congregations. This is the translation William Shakespeare quotes in his plays and that the American Colonists took with them, as they renounced the king and his Bible.
At the request of the Puritans in 1604, King James the First of England [ and Sixth of Scotland ] sponsored a new translation to replace the Bishop’s Bible for use in the services of the Church of England eventually published in 1611 which drew on the best in previous translations including the Roman Catholic Bible and was produced by a large committee of Church of England scholars. These men were prejudiced against what other Christians believed.
It was inaccurately called the Authorised Version, or AV for short. Many Christians who did not accept that spurious title, called it the King James Version. [ KJV]
The Geneva Bible remained widely popular for another 50 - 100 years before being replaced by the fourth revision version of the KJV published in 1769 which is the edition still in use in some places today.
After that date there were several other versions and revisions including John Wesley’s simplified version for the use of the working class converts to his preaching who had to be taught to read. At that time 60% of the population of England were not associated with the Church of England, and John Darby’s new translation in America widely used for many years by Christian Brethren churches.
In 1853 a new revised Greek translation became available using earlier documents of the Greek Bible from Alexandria in Egypt discovered in the Vatican library and in a monastery near Mount Sinai .
This latter one was bought by the Czar of Russia and between the World Wars was sold to the British by the Communists for £300.000 The 1853 Greek Bible was used partly in the publication of the Revised English Bible in 1881 and was used to bring out the New Century New Testament in 1901.
Since then other manuscripts have come to light and the Greek Text has been improved and throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries there have been a lot of new modern English translations, and revisions also due to language and vocabulary changes.
Some were produced to particularly connect with children and teenagers, including from the 1940’s The New English Bible, J.B Philips New Testament, and William Barclay’s Study Bible produced for Boys Brigade Companies Bible Classes in Scotland, and the Living Bible and in the 1960’s the TEV - Today’s English Version, commonly called the Good News Bible published by the Bible Society of Scotland.
Later came the CEV - the Contemporary English Version and the New King James Version [ NKJV] which is a modern English translation using the manuscripts used by Erasmus for his Greek Bible
Each new English revision has to use different English words for the Greek words to avoid infringing the copyright law effecting the other editions. However there are now many English words to describe the narrower vocabulary of the Greek.
All Bible quotations used in the coming pages of this essay here are from the New International Version of the Bible published in 1979 in American English, by the American Bible Society now called the International Bible Society. The Anglicised
version was published in 1983 with some revisions.
Scholars tell us that the most accurate and easily readable of the modern English Bibles is the Standard English Version [ SEV ] published in Britain in 2007 which can be ordered through book shops.
Contact www.odb.org
Contact www.dunmowbaptist.org
##########################
Christian faith is learnt by experience, by being exercised, by trusting in God and the foundation for our faith is the Word of God.
Recorded in the Books of the Bible, - the Written Word of God.
Lived out by Jesus Christ, and by Holy Spirit empowered Christians today who together are the body of Christ on Earth today - the Living Word of God.
So today the Bible is the source of the Christian’s authority which we have to apply to the needs of our world today.
The Books of the Bible were finally agreed upon, in the 4th century AD by the Christian Council of Carthage They were then published in the universal language of the time - Greek. All copies were hand written for about 1200 years until printing was established in Europe.
As copies wore out they were replaced by new copies by experts in handwriting. Great efforts were made to ensure accuracy
although some mistakes may have crept in, to be sorted out later.
Later the Bible was translated into the ordinary everyday language of the Roman Empire - Latin .
Later still the Greek Bible was rediscovered and from it the German, French , Dutch, Swedish, Spanish, Italian, Danish and English Bibles were translated,
and into many other languages since.
Attempts at a Bible in English go back to the reign of Alfred the Great in Anglo- Saxon England, and most notably to John Wycliff 1329 - 1384 who came from the North of England to serve at Oxford University. His English translation was from the Latin Bible and served in it’s time to open up God’s Word to ordinary people who did not understand Latin.
A flurry of translation activity got underway in the 16th century using the Greek Bible produced from newly recovered ancient Greek manuscripts from the library of Constantinople smuggled out when that city fell to the Moslem Turks that, were spread around Europe
Two scholars competed to create from them a complete Greek Bible that would be printed, to be used to translate into their national languages. A Spaniard and a Dutchman.
Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam [ 1467 - 1536 ] A Roman Catholic theologian humanist and satirist who spent some time in England, wrote many books but his great claim to fame was his Greek New Testament published at Basle in 1516.
That was the year before The Reformation of the Church in Europe began in an obscure province in one German conscience, stung into protest against the self satisfaction and errors of the Roman Catholic Church the man – Martin Luther .
Desiderius Erasmus recorded this message
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I wish that the Scriptures [ the Bible ] might be translated into all languages
so that not only the Scots and the Irish but also the Turks and the Saracens might read and understand them.
I long that the farm labourer might sing them as he follows his plough,
the weaver hum them to the tune of his shuttle and the traveller beguile the weariness of his journey with their stories”.
The pioneer of the English Bible was William Tyndale who published his first translation of the New Testament in 1525. He was persecuted and executed on the orders of the Pope as the Roman Catholic Church, at that time, wanted to ban the Bible getting into the hands of the uneducated masses of the nations.
.
Tyndale translated part of the Old Testament, and this was completed by his colleague Miles Coverdale translating from Martin Luther’s German translation. who published the complete English Bible in 1535.
Then came the Matthew’s Bible in 1537 which was revised to become The Great Bible in 1539 chained up in major cathedrals and parish churches and ordered by King Henry the Eighth to be read to congregations.
During the short reign of Henry’s son, England’s first truly Protestant King the young Edward the Sixth, 1546 -1553 Protestant Reformed Christianity became established in our land.
During the reign of Roman Catholic Queen Mary 1553 - 1558 Protestant Reformed Christians were persecuted, over 300 were burnt at the stake across the land on the orders of this cruel prejudiced queen, and many leading Protestants went into exile on the Continent.
A group of 4 scholars led by Coverdale produced a revised English translation that was then printed and smuggled into England where the Bible was banned This was in 1560 and called The Geneva Bible, and was detested by the clergy of the Catholic and later Puritan Church of England who in 1568 produced their own translation The Bishops Bible for use of the clergy and to be read in church services.
The Geneva Bible was widely popular amongst the non-clergy and all those who attended other illegal Independent congregations. This is the translation William Shakespeare quotes in his plays and that the American Colonists took with them, as they renounced the king and his Bible.
At the request of the Puritans in 1604, King James the First of England [ and Sixth of Scotland ] sponsored a new translation to replace the Bishop’s Bible for use in the services of the Church of England eventually published in 1611 which drew on the best in previous translations including the Roman Catholic Bible and was produced by a large committee of Church of England scholars. These men were prejudiced against what other Christians believed.
It was inaccurately called the Authorised Version, or AV for short. Many Christians who did not accept that spurious title, called it the King James Version. [ KJV]
The Geneva Bible remained widely popular for another 50 - 100 years before being replaced by the fourth revision version of the KJV published in 1769 which is the edition still in use in some places today.
After that date there were several other versions and revisions including John Wesley’s simplified version for the use of the working class converts to his preaching who had to be taught to read. At that time 60% of the population of England were not associated with the Church of England, and John Darby’s new translation in America widely used for many years by Christian Brethren churches.
In 1853 a new revised Greek translation became available using earlier documents of the Greek Bible from Alexandria in Egypt discovered in the Vatican library and in a monastery near Mount Sinai .
This latter one was bought by the Czar of Russia and between the World Wars was sold to the British by the Communists for £300.000 The 1853 Greek Bible was used partly in the publication of the Revised English Bible in 1881 and was used to bring out the New Century New Testament in 1901.
Since then other manuscripts have come to light and the Greek Text has been improved and throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries there have been a lot of new modern English translations, and revisions also due to language and vocabulary changes.
Some were produced to particularly connect with children and teenagers, including from the 1940’s The New English Bible, J.B Philips New Testament, and William Barclay’s Study Bible produced for Boys Brigade Companies Bible Classes in Scotland, and the Living Bible and in the 1960’s the TEV - Today’s English Version, commonly called the Good News Bible published by the Bible Society of Scotland.
Later came the CEV - the Contemporary English Version and the New King James Version [ NKJV] which is a modern English translation using the manuscripts used by Erasmus for his Greek Bible
Each new English revision has to use different English words for the Greek words to avoid infringing the copyright law effecting the other editions. However there are now many English words to describe the narrower vocabulary of the Greek.
All Bible quotations used in the coming pages of this essay here are from the New International Version of the Bible published in 1979 in American English, by the American Bible Society now called the International Bible Society. The Anglicised
version was published in 1983 with some revisions.
Scholars tell us that the most accurate and easily readable of the modern English Bibles is the Standard English Version [ SEV ] published in Britain in 2007 which can be ordered through book shops.
Contact www.odb.org
Contact www.dunmowbaptist.org
Attachments:
