What is the original translation of the Bible?

Answer 1

Originally the language of the Bible was Hebrew for the Old Testament and Greek for the New Testament. The Torah had been translated into Aramaic during the Babylonian Captivity of the Jewish nation, but the Hebrew text had been preserved by the Masoretes.

The whole Bible had been translated early into Latin, later into German and English. Other ancient translation include the Syian Aramaic and Bulgarian Gothic. The Old Testament was also translated into Greek, called the Septuagint Version and the New Testament was basically preserved by the copies of the Byzantine Manuscripts, of which about 5600 exist today.

Other translations have appeared, such as the Hungarian Hussite Bible, the early Catalan Bible in Valencian Dialect, Spanish Bibles, etc.

Answer2: The Bible was written over a period of some 1,600 years. Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. But he was not the only one who wrote. God used about 40 men to write parts of the Bible. These men lived a long, long time ago, and it took many years for the Bible to be finished. Yes, it took a period of about 1,600 years! What is amazing is that even though some of these men never met one another, everything they wrote is in absolute agreement.

No modern language exactly mirrors the vocabulary and grammar of Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, so a word-for-word translation of the Bible could be unclear or at times could even convey the wrong meaning.

After the Babylonian exile, Aramaic became the everyday language of some of God's people. Perhaps to indicate what was to come, Jehovah inspired the prophets Daniel and Jeremiah and the priest Ezra to record portions of their Bible books in Aramaic.

Alexander the great later conquered much of the ancient world, and common, or Koine, Greek became an international language. Many Jews began to speak that language, leading to the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. This translation, thought to have been done by 72 translators, became known as the Septuagint. It was the first translation of the Bible and one of the most important.* The work of so many translators resulted in varied translation styles, from literal to rather free. Nevertheless, the Septuagint was viewed as God's Word by Greek-speaking Jews and later by Christians.