Ancient Versions of the Bible

To understand how the Bible reached different peoples, imagine a map of the eastern hemisphere. Place Palestine at the center. Now imagine God’s revelation as a small stone dropped into water. God revealed himself through the prophets, through Christ, and through the apostles. Like circles spreading out from the stone, the Bible spread out from Palestine into many languages.

To the south, it reached Coptic, Arabic, and Ethiopic. To the west, it reached Greek, Latin, Gothic, and English. To the north, it reached Armenian, Georgian, and Slavonic. To the east, it reached Syriac.

The Bible began in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, in and near Palestine. As the Bible moved farther from that center, it was usually translated into each new language at a later time.

God’s revelation, the Bible, began in the Middle East. It was written mainly in two languages used in and near Palestine.

The Old Testament was written in Hebrew. However, parts of Daniel and Ezra may have been written in Aramaic. Aramaic was the language many Jews used during and after the exile, when they were taken away from their land.

The New Testament was probably written in common Greek, also called koine Greek. This was the main language in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. Many people in other parts of the empire also understood it.

For this reason, people who did not speak Hebrew or Greek could not easily receive God’s written revelation. They needed someone to translate the Bible into their own language.

Bible translation began even before the birth of Christ. At that time, people were already translating the Old Testament into Greek and Aramaic.

Many Jews lived outside their homeland before Christ came. These Jews are often called the dispersed Jews, meaning Jews who lived in many different places. Many of them did not know Hebrew. So they needed the Old Testament in Greek or Aramaic.

The most widely used Greek translation of the Old Testament was the Septuagint. Many Jews used it. Later, many Christians also used it. In fact, the Septuagint served as the Bible for the first Christians. This included some of the people who wrote books of the New Testament.

Early Christian missionaries carried the Septuagint (or Hebrew Bible) and the Greek New Testament or parts of it. They could read these texts themselves. These missionaries moved farther out from the early churches in Jerusalem and Antioch. We read about these churches in the book of Acts. The missionaries went to peoples whose languages they learned to speak.

At first, they translated or explained Bible passages aloud. They did this for teaching, preaching, and worship. People became believers, and new churches began. Soon, missionaries saw that new believers needed the Bible in their own language. So they began to translate the whole Bible for them.

This same desire is behind modern Bible translation groups such as Wycliffe Bible Translators. The desire to give people the Bible in their own language has always been central to Christian mission. In this way, the major Bible versions were created.

Bible translation usually began in a natural way. At first, it was almost always informal and spoken. Its main purpose was to share the good news about Jesus.

The early church strongly supported Bible translation. It also took part in this work. Even in the mid-ninth century, when the Slavonic version was made, Pope Adrian II and Pope John VIII supported the project. The Slavonic version was a Bible translation for Slavic-speaking peoples.

But a major change took place in the Western church. Latin became the main language, and fewer people could read Greek. Over time, only wealthy nobles and high-ranking church leaders received much education. During the feudal period in Europe, society was organized around land, rulers, and local lords. Much of the learning from the older Greek and Roman world was lost or limited to fewer people.

At the same time, the Roman Catholic leadership, headed by the pope, gained strong control over Western Christianity. As a result, ordinary believers had less direct access to the Bible. Priests could still read Latin texts and lead worship in Latin, at least in a basic way. Because of this, many church leaders no longer saw a strong need to translate the Bible into local languages.

Latin came to be seen almost as a sacred language. Many church leaders became suspicious of Bible translations into local languages.

Pope Gregory VII served from 1073 to 1085. He expressed this concern clearly. About 200 years earlier, Pope Adrian II and Pope John VIII had supported a Slavonic translation of the Bible. But in 1079, Gregory tried to stop people from using it.

Gregory wrote to King Vratislaus of Bohemia that God had a reason for keeping Scripture hidden in some places. He said that if everyone could understand it clearly, some people might not value it or respect it. He also said that people with limited learning might misunderstand Scripture and be led into error.

Meanwhile, Islam spread through Palestine and North Africa. This changed the religious life of the eastern and southern coasts of the Mediterranean Sea.

Within 100 years after Muhammad’s death, over 900 churches had been destroyed. Muhammad lived from about 570 to 632. The Quran became the main sacred book across a large area. This area stretched from the borders of Byzantium in the east to Spain in the west. Byzantium was the eastern part of the Roman Empire. At this time, it was under pressure from outside forces.

Bible translations slowed for the next 500 years due to opposition from both the Western church and the rise of Islam in the East. Bible translation became active again during the Protestant Reformation in the early sixteenth century. At that time, missionaries used movable-type printing to make many Bible translations. Movable-type printing was a new printing method developed by Johannes Gutenberg. It made books faster and easier to produce.

Erasmus expressed the hope of many Bible translators in the preface to his Greek New Testament, published in 1516.

Erasmus wrote that he wanted even the least educated person to read the Gospels and the letters of Paul. He wanted these writings translated into every language. Then people from many nations could read and understand them, including Scots, Irish people, Turks, and Saracens.

He believed that helping people understand Scripture was the first step. Some people might laugh at it. But others would take it seriously and receive it deeply.

Erasmus longed for ordinary people to know Scripture in daily life. He wanted farmers to sing parts of it while they worked in the field. He wanted weavers to hum it while they worked at the loom. He wanted travelers to pass the time on their journeys by telling its stories.

What materials did early translators and copyists use when they worked carefully on Bible translations?

At the time of Christ and during the first two centuries of the church, people often wrote with ink on papyrus. Papyrus was a paper-like material made from a plant.

Until the first century, books were usually scrolls. A scroll was made from long sheets of papyrus joined together and rolled around two rods.

Later in the first century, people began to use another kind of book. It was called a codex. A codex was an early form of the modern book. It had folded sheets and a stitched spine. Christians were among the first people to use this form for books.

In AD 332, Constantine I, the first Christian emperor, ordered 50 Bibles for the churches in Constantinople, his new capital city. He ordered them from Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea.

Constantine said these Bibles should not be scrolls. They should be codices. He also said they should not be made from papyrus. They should be made from vellum. Vellum was carefully prepared animal skin, often from sheep or antelope.

By the late third and early fourth centuries, codices and vellum had almost fully replaced scrolls and papyrus.

For centuries, scribes copied Bibles by hand. This was slow and careful work. They wrote the text in all capital letters. The earliest surviving manuscripts of Bible versions use this kind of writing. These manuscripts are called uncials.

In the ninth and tenth centuries, it became common to write in lowercase letters. Surviving manuscripts that use this style are called minuscules or cursives. However, some cursive manuscripts existed as early as the second century before Christ. Most surviving biblical manuscripts from the tenth through the sixteenth centuries are minuscules.

In 1454, Johannes Gutenberg used movable type for the first time. Movable type was a printing method that used separate metal letters. This made handwritten copies much less necessary. Gutenberg’s first printed book appeared in 1456. It was a beautiful Latin Bible.

Printed Bibles today have chapter and verse numbers. These divisions were added much later.

Chapter divisions first appeared in the Latin Vulgate. Scholars do not all agree on who created them. Some credit Lanfranc, the archbishop of Canterbury, who died in 1089. Others credit Stephen Langton, another archbishop of Canterbury, who died in 1228. Still others credit Hugo de Sancto Caro, who lived in the thirteenth century.

Verse numbers appeared later. They were first used in the fourth edition of the Greek New Testament, published in Geneva in 1551 by Robert Estienne, also called Stephanus. They also appeared in the Hebrew Old Testament published by Athias in 1559–1561.

Earliest Versions of the Old Testament

Complete Bible Versions of Christendom

Latin Versions

Coptic Versions

Gothic Version

Syriac Versions

Armenian Version

Georgian Version

Ethiopic Version

Arabic Versions

Slavonic Version

The Samaritan Pentateuch is the first Old Testament version to consider. However, it is not technically a translation. It is a Hebrew version of the first five books of the Old Testament. These books are also called the Law. For the Samaritan community, they are the whole Scripture. The Samaritan community still exists today in modern Nablus, Palestine.

The Samaritan Pentateuch follows a different Hebrew text tradition from the one used in traditional Judaism. Traditional Judaism uses the Masoretic Text. The Masoretic Text was preserved by the Masoretes. The Masoretes were Jewish scribes who worked from about AD 600 to the tenth century. They carefully copied and preserved the Old Testament text. The Masoretes also added vowel points. These marks showed the vowel sounds that were not written in the Hebrew consonant text. The Masoretic Text is the main Hebrew text behind the Old Testament in the King James Version.

The Samaritan Pentateuch goes back to the fourth century BC. It differs from the Masoretic Text in about 6,000 places. Scholars consider about 1,000 of these differences important. In some places, the Samaritan Pentateuch agrees with the Greek Septuagint and other ancient versions. This makes it a valuable witness to the Old Testament text in those cases.

The two oldest Samaritan Pentateuch manuscripts outside Nablus are codices found in England. One dates from about AD 1211–1212 and is kept in the John Rylands Library in Manchester. The other dates from before 1149 and is kept in the University Library at Cambridge.

There are also two smaller translations connected with the Samaritan Pentateuch. One is an Aramaic Samaritan Targum (an Aramaic translation or explanation of Scripture) from early Christian times. The other is an Arabic translation from about the eleventh century.

The Septuagint is the second Old Testament version to consider. It is a true translation from Hebrew into Greek. It was the first known translation of the Old Testament. The apostles used it, and many Old Testament quotations in the New Testament come from it. Because of this, the Septuagint became the Bible of the early church.

The story of how the Septuagint was made appears in a document called The Letter of Aristeas. This letter was written sometime between 150 and 100 BC. According to the letter, an Egyptian king named Ptolemy Philadelphus wanted to collect all the world’s books in his library in Alexandria. He did not have a Greek translation of the Old Testament. So he asked the high priest in Jerusalem to send him Jewish scholars and Hebrew texts.

The letter says that 72 Jewish elders went to Egypt. After the king welcomed them, they translated the whole Old Testament into Greek in 72 days. This translation became known as the Septuagint. Its name comes from the number 70, written as LXX in Roman numerals.

However, scholars believe the true story is less dramatic. The Septuagint was probably made for Greek-speaking Jews who no longer understood Hebrew. Some parts were likely translated as early as 250 BC. Other parts were probably finished by 100 BC. Different translators likely worked on it over several centuries. Later, these translations were gathered into one collection.

The Septuagint also includes up to 15 additional books. These books are called apocryphal, or non-canonical. This means many Christian traditions do not include them as part of the Old Testament canon, or official list of Scripture. Most modern English Bibles do not include them.

The third Old Testament version is the Aramaic version. Until the nineteenth century, scholars often called it Chaldee. Biblical Aramaic was the language of the rulers who conquered Israel. Over time, many Jewish people began to speak it.

When the Jews returned from exile in Babylon in 536 BC, they brought Aramaic with them. Many scholars think Ezra and the Levites explained the Book of the Law by paraphrasing Hebrew into Aramaic (Nehemiah 8:8). A paraphrase restates a text in clearer or different words.

Aramaic was the main language in Palestine until the Bar Kokhba revolt against Rome in AD 132–135. During this time, Hebrew was mostly used as a religious language by priests, scribes, and other religious leaders. As priests and scribes read the Law and the Prophets, a custom developed. After the Hebrew reading, someone would give an Aramaic translation. These translations were called targums, or targumim.

Rabbis did not want the targumim to be written down. But over time, people did write them down. The earliest Targum was a translation of the Law. It was written by someone known as Onkelos in the second or third century AD.

Targums on the historical and prophetic books were written in the third and fourth centuries AD. The most important of these was Targum Jonathan ben Uzziel.

The earliest Targum of the Wisdom Literature was written in the fifth century AD. The Wisdom Literature includes Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, and some Psalms.

In the end, the rabbinic Aramaic Targums included all of the Old Testament except Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah.

The Islamic conquest of the Middle East made Arabic the common language. Rabbis began to write Arabic targums, and became less and less spoken.

As the early Christian church collected the New Testament and joined it with the Old Testament, Bible translation began to grow. This work helped Christianity spread from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria. Over time, it helped carry the Christian message to people in many parts of the world.

Similar to the Aramaic Targums, which were Aramaic translations used by Jewish worshipers, the Old Latin Bible developed informally. In the early Roman Empire and the early church, Christians mainly used Greek. Even the first bishops of Rome wrote and preached in Greek. As the Roman Empire and the church grew older, Latin became more common, especially in the West. So priests and bishops began to translate the Greek New Testament and the Septuagint into Latin.

This first Latin version is called the Old Latin Bible. No complete manuscript of it still exists. But scholars can reconstruct much of the Old Testament and most of the New Testament from quotations by the early church fathers (early Christian teachers and writers). Scholars believe that an Old Latin Bible was being used in Carthage, in North Africa, as early as AD 250. The surviving pieces and quotations suggest that there were two kinds of Old Latin text. These were the African text and the European text. The European text also had an Italian revision.

The Old Latin Bible is important for studying the Septuagint. This is because the Old Latin was translated from the Septuagint before Origen made his Hexapla, a large study edition that compared several versions of the Old Testament text.

Church leaders in many places saw the need for one trusted Latin translation of the whole Bible. Pope Damasus I served from 366 to 384. He had a very skilled and learned secretary named Jerome. Jerome lived from about 340 to 420. In 382, Damasus asked Jerome to make a new Latin translation of the Gospels.

Jerome completed the Gospels in 383. He seems to have completed Acts and the rest of the New Testament after that. Jerome translated the Gospels with great care. He based this work on the European Old Latin text and an Alexandrian Greek text. An Alexandrian Greek text is a Greek Bible text linked with Alexandria, an important center of learning in Egypt.

The rest of the New Testament received a much lighter revision. In those books, the Old Latin wording stayed in place unless the Greek text required a change. Most likely, Jerome himself did not revise this part.

Jerome left Rome in 385. In 389, he and Paula, one of his followers, started two religious houses near Bethlehem. Jerome led one of them.

There, Jerome began to focus on the Old Testament. He believed the Latin Bible needed a new translation from Hebrew. He did not think it only needed a revision of the Greek Septuagint, an early Greek translation of the Old Testament. He asked Jewish rabbis, or Jewish teachers, to help him understand the Hebrew text. By 390, Jerome had translated the Old Testament books through Kings. From 390 to 396, he revised an earlier translation he had made of the Psalms. He also translated the prophets, Job, Ezra, and Chronicles.

After being sick for two years, Jerome began the work again. He translated Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs. In 404, he translated Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and Esther.

Soon after this, Jerome translated the apocryphal parts of Daniel and Esther. He also translated Tobit and Judith from Aramaic. The Apocrypha are books included in some Christian Old Testaments but not in the Hebrew Bible.

Jerome did not translate the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, or the books of Maccabees. These books entered the official Latin Bible in their older Latin form.

Jerome’s work was not the same in quality across all the books. He also did not gather all his translations into one complete Bible.

Jerome’s work received strong criticism. He defended it with skill and anger. But he did not live long enough to see people fully respect it. Even so, his life’s work became part of what is now called the Vulgate Bible. The word vulga means the common, everyday speech of the people.

The evidence suggests that Cassiodorus may have collected Jerome’s work into one book. Cassiodorus died around 580. He may have done this work in his monastery at Scylacium in Italy.

The earliest existing manuscript that contains Jerome’s whole Bible is the Codex Amiatinus. It was written around 715 in the monastery at Jarrow, in Northumbria, England.

The old texts of the Vulgate are very important for studying the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. Only the Septuagint, an early Greek translation of the Old Testament, is more important for this work. Jerome used Hebrew texts that were older than the work of the Jewish Masoretes. The Masoretes were Jewish scholars who carefully copied and marked the Hebrew Bible.

The Vulgate slowly replaced the Old Latin Bible. This process took a long time. In 1546, the Council of Trent made the Vulgate the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. This happened about 1,000 years after Jerome’s time. The Council of Trent also approved an official corrected edition of the Vulgate. Pope Sixtus V first published this edition in 1590. It came out in three volumes.

Many people did not accept this edition. Pope Clement VIII later withdrew it. In 1592, he published a new official edition of the Vulgate. This became the standard edition until recent times.

The language continued even after strong Greek influence from Alexander the Great and the rulers who came after him. It also continued under Roman rule, even though Latin was the language of the Roman emperors.

The Coptic alphabet used 25 Greek letters. It also used seven extra symbols for sounds that Greek did not have. Over time, five main forms, or dialects, of Coptic developed:

Akhmimic

Sub-Akhmimic

Sahidic

Fayumic

Bohairic

Bible fragments have been found in the Akhmimic, sub-Akhmimic, and Fayumic dialects. However, we do not know whether the whole Bible was ever translated into these dialects. Over time, these dialects disappeared. By the eleventh century, only Bohairic and Sahidic were still used. Bohairic was spoken in the Nile Delta. Sahidic was spoken in Upper Egypt. By the seventeenth century, most people no longer knew these dialects. They were used mainly in Coptic churches for worship. Arabic had become the main language after the Islamic conquest of Egypt in 641.

The earliest Coptic Bible translation was in the Sahidic dialect. Sahidic was spoken in Upper Egypt, where fewer people understood Greek.

The Sahidic Old Testament and New Testament were probably completed around AD 200.

In the Nile Delta, more people spoke Greek. For this reason, the Bohairic Bible translation probably came later. Bohairic later became the main language of the Coptic church. This happened because it was used in Alexandria, where the Coptic religious leader lived.

The Copts separated from the Roman Empire and the wider Catholic Church after the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451. The separation happened because of theological differences, or different beliefs about Christ and Christian teaching. Later, centuries of Islamic rule separated the Copts even more from churches in the West.

The Gothic language was an East Germanic language. The earliest known writings in any Germanic language are Bible fragments translated by Ulfilas, also called Wulfila. Ulfilas translated the Bible to share the good news about Jesus with his own people. He was one of the most famous early Christian missionaries.

Ulfilas was born in Dacia. His parents were Roman Christians who had been captured by the Goths. Later, Ulfilas traveled to Constantinople. He may have become a Christian there. Around AD 340, Eusebius of Nicomedia ordained Ulfilas as a bishop. Eusebius was an Arian bishop. Arian belief taught that Christ was Savior and Lord because God appointed him and because Christ obeyed God. It also taught that Christ was not equal to God.

Ulfilas returned to preach to the Goths. He seems to have created an alphabet for their language so he could translate the Bible into Gothic. Records say that he translated the whole Bible except the books of Kings. He left these books out because he thought they might encourage violence among the Goths, who were already known for war.

Only small parts of his Old Testament translation still exist. About half of the Gospels survive in the Codex Argenteus. This manuscript comes from the fifth or sixth century and is now kept in Uppsala, Sweden.

Syriac, a Semitic language, was the main language of Edessa and western Mesopotamia. The Syriac Bible version known today as the Peshitta developed in several stages. The Peshitta is still used by Christians from the old Assyrian region.

The Peshitta often does not include:

2 Peter,

2 and 3 John,

Jude, or

Revelation.

One of the most famous early translations was the Diatessaron, a harmony of the Gospels made by Tatian, a disciple of Justin Martyr in Rome. He translated it from Greek around AD 170, and it became very popular among Syriac-speaking Christians. Later, bishops had trouble persuading Christians to use a version that kept the four Gospels separate. This version was called the Gospel of the Separated Ones.

Other parts of the Bible were also translated into Old Syriac. Writings from early church fathers suggest that a second-century Old Syriac Bible existed along with the Diatessaron. The Old Testament in this version may have originally been a Jewish translation into Syriac that Christians adapted, similar to how Greek Christians adapted the Septuagint.

Around the end of the fourth century, this version went through an official revision, resulting in the Peshitta (which means “simple” or “basic”). According to tradition, Rabbula, the bishop of Edessa, helped create the New Testament part of the Peshitta.

In AD 431, Syriac-speaking Christians divided into two groups: the Monophysites, also called Jacobites, and the Nestorians. Their disagreement was about the nature of Christ. At first, both groups used the Peshitta. But the Jacobites wanted a new translation.

In AD 508, Bishop Philoxemus of Mabbug, also called Mar Zenaia, translated the Bible into Syriac. He worked from the Septuagint and from Greek New Testament manuscripts. His translation included, for the first time, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude, which were later added to the standard Peshitta text.

Although the Peshitta has been used continuously since the fifth century and was spread as far as India and China, it has not been as valuable for biblical studies as the Septuagint. The Peshitta underwent frequent revisions based on comparisons with various Greek texts, Hebrew manuscripts, and other sources, making it difficult to trace its original form. One of the most important surviving Peshitta manuscripts is the Codex Ambrosianus from the sixth century, which contains the entire Old Testament.

Syrian Christians spread their faith to the Armenians in eastern Asia Minor. Armenia became the first Christian kingdom in history when Tiridates III, who ruled from AD 259–314, converted.

In the fifth century, an Armenian alphabet was created to translate the Bible into the Armenian language. The Armenian Bible is known for its beauty and accuracy, although it may have been first translated from Syriac and later revised based on Greek texts. The Armenian language is similar to Greek in grammar and structure.

According to tradition, the New Testament translation was done by Mesrop, a bishop in Armenia, who is also credited with inventing the Armenian and Georgian alphabets. Armenian churches did not accept the book of Revelation as part of their Bible until the 12th century.

The same tradition that says Mesrop translated the Bible into Armenian also says an Armenian slave woman helped bring Christianity to Georgian-speaking people. The earliest Georgian Scripture manuscripts date only to the eighth century. But these manuscripts seem to come from an earlier Georgian translation. This translation shows signs of Syriac and Armenian influence.

The Gospels may have first arrived in Georgia as the Diatessaron. The Diatessaron was a Gospel harmony, meaning it combined the four Gospels into one account. Because of this, Georgian fragments are important for studying the Diatessaron. A complete manuscript copy of the Georgian Bible exists in two volumes. It is kept in the Iberian Monastery on Mount Athos.

Along with the Armenians and Georgians, a third Caucasian people group, the Albanians, also seem to have received an alphabet from Mesrop. This alphabet was likely created so Scripture could be translated into their language. However, their church was destroyed during the Islamic wars. No remains of this Bible version have ever been found.

By the middle of the fifth century, Ethiopia (also called Abyssinia) was ruled by a Christian king. The country had close ties with Egyptian Christianity until the Islamic conquests. The Old Testament was probably translated into Old Ethiopic (called Ge’ez) by the fourth century.

This version is interesting for two reasons:

It is the Bible of the Falashas, a group of African Jews who claim to be descendants of Jews who migrated to Ethiopia during the time of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and

it contains books not included in the Hebrew Apocrypha, such as the book of Enoch, which is quoted in Jude 1:14.

The book of Enoch was unknown to scholars until a copy was brought to Europe in 1773. 3 Baruch, an apocryphal book, is only preserved through the Ethiopic version.

The New Testament was translated into Old Ethiopic later than the Old Testament. It includes writings mentioned by Clement of Alexandria, such as the Apocalypse of Peter. Although both Testaments are still available in Ethiopic manuscripts, none are older than the 13th century. These manuscripts depend heavily on Coptic and Arabic sources. The chaos in Ethiopia between the seventh and 13th centuries destroyed earlier manuscripts. Since the surviving manuscripts are so late, they have had little value for biblical scholars.

In AD 570, Muhammad was born in Mecca. He married a wealthy widow, Khadijah, at age 25. Muslims believe his call to be a prophet came when he was 40. In 622, he moved to Medina (an event called the Hegira), and he died in 632, having united Arabia under Islam.

Within one hundred years, Islamic rule spread from the Pyrenees across Spain, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, covered North Africa, and included Egypt and the lands of the Bible. This relentless spread put pressure on Byzantium and eventually led to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The Islamic conquest reached as far east as India, making Arabic the most widely spoken language since the days of Alexander the Great, nine centuries earlier.

There were several strong Jewish communities in Arabia during Muhammad’s time. Many Christian communities also came under Arab rule during the great conquests. A few of these Christian communities continued to survive.

However, the Arabic Bible seems to have developed later, through the work of Saadya Gaon. Saadya was born in Fayum, in Upper Egypt, in 892. He died in Babylon in 942.

Saadya translated the Pentateuch from Hebrew into Arabic. The Pentateuch is the first five books of the Old Testament. Other Old Testament books were translated later. Joshua was translated from Hebrew. Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and Job were translated from the Peshitta, the Syriac Bible. The Prophets, Psalms, and Proverbs were translated from the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament.

These translations were not necessarily all done by Saadya. The Arabic version that resulted was used by Arabic-speaking Jews down to recent times. The Qara’ites did not approve of Saadya’s freer style of translation. The Qara’ites were a Jewish group that rejected later rabbinic tradition and emphasized Scripture itself. They made their own competing translations. The most important was made by Japheth ben Eli ha-Levi in the tenth century.

Arabic translations of the New Testament appeared between the seventh and ninth centuries. They were translated from Syriac, Greek, and Coptic sources.

Arab writers say that John I, a Jacobite patriarch of Antioch, translated the Gospels from Syriac into Arabic. A patriarch is a senior church leader. John I served from 631 to 648.

Another John, the bishop of Seville in Spain, is said to have translated the Gospels into Arabic from the Vulgate around 724. The final form of the Arabic New Testament depended most heavily on the Coptic Bohairic version. Bohairic was a Coptic dialect used in northern Egypt.

Because the Arabic texts were late and came from mixed sources, they have had little importance for textual studies.

The Slavs were one of the major people groups near the early centers of Christianity. Even so, Bible translations into Slavonic cannot be traced before the ninth century.

Two brothers, Constantine and Methodius, began by translating church worship texts into Slavonic. They were sons of a Greek nobleman. With the approval of Pope Adrian II and Pope John VIII, they translated the Bible. Constantine later changed his name to Cyril. He lived from 827 to 869. Methodius lived from 826 to 885. They worked among the Slavs and Moravians.

Cyril created an alphabet to help with the translation work. This alphabet came to be called Cyrillic, after his saint name.

Some manuscript portions from the tenth or eleventh centuries still exist. But the oldest Slavonic manuscript of the whole Bible is the Codex Gennadius in Moscow. It is dated to 1499. Because it is so late, it has little value for studying the earliest form of the biblical text.