The story of how the Bible reached us in its present form is an interesting one. The first copies were handwritten, and in manuscript form—not necessarily in book form at all. These manuscript copies of the Bible were exceedingly scarce in the days of the Early Church. Not all the individual members of those early congregations possessed them. It was not until perhaps the year A.D. 120 that the books of the New Testament, as we know them, were complete, assembled together, and available for use, but even then they were very scarce.

Seemingly larger congregations of Early Christians possessed manuscript copies of at least parts of the Bible. There were some manuscripts of the Old Testament in the Hebrew language, and some which had been translated from the Hebrew into the Greek language. The main Greek translation of the Old Testament was known as the Septuagint Version, though Aquila, Theodotion, Symmachus, and others also made Greek versions.

Besides, there were copies of the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the various apostolic epistles, and the Book of Revelation—all in manuscript form. These have reached us by long and complex chains of circumstances, including the hand copying of manuscripts and translating, both of which were often done under most trying conditions.

The early translators were usually persecuted— sometimes even unto death—not just by the worldly, but by their contemporary religionists, who often took the viewpoint, as one of the early translators expressed it—that “ignorance is holiness.” The bitter opposition manifested by some against the Revised Version, the Revised Standard Version, and other more recent attempts to improve the accuracy of our English Bible, indicates that human nature has not changed much since those early days.

One of the first English versions of the Bible was translated by John Wycliffe about the year 1367, although no part of it was printed before the year 1731. Concerning the death of Wycliffe, one of the church writers at the time said:

“On the feast of the passion of St. Thomas of Canterbury, John Wycliffe, the organ of the devil, the enemy of the church, the idol of hypocrites, the restorer of schisms, the storehouse of lies, the sink of flattery, being struck by the horrible judgment of God, was seized with palsy throughout his whole body.”

Wycliffe was referred to by another writer as “that pestilent wretch, the son of the old serpent, the forerunner of Antichrist.” He was evidently himself keenly aware of the opposition that would be aroused by his translation of the Bible, and in the preface had the following inscribed: “God grant us, to ken and to kepe well Holie Writ, and to suffer joiefulli some paine for it at the laste.”

The first book to be printed was the Bible. It was published by Johann Gutenberg, the inventor of moveable type for the printing press. This was in 1455 or 1456. It was in Latin, and bound in two volumes. Then followed other Bible versions: German (1466), Italian (1471), Catalan (1478), Czech (1488), Ancient Greek (1517), Dutch (1522), and French (1530).

Then in 1525 came Tyndale’s English Version of the New Testament and in 1535 of the Bible— the first English translation to be printed. The language of Tyndale’s translation was essentially the same as that in our Common, or King James Version. Tyndale, even as former translators of the Bible, was vilified and persecuted by the orthodox church of his day.

In order to complete his task he was forced to leave England, and he became an exile in Germany. But it was this, in the providence of God, that put him in touch with the printing press. This resulted later in large quantities of his printed Bible being smuggled into England contrary to the decree of the church, and distributed among the people. It was in the year 1524 that Tyndale left his native land, never to see it again, and as the historian states:

“At Hamburg, in poverty and distress, and amid constant danger, the brave-hearted exile worked on his translation, and so diligently that the following year we find him at Cologne with sheets of his quarto New Testament already in the printer’s hands.”

It was difficult enough to stop the circulation of the Wycliffe Bible, when it required months to finish a single copy. But what could be done about Tyndale’s translation? These books were pouring into the country in great numbers because they were coming off the printing press at the rate of a hundred a day, and at a price within the reach of many.

The Bishop of London hit upon what he thought was an excellent plan to put a stop to this plague. He contacted a man by the name of Augustine Pakington, a merchant trading between England and Antwerp, and asked what he thought of the possibility of buying up all of Tyndale’s copies of the Bible, bringing them to England, with the secret intention of burning them. Pakington was a friend of Tyndale’s and sympathetic with what he was doing, so he quickly agreed with the bishop, saying:

“My lord, if it be your pleasure, I could do in this matter probably more than any merchant in England, so if it be your lordship’s pleasure to pay for them—for I must disburse money for them—I will insure you to have every book that remains unsold.” The bishop agreed to this, thinking, as one humorous writer of the time said, “that he hadde God by the toe, whenne in truthe he hadde, as after he thought, the devil by the fiste.”

What happened is this: Tyndale accepted the offer, charged a good price for the Bibles he had on hand, and with the money paid his debts and then published a much larger and better edition. Hence the bishop’s plan acted as a boomerang, and Tyndale’s Bible continued to pour into England.

Poverty, distress, and misrepresentations were Tyndale’s constant lot. Prison and death were ever staring him in the face. Finally, in October 1536 he was strangled at the stake and then burned to ashes, fervently praying with his last words, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” After this, various translations appear such as the Coverdale Bible, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, and others. There was also published in 1568 the Bishop’s Bible. And then, in January 1604, at a conference of bishops and clergymen held in the drawing rooms of Hampton Court Palace, the first suggestions were made which led to the revision of versions then in use. This, in turn, led to our authorized King James Version in 1611. To prepare this translation, forty seven learned men from Oxford, Cambridge, and London were selected as impartially as possible from high churchmen and Puritans, as well as from those who represented scholarship totally unconnected with any party. King James I authorized that the cooperation of every Bible scholar of note in the entire kingdom should be secured. Excellent rules were adopted to govern the work of translating. Never before had such labor and care been expended upon translating the English Bible. The language of the King James Version follows closely the pattern of that used by Tyndale in his translation. Revised and improved by a committee of such excellent scholars, it has stood the test of more than four hundred years of popular use.

Since the publishing of the King James Version of the Bible, many other translations have appeared for the use of students of the Bible. In addition to the first official revision of the King James Version starting in 1881 in both England and the U.S.A., we have seen such translations as Weymouth, Moffatt, Wilson’s Emphatic Diaglott, as well as study Bibles such as Scofield’s, the Thompson Chain Reference Bible, and Bullinger’s Companion Bible. All of these have their merits, but none of them is any more than a translation. All translations thus far made have one thing in common, which is that they reflect more or less the theological view- points of their translators.