Several years ago, my wife and I were passing out fliers for a summer Vacation Bible School at our church when we came across a house with an entire family in the front yard.  The mother and father were sitting in lawn chairs.  The children were playing chase or some kind of game involving tag.  And we thought, “Jackpot!  This is exactly what we are looking for.  Parents!  Children!  The whole family just sitting out in the front yard waiting for us!  Surely they will want to hear about our Vacation Bible School.”  So we proceeded to hand them a flier and talk to them about the programs we were offering.

And somewhere in the middle of our sales pitch, the father said something that completely shocked us.  He said, “Well, I appreciate all of that but we can’t come to your church because you don’t preach from the real Bible.  Your church doesn’t preach from the King James Version.”

Before I could get a word in, he proceeded to say things like, “Your Bible doesn’t talk about the blood.”  “Your Bible has errors in it.”  “Your Bible leaves things out.”  “Your Bible is incomplete.”  “So we can’t come to your church because you don’t preach from the right Bible.”  “You don’t preach from the KJV.”1

Conversations like this one are common in Christian circles today and with the enormous amount of Bible translations floating around, it is easy to understand why.   According to the American Bible Society, there are close to 900 translations of the Bible available today.2  To put that in perspective, there are 196 nations in the world.  So there are four times as many translations of the Bible as there are sovereign, independent countries on our planet.3

To give you just a small sampling of the English Bible translations out there, there is the King James Version, the New King James Version, the New American Bible, the New American Standard Bible, the English Standard Version, the New International Version, the Revised Standard Version, the Holman Christian Standard Bible, the New English Translation, the Philips Modern English Bible, the Living Bible, the Good News Bible, the Jerusalem Bible, the Contemporary English Version, the New English Translation, the Message, and the New Living Translation.  And there are Study Bibles and Bible Commentaries and Bibles On-Line and Bible websites.  And there are Bible Reading Calendars and Bible Memorization Techniques and Bible Study Guides.  And there are books on the history of the Bible and books on the interpretation of the Bible and books on the people mentioned in the Bible.  Bible, Bible, Bible, Bible!  There are more Bible resources available to us today than at any other time in the history of the world.

And it all raises the question, why do we have so many translations?  Is it really necessary?  Would one not suffice?  And  are the different translations a help or a hindrance?  Is there a reason they are translated differently?

To answer these questions, this Frequently Asked Question will look at two aspects of Bible translation.

I. THE HISTORY OF BIBLE TRANSLATION

To summarize the history, we are going to examine four ages of Bible translation.4

1. The Patristic Age

In Old Testament language, the “patriarchs” refers to the fathers of the Jews: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.5  In New Testament Language, the “patriarchs” refers to the fathers of the church.  It refers to the men who set the direction for the church after the First Century.

The Patristic Age lasted from around A. D. 90 until A. D. 312.6  In A. D. 90, John, the last of the Apostles, died7 and in A. D. 313, the Roman Emperor Constantine issued his Edict of Milan8 which made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.  Before this edict, Christians were brutally persecuted and put to death for their faith.  In fact, all 12 of Jesus’ apostles were martyred except for John who died on a prison island.9

So the age of the Patristic Fathers was an age of persecution and tough times for the early church.  The church grew but it grew under extreme difficulties.  As Tertullian once put it, “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.”  The death of the Lord’s saints was the seed from which the early church grew into a mighty oak tree.

I will focus on just one man during each age of Bible translation (except for the Age of Reformation) but there were several Patristic Fathers that have become familiar to us today.  Men like Polycarp, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Justin Martyr, Eusibius, and Clement of Alexandria are still talked about and discussed today.  These Godly scholars and pastors took over leadership of the early church after the last Apostle died.

One name that should be remembered from the Patristic Age is that of Origen.10  Origen lived in the latter half of the 2^nd Century and the first half of the 3^rd Century and was a bit of an eccentric.  His father was a martyr and his mother hid his clothes when he was twelve years old so that he would not become a martyr himself.  As a young man, he wanted to die for Christ like his father did but his mother took all of his clothes away to keep him from achieving his lofty goal.

Origen also made himself a eunuch in his latter teens.  After reading Matthew 5:30, which says,

If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell.

Origen took the passage literally and castrated himself.

Not only was Origen eccentric, he was also a genius.  He took over leadership of the Christian school at Alexandria, Egypt (an early Seminary of sorts) when he was 18 and he wrote hundreds upon hundreds of books.  One historian said that

Origen was an uncommonly prolific author, but by no means an idle bookmaker.  Jerome says, he wrote more than other men can read.  Epiphanius, an opponent, states the number of his works as six thousand, which is perhaps not much beyond the mark, if we include all his short tracts, homilies, and letters, and count them as separate volumes.11

But when it comes to Bible translation, Origen should be best remembered for his Hexapla. “Hex” is the Greek word for “six” and the Hexapla placed six different translations of the Old Testament side-by-side.  One translation/column was the original Hebrew.  A second column was Origen’s Greek translation of the Old Testament.  And the next four columns were other Greek translations such as the Septuagint, the translation of Aquila, the translation of Symmachus, and the translation of Theodotion.  The Hexapla was important because scholars after Origen used it as a guide to help them in their work.

2. The Age of Christendom

“Christendom” refers to the time when the church and the state became one entity.12  There is “Christianity” where the church submits to the governing authority of the state.13  And there is “Christendom” where the church rules the state and the state acts as an enforcing arm of the church.

With the arrival of the Age of Christendom, heretics were no longer church disciplined, they were now executed.  Pastoral offices ceased to be religious in nature, they now became political in nature.  The way to get ahead in the church was no longer with Godly character and religious service; it was now with bribery and extortion and getting in with the right people.  As Justo Gonzalez wrote in The Story of Christianity,

Whatever the case may be, there is no doubt that the conversion of Constantine had enormous consequences for Christianity, which was forced to face new questions. What would happen when those who called themselves servants of a carpenter, and whose great heroes were fisher folk, slaves, and criminals condemned to death by the state, suddenly saw themselves surrounded by imperial pomp and power? Would they remain firm in their faith? Or would it be that those who had stood before tortures and before beasts would give way to temptations of an easy life and of social prestige?14

The Age of Christendom lasted from A. D. 313 until A. D. 590.15  It lasted from the time when Constantine gave the Edict of Milan until 590 when Gregory the Great became the first official leader or Pope of the Holy Roman Empire.16  There were Popes before Gregory and there were leaders of Christendom before him, but Gregory was the first to hold both offices at the same time.  He ruled the church and the state.

The name you will want to remember from the Age of Christendom is Jerome.17  Like Origen, Jerome was raised by Christian parents who had him educated by some of the best teachers in Rome.  By the age of 19, he had mastered Greek and Latin.  And, by his early 30’s, he had conquered Hebrew.  Jerome was so smart that, according to Augustine, he knew everything.  In his own words, Jerome always sought in his studying “To read the ancients, to test everything, to hold fast the good, and never to depart from the catholic faith.”18

In order to pursue the life of a monk and to be left alone to study, in mid-life Jerome moved to Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus.  While there, he was commissioned by the Pope to translate the Bible into the “vulgar” or common tongue of the people, which was Latin at the time.  And so he did.  Jerome’s translation of the Bible is known as the Latin Vulgate.19

The Latin Vulgate would become the favored translation of the Roman Catholic Church and the standard translation of Christendom for the next 1,000 years.  Until the early Reformers began to translate the Bible into English and German and French, the Vulgate was the primary Bible used by the church for the next ten centuries.

The Latin Vulgate is not a bad rendering of the Bible, although Jerome included the Old Testament Apocrypha and translated some verses incorrectly at the insistence of the Pope.  In the words of New Testament Scholar, F. F. Bruce,

Perhaps [Jerome] thought it politic to please [the Pope], as he had some hopes of succeeding him in the Roman see.  The work of translation and revision was not easy.  He was told to be cautious for the sake of “weaker brethren” who did not like to see their favorite texts tampered with, even in the interests of greater accuracy.  Even so, he went much too far for the taste of many, while he himself knew that he was not going far enough.20

The reason the Roman Catholic Church today believes that some of the Old Testament Apocrypha is inspired is because of the Latin Vulgate. Also, the reason Roman Catholic services were held in Latin until just a few decades ago is because of this translation of the Bible.

3. The Middle Ages

The best description I have ever heard of the Middle Ages is 1,000 years without a bath.21  During this time, all of Europe was immersed in ignorance and poverty while the Roman Catholic Church enjoyed total and absolute power.  The people starved and lived in ignorance while the priests and the Popes lived in wealth and held the key to learning in their monasteries and universities.  The Middle Ages were a terrible time in human history.

This period lasted from A. D. 590 until A. D. 1517.22  The term “Middle Ages” or “Dark Ages,” as they are often called, refers to the 927 years from the election of Pope Gregory the Great until Martin Luther’s act of nailing the 95 thesis to the door of his church in Wittenburg, Germany.  As we will see in a moment, it was the Protestant Reformation that brought Europe out of the Dark Ages as learning and power were again placed into the hands of the people.

As evidence of the darkness of the Middle Ages, for 1,000 years, Bible translations were almost non-existent.  Bible copying occurred in the monasteries but Bible translation was prohibited as the Roman Catholic Church ruled that the Latin Vulgate was the only legitimate translation of the Bible.  Interestingly enough, this ruling was made despite the fact that ordinary men and women did not speak Latin.

But there were a few people who tried to change all of that.  One of them was Desiderius Erasmus.23  Erasmus was a Catholic monk who was widely acclaimed for his learning.  He wrote books that sold in the thousands in an age when very few could read and write.  One of his books, The Praise of Folly, was so popular that it went through 600 different editions after his death.  Concerning Erasmus’ influential scholarship, Philip Schaff says that,

Erasmus was the prince of Humanists and the most influential and useful scholar of his age.  He ruled with undisputed sway as monarch in the realm of letters.  He combined brilliant genius with classical and biblical learning, keen wit and elegant taste.  He rarely wrote a dull line.  His extensive travels made him a man of the world, a genuine cosmopolitan, and he stood in correspondence with scholars of all countries who consulted him as an oracle.  His books had the popularity and circulation of modern novels.24

Not only was Erasmus a great scholar but he was also a Bible translator.  Even though he was not a converted man, Erasmus believed that the Bible was the Word of God.  And he believed that it was inspired in its original Greek and Hebrew, not in Latin, and that the people had a right to read the Bible for themselves.  So Desiderius Erasmus published a translation of the Bible with the Greek text placed alongside the Latin text so other scholars could read Latin right alongside the Greek New Testament.  This translation was called Novum Instrumentum or “New Instrument.”25

This seems like a pretty unimpressive thing to do but, at the time, it was revolutionary.  For one thing, Novum Instrumentum was the first Greek New Testament ever printed on a printing press.  For another thing, in completing this translation, Erasmus sent a message to the Roman Catholic Church that he believed that the Latin Vulgate was not the only legitimate translation of the Word of God but that the original Word of God was written in Greek and Hebrew.  In fact, in the preface to Novum Instrumentum, Erasmus dedicated his work to his patron Archbishop Warham instead of to Pope Leo.   Erasmus could have been burnt at the stake for such an insolent act.

Before we move on to the next age of Bible translation, it is helpful to mention that Novum Instrumentum was the translation the Protestant Reformers used in their translations of the Bible.  The King James Bible, the Geneva Bible, and Martin Luther’s German Bible were all based off of Erasmus’ “New Instrument.”

4. The Age of Reformation

If the Middle Ages was 1,000 years without a bath, the Protestant Reformation was a long-awaited bath.26  One cry of the Reformers in Geneva was “Post tenebras lux!” which meant “After darkness light!” and that was exactly what the Protestant Reformation was: an age of light after an age of darkness.

During this period of history, men and women broke away from the tyranny of the Roman Catholic Church.  Monks left their monasteries.  Nuns left their nunneries.  Priests came to saving faith in Christ and began to preach the Word of God in a language that people could understand.  Whole countries shook off the yoke of Rome and their people began to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth27 for the first time since the Roman Empire.  It was an age of learning, it was an Age of Reformation, and it was an age of Bible translation.

The Protestant Reformation lasted from A. D. 1517 until A. D. 164828 when the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason began to set in.  But, in some ways, the Age of Reformation is still with us today.  Many of the principles that were near and dear to the Reformers are near and dear to the hearts of Christians in the 21^st Century.  Sola Gratia – by Grace Alone; Sola Fide – by Faith Alone; Solas Christus – in Christ Alone; Sola Scriptura – by Scripture Alone; and Soli Deo Gloria – Glory to God Alone29 are all tenets that churches adhere to in the present day.  So, in some small way, we are still living in the Age of Reformation.

The case could be made that the Protestant Reformation happened because people went back to the Bible as their first authority instead of to the church.  The Roman Catholic Church said that the church had the right to interpret the Bible for the people and that the people did not have the right to interpret the Bible for themselves.  The Protestant Reformers said just the opposite.  They said that the people had the right to interpret the Bible for themselves and that the church did not have the right to interpret it in their place.  And, with that in mind, the Reformers taught their people the Word of God.  They translated the Bible into the common or “vulgar” language of the people.

And, because of that, several versions of the Bible were published during the years 1517 to 1648.  The Bible was translated into German, English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese to name a few.  For the sake of time, we will not be able to look at all of these translations but will focus on the English.

There were seven English Bibles printed during the Age of Reformation.30  Some of them contained the Old and New Testaments.  Some of them contained only one Testament.  And some contained both Testaments along with notes (the first English Study Bibles).  Here are all seven in chronological order:

The Tyndale Bible / Tyndale New Testament

The Coverdale Bible

The Matthew-Tyndale Bible

The Great Bible

The Geneva Bible31

The Bishop’s Bible

The King James Bible

Concerning the English translators themselves, two names are worth remembering.  The first is that of John Wycliffe.  Wycliffe was an Oxford scholar and the first major figure in the Age of Reformation.  In fact, this early Protestant was so influential in his ministry and such an irritation to the Roman Catholic Church that, after he died of natural causes, the Pope ordered that his body be dug up and burned and his ashes scattered over the Thames River in London.

But, when it concerns Bible translation, John Wycliffe should be remembered for being the first scholar to translate the original Greek and the Hebrew into English.  He did not translate the entire Bible or even an entire book of the Bible.  But Wycliffe did start the idea of English translation and should be remembered for that.

The second name to be remembered in the Age of Reformation is that of Myles Coverdale.  Coverdale was a friend of William Tyndale, the first scholar to translate the entire New Testament into English.  After the death of Tyndale, Myles Coverdale translated the Old Testament, placed it alongside Tyndale’s New Testament, and published the first complete Bible in the English language: the Coverdale Bible (named after its author/editor).

The Coverdale Bible was a marvelous team effort.  As the story goes, Tyndale was caught by the Roman Catholic authorities and burnt at the stake.  But Coverdale picked up where he left off and gave us our first English Bible.

II. THE APPROACH TO BIBLE TRANSLATION

During the Protestant Reformation, English Bibles were printed illegally and under the threat of death so there was not much variety to them.  Every translation was done with a similar flavor or style to it.  But, once the threat of death was lifted, all sorts of translations came on the scene.  As mentioned earlier, there are now something like 900 translations available to the public.32

And the reason for this huge number of translations, particularly in English, is the “approach” of the translators.  It is very common for modern translators to strive for uniqueness or originality in their work, which is something the early translators tried to avoid.  Most contemporary scholars want to stand out and be original.  Most ancient scholars wanted to mimic what was done before them.

To say all of this another way, the difference in approach has lead to the difference in translation.  The different goals of the translators have led to the enormous variety that we see in our Christian bookstores.  And to understand this a little better, here are the two basic approaches to Bible translation.

1. The Formal Equivalence Approach

The Formal Equivalence Approach seeks to translate the word of the text over the thought of the text.  In this approach, the translators attempt to take no creative liberties with the portion of Scripture under consideration.  In other words, Formal Equivalence translators strive for a literal word-for-word representation of each and every passage in the Bible.

With this approach, scholars try to leave their own summaries or thoughts out of their work and give the meaning of each word as accurately as possible.  In doing so, they want to let the reader interpret the Word of God for himself.  They just want to present the Word of God as it stands on its own.

Formal Equivalence proponents translate this way because they believe that every word in the Bible is inspired.33  In their thinking, to leave one word out of a translation or to add one word to a translation is to violate the inspiration of the Bible and, therefore, the proponents are not striving for the “gist” of what the author said.  Instead, they are striving for the “word” that the author said.  They are not primarily interested in the paragraphs or in the sets of sentences.  They are primarily interested in words.

Formal Equivalence is a “literal,” sometimes almost “wooden” translation.  In the words of Robert L. Thomas,

A formal-equivalence translation concerns itself primarily with accuracy or faithfulness to the original text.  In both form and content it focuses attention on the original text being translated.  It seeks as close a match as possible between the elements of the [English] and those of the [Greek and Hebrew].  Its reader can thus identify himself as fully as possible with someone in the [Greek and Hebrew] context and more fully comprehend the customs, manner of thought, and means of expression connected with the original setting.

To accomplish this goal, the literal translation preserves as much of the [Greek and Hebrew] grammatical structures and word usages as the boundaries of proper English will allow.  Bible translations in the Tyndale tradition are of this type, but they are not the only literal translations.34

This is the approach that the early church used.  In fact, up until the last hundred years or so, no translator used any approach but Formal Equivalence.  And, because of this, there was no need for a large number of translations to be published.  There is no call for originality when everyone is translating the same book into the same language with the same literal approach.

Examples of Formal Equivalent translation include the American Standard Version (ASV), the King James Version (KJV), the New King James Version (NKJV), the New American Standard Bible (NASB), the English Standard Version (ESV), the New American Bible (NAB), the Revised Standard Version (RSV), the Modern Language Bible (MLB), and the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB).  On the better end of Formal Equivalence would be the ESV and the NKJV and the NASB.  On the worse end of Formal Equivalence would be the KJV simply because it is outdated.  Published in 1611, the English of the King James Version is no longer in use today, making it difficult to understand.35

The danger of Formal Equivalence is that it can be hard to read.  Because it focuses on individual words instead of on paragraphs or contexts, the English used in Formal Equivalence translations can sound a little strange.  One reason for this is that some Greek and Hebrew words cannot be translated into one English word.36  Sometimes it takes two or three English words to translate one Greek or Hebrew word and, when that happens, it throws the Formal Equivalence approach off.

The benefit of Formal Equivalence is that it tries to help the reader interpret the Bible for himself.  Its goal is to let the Word of God speak on its own without any outside interference and that is very helpful when you want accuracy.  Formal Equivalence translators attempt to leave their own ideas out of the translation which helps to make a more objective rendering of the text.  Because of this objective approach, Formal Equivalence translations are best to use for deep study.

2. The Dynamic-Equivalence Approach

The Dynamic-Equivalent approach seeks to translate the thought of the text over the word of the text.  The translators take a lot of liberties and, therefore, their approach is called “dynamic” as opposed to “formal.”  In other words, Dynamic Equivalence scholars are not going for a word-for-word translation of each passage, instead they are  communicating the thought or the idea of each passage.  They are striving to get across the “gist” of what the author said.

To do this, proponents of Dynamic-Equivalence paraphrase or reword passages so that a modern audience can better understand them.  They also tend to translate paragraphs or groups of sentences as opposed to individual words.  Furthermore, they do not aim for accuracy with the words of Scripture because they are going for an abridged translation, not a literal one.

Dynamic-Equivalent translators work this way because they think that the original languages are too difficult for a modern audience to understand if they are communicated verbatim.37  In their thinking, there are too many idioms and expressions in the original language that do not translate well into our modern language, so the English translation needs a little bit of help.  It needs to be touched up and reworded to sound more contemporary.

In other words, Dynamic-Equivalence is a summary translation.  To quote again from Robert Thomas in his book, How to Choose a Bible Version,

The chief concern of the dynamic-equivalence approach is readability.  This philosophy centers on conveying the thought of the original languages to the reader with the greatest possible clarity and gives little or no attention to obtaining a word-for-word correspondence between the original and the translation.  It focuses rather on obtaining a correspondence of ideas between the two languages.

The important consideration here is to produce an effect on the reader in the [English] equivalent to what was produced on the original recipients of the message in the [Greek and Hebrew].  If a free translation evokes the same response from its readers as the original did on the readers when the book was first circulated, it has accomplished its purpose.  Most late-twentieth-century Bible translations are of this type.38

This approach to Bible translation is very new in church history and is the reason why so many translations have recently appeared on the scene.  If everyone is trying to interpret the Bible literally, then there is no need for a large number of English Bible translations to be published.  But, on the other hand, if everyone is trying make the Bible more “contemporary” and “readable” (however they define “contemporary” and “readable”), then there is no end to the number of versions that will be published.

Examples of Dynamic-Equivalent translations include the New International Version (NIV), the New English Translation (NET Bible), the Good News Bible (GNB), the Contemporary English Version (CEV), The Living Bible (TLB), the New Living Translation (NLT), the Jerusalem Bible (JB), the Message, and Philips Modern English Bible.  On the better end of the Dynamic Equivalence translations would be the NIV and the NET Bible.  On the worse end would be the Message or the Living Bible.

The worst example of this approach would probably be The Cotton Patch Version by Clarence Jordan.  In this English translation, Annas and Caiaphas are co-presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention and Jesus Christ is born in Gainsville, Georgia and lynched rather than crucified.39  But most Dynamic Equivalent translations are nowhere near as cavalier and loose with the text as that.

The danger of Dynamic Equivalent translations is that they seem to be more of an interpretation than a translation.  In fact, with this approach the translator often becomes the interpreter.  Instead of telling you what the author said, proponents of Dynamic Equivalence often tell you what they think the author said.  They do not offer an English version of the Greek and Hebrew, so much as they offer their own version of the Greek and Hebrew, which is why this approach to Bible translation can be very dangerous.  It does not have to but it can substitute the word of men for the Word of God.

The benefit of Dynamic Equivalence translations is that they are usually easier to read than Formal Equivalence translations.  Because whole sections and paragraphs are given priority in translation above individual words, the text seems to flow better.  Many Bible readers have commented on the nice, fluid rendering of translations like the NIV or the NET Bible over against the NASB or RSV.  This is not to imply that one translation is better than the other, only that the difference in approach has led to different strengths for the various translations.

CONCLUSION

The great theologian B. B. Warfield once said, “The Bible is the Word of God in such a way that when the Bible speaks, God speaks.”40  Because of this, it is to our benefit that we have so many Bible translations to help us hear God speak to us.  In fact, not only do we have a multitude of translations but, when it comes to the Bible, we have a multitude of Study Bibles, Bible Commentaries, and books on the Bible as well.  No Christian in America can say that he cannot hear God speak to him because he lacks resources.

Of course, the dilemma with all of this is that some of the Bible translations, Study Bibles, Commentaries, and books on the Bible are more of a hindrance than a help.  To be perfectly honest, some should never have been printed in the first place.  Far too often, the word of men has been substituted for the Word of God.  So how can we discern which is which?  How can we separate the good resources from the bad ones?  How can we tell when God is speaking to us and when men are speaking to us?

Hopefully this article will help point you in the right direction.  Be aware and beware of the differences in Bible translation.  And be aware and beware of the reason for those differences.  Look for translations that read well but strive to keep the translators out of the picture.  And remember the history of how the Word of God has come to us.  Remember that men have bled and died for what we hold in our hands today.  Strive to read the text properly so that you can “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints” (Jude 3).

1. It is not the time or the place here to go into a discussion of the King James Only debate but an excellent resource on that subject is James White’s The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust the Modern Translations? (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1995). [↩]
2. record.americanbible.org/content/bible-qa/number-english-translations-bible as of 8/1/11. [↩]
3. www.geography.about.com/cs/countries/a/numbercountries.htm as of 8/1/11. [↩]
4. These four ages are loosely taken from Bruce Shelley’s Church History in Plain Language, Third Edition (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, 2008).  In Shelley’s book, the ages are “The Age of Catholic Christianity,” “The Age of the Christian Roman Empire,” “The Christian Middle Ages,” and “The Age of the Reformation.” [↩]
5. Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Dictionary, ed. by Ronald F. Youngblood (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1995 ed.) 950-951. [↩]
6. Shelley, ix. [↩]
7. John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1997) 1989. [↩]
8. Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, Volume 1 (San Francisco, Cal.: Harper Collins Publishers, 1984) 107-108. [↩]
9. For more information concerning the martyrdom of the 12 apostles, see John Foxe’s Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, ed. by W. Grinton Berry (Grand Rapids: Baker Books House, 2003 ed.) 1-17. [↩]
10. The following information regarding Origen and his Hexapla is taken from Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church, Volume 2, 785-799. [↩]
11. Ibid., 793. [↩]
12. Millard J. Erickson, The Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2001 ed.).  Erickson provides a different definition for “Christendom.”  He defines it as “The realm of Christianity; that is, the peoples among whom and the lands in which Christianity is the dominant religion” (33). [↩]
13. Rom 13:1 [↩]
14. Gonzalez, 108. [↩]
15. Shelley, x. [↩]
16. The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. by J. D. Douglas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1978) 432. [↩]
17. The following information regarding Jerome is taken from Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church, Volume 3, 205-213, 611, 967-987. [↩]
18. Quoted in History of the Christian Church, Volume 3, 968. [↩]
19. The following information concerning the Latin Vulgate is taken from F. F. Bruce’s The Books and the Parchments: How We Got Our English Bible, Revised and Updated (Old Tappan, N. J.: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1984) 191-202. [↩]
20. Bruce, 195. [↩]
21. The following information regarding the Middle Ages is taken from Justo Gonzalez’s The Story of Christianity, Volume 1, 222-375. [↩]
22. Shelley, x. [↩]
23. The following information regarding Desiderius Erasmus is taken from Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church, Volume 6, 625-641. [↩]
24. Ibid., 635-646. [↩]
25. The following information regarding Novum Instrumentum is taken from J. Kelley Sowards’ Desiderius Erasmus (Boston, Mass.: Twayne Publishers, 1975) 57-76. [↩]
26. The following information regarding the Age of Reformation is taken from Justo Gonzalez’s The Story of Christianity, Volume 2, 6-125. [↩]
27. Jn 4:21-24. [↩]
28. Shelley, xi. [↩]
29. Stanley J. Grenz, David Guretzki, & Cherith Fee Nordling, Pocket Dictionary of Theological terms (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1999) 108. [↩]
30. The information concerning the translation of the Bible into English is taken from www.greatsite.com as of 8/1/11. [↩]
31. The Geneva Bible is the Bible that the pilgrims took with them to America. [↩]
32. See footnote 2. [↩]
33. Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms, 66.  Inspiration is “A term used by many theologians to designate the work of the Holy Spirit in enabling the human authors of the Bible to record what God desired to have written in the Scriptures.” [↩]
34. How to Choose a Bible Version, Revised Edition (Ross-shire, G. B.: Mentor, 2000) 90. [↩]
35. Ibid., 96. [↩]
36. G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (New York: T & T Clark, 2001 ed.) 205.  The Greek word for “inspired by God” in Second Timothy 3:16 is theoneustos.  It can mean “inspired by God” but it literally translates “God-breathed” or “breathed out by God.”  Theoneustos is actually a compound word in Greek that comes from theos (“God”) and neustos (“Spirit”).  In saying that “all Scripture is inspired by God,” Paul is saying that all Scripture contains the Spirit of God in it – it is God-breathed.  The NASB translates it as “inspired by God” with its literal one word approach and the NIV translates it “God-breathed” with more of a dynamic paraphrase approach. [↩]
37. For a discussion of the clarity of Scripture, see the FAQ “How Do We Interpret the Bible.”  It is the conviction of this author and those at /jtst/ that the Scripture is clear and does not need to be paraphrased or reworded up by a translator in order to be understood. [↩]
38. Thomas, 89-90. [↩]
39. Ibid., 175. [↩]
40. Quoted in Howard G. Hendricks & William D. Hendricks’ Living by the Book (Chicago: Moody Press, 1991) 24. [↩]