As we continue our series on apologetics, these last four classes will be about how we got the English Bible. We will talk a bit about how the Bible itself came to be, but we will focus on the early English translations of the Bible for most of this study. The story of the English translation of the Bible is a fascinating history by itself, but it illustrates in grand detail the danger of turning away from God’s design for the church.

What I hope you will take away from this study:

We will be covering a significant amount of history but try to stay on the narrow track of the important parts of history that resulted in the English Bibles we have today.

I have two primary resources for this class:

I welcome your comments and questions!

The Bible as we know it today is a set of 66 books, written by various men over a period of roughly 1500 years. The word Bible comes from a word that means “book” in both Latin and Greek. As of 2006, over 4 billion Bibles have been printed in 2400+ languages.

In the beginning, writings were on stone, clay, and papyrus. Scrolls were used up to about the First Century A.D., then codices were used. (A codex is a book.) Papyrus came from the Nile delta. Paper as we know it today was developed in China in roughly 300 B.C. but was not common in Western Europe until the First or Second Century A.D. Papyrus supply eventually could not keep up and parchment and vellum became more common. Paper was not common until 12 Century A.D.

The Wycliffe Bible that we will study about was inscribed by hand on parchment or vellum. Production time was 10 months to 2 years. The cost was a laborer’s annual wage!

These books were inspired by God but written by human hands. God gave these men the words to write. Men chosen by God to be prophets were given the words they needed to speak at the time they were needed. Notice how God sent Moses to be His mouthpiece to the Israelites:

Exodus 4:11–16 (NASB95)

11 The Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes him mute or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?

The New Testament echoes the same kind of language:

Hebrews 1:1–2 (NASB95)

1 God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways,

1 Corinthians 2:11–13 (NASB95)

11 For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.

Ephesians 3:1–5 (NASB95)

1 For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles—

*A deuterocanonical/apocryphal book

The Old Testament books were written in Hebrew with some Aramaic. The New Testament books were written in Greek.

All the books of the Bible started as separate texts, but they came to be part of collections:

It was not until the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in A. D. 70 that the Old Testament was put together in its current form.

So how do we know that the books of the Old Testament should be in the Old Testament?

By the time of Christ, the canon of the Old Testament was firm and fixed. Jesus and the apostles quoted regularly from “Scripture.” Two examples:

Luke 24:44 (NASB95)

44 Now He said to them, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”

The three divisions of scripture Jesus mentions line up exactly with the Jewish division of the Old Testament: Law of Moses, Prophets, and Psalms.

Luke 11:49–51 (NASB95)

49 “For this reason also the wisdom of God said, ‘I will send to them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will kill and some they will persecute,

Here Jesus indirectly refers to the totality of the Old Testament as it was arranged by the Jews – from Abel (Genesis) to the death of Zechariah (II Chronicles 24:20-21), which comes at the end of the Hebrew Bible.

So, what about the New Testament? How do we know we have the right books?

First of all, we know we can trust what Jesus Himself said and the people He sent out to bear His message. The people of the first century were in an excellent position to judge the authenticity of the writings as they were copied and spread between churches and individual Christians.

The early churches were unanimous in accepting the 27 books of the New Testament as divinely inspired. We can also see that these books harmonize with each other, with the Old Testament, and with recorded secular history.

So, what about the Apocryphal books or Deuterocanonical books? These are currently included in Catholic Bibles.

These books were almost all written before the New Testament, but Jews of that time never considered them to be canonical. Jesus and his disciples also never quoted from them or referenced them, even though the rest of the Old Testament was quoted heavily.

These books also disagree with each other, recorded history, and the rest of the Old Testament. For example, in the book of Judith, Nebuchadnezzar is said to have ruled over the Assyrian empire from the city of Ninevah, when he was actually the King of Babylonia, ruling from Babylon.

It is for these reasons that these books are not included in the 66 books of the Bible.

In the 3rd century B. C. 72 scholars (6 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel) were sent by the high priest in Jerusalem to Alexandria by request of King Ptolemy II Philadelphus. He wanted to include a copy of the Torah in Greek in his great library there. The scholars completed the translation in 72 days (according to tradition). Other Old Testament books were later translated, along with the 14 books of the Apocrypha. and the whole work became known as the Septuagint (p. 14).

The Septuagint was the Bible of the first apostles and was used by the early church. Because Christians adopted it as their own and used it in debates against Jews, the Jews tried to argue it was an imperfect translation.

In the 2nd century A.D., the New Testament began to take shape. It was not until the middle of the 4th century A.D., that the canon of the NT was established.

Also, in the 2nd century A.D. an “Old Latin” translation of the Bible was made directly from the Greek by an unknown group. It came to be used as scripture by the Latin-speaking churches of North Africa, Italy, Spain, and Gaul.

Alongside this, the Catholic church began to take shape. Early Christians were very loosely organized as independent local churches as we read in the New Testament. But by the end of the second century, a more structured hierarchy developed with a central bishop having authority over the clergy in a city. The hierarchy started to mimic the structure of the Roman empire. The churches in some regions began to have more influence than others and by the 2nd and 3rd centuries, bishops were meeting in regional synods to resolve doctrinal issues. The bishop of Rome began to act as a court of appeals for problems that other bishops could not resolve.

Revelation 1:4–6 (NASB95)

4 John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace, from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne,

Hebrews 7:23–28 (NASB95)

23 The former priests, on the one hand, existed in greater numbers because they were prevented by death from continuing,

1 Timothy 4:1–3 (NASB95)

1 But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons,

Over time, various theological leaders such as Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and Augustine of Hippo defined Catholic teaching.

When Constantine became Emperor of Rome, he worried that disunity among Christians would displease God, so he took steps to eliminate some sects of Christianity. He also called ecumenical councils to determine binding interpretations of church doctrine.

In 380, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, which caused Christians outside the Empire to be persecuted. Other countries feared that Christians would revolt in favor of the emperor.

The church now had legal authority for capital punishment, resulting in the first use of capital punishment on a heretic in 385.

By the middle of the 4th century, several variants were circulating. The Church authority saw this as corruption of the text and thus intolerable.

In 382 A. D., Pope Damasus invited Eusebius Hieronymus (later known as St. Jerome) to revise it. Jerome was a good choice as he was an outstanding biblical scholar and knew both Hebrew and Chaldee.

At first, he made edits to the gospels and Psalms. followed by several other books. In 391, he decided to abandon this and translated directly from the original languages. In 405, he came out with a Latin translation of the full Bible. The translation was not immediately accepted by the church. Some said it was “tainted with Judaism” while others adhered to the older Greek and Latin versions due to their “halo of sanctity.” This exasperated Jerome and even at his death in 420, it was still not fully accepted. (p. 15)

By the early 7th century, it was in general use by churches throughout the west.

So, with all of that foundation laid, we now look at what was happening in Britain.

According to tradition, Christian missionaries first arrived in Britain not long after the Crucifixion. They settled as hermits at Glastonbury in Somersetshire, where they built a church of wattles (fence posts and twigs), dedicated to the Virgin Mary. For a while they lived in caves at the foot of Tor hill.

Tradition says were 12 in number and sent by Philip, coming in by way of Wales. Supposedly were led by Joseph of Arimathea. (Josephs’ story became more fantastical in Sir Thomas Mallory’s Morte D’ Arthur, in which he was the custodian of the Holy Grail (the chalice Christ drank from at the Last Supper and which was used to catch and preserve the blood flowing from Christ’s wounds).)

The church at Glastonbury was even older than the one at Rome, which gave some challenge to Roman claims. Christians were initially all through the British Isles until Germanic invaders pushed them west so only Ireland and Wales were primarily Christian (400s-500s AD).

In the spring of 597, Augustine of Canterbury landed on the Isle of Thanet with forty monks on a mission from Pope Gregory the Great. King Ethelbert of Kent received him and promised not to interfere. Thousands were reportedly baptized by Augustine himself on Christmas Day. Then a second wave of missionaries arrived. In 602, Augustine founded Christ Church, Canterbury as his episcopal see.

Augustine learned of the other Christians on the island and met with them in the interests of “Catholic unity,” which went bad quickly. Their worship practices did not line up, and apparently even worse, the two church calendars did not line up. The British wouldn’t budge, but Augustine saw himself as their spiritual overlord and insisted they conform with Latin norms. This devolved into threats from the Catholics. The two church missions were joined by the Synod of Whitby in 664, incorporating Britain into the Holy Roman Catholic Church. A succession of popes then increasingly centralized HRCC authority and setup the complex hierarchical structure it has now, finally resulting in the papal monarchy as stated by Pope Gregory VI in the 11th century (see p. 23). Pope Innocent II adopted the title “Vicar of Christ.” and made himself the arbiter of the affairs of Europe. The HRCC represented order and stability during a time when there was chaos and lawlessness in the feudal system. But the HRCC began to decay from within and by the middle of the 14th century, papal authority had declined (p.24).

Now we must introduce a man named John Wycliffe: