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Building Background

The Bible Although most people think of the Bible as a single book, it is actually a collection of books. The word Bible comes from the Greek words ta biblia, meaning “the little books.” As a matter of fact, there are at least two Bibles. The Hebrew Bible contains the scriptures Jewish religious authorities consider holy. The Christian Bible contains some of these same scriptures in the “Old Testament,” as well as 27 additional books called the “New Testament.”

The first book of both Bibles is Genesis. This book describes the creation of the universe, the earth, and the living things on the earth. The second selection is one of the 150 psalms contained in the Old Testament and the Hebrew Bible. Psalms are songs of praise, some of which were written by David, who was king of Israel around 1000 B.C.

Translations of the Christian Bible Most of the Old Testament was first written in Hebrew, and most of the New Testament was written in Greek. Over the centuries religious scholars translated these texts into other languages, such as Aramaic and Latin. When English scholars began developing English-language Bibles in the 1500s, they based their translations on a Latin version completed in 405 by the Christian monk St. Jerome. This version had been the popular standard for more than a thousand years.

The King James Bible When James I became king of England in 1603, at least seven English translations of the Bible were in use. Each had its own distinctive literary style and reflected its translator’s own religious beliefs. In 1604 a conference of churchmen proposed that the English Bible be revised. King James agreed and gathered a group of 47 scholars to create a new English Bible. This group of revisers was divided into six companies, and each company was assigned a specific portion of the Bible to revise. Two companies worked at Oxford, two at Cambridge, and two at Westminster.

All the companies were instructed to correct the Bishops’ Bible, which was used by the churches, by comparing it with the Hebrew and Greek texts. Elaborate rules were made to ensure that this new version would be free from biases and perceived errors. The outcome of the revisers’ efforts, first printed in 1611, was the King James Bible. The King James Bible, considered a masterpiece of English literature, was the principal Bible used by English-speaking Protestants for the next 270 years. Not until the twentieth century did biblical scholars produce several widely accepted new translations.

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