Translating Biblical Readers' Needs through the Years

The introduction to Hamlin and Jones’ book The King James Bible after 400 Years traces the history of the English translation of the Bible, providing a brief outline of the rise and fall of the King James Bible. Although it was the predominant version of the Bible in Britain for a long period of time, the patterns surrounding the evolution of biblical texts have, in some ways, not really changed since the scribal rewritings of scripture in Second Temple times.

In Rewriting Scripture in Second Temple Times, Sidnie White Crawford explores the role of scribes in changing scripture. Although the primary goal of these scribes would have been to copy biblical text, this process was an active one at the time. Through copying, scribes would revise the text to create their own critical interpretation.

According to The King James Bible after 400 Years’ history of the Bible’s translation into English, each version was created for someone’s different personal, political, or theological goals. The rise of a demand for the vernacular Bible led to some of the original translations, and Henry VIII eventually rethought his position on the vernacular Bible. According to David Scott Castan, the vernacular Bible allowed Henry to show separation from Rome and to "confirm the royal supremacy" (47). This version, the Great Bible, was banned during the reign of a Catholic monarch. The Geneva Bible was created to complete and improve upon the other translations while the Bishops’ Bible was commissioned to give church authorities a say in the version used in English churches. The Rheims New Testament was even translated to fulfill the Catholic ideal of having a vernacular text that resembled the Latin vulgate that was approved by Rome. With each of these earlier versions and the creation of the King James Bible, translators used “critical judgment” to fit the text of the new version to their needs (7). Hamlin and Jones also discuss the tension between functional and formal translations of the Bible. The King James Bible was created as a formal translation in an attempt to maintain as much of the meaning of the original Hebrew and Greek as possible. However, the preference for functional translations has seemed to resurface in modern times, as people want more readable versions of the Bible. This transition results in the loss of meaning for simpler wording (10), and the desire for more altered biblical text allows modern translators to continue this tradition of rewriting scripture with a particular message.

It is fascinating to follow the motivations of biblical translators through the early history of English Bibles because it seems at times that the role of translator has simply been a continuation of early scribal revisions to manuscripts. Even today, it seems that a similar model still exists. As versions of the Bible continue to be created, different individuals and groups can still distribute widely varied Bible translations to serve their exegetical purposes.