How the Bible came to the English reader, step by step: translations, copies, chapter and verse numbers, and the Bibles in Open Scroll.
Read the dates from top to bottom.
The Law of Moses is put into Greek in Egypt. A letter under the name of Aristeas tells it: King Ptolemy Philadelphus asks for the Jewish Law for his library, and seventy-two elders translate it. The Jewish Encyclopedia says the letter’s history is not reliable. The Greek Old Testament is called the Septuagint.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are copied. They include copies of books of the Bible in Hebrew.
Jerome translates the Bible into Latin. His Latin Bible is called the Vulgate.
Jewish scribes, the Masoretes, add vowel marks to the Hebrew letters. By about 750 the marks are part of the text. They did not change the letters.
The Leningrad Codex is copied: a handwritten book holding the complete Hebrew Bible, with its vowel marks. The Hebrew on Open Scroll’s cards follows it.
Stephen Langton, teaching in Paris, divides the Bible into chapters.
William Tyndale’s New Testament is printed at Worms: the first New Testament printed in English. It is based on the third edition of the New Testament by Erasmus.
Martin Luther’s full German Bible is printed. It sets the extra books apart in a section of their own, after the Old Testament.
The Council of Trent lists the books it receives, and names Jerome’s Vulgate the authentic Latin text.
Robert Estienne, a printer, numbers the verses of the New Testament.
The Geneva Bible is the first English Bible with chapter and verse numbers all the way through.
The Douay-Rheims New Testament is published at Reims, for English Catholics. It is translated from the Latin Vulgate.
The Douay-Rheims Old Testament follows.
The King James Bible is published. It prints 14 more books in a section headed Apocrypha, between the Old and New Testaments.
Bishop Challoner revises the Douay-Rheims.
The King James text used in Open Scroll’s King James Version dates from this year.
Lancelot Brenton’s English translation of the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, is published. It is the Greek Old Testament in Open Scroll.
Robert Young dates the preface of his Literal Translation of the Holy Bible, at Edinburgh.
An American edition of the Douay-Rheims is printed. It is the Douay-Rheims in Open Scroll.
The American Standard Version is published. It prints Jehovah where the English Revised Version printed LORD and GOD.
The Jewish Publication Society of America, in Philadelphia, publishes The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text, a new English translation of the Hebrew Bible. Its title page says it was made with the help of earlier versions, in constant consultation with Jewish authorities. It is the Jewish Tanakh in Open Scroll.
R. H. Charles’s English translation of the Book of Enoch is published in London by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. It reprints the translation of his second edition of 1912. The whole book survives in full only in Ethiopic. Pieces of it were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is the 1 Enoch in Open Scroll.
R. H. Charles’s English translation of the Book of Jubilees, or the Little Genesis, is published by the same society, with an introduction by G. H. Box. It is translated from the Ethiopic. It is the Jubilees in Open Scroll.
A young Bedouin shepherd finds the first Dead Sea Scrolls in a cave near Qumran. Eleven caves there held scrolls.
| Bible in Open Scroll | What it is | Books |
|---|---|---|
| King James Version | The 1769 text of the 1611 King James Bible. | 66 |
| King James Version (with Apocrypha) | The same, with the 14 books of the 1611 Apocrypha between the Testaments. | 80 |
| American Standard Version | Published 1901. Prints Jehovah for God’s name. | 66 |
| Young’s Literal Translation | By Robert Young. It keeps very close to the Hebrew and Greek. | 66 |
| Catholic Douay-Rheims | The 1899 American edition, translated from the Latin Vulgate. | 73 |
| Jewish Tanakh (JPS 1917) | The Hebrew Bible in English, from the Jewish Publication Society of America. Books in the Jewish order: Torah, Prophets, Writings. | 39 (24 by the Jewish count) |
| World Messianic Bible | Also known as the Hebrew Names Version. eBible.org lists the phrases it changes from the World English Bible. | 66 |
| Greek Old Testament (Septuagint) | Brenton’s 1851 English translation of the Greek Old Testament, with the other books found in it. Ezra and Nehemiah are one book. | 52 |
| 1 Enoch (R. H. Charles) | Not a whole Bible: one book, read on its own. It is in the Old Testament of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. | 1 (108 chapters) |
| Jubilees (R. H. Charles) | Not a whole Bible: one book, read on its own. It is in the Old Testament of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. | 1 (50 chapters) |