Each month, I'm going to put some information in our newsletter, The Link, about the various Bible translations that are available. My personal belief is that every Christian should have more than one version of the Bible available to them to help in their reading, study, and understanding of God's Word.
The selection of a particular version of the Bible is a 'personal' decision. Pick one that you can understand...period. There is no such thing as an authorized version. Whoever authorized a version did so based on their preferences. Southern Baptists for decades felt the King James was the only "right" version to use. But over the past few years, the SBC Convention has endorsed the Holman translation. Obviously, that decision was influenced because some in the convention Knew Mr. Holman?
The Bible, as we know it, did not even exist until many, many centuries after Christ and the lifes of the Disciples. What did exist were many individual copies of the Old Testament books (really scrolls). For example, fragments of the Jeremiah scroll were available in various parts of the Mediterranean world. These scrolls were copied by monks, clerics and scribes so that more synagogues and churches could have them available but only for use by those trained in reading them since they were written in Greek and Hebrew. Jeremiah used a scribe and on occasion so did Paul.
Scholars believe some early original scrolls may have been housed in the Temple at Jerusalem and many were in the Great Library at (of all places) in Alexandria, Egypt. This library contained over 100,000 scrolls on various subjects, including religion, many religions. Early Jewish missionaries took teh Jewish religion to Egypt. Maybe as far back as Joseph.
Tragically, the Romans burned the Great Library at Alexandria when they conquered it losing forever some of those prescious scrolls that were 1st or 2nd generation copies of the originals. Scholars are still not sure what may have happened to the originals. A similar fate to early scrolls occurred in Jerusalem when the Romans burned and sacked Jerusalem.
One of the earliest attempts to compile all these various copies of New Testament letters and copies of Old Testament scrolls was done by Wycliff, long before King James. Today, you can still purchase a Wycliff Bible. Wycliff was burned at the state as a heretic for producing it. Strange but true. Next copy of the Link will have some notes on "The Message", a fairly modern version of the Bible.
Pastor Schrum
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