The Bible's Origin(s), Part II

What became The Old Testament of the Bible was originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic on a type of writing paper called papyrus which is a reed and also on parchment which was made from animal skins. Both papyrus and parchment were joined together to make a long roll called a scroll. None of the original copies of the Bible on these types of materials have survived. In about 280 B.C. The Old Testament was translated into Greek by seventy men and became known as the Septuagint referring to the seventy who did the task of translating.

The second half of The Bible, The New Testament was written completely in Greek. In the 4th century one of the early church leaders, Jerome translated The Bible into Latin which became known as the Vulgate. The Vulgate became the official version of The Bible for western Europe for over a millenium.

As time passed and fewer and fewer people had knowledge of Latin except church clergy, an Englishman John Wycliffe decided that the common people should be given the opportunity to read The Bible in their own tongue, so he and his followers set about the task of translating the entire Bible into English. Wycliffe's project was limited, however, due to the fact that during his time, the 1300s, the printing press had not been invented. Therefore, all of his volumes had to be done by hand. By the time of William Tyndale in the 1500s, the printing press had become available, so Tyndale did his own translation of The New Testament from the Greek to English, and his version was the first to be mass produced.

King James of both England and Scotland had a committee translate the Bible in 1611 creating the most authoritative and best loved versions of the Bible, the King James or Authorized Version.