Intermediate

A Newly Digitized Bible Reveals the Origins of the King James Version

A one-of-a-kind Bible used by the King James translators offers a rare glimpse of their textual decisions.

Though often thought to be a fresh translation, the King James Bible is, at heart, a revision of the 1602 Bishops’ Bible that was produced in three stages (translation companies, General Meeting, and final revisions). It was a monumental feat and one that has influenced English Bibles ever since. Fortunately, we know more about the process that produced the King James Bible (KJB) than just about any other translation of its time.

One key source involves the actual Bibles used by the revisers. According to an extant bill dated 10 May 1605, King James I purchased “40 large church bibles for the translators” from Royal Printer Robert Barker for the translators to use.¹ The translators worked directly on these unbound pages in the first stage of work. As far as we know, only a single copy remains.

This remaining copy, a 1602 Bishops’ Bible in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, collects handwritten notes reflecting alterations made while crafting the KJB. Thankfully, it has recently been digitized and made completely accessible online for the first time ever.² The document’s importance to scholars studying the history of the English Bible is hard to overestimate. This article introduces the history of its study and gives a small sample of its value for understanding the work of the KJB translators.

The document’s importance to scholars studying the history of the English Bible is hard to overestimate.

The 1602 Bishops’ Bible with the translators’ notes (left) and the final product in the 1611 KJB (right). Images from Bodleian Library and UPenn

Previous scholarship

The Bodleian Library acquired the volume in 1646 when it was described as “a large Bible wherein is written downe all the Alterations of the last translacōn.”³ The first critical notice was in 1868 by B. F. Westcott. When preparing his history of the English Bible, he requested a summary of its notes from John Wordsworth, Bishop of Salisbury, and Bodleian Librarian Henry Coxe. Unfortunately, Westcott mistakenly thought it represented “a scholar’s collation of the [KJB] and Bishops’ texts” rather than the source for the KJB itself.

In 1888, Nicolas Pocock pronounced Westcott’s judgment “very doubtful,” and Edwin Willoughby later took the document more seriously as a genuine draft and brought it to public attention.⁴ In the 20th century, Edward Jacobs examined the Old Testament annotations in detail in his 1972 dissertation but, sadly, had to rely on microfilms; he extended this study in later articles to its New Testament annotations.⁵ As Jacobs finished his dissertation, Irena Backus started a thesis studying Theodore Beza’s impact on the KJB New Testament which also employed the document, their different conclusions interacting only in a footnote.⁶ A decade later Jacobs published, with Ward Allen, a transcription of the Gospels with an introduction and, more recently, David Norton has used the document to sift translators’ intentions from printers’ errors while editing the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible for Cambridge University Press.

What’s in this Bible?

What’s in the document and what makes it so important to scholars? The answer is the handwritten notes themselves. In the Old Testament, these annotations cover almost every book, though in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, they end after chapter four. (Lamentations and the Apocrypha are unannotated.)

Letters were used to identify other translations as the sources for suggested changes. Source

The notes also reveal other translations used by the revisers besides the Bishops’ Bible itself. Back in 1868, Westcott described a set of miniscule letters (g, t, and j) which identify these other sources. He correctly identified “g” as the Geneva Bible, the KJB’s famous predecessor. Other scholars have suggested that “t” is for Tremellius and “j” is for Junius or Jerome’s Vulgate.⁷

Dating the translators’ notes

Dating the Old Testament annotations is complicated as they stretch across text assigned to all three translation companies and are written in what Jacobs believed is the same hand. This means, as Miller points out, that “the Old Testament annotations, in the aggregate, must postdate the company stage of the translation process, since one person could not have been part of three different translation companies in three different locations.”⁸

Several dates have been proposed, including ones that suggest the notes are an actual printers’ master copy, a copy of the printers’ master copy, notes made at the General Meeting, or a revision sent to the General Meeting. Miller argues that, most likely, “the annotations were made in preparation for the general, revisory meeting in London, assimilating into a single working manuscript the changes that had been separately proposed by the three Old Testament translation companies.” This would mean the handwriting is likely that of a scribe, though it is also possible they “could have been made at the general meeting itself.”⁹

The New Testament annotations are less extensive. The text of Matthew, Mark, and Luke is heavily revised, but in John, only chapters 17–21 are annotated. Elsewhere, only brief notes are found in a handful of places (Eph. 4:8; 2 Thess. 2:15; 1 Cor. 9:5; Gal. 3:13; and 2 Pet. 1:10).

Dating the New Testament annotations is simplified by the fact that they occur across text assigned to only one company. Even here, however, the dating is complicated by the fact that the annotations are in three separate hands.¹⁰ Miller gives this as a reason why “the draft of the Gospels seems to be assignable to the company stage of the translation process, distinct from the draft of the Old Testament now bound together in the same Bodleian volume.”¹¹ The different hands would then represent either the company internally critiquing its own draft or the input of one or more of the other companies upon it. The process of producing the most famous English Bible in history was obviously not a simple one!

Insights into the translators’ decisions

One of the most interesting and unexplored areas of the translators’ work that this document illuminates is how they wrestled with textual issues. Here are four examples.

1. Mary’s purification (Luke 2:22)

I have noted before that, in the Christmas story, the translators’ base text for Luke 2:22 explains that Mary brought Jesus to the temple because it was the time of “her purification,” without any notes. Virtually all the textual data read “their purification” (including either Joseph or Jesus in the purification). Greek editions at the time differed, particularly those of Erasmus and Beza.

What did the KJB translators do? This document shows a complex back-and-forth. First, “Or, theyr” was added to the main text (which read “her”) to indicate a textual variant. Then they changed their minds on the base text but still wanted a note. “Her” was crossed out in the text, “theyr” written above it, and in the margin “theyr” was replaced by “her.” Now the main text would read “theyr” with a marginal note giving the alternative: “Or, her.” This revision too was apparently overturned, presumably at the General Meeting. In the end, the KJB ended where it began: “her” in the text and nothing in the margin.

The text at Luke 2:22, showing a series of changes from “her” to “their” and back to “her.” Source

2. Jesus’ rebuke of Satan (Matt. 4:10)

Another example appears in Matthew 4:10 in the case of Jesus’ rebuke of the Devil, a rebuke later echoed after Peter’s confession (Matt. 16:23). The translators’ base text has “get thee hence behind me” (opisō mou). But they crossed out this last phrase. Why? Because the editions of the Greek New Testament they had available from Erasmus (1535), Stephanus (1550), and Beza (1598) all have the shorter reading in the text (though each mentions the longer reading).

The words “behinde mee” are crossed out in Matt 4:10. Source

3. Greeting our friends (Matt. 5:47)

Matthew 5:47 provides an example of how the translators wanted their readers to see more textual variation than what ultimately made it into the final version. The Bishops’ text has Jesus asking if his followers only greet “your brethren”—with no note. The KJB revisers added a marginal note that read “Or, frendes,” indicating the variant in Greek (philous vs. adelphous). As before, the two readings were known to them because of the Greek New Testaments of Erasmus and Beza. But, this note was not to survive. It was struck down by later revisers and didn’t make it to the published 1611 KJB.

The words “or friends” were added to the margin but never made it into the final King James. Source

4. Two longer marginal notes (Luke 17:36; Matt. 26:26)

Other marginal changes did make the cut. In Luke 17:36, the Bishops’ Bible has no marginal note, but the revisers wanted to alert their readers to a variant by adding a note saying: “The 36 verse is wanting here in the most of the Greeke copyes.” The revisers at Stationers’ Hall made a few minor changes in wording to the note but included it in the published text.

A note added in the left margin about manuscripts missing Luke 17:36. Source

Likewise, in Matthew 26:26 the text of the Last Supper says that he broke the bread when he had taken it and “given thankes,” without a note. The revisers crossed this out, added “blessed and” beside it, and added the marginal note, “Many Greeke copies have, given thankes.” This switched the base text from “given thankes” (eucharistēsas) to “blessed” (eulogēsas) and alerted the reader to the variant. The note was tweaked slightly but still published.

The note added in the left margin for Matthew 26:26. Source

This is just a sample of what this Bible reveals about the translators’ textual work. All the KJB’s notes that reflect textual variants were collected by F. H. A. Scrivener and his list remains the best treatment of the translators as textual critics. Scrivener, however, never examined this document.

Conclusion

For the translators, textual variants like these were part of a larger category they called “differences of readings.” This category included not only textual uncertainties but also lexical uncertainties, where words could have several different meanings. Today, we tend to think of these as separate categories. But applying our distinction to the KJB translators would be an anachronism.¹² Perhaps detailed examination of the document in the future from a text-critical perspective can catalogue all annotations reflecting textual decisions, painting a clearer picture of the KJB translators as textual critics.

Viewing the images online is a visual reminder of how many decisions Bible translators have to make.

This is just a small sample of the kind of insight that can be gained from studying this source of the most important English Bible in history. Viewing the images online provides an immediate, visual reminder of how many decisions Bible translators have to make. Further study will undoubtedly bring to light further insights into how the translators made their decisions. May we all be grateful for the push towards open access upon which human knowledge thrives!

An earlier version of this article could have given the impression that F. H. A. Scrivener’s list of the KJB’s notes was collected by him in 1910. What was meant is that his list was last published, posthumously, in 1910.

Notes

1
“MS. Don. c. 88” (Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, n.d.); Paul Morgan, “A King’s Printer At Work: Two Documents of Robert Barker,” The Bodleian Library Record 13, no. 5 (1990): 370; A massive cache of documents relating to the King’s printing house, the largest collection of manuscript materials relating to any single printing house in the Jacobean period, have recently been studied by Graham Rees and Maria Wakely, Publishing, Politics, and Culture: The King’s Printers in the Reign of James I and VI (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
2
Previously catalogued as BL Bib. Eng. 1602 b.1, it was given a new pressmark in Sep. 2013: Arch. A b. 18. My thanks to Chris Yetzer for informing me about its digitization.
3
William Dunn Macray, Annals of the Bodleian Library, Oxford: With a Notice of the Earlier Library of the University, 2nd ed. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1890), 102.
4
Nicholas Pocock, “The Bishops’ Bible of 1568, 1572, and 1602.,” The Athenaeum, no. No. 3148 (February 25, 1888): 243–45; Edwin Eliott Willoughby, The Making of the King James Bible: A Monograph with Comparisons from the Bishops Bible and the Manuscript Annotations of 1602, with an Original Leaf from the Great “She” Bible of 1611 (Los Angeles: Printed for Dawson’s Book Shop at The Plantin Press, 1956); Adam Nicolson, Power and Glory: Jacobean England and the Making of the King James Bible (London: Harpercollins, 2003), 151–52.
5
Edward Craney Jacobs, “A Bodleian Bishops’ Bible, 1602 (Bib. Eng. 1602 b. 1): A Preliminary Study of the Old Testament Annotations and Their Relationship to the Authorized Version, 1611.” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Alabama, Auburn University, 1972), 14; Edward Craney Jacobs, “Two Stages of Old Testament Translation for the King James Bible,” The Library S6-II, no. 1 (March 1, 1980): 16, fn. 2; Jacobs, “A Bodleian Bishops’ Bible, 1602 (Bib. Eng. 1601 B. 1)”; Edward Craney Jacobs, “An Old Testament Copytext for the 1611 Bible,” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 69, no. 1 (1975): 1–15; Jacobs, “Two Stages of Old Testament Translation for the King James Bible”; Edward Craney Jacobs, “King James’s Translators: The Bishops’ Bible New Testament Revised,” The Library s6–14, no. 2 (June 1, 1992): 100–126.
6
Irena Dorota Backus, “Influence of Theodore Beza on the English New Testament” (DPhil Thesis, University of Oxford, 1976); Irena Backus, The Reformed Roots of the English New Testament: The Influence of Theodore Beza on the English New Testament, ed. Dikran Y. Hadidian (Pittsburgh: Wipf & Stock, 1980), 28, fn. 63.
7
See Jacobs, “A Bodleian Bishops’ Bible, 1602 (Bib. Eng. 1601 B. 1),” 30–31, fn. 44; Jeffrey Alan Miller, “‘Better, as in the Geneva’: The Role of the Geneva Bible in Drafting the King James Version,” Journal of Medieval & Early Modern Studies 47, no. 3 (September 2017): 517–43.
8
Jeffrey Alan Miller, “The Earliest Known Draft of the King James Bible: Samuel Ward’s Draft of 1 Esdras and Wisdom 3–4,” in Labourers in the Vineyard of the Lord, 2018, 216.
9
Miller, 216.
10
Allen and Jacobs, The Coming of the King James Gospels, 5–7.
11
Miller, “The Earliest Known Draft of the King James Bible,” 216.
12
As seen in the comments of Miles Smith defending the KJB’s marginal notes, which discuss both textual and lexical differences in the same section, and in the report of translator Samuel Ward to the Synod of Dordt, suggests. Samuel Ward, “SSC MS Ward L1” (Sidney Sussex College, n.d.), fol. 5r; Anthony Milton, ed., The British Delegation and the Synod of Dort (1618–1619), vol. 13, Church of England Record Society (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 2005), 138–40; Christian Moser, Donald Sinnema, and Herman J. Selderhuis, eds., Acta of the Synod of Dordt, vol. I, Acta et Documenta Synodi Nationalis Dordrechtanae (1618-1610) (KG, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 17, 203; Samuel Ward, “British Statement on the Method of Bible Translation,” in Early Sessions of the Synod of Dordt, ed. Anthony Milton, vol. II/2, Acta et Documenta Synodi Nationalis Dordrechtanae (1618–1610) (KG, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), 69, 70.

The Bible in the Language of Jesus

The Syriac Peshitta is an early Bible translation that is key to textual criticism and offers insights into the teaching of Jesus.

Philip M. Forness

It may not be as obvious to modern readers, but the earliest Christian communities attached significance to the actual words spoken by Jesus in the Aramaic dialect of first-century Palestine. The Gospels do this several times, drawing attention to the original language used by Jesus and his disciples.

Here we can think of Jesus’s quotation of Psalm 22:1 on the cross “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?,” translated as “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46; cf. Mark 15:34). Mark also records Jesus’ Aramaic words while he raises a girl from the dead: “Talitha cumi” (Mark 5:41), and John specifies that Jesus gave Simon the name Cephas “which,” he notes, “means Peter” (John 1:42). All these show interest on the part of the evangelists in the actual Aramaic words of Jesus. But what is Aramaic and what is the history of the Bible in Aramaic?

Syriac translations of the Bible

The Aramaic language has been in use for over 3,000 years and remains a living language today. Many varieties or dialects of Aramaic existed in Jesus’ day, and Christian communities used Bible translations in two different Aramaic dialects in antiquity: Christian Palestinian Aramaic and Syriac. The Aramaic dialect known as Syriac developed in the region around the city of Edessa which is located in modern-day southeastern Turkey.

The Bible was translated several times into Syriac. News about the Old Syriac Gospels translation circulated widely in popular media in early 2023, reporting on fragments of a fourth manuscript containing this version that are identified in two articles from 2022 and 2023. But the most commonly used Syriac Bible translation is known as the Peshitta, meaning the “simple” or “straightforward” version. A new English translation of the Peshitta is nearly complete, and another English translation project is just getting underway. This Bible translation remains in use today in Christian communities of the Syriac heritage.

The opening of Matthew in the Old Syriac. BL Add MS 14451, f. 1v (5th c.)

Produced in the second century AD, the Peshitta Old Testament forms one of the earliest monuments of Syriac literature. Since it was translated directly from the Hebrew and exhibits knowledge of some Jewish interpretive traditions, scholars used to make the argument that the translation was produced by a community of Jewish converts to Christianity from the city of Edessa. This argument has been called into question, and the current opinion is that the translation was produced by a Jewish community and subsequently used by Christians who also knew Syriac.¹

The Peshitta New Testament emerged around the year 400 and forms a revision of the Old Syriac Gospels. Interestingly, five of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament are not included: 2 Peter, 2–3 John, Jude, and Revelation. Syriac translations of these books only appeared in the sixth or seventh centuries. The Peshitta also omits the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 7:53–8:11, suggesting that the passage must have been absent in the Greek manuscripts available to the translators.

A translation in the language of Jesus

When reading the Peshitta, one is immediately struck by the fact that this work was written in a dialect of the language used by Jesus. So, what do they do when the Greek source presents Jesus’ Aramaic words noted above? Peshitta Matthew, for example, does not translate Jesus’ Aramaic words on the cross. Peshitta Mark includes the same words of Jesus found in Matthew and then offers a translation that corresponds to the Peshitta version of Psalm 22:1. Further, Mark 5:41 offers no explanation of Jesus’ Aramaic words to the girl in Mark 5:41, and Peter is simply known as Cephas (Kepha in Syriac) throughout the Gospels without any attempt to represent the Greek petros.

Even more fascinating are the instances where the Peshitta seems to give insight into the original Aramaic spoken by Jesus. Jeff Childers suggests that the Peshitta may reveal a pun in Jesus’ language in John 8:34. Jesus states in Childers’s translation: “Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.” The Syriac words for “commits” (ʿabed) and “slave” (ʿabda) share the same three-letter root in Syriac. One can imagine how this phrase would have stuck in the ears of Jesus’s audience. Childers identifies another possible wordplay in Luke 12:7. Jesus says to the disciples in Childers’s translation: “But as for you, even the separate hairs of your head are all numbered.” In Syriac, “hairs” (mene) and “numbered” (manyan) share many of the same consonants, suggesting that the original phrase in Aramaic may well have featured alliteration.

Translation choices and interpretive traditions

Quite beyond the recovery of Jesus’ words in Aramaic, the Peshitta led to distinctive interpretive traditions. In Genesis 2:2, God is stated to have finished the work of creation not on the “seventh day” as in the Hebrew Bible, but on the “sixth day.” Craig Morrison points out that the translators of the Septuagint—the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible—made the same decision. The reason for this translation choice seems to be its theological or practical significance. God was completely finished with the work of creation by the sixth day. There should be no confusion that the seventh day, the Sabbath, was entirely reserved for rest.

The Peshitta’s rendering of Genesis 2:2 had an effect on the Syriac tradition of biblical interpretation. Several early Christian authors wrote works on the six days of creation. The fourth-century Greek author Basil of Caesarea’s sermons on the six days became very popular and were translated into Syriac in the fifth century. The extensive homily on creation by the sixth-century Syriac poet and preacher Jacob of Serugh covers 151 pages in its modern edition. Jacob treats all seven days, dedicating over twenty pages to God’s rest on the seventh day. The focus on God’s rest does not feature so prominently in any other work on the six days of creation in antiquity. Here the Peshitta translation of this passage may have inspired Jacob.

The Peshitta also offers a window into how early Christians wrestled with theological terminology, as with Paul’s theology of justification. The Hebrew word ṣedeq, often translated into English “justice” or “righteousness,” was translated in the Septuagint as dikaiosune. Paul uses this term both to refer both to God’s own righteousness and to God’s act of making humanity righteous. As Daniel King and J. Edward Walters discuss, the Syriac text uses two words for the Greek term dikaiosune and related forms: zaddiquta with a semantic range from acquittal to righteousness, and kenuta meaning just or innocent. We can look to the Peshitta to see how ancient translators tried to translate important theological ideas into their language that still challenge modern translators today.

We can look to the Peshitta to see how ancient translators tried to translate important theological ideas that still challenge modern translators today.

Encountering the Bible through the Peshitta

In addition to the text of the Peshitta, its transmission in manuscripts show different ways that Christian communities encountered and read the Bible. The books of Ruth, Susannah, Esther, and Judith circulated in the first millennium as a collection called the “Book of Women.” In a sixth-century manuscript, the early Christian writing the Acts of Thecla which focuses on a female follower of the apostle Paul appears at the end of the collection. As Catherine Burris has discussed, this collection invites readers to hear the stories of virtuous women stretching from the time of the judges through the Jewish communities in Assyria, Babylon, and Persia to the earliest Christian communities.²

By the sixth and seventh centuries, Syriac Christianity had spread as far as China and India bringing the Peshitta with them. These Christian communities had a continuous presence in India down to the Portuguese colonial period. At a synod held in India in 1599, the Portuguese colonizers condemned the omission of five books from the New Testament used by the Syriac Christians of India. Interestingly, they also noted that the Bible used in India did not include a longer version of 1 John 5:7. This extended version reads as follows, with the additional words in italics: “For there are three that testify in heaven: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one.” In this way, the Peshitta Bible used by the Syriac Christian communities in India—rather than the Bible of the colonizers—was closer to what is now considered the earliest known version of the New Testament.

The East Syriac tradition developed a distinct way of organizing the Bible. In addition to the Psalter, they divided the Old and New Testaments into five volumes: (1) the Book of the Pentateuch, (2) the Book of Sessions, (3) the Book of the Prophets, (4) the Book of the Maccabees, and (5) the New Testament.³ The contents of the Pentateuch, Prophets, and New Testament are clear. But the Book of Sessions combines an interesting array of historical and poetic books: Joshua, Judges, 1–2 Samuel, 1–2 Kings, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Ruth, Song of Songs, Sirach, and Job. The Book of the Maccabees features a mixture of histories and wisdom literature: 1–3 Maccabees, 1–2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Wisdom, Judith, Esther, Susanna, Epistle of Jeremiah, Epistle of Baruch, and Baruch. How might this organization encourage different ways of encountering and reading the Bible?

Conclusion

The Peshitta represents a fascinating early translation of the Bible. It has proven important for textual criticism, as the Old Testament was based directly on the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament translation was carried out at an early date. As a dialect of Aramaic, the Syriac may offer insight into wordplays used by Jesus. Finally, the Peshitta has served as the Bible for Christian communities for more than 1,500 years. This translation inspired different interpretation traditions, which we can glimpse in the rich literature of the Syriac Christian communities.

An earlier version of this article said the Syriac Bible used in India omitted the addition to the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6:13, but it actually omitted the longer version of 1 John 5:7.

Notes

1
Simcha Gross, “A Long Overdue Farewell: The Purported Jewish Origins of Syriac Christianity,” in Jews and Syriac Christians: Intersections across the First Millennium, ed. Aaron Michael Butts and Simcha Gross, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 180 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 131–33.
2
Catherine Burris, “The Syriac Book of Women: Text and Metatext,” in The Early Christian Book, ed. William E. Klingshirn and Linda Safran, CUA Studies in Early Christianity (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 86–98.
3
Heleen Murre-van den Berg, Scribes and Scriptures: The Church of the East in the Eastern Ottoman Provinces (1500–1800), Eastern Christian Studies 21 (Leuven: Peeters, 2015), 228–29.

What We Know about the People behind the Dead Sea Scrolls

History, archeology, and the scrolls themselves reveal a fascinating picture of a unique Jewish community.

Anthony Ferguson

The ancient Jewish group known as the Essenes remained in obscurity for over two millennia. Neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament mentions this group, and although ancient authors like Josephus, Philo, and Pliny describe them, in addition to some church fathers, the Essenes never captured the public’s interest quite like the Pharisees did.

All that changed one day in 1948 after the exhilarating announcement that ancient biblical manuscripts had been discovered near the Dead Sea and now known the world over as the Dead Sea Scrolls. This announcement would soon catapult the Essenes from obscurity to the front pages of every major newspaper. The Essenes became popular almost immediately.

Despite this popularity, knowledge of the Essenes is often quite basic for most scholars and interested laypeople. Most would correctly identify the Essenes as a Jewish sect, but a more detailed description evades many. So who were the Essenes?

We need to first decide on the relevant evidence which is not completely straightforward. Scholars disagree about the reliability of the historical accounts, the nature of the Qumran settlement, and the group described in the non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls. So which evidence is relevant for this conversation, and ultimately, what does the evidence tell us about this mysterious group of Jews that has captured our attention?

Putting the puzzling pieces together

The community described in the Qumran manuscripts does not designate itself as Essenes. Rather, they designate themselves with titles like “the Yahad” (e.g., 1QS 5:3), “the sons of light” (e.g., 1QS 2:16), and “members of the covenant” (CD 2:2). This discrepancy, therefore, compels us to start our investigation with the sources that use the name “Essenes.” Among these accounts, Philo (Hypothetica 11:1–18; Every Good Man is Free 12:75–13:91), Josephus (Jewish Wars 2.119–161; Life 1.10–12; Antiquities 18.18–22), and Pliny (Natural History 5.25) are the most well-known and most cited—and for good reason.

These authors were contemporaries of the group. Their accounts are rather detailed, and Pliny’s description, in particular, provides us with “GPS coordinates” to the Essenes’s settlement! Thus, we will begin with the historical accounts and then proceed to the evidence from Qumran and the scrolls deposited nearby.

The evidence

1. Historical accounts

The historical accounts should be interpreted critically since scholars have pointed out apparent inconsistencies and embellishments in these accounts. For example, Pliny says the group has existed for thousands of ages. Despite this reality, the accounts have considerable overlap, and this overlap illustrates the accounts’ credibility.

2. The site

Pliny’s “GPS coordinates” link the site of Qumran to the Essenes, so the site of Qumran is a good second step. In his Natural History, Pliny described three locations on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, and he located the Essene settlement north of Masada and Engedi (Natural History 5.25). To the best of our knowledge, Qumran is the only settlement that fits this description at this time.¹ This geographical and chronological correspondence demonstrates an important link between Pliny’s accounts and the site of Qumran and strongly suggests that this was an Essene settlement.

In addition to Pliny’s description, the site’s archeology and artifacts provide a further link between the Essenes and Qumran.² For example, Josephus described the Essenes’ modest approach to defecating. The Essenes, according to Josephus, would defecate privately and then wash afterward (Jewish Wars 2.148–149).

The archaeological site at Qumran provides key details about the Essenes. Photo credit

This historical account interestingly aligns with what scholars have identified as a toilet at Qumran. The toilet is roofed, secluded to ensure privacy, and connected to a ritual bath. Although concern for privacy and a desire to wash oneself after this act fits our modern hygienic perspective, Josephus’s account demonstrates that these practices were exceptional. The lack of ornate features and decorative pottery likewise aligns with Philo’s account that the Essenes despised luxury (Philo, Hypothetica 11.11).

3. The manuscripts

The Qumran manuscripts, often called the Dead Sea Scrolls, are likewise important data when investigating the identity of the Essenes. Although some scholars argue that Jews fleeing the Jewish revolts deposited these manuscripts in the caves, this suggestion is unlikely since the non-biblical texts describe a community that had separated from mainline Judaism (1QS 8:9–18; 9:20).³

Scholars have rightly discovered many similarities between the historical accounts and these texts, which further suggest that these texts were deposited there by Essenes.⁴ Josephus’s description of the initiation process in Jewish Wars 2.137–142 aligns with the community’s process outlined in their handbook (see 1QS 6:14–23). The penal code described in both accounts is similar. For example, both forbid spitting during a meeting of the assembly (1QS 7:13; Jewish Wars 2.147). Members of the Essenes were prohibited from sharing their community’s secrets (Jewish Wars 2.142); 1QS has a similar prohibition (1QS 9:17). The similarities strongly suggest that these manuscripts were Essene documents.

A scholar studies the Great Isaiah Scroll. Image credit

So, who were the Essenes?

The historical accounts, the site of Qumran, and the Qumran manuscripts all provide valuable evidence for understanding the identity of the Essenes. What do we learn about them from this information? Here are six characteristics that we know about this group.

1. Essenes were sectarians

The Essenes separated from mainline Judaism because of different interpretations of the law, or halakhic disagreements. These disagreements are outlined in a text labeled 4QMMT (MMT is an abbreviation for the Hebrew words translated as “Some Percepts of the Torah). This group further disagreed with the lifestyle of the Hasmonean rulers. These ethical concerns are outlined in a commentary on Habakkuk (1QpHab). Here, we learn that the “wicked priest” (a high priest from the temple) pursued the Teacher of Righteousness (the leader of the Essene community) to destroy him on the Day of Atonement. The Essenes separated from Judaism in Jerusalem for ethical and hermeneutical reasons.

2. Essenes lived throughout Israel

Josephus makes this point when he describes how the Essenes did not occupy just one town, but lived together closely in many towns (Jewish Wars 2). This detail is verified in the community’s handbook (see 1QS 6:2) and by the archaeological evidence. The incongruence, for example, between the number of kitchen dishes that number over one thousand and the maximum capacity of permanent residences implies that this could not be a permanent residence for all Essences.⁵ Rather, Qumran probably functioned as a community center as described by Jodi Magness and others.

3. Essenes cherished the Bible

Approximately one-fourth of the scrolls discovered at Qumran are biblical texts.⁶ In addition, the Qumran community composed numerous other literary documents based on the biblical text. These include commentaries, liturgical compositions, compositions that reworked beloved Bible stories, and harmonized texts that topically rearranged some of the biblical texts. Moreover, if ten men were gathered in the same location, they were required to designate someone to study the Law continually (1QS 6:6).

The Essenes cherished the Bible. Approximately one-fourth of the scrolls discovered at Qumran are biblical texts.

4. Essenes were devout

Josephus and Philo both describe their devotion to the Lord and to the Scriptures as praiseworthy. The penal code outlined in their handbook (1QS) prescribed up to a two-year punishment for any member who sinned unintentionally while an intentional sin could lead to banishment (1QS 9:1). Strict obedience to the Scriptures was expected from community members.

5. Essenes were extremely hierarchal

Newly initiated community members would immediately be assigned a rank in the community based on their understanding of the Law and the integrity of their life (1QS 6:1–2, 18). This rank dictated where members sat during meetings and when they were permitted to speak.

The Great Isaiah Scroll was among the first discovered. Today, it is housed at the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. Photo by Dennis Jarvis
How Much Can the Most Famous Dead Sea Scroll Prove?
The Great Isaiah Scroll is a crucial piece of the Old Testament puzzle, but it doesn’t give us the whole picture.
Anthony Ferguson

6. Essenes were (somewhat) countercultural

The Essenes understood slavery as a moral evil, and that this institution promulgated injustice, was contrary to nature, and outraged the law of equity (see Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.21–22 and Philo, Every Good Man is Free 12.79). In this way, this community should be applauded. Yet, their view of women was chauvinistic. They described women as sexual predators and selfish creatures who promoted dissension (Josephus, Jewish Wars 2.121; Jewish Antiquities 18.22; Philo, Hypothetica 11.14). Some historical authors claimed that this negative view of women was the reason some refrained from marriage. Thus, they upheld the dignity of humanity in a way that was quite countercultural but not in every way.

Conclusion

A fairly clear picture of the Essenes emerges from considering the historical accounts, the site of Qumran, and the manuscripts deposited nearby. Of course, Essenism was not monolithic. Some Essenes married while others did not, and their religious beliefs and attitudes toward Judaism in Jerusalem did not remain static. Despite these details, a careful investigation of the sources allows us to deepen our knowledge of this group in several key ways: they were a hierarchal and devout sect of Jews spread throughout Judea who treasured the Bible. Perhaps, this is a good starting place for those whose imagination is captured by this now less mysterious ancient Jewish group!

Notes

1
James C. VanderKam, An Introduction to Early Judaism, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022), 167.
2
Jodi Magness’ excellent book The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls,2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021) traces several similarities between the archaeology of the site and the historical accounts including the toilet habits, nature of the pottery, and the nature of the site summarized here.
3
James C. VanderKam has a helpful concise discussion of this topic in Early Judaism, 166–167.
4
Magness, for example, discusses many of these similarities in The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2nd ed.
5
See Magness, Archaeology of Qumran, 79–81 for this evidence and conclusion.
6
See Emmanuel Tov’s statistics in Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis, Fortress, 2011), 95.

Erasmus and the Search for the Original Text of the New Testament

Erasmus’s Greek New Testament was a monumental achievement, but left room for later scholars to improve it.

Martin Heide

The Greek New Testament published in Basel (Switzerland) in 1516 was the greatest achievement of the magnificent Dutch philosopher, philologist, and Catholic theologian Erasmus of Rotterdam (ca. 1466–1536). At that time in Western Europe, the Latin Bible was the “Gold standard” of Holy Writ; it was often seen as the inspired text. Philologists and theologians such as Erasmus, however, knew that the Latin Bible of his time, also known as the “Vulgate,” was actually a translation, and that it had been translated by Jerome from the Greek in the 4th century AD.

While revising Jerome’s Latin translation and preparing to publish a new Latin edition, Erasmus often consulted Greek manuscripts to ensure his decisions. During that process, he felt encouraged to print the (revised) Latin and the Greek New Testament on facing pages and publish it under the title Novum Instrumentum omne (Complete New Testament), thus allowing qualified readers to verify his revision.

Erasmus used the only Greek New Testament manuscripts available in Basel at his time.

The publication of the Novum Instrumentum omne was a great success. However, because the printing process was done in a hurry, the first edition had many editing errors and typos, which were partly dealt with in the ensuing edition(s). For printing the Greek part of his Novum Instrumentum, Erasmus used the only Greek New Testament manuscripts available in Basel at his time. These eight manuscripts were written between the 10th and 15th centuries. They once belonged to Cardinal John of Ragusa (ca. 1393–1443), who, before the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, had brought about 60 Greek manuscripts, covering all fields of learning, from Constantinople to Basel. John of Ragusa bequeathed these manuscripts to the convent of the Dominicans in Basel. Except for two manuscripts that were already in the hands of Johann Reuchlin (ca. 1455–1522) at Erasmus’s time and that he had to borrow from this great scholar, the Dominican library loaned six manuscripts directly to Erasmus.

Today, six of the eight are housed in the University library of Basel, while manuscript 2814, the only manuscript with the book of Revelation, is owned by the University Library of Augsburg. Manuscript 2105, which Erasmus used mainly for his separately published textual commentary, the Annotationes (Annotations), was discovered in the Bodleian Library of Oxford in 1966. The eight manuscripts are listed in the table below, with the respective Gregory-Aland (GA) numbers that are in use today:

GA	Contents	Date	Shelf Number
1	Acts, epistles, four gospels	12th c.	Basel A.N. IV. 2
2	Four Gospels	12th	Basel A.N. IV. 1
2815	Acts, epistles	12th	Basel A.N. IV. 4
2816	Acts, epistles	15th	Basel A.N. IV. 5
2817	Pauline Epistles	10–11th	Basel A.N. III.11
817	Four Gospels with Theophylact’s commentary	15th	Basel A.N. III. 15
2814	Apocalypse with Andrew’s commentary	12th	Augsburg I.1.4° 1
2105	Pauline Epistles with Theophylact’s commentary	12th	Oxford E. 1. 6

Manuscripts used by Erasmus

Understandably, Erasmus was used to the text of the Latin Bible from his childhood and indebted to the general scholarly opinion of his time that favored this text. Thus, from the first edition in 1516 onward, Erasmus introduced, knowingly or unknowingly, some Latin readings into the Greek text. For example, in Acts 9:5–6, he added the following phrase: “it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks, and he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him” (KJV). In his Annotationes, Erasmus admitted that, “in most Greek manuscripts this addition is not found.”

However, this phrase, being not known from any of the Greek manuscripts at Erasmus’s disposal, is actually found in some later Latin manuscripts and in the printed Latin editions of Erasmus’s time (such as the Gutenberg Bible, and many more). Since the same text is known from Acts 22:10, it might be argued that Erasmus thought the introduction of the Latin phrase would neither change the meaning nor the inspiration of the text.

Moreover, high opinions of the Latin Vulgate and negative views of the Greek text moved Erasmus to write extended apologies for readings which departed from the Latin in his Annotationes. In addition, unfavorable reviews of his first edition forced him to include a late reading based on the Latin in his third edition, the so-called Comma Johanneum, which is added here in brackets: “For there are three that bear record [in heaven, Father, Word, and Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 8 And there are three that bear witness in earth], Spirit, and water, and blood, and the three agree in one” (1 John 5:7–8 according to Erasmus’ third edition).

As Greek manuscript support was lacking for this reading, it was not included in the first (1516) and second (1519) editions. Erasmus seems to have yielded to pressure to include the passage when he learned that a Greek manuscript in England, the so-called Codex Britannicus, known today as Codex Montfortianus (GA 61), contained the text (fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Codex Britannicus or Montfortianus (GA 61), fol. 439r, with the text of 1 John 5:7–9 including the Comma Johanneum. Source

This codex was actually written around 1520 by a monk named Roy, most likely to provide Erasmus with the missing “evidence.” Erasmus claimed in his Annotationes that he did not believe the reading to be genuine and that it looked very similar to the Vulgate reading. Erasmus wondered why this codex lacked the phrase “and these three agree in one” in verse 8, in accordance with the Latin Vulgate, while it is found in nearly all Greek copies. Moreover, Erasmus saw evidence for a Latin origin of the Greek text in the missing articles before important nouns such as “father” (πατὴρ), “word” (λόγος), and “spirit” (πνεῦμα). Ultimately, however, Erasmus chose to include the Comma Johanneum from his third edition onward, gaining wider acceptance of his Latin and Greek texts, so that, in his own words, no one would have a basis to criticize him.

A comparison of the Codex Montfortianus and Erasmus’ third edition reveals that he added “and” (καί) between “spirit” and “water,” and supplemented the phrase “and these three agree in one.” In the 4th and 5th editions, he polished the Greek, inserting the missing articles. After Erasmus’ death, the text received further improvement, so that the Comma Johanneum reads today: “For there are three that bear record [in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 8 And there are three that bear witness in earth], the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one” (1 John 5:7–8 according to the KJV).

The Comma Johanneum is not found in Luther’s German New Testament of 1522, which was translated from a reprint of Erasmus’ first edition. Martin Luther stated in his “Lecture on the First Epistle of John” that the Comma Johanneum had been “clumsily inserted by the zeal of the old theologians against the Arians … I could easily make fun of the fact that there is no more unsuitable place of proof for the Trinity.” In a similar way as Erasmus, Luther did not really buy the text. In the margin of 1 John 5 in his own Bible, he added the remark that, “there is no testimony in heaven” (in coelo non est testimonium). The German Bible did not include the Comma Johanneum before 1581.

The Text of Revelation

For the text of Revelation, Erasmus had but one Greek manuscript, no. 2814, which actually was a commentary of archbishop Andrew of Caesarea (ca. 563–614). There are many places where Erasmus (or his associate, or his printer) had problems to read the text or to distinguish between the commentary and the biblical text, so that Erasmus’s Greek text of Revelation has not a few unique readings. Most of these faulty readings have never been corrected by Erasmus or those responsible for reprinting the Received Text.

For instance, fig. 2 shows leaf no. 64 (folio 64r) of manuscript 2814. Most of the text consists of Andrew’s commentary, but the red marks in the left margin indicate the next Bible verse (Rev. 17:8b) to be commented upon: “they shall wonder … when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and is” (θαυμασθήσονται … βλεπόντων τὸ θηρίον ὅτι ἦν καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν καὶ παρέσται). However, the last two words cited here appear, due to misreading, in Erasmus’s text not as “and is” (καὶ παρέσται), but as “and yet is” (καὶπερ ἔστιν).

Fig. 2. The last two words of the biblical text (in orange) were misread in Manuscript 2814, University Library of Augsburg (12th c.), f. 64r. Source

In Revelation 21:23–24, Erasmus’s Novum Instrumentum introduced a unique reading due to a confusion of Bible text and commentary. As can be seen in fig. 3, the first visible line begins with Revelation 21:23c: “for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof” (γὰρ δόξα τοῦ θεοῦ ἐφώτισεν αὐτήν καὶ ὁ λύχνος αὐτῆς τὸ ἀρνίον). Immediately after that, Andrew’s commentary resumes, before line four is again marked as biblical text in the margin.

However, the scribe of the manuscript mispositioned the marginal signs! The text of line four simply continues Andrew’s commentary with the words translated in the KJV as “and the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it” (καὶ τὰ ἔθνη τῶν σωζομένων τῷ φωτί αὐτῆς περιπατήσουσιν). This commentary text naturally deviates from the usual Bible text attested in Revelation 21:23–24 which should read “by its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it” (καὶ περιπατήσουσιν τὰ ἔθνη διὰ τοῦ φωτὸς αὐτῆς). Thus, a few words of Andrew’s commentary crept into the Received Text as Holy Writ and, from there, into the early translations such as Luther’s German Bible and the KJV.

Fig. 3. Because of a miswritten marginal sign, the commentary text (in orange) was read as the biblical text in Manuscript 2814, University Library of Augsburg (12th c.), f. 88v. Source

Moreover, as is well-known, a leaf is missing toward the end of manuscript 2814, so that the biblical text quoted ends abruptly with Revelation 22:16 (fol. 92v), while the next leaf (fol. 93r) continues with Andrew’s commentary until its last page (fol. 94r). To fill the gap in his Greek text, Erasmus had to retranslate it from the Latin, which he freely admits in the defense of his text against the critique of Edward Lee: “At the end of my copy of Revelation, a few lines were missing. I added them in accordance with Latin copies,” which means that he retranslated them from the Latin Vulgate into Greek. Similarly, he writes in his Annotationes to the Apocalypse: “Although at the end of this book I have found some words in our text [i.e., the Latin] that were missing in the Greek copies, we have nevertheless added them from the Latin.”

Rev. 22:19 in a 1512 Latin Bible with the word “book” (libro) in the text and the usual reading “tree” (ligno) in the margin — Fig. 4. Rev. 22:19 in a 1512 Latin Bible with the word “book” (*libro*) in the text and the usual reading “tree” (*ligno*) in the margin. Source

Up to today, the textus receptus or “Received Text,” as Erasmus’s Greek text was called from the 17th century onwards, has some Greek readings that hail from Erasmus’s retranslation procedure and that have no manuscript support whatsoever. Although most of these readings are trivial, some are visible in the translations, such as the “book of life” (KJV) instead of “the tree of life” (NASB) (Rev. 22:19). This reading is based on late Latin manuscripts, which confused ligno “tree” with libro “book,” as can be seen in fig. 4.

Further Research after the Reformation Period

After the Reformation, scholars such as the Lutheran pietist clergyman J. A. Bengel (1687–1752) realized that the textus receptus or Received Text was largely based on late medieval Greek manuscripts and that its revision was overdue, in face of many more and much older Greek manuscripts that had become known in Europe. Back in 1516, Erasmus had no choice; he had to use what was available at his time. Bengel, on the other hand, in the spirit and zeal of Erasmus, seized the opportunity and compared the manuscripts newly known in his time to the Received Text. For instance, with the help of the Codex Alexandrinus (5th century) and medieval manuscripts, Bengel was able to correct the most obvious faults of the Book of Revelation (fig. 5) and made text-critical observations that are still valid today.

Bengel’s Testamentum Novum (1734) has the reading τοῦ ξύλου (tou xylou) “of the tree” in the text of Rev. 22:19 — Fig. 5. Bengel’s *Testamentum Novum* (1734) has the reading τοῦ ξύλου (*tou xylou*) “of the tree” in the text of Rev. 22:19, while Erasmus’s reading βίβλου (*biblou*) “of [the] book” is merely cited as a variant. It is marked by the Greek letter ε to signal a reading “to be rejected, though approved by some.” Source

Erasmus’s Legacy

The Novum Instrumentum was the only printed and published Greek text available at the onset of the Reformation and it has done the church a great service. The success and deep impact of the Reformation and its aftermath would be unthinkable without this new spiritual and intellectual basis of the New Testament text. Moreover, no cardinal doctrine is jeopardized by its obvious shortcomings. However, the Greek of the Novum Instrumentum, or the “Received Text,” as it was later called, “soon became, as it were, stereotyped in men’s minds; so that the readings originally edited on most insufficient manuscript authority, were supposed to possess some prescriptive right, just as if … an apostle had been the compositor.”¹

The work of the ingenious and industrious Erasmus marks the beginning of modern New Testament textual criticism, of the science that compares Greek New Testament manuscripts to reconstruct and print the earliest and original text. As it would be foolish today to think that the knowledge, of, e.g., Roman history during the 16th century was superior to our knowledge of the past and to ignore all the progress that has been made in reconstructing ancient history, so it would be foolish to claim that we should see the Novum Instrumentum as the only valid Bible text, arguing that God in some mysterious way restored the original text through the error-prone work of Erasmus.

We do not need to bend our brains to explain away the errors of the Received Text.

Thanks to Erasmus, we do not believe anymore that the Vulgate is the only truly inspired text of the church. And thanks to such men as John Mill (1645–1707), Johann A. Bengel (1687–1752), Samuel P. Tregelles (1813–1875), Constantin v. Tischendorf (1815–1874) and many others who followed in their footsteps and worked hard to restore as close as possible the original Greek text of the New Testament, we do not need to bend our brains to explain away the errors of the Received Text, seeing the text and its ramifications today as it is.

Notes

1
Samuel. P. Tregelles, An Account of the Printed Text of the Greek New Testament (London: Bagster, 1854), 29.

The Legacy of the First Revised Bible Translations

The modern impulse to get the Bible right in translation has its roots in the Jews who revised the Septuagint.

John D. Meade

Many Christians today read the Bible through revisions of original translations. We read the Revised Standard Version (RSV), a revision of another revision of the King James Version; English Standard Version, a revision of the RSV; the New King James Version, another revision of the King James and on and on. Translation committees simply find it easier to revise already existing translations by conforming them to a more contemporary understanding of the Hebrew and Greek texts and updating English diction as needed. Instead of de novo translations, they produce thorough revisions of older translations and in many cases improve the accuracy and readability of the older translation. Nothing is new under the sun.

Ancient Jewish communities who read the Scriptures in Greek translation were the first to revise older Greek translations. These older Greek translations are popularly known as the Septuagint (an abbreviated Latin term meaning “Seventy”) and probably are to be dated between 280–100 BC. But even before the Jews finished translating each Hebrew book into Greek, some Jewish communities had already begun to revise the older ones. What are these Jewish Greek revisions? Why were they undertaken? Where do we find them? What do they tell us about the Bible’s history and our own translation proclivities? Learning more about the ancient Jewish revisions and why they were undertaken not only tells us more about the Bible’s history, but it also explains our modern-day practice too.

The impulse to revise Bible translation

Ancient translators and revisers do not tell us explicitly why they did what they did. But the historical background and the texts themselves suggest why Jews revised their texts. In the third to second century BC, in the library at Alexandria, Egypt, grammarians like Aristarchus of Samothrace were carefully correcting the copies and texts of Homer’s Iliad.¹ Perhaps, the Jewish revisers simply followed their lead in wanting more accurate texts of their scriptures in Greek. To do that, they revised or corrected the earlier translations by conforming them more closely to the standard Hebrew text.

An illustration of the Septuagint translators from the Nuremberg Chronicle. Wikimedia

The translations themselves suggest two other motives for revisions: (1) bringing the older translation into greater alignment with the standard Hebrew text and (2) ensuring their Greek translations reflected current interpretation of the text. Regarding the first reason, the old Greek translator of Job worked as a paraphrast or epitomizer, abbreviating the original, longer Hebrew text by about one-sixth in length. But the Jewish revisers wanted to restore or correct the older translation by supplying an equivalent Greek line for every Hebrew line of the poetic speeches.

Regarding the second reason, the most famous example of interpretive revision probably comes from Isaiah 7:14. The Septuagint contains “Behold the virgin (parthenos) will conceive…,” while the revisers have “Behold the young woman (neanis)….” Hebrew ‘almah could mean “virgin” or “young woman,” and Jewish interpretation of this passage could have shifted between the older and newer translations. Though debate persists over whether the Jewish interpretation of this passage evolved from “virgin” to “young woman,” what is clear is that, as parthenos came to mean only “chaste woman” in Greek, the revisers adjusted their translations to neanis “young woman” to reflect the current Jewish interpretation of this word to mean “maiden of marriageable age.”

What’s significant is that both of these reasons—textual accuracy and correct meaning—are still major reasons we revise Bible translations today.

Both these reasons—textual accuracy and correct meaning—are still major reasons we revise Bible translations today.

Understanding the ancient Jewish revisions

Several ancient Jewish revisions of the Septuagint have names associated with them. Most famous among them are “the Three”: Theodotion (post 30 AD), Aquila (ca. 130 AD), and Symmachus (ca. 200 AD). We will return to them. Most other revisions were anonymous. The church father Origen of Alexandria discovered two other versions which he called “the Fifth” and “the Sixth,” since the texts did not have names attached to them. But before these famous revisions existed, we now know that Jewish communities had long been revising their older Greek translations.

The dividing line between an original translation and its revision is not easy to establish. Thus, for the earliest manuscripts of the Greek translations, some debate exists among scholars for what constitutes an early witness to the original translation and what is evidence for its earliest revision. That said, scholars do agree that some Jewish communities were revising older Greek translations since we have manuscript evidence from as early as 2nd–1st centuries BC showing revisions of Numbers (4QLXXNum) and Deuteronomy (Papyrus Fouad Inv. 266b-c). That is, these texts show a revision of the older Greek translation towards the standard Hebrew text.

A brief example comes from Numbers 4:7 where the old Greek translation has, “And over the presentation table they shall throw over it a wholly purple cloth, and the bowls…” But 4QLXXNum has “And over the presentation table they shall throw over it a wholly purple cloth, and they shall set on it the bowls…,” which agrees with the standard Hebrew text. If the original translation of Numbers occurred around 280 BC, this revision could have been carried out about hundred years later.

Probably in the first century BC, a Jewish community engaged in a major project of revising older translations and producing new translations for books like Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes. We call this tradition the “kaige tradition,” since it employed a distinctive Greek translation kaige (καίγε) “and even” for Hebrew gam/wegam (גם/וגם) “and even.” This tradition produced a literal or formal equivalence translation of the standard Hebrew text, not unlike our own English translations that follow in the tradition of the NASB.

Here we can locate the famous Three revisers within the overall tendency to revise the older Greek translations. Although the kaige tradition included mostly anonymous revisions and translations, the kaige did include the more well-known reviser, Theodotion, and probably peaked and was perfected in the work of Aquila. Both of these revisions represent very literal translations and even stereotypical equivalents (each Hebrew word rendered by the same Greek word) in the case of Aquila. Later, Symmachus rendered the Hebrew more functionally (think closer to the NIV) and generally avoided the approaches introduced by kaige.

For example, Theodotion would usually render Hebrew ’el “God” with Greek ho ischyros “the powerful one” and Aquila would render the same word with ischyros “Powerful One” (as a proper noun). Symmachus came later and used the more typical Greek rendering theos “God” instead of continuing the idiosyncratic rendering of the kaige tradition. When later Jewish and Christian debates over the interpretation of the Scriptures arose, usually the debates centered on the texts of the Three and the Septuagint. But scholars now see that early Christian exegetes sometimes used the revisions of the Three for their interpretations more than has been recognized in the past.

When the Apostle Paul quoted Isaiah 25:8 in 1 Corinthians 15:54 he quoted the text of Theodotion (“Death is swallowed up in victory”) and not the text of the Septuagint (“Death, having prevailed, swallowed them [nations] up”) or the later reading of the Masoretic Text (“He will swallow up death forever”). A variant Hebrew text does not explain the differences. Rather, the translators and revisers read the same Hebrew consonants differently, and in this case, Paul must have agreed with how Theodotion’s version conveyed the Hebrew with its emphasis on God’s “victory” over death.

Where we find the revisions

We observe the earliest revisions from the manuscripts themselves. For example, we can observe the kaige tradition directly in the fragments of the Greek Minor Prophets scroll from Nahal Hever. This scroll was discovered in 1952 and 1961, and, amazingly, another part of this same scroll was found as recently as 2021. A very interesting feature of this Greek scroll is its exhibition of the divine Name or the Tetragrammaton in proto-Hebrew letters.

The Nahal Hever scroll with the Tetragramaton in proto-Hebrew script (lines 3, 5). Wikipedia

How about the remains of the Three? Unfortunately, the Three only survive fragmentarily. Some of Aquila’s translation for 1 Kings 21:7–17 and 2 Kings 23:12–27 survives, but most of the remains of the Three come from Origen of Alexandria’s Hexapla, where these revisions were included. But the Hexapla does not survive in full. Rather, we find most remains of the Hexapla in the margins of Greek manuscripts, citations in patristic commentaries, and ancient translations like Syriac. The last edition of the hexaplaric fragments was published in 1875 by Frederick Field. The Hexapla Institute, which is now hosted by the Text & Canon Institute, seeks to publish new critical editions because more evidence of the Three has since come to light. Newer editions will further our knowledge of the Three’s language and approach to the revisionary task.

What these revisions tell us

Although most of us don’t read the remains of the Jewish revisers directly, we do encounter Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion in the footnotes of our English Bibles (see, e.g., Job 5:5). Interestingly, the early English Bible prefaces appeal to the Three by name, ensuring they play a part in the English Bible’s history. Describing the benefit of various Bible translations throughout history, Myles Coverdale (1535) says,

Whereas some men think now that many translations make division in the faith and in the people of God, that is not so: for it was never better with the congregation of God, than when every church almost had the Bible of a sundry translation … Beside the seventy interpreters, is there not the translation of Aquila, of Theodotion, of Symmachus, and of sundry other?²

Even the venerable Preface to the KJV 1611 mentions Aquila, Theodotion, Symmachus, and the anonymous Fifth and Sixth translations as responses to the perceived problems in the Septuagint translations. In this way, the work of the ancient Jewish revisers was seen as a powerful precedent for revisions made more than 1,000 years later.

Overall, the Jewish revisions attest the conservatively copied Hebrew text.³ Their literal translation approach reveals the antiquity of the standard Hebrew text. Thus, where we can consult these readings, we can usually see that Hebrew text as the base text. Sometimes, these translations show a different Hebrew reading than the Masoretic Text and as such become very valuable witnesses to the textual history of the Hebrew Bible.

Conclusion

The Bible’s history has many chapters. The Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Septuagint constitute major developments in the plot. As such, the revisions and later corrected texts like those produced by Origen often are overlooked. But these textual endeavors show a great interest in possessing the correct text and as such tell us much about the texts’ creators, curators, and users. Today, when we read or attempt revisions of our older translations, we can rest assured that we’re participating in a long-standing tradition, one that has roots in the impulse to get the text right. That tradition and its history are worth exploring more deeply so that we can also understand our own impulses and desires.

Notes

1
Francesca Schironi, The Best of the Grammarians: Aristarchus of Samothrace on the Iliad (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018).
2
Spelling updated.
3
But even here these fascinating revisions tell different tales. For example, the ending of Job in the older Greek translation came to have a longer ending beyond the Hebrew text which ended with “And Job died an old man and full of days.” The earlier reviser, Theodotion, continued to revise the longer ending of Job, while the slightly later revisers of Aquila and Symmachus ended their revisions precisely where the Hebrew ended.

Scribal Blunders in Biblical Numbers

Different ways of writing numbers in Greek can be difficult both for ancient scribes and modern scholars.

Zachary J. Cole

Ancient scribes faced many challenges when they copied books, but they seem to have had an especially difficult time with numerals. A survey of the numbers in the Bible shows that copyists often misread and miscopied them, leading to a variety of textual variants among existing manuscripts. This is more significant than we might think at first.

Remember that numbers play a significant role throughout the New Testament. For example, think of the three sets of fourteen generations in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus (Matt. 1:17), the precise hours given for the chronology of Jesus’ passion (Mark 15:25, 33, 42), the number of witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection (1 Cor. 15:6), the number of the Beast (Rev. 13:18), and the ubiquitous numbers three, seven, and twelve.

In this article, we consider why many numerals were prone to corruption during the copying process and what this tells us about the New Testament text.

Writing numbers

To understand why some ancient copyists botched biblical numbers, we need to recognize that there were two different systems of number-writing in use at the time of the New Testament. Perhaps surprisingly, biblical manuscripts often contain both systems standing side-by-side. Actually, modern English does the same thing; we can spell numbers fully or use shorthand symbols (two and 2). Koine Greek likewise used both number-words and number-symbols. A Greek writer, for instance, could spell the number “two” fully, δύο (duo), or use the shorthand equivalent letter beta (β̅). New Testament manuscripts, especially the early ones, often use both systems, sometimes even within the same verse.

Numbers written as both letters (yellow) and words (red) in Luke 12:52 in P75 (3rd c.). Pap.Hanna.1 1B.6v

The numerical shorthand we find in New Testament manuscripts is an alphabetic system. This means the regular letters of the Greek alphabet were used to express numerical values. For example, the number 153 could be expressed in shorthand form as ρ̅ν̅γ̅—where ρ̅ stands for one hundred, ν̅ for fifty, and γ̅ for three. Notice how it is potentially confusing to use the very same characters for both letters and numbers. How should a scribe know if the letter alpha (α) was meant to stand for a number (“one”) or was simply a part of the next word? To help prevent misunderstanding, scribes used a horizontal stroke above the letters to mark them out as shorthand numbers (ρ̅).

Confusing numbers

Even still, confusion occurred. Consider four notable examples of numerals with textual variation in the New Testament.

Number of shipwrecked passengers

First, in Acts 27, Luke narrates the account of Paul’s shipwreck on the way to Rome, and he happens to mention that there were 276 persons aboard the ship (Acts 27:37). Or was it only 76 persons? While the vast majority of Greek manuscripts have the number 276, there is one early manuscript that instead reads: “about 76”. That manuscript is an important one, Codex Vaticanus (B 03).

It is hard to see how such an alternative reading would arise when the numerals are written as words. Observe:

Most Greek manuscripts: “276 in the ship” (ἐν τῷ πλοιῷ διακόσιαι ἑβδομήκοντα ἕξ)
Codex Vaticanus: “about 76 in the ship” (ἐν τῷ πλοιῷ ὡς ἑβδομήκοντα ἕξ)

However, if we remember that scribes often used numerical shorthand, the reason for the error becomes clear. With the number written as a symbol (and without spaces between words), the phrase would have appeared like so: entōploiōsos (εντωπλοιωϲ̅ο̅ϲ̅). Now we can see how the scribe of Vaticanus could misread this as en tō ploiō ōs os (εν τω πλοιω ωϲ ο̅ϲ̅). These numerals in the exemplar of Vaticanus were almost certainly written in shorthand.

Number of years by the pool

A second example appears in Codex W^s (032), which wrongly states that the crippled man at the pool of Bethesda had been lying there for forty-eight years rather than thirty-eight (John 5:5). Here, it is easy to see the similarity between the longhand forms of the numbers: tesserakonta kai oktō (τεσσεράκοντα καὶ ὀκτῳ) versus triakonta kai oktō (τριάκοντα καὶ ὀκτῳ). Such visual and aural similarity by itself might explain the error. However, this appears to be another case in which numerical shorthand caused the problem. The difference between the shorthand versions is very slight, a one-letter difference: mē (μη) versus lē (λη). Furthermore, if we take into account the appearance of ancient majuscule (capital) script, the difference is even harder to detect at first glance: ΜΗ and ΛΗ.

Number of Jesus’ followers

Third, a well-known case of numerical variation appears in Luke 10:1 and 17. Luke tells us that in addition to the core group of twelve disciples, Jesus also had a larger group of seventy followers—or was it seventy-two? Manuscripts are split here. The majority of Greek manuscripts contain “seventy-two,” but several manuscripts—some very early and some later—simply have “seventy.” The difference in Greek would appear like so:

seventy-two: ο̅β̅ = ἑβδομήκοντα δύο
seventy: ο̅ = ἑβδομήκοντα

Making a decision here is extremely difficult, and commentators are not in agreement about the original wording. From a transcriptional point of view, it’s more likely that a scribe would inadvertently omit duo (δύο) or β̅ rather than add it. A survey of numerical errors in New Testament manuscripts shows that, in general, scribes tended to omit the second of two digits rather than add them. This trend suggests that “seventy-two” is the preferable reading. In this case, knowledge of numerical shorthand does not immediately decide the issue but a knowledge of scribal tendencies can help.¹

Number of the Beast

A fourth and final example is the famous “number of the beast” in Revelation 13:18. The standard reading here is, of course, 666. Written fully, it is hexakosioi hexēkonta hex (ἑξακόσιοι ἑξήκοντα ἕξ). In shorthand, it would be χ̅ξ̅ϲ̅. However, two notable Greek manuscripts (P115 and C 04) attest an alternative number, 616. Written longhand, it would be hexakosioi deka hex (ἑξακόσιοι δέκα ἕξ; as in C 04), and shorthand it would be χ̅ι̅ϲ̅ (as in P115). Unfortunately, knowing the appearance of the shorthand version does not seem to help us resolve this textual problem. There is no obvious transcriptional reason why a scribe might mistake one of these for the other.

It is worth recognizing the potential symbolic value of the number of the beast, and thus the likelihood that a scribe could intentionally change it. It is possible, for example, that early Christians saw the numerical value 666 as a code for a name. Using the practice of gematria (called isopsephy in Greek), the letters of a name or word could be totaled up (since, as we have seen, letters were also numbers) and connected with other things.

For example, many early Christian documents have the number 99 written at the top, which most likely means “amen,” since the total of the values in the word amēn (ἀμήν) amount to exactly 99: α (1) + μ (40) + η (8) + ν (50) = 99. If early readers of Revelation were seeking to identify a known individual as the Beast, this may have led to intentional changes so that the numbers “added up,” so to speak.

In short, recognizing the dynamics of Greek number-writing can often, though not always, explain the cause of errors in the copying of numerals.

Preserving numbers

The examples that we have considered here are instructive for an additional reason. One of the striking things about these points of variation is how relatively minor they are. This point can be seen more clearly when we consider how some skeptical scholars claim that scribes intentionally corrupted the text of the New Testament by doctoring its presentation of Jesus. It is often claimed that scribes deleted uncomfortable wording and added things to make Jesus appear more impressive and godlike than he really was.

With that idea in mind, the remarkable thing about New Testament numbers is how stable most of them they are. Take, for example, the account of the feeding of the five thousand in John’s Gospel. Here would have been an opportunity for a scribe to fudge the numbers and exaggerate the extent of Jesus’ miracle. It would have been easy to change five thousand into six thousand, or ten thousand, and so on. And yet the Nestle-Aland critical apparatus notes only one textual variant affecting the value of this number (John 6:10). It is in Codex Sinaiticus (ℵ 01), which wrongly has three thousand (which was subsequently corrected). In other words, scribes here had the opportunity to exaggerate the extent of Jesus’ miracle and thereby inflate the depiction of Jesus. But there is only one known manuscript that miscopied the number, and the value actually decreased. We would expect the opposite if scribes were rewriting the narrative.

The remarkable thing about New Testament numbers is how stable most of them they are.

We can also consider the narrative of the feeding of the four thousand. One might imagine that this account would have been another tempting occasion for a scribe to exaggerate numerical values and thereby increase the miraculous nature of the feeding. Instead, this is exactly what we do not find. The account appears in both Matthew and Mark. According to the Nestle-Aland apparatus, there are no textual variants with respect to the number of loaves Jesus multiplied (seven in Matt. 15:34/Mark 8:5), the size of the crowd (four thousand in Matt. 15:38/Mark 8:9), nor the amount of leftover baskets (seven in Matt. 15:37/Mark 8:8).² In other words, there is remarkable stability across all Greek manuscripts in these seemingly minor numerical details.

In conclusion, appreciating the dynamics of ancient Greek number-writing can help us understand the causes of some errors that occurred while copying. Yet, the overall picture gives us confidence in the stability and reliability of the New Testament.

Notes

1
For more on this argument, see Zachary J. Cole, “P45 and the Problem of the ‘Seventy(-two)’: A Case for the Longer Reading in Luke 10.1 and 17,” NTS 63.2 (2017): 203–221.
2
The only apparent numerical variant is that a handful of manuscripts add “about” (ὡς/ὡσει) before four thousand in Matthew 15:38 in parallel to Mark 8:9.

Topics

Levels

Intermediate

Previous scholarship

What’s in this Bible?

Dating the translators’ notes

Insights into the translators’ decisions

1. Mary’s purification (Luke 2:22)

2. Jesus’ rebuke of Satan (Matt. 4:10)

3. Greeting our friends (Matt. 5:47)

4. Two longer marginal notes (Luke 17:36; Matt. 26:26)

Conclusion

Notes

Syriac translations of the Bible

A translation in the language of Jesus

Translation choices and interpretive traditions

Encountering the Bible through the Peshitta

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Conclusion

Notes

Putting the puzzling pieces together

The evidence

1. Historical accounts

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2. The site

3. The manuscripts

So, who were the Essenes?

1. Essenes were sectarians

2. Essenes lived throughout Israel

3. Essenes cherished the Bible

4. Essenes were devout

5. Essenes were extremely hierarchal

Related

6. Essenes were (somewhat) countercultural

Conclusion

Notes

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The Text of Revelation

Further Research after the Reformation Period

Erasmus’s Legacy

Notes

The impulse to revise Bible translation

Understanding the ancient Jewish revisions

Where we find the revisions

What these revisions tell us

Conclusion

Notes

Writing numbers

Confusing numbers

Number of shipwrecked passengers

Number of years by the pool

Number of Jesus’ followers

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Number of the Beast

Preserving numbers

Notes

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