It is helpful to know something about the languages that the Scriptures were originally written in. This is intended as a brief discussion of how the Scriptures came into the form we know it today.

The Hebrew Scripture (The Old Testament) was originally written in Hebrew. In the third and second century BCE, as Greek became the common language of the eastern Mediterranean following the conquests of Alexander the Great, the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek. The Greek translation is known as the Septuagint — the Old Testament as the Greek-speaking world read it, and the version most often quoted in the New Testament. The name is derived from the Latin word for seventy. According to tradition, seventy-two Jewish scholars — conventionally rounded to seventy, which is why the translation is abbreviated LXX — did the work at the request of Ptolemy II. The project began with the Torah (the first five books); the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek over roughly the following two centuries.

Which Hebrew writings would be included was determined by the Jewish Rabbis and scholars. Both the original Hebrew and the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures are quoted by the writers of the New Testament.

It is important to remember that the Scriptures known and quoted by Jesus were the Hebrew and Greek versions of the Hebrew Scriptures. On occasion Jesus also quoted in the more colloquial Aramaic, which was the common language of that era. No New Testament authorship occurred till several years after Jesus’ resurrection.

The New Testament texts were originally written in Greek, the common language of the Roman Empire.

As the writing of the earliest followers of Jesus were collected, the second collection of books we call the New Testament was assembled. The writings to be included were recognized gradually through their widespread use in the churches, and were affirmed at councils such as Hippo (393) and Carthage (397). Athanasius’s letter of 367 already named the same twenty-seven books we have today.

With the fall of the Roman Empire, and as the Gospel spread throughout the known world, the need to translate the Scriptures into other languages became more acute. For simplicity, I will only discuss the translation of the Scripture into the English language.

As you would expect, portions of Scripture were translated many times over as missionaries carried the Gospel to different peoples. These are the milestones in English.

Translation	Date	Why it matters
John Wycliffe’s Bible	c. 1382	The first complete Bible in English. Hand-copied rather than printed, and made from the Latin, not the original languages.
Tyndale’s New Testament	1526	The first English New Testament printed, and the first translated directly from the Greek.
The Geneva Bible	1560	The first English Bible to use the chapter-and-verse system we know today, and the first to disregard the Divine Right of Kings.
The Bishops’ Bible	1568	The Church of England’s own revision, produced in response to the Geneva Bible.
The Authorized (King James) Version	1611	Made at the request of King James I. It became the authorized version of the Church of England, and the best known translation of the era.

When the early settlers came to America, the translation they were most familiar with was the Geneva Bible — it came over on the Mayflower and was the dominant Bible of the early colonies.

Chapter divisions trace back to Stephen Langton in the early thirteenth century, and verse divisions to Robert Estienne in 1551 and 1555; the Geneva Bible was the first English Bible to carry both.

While early English Bibles were generally based on a small number of Greek texts, or on Latin translations, modern English translations of the Bible are based on a wider variety of manuscripts in the original languages (Greek and Hebrew). The translators put much scholarly effort into cross-checking the various sources. Relatively recent discoveries such as the Dead Sea scrolls provide additional reference information.

More recently the need for translations in modern English was apparent, and numerous good translations are available. To understand the different approaches to translation, and which translations use what approach, click here.

My goal here is to offer a few suggestions to help you decide where to begin. The two most popular come first.

Translation	Approach	Why you might choose it
New International Version NIV	Thought for thought	A highly accurate and smooth-reading version in modern English. Because of its popularity, this is the translation you will most often hear read in public meetings.
New King James Version NKJV	Word for word	A modern-language update of the original King James Version. It retains much of the respect and style of the original.
GOD’S WORD Translation GW	Thought for thought	My first recommendation for anyone reading the Scripture for the first time. It uses only language in current use, avoiding words that are familiar mainly to those with some religious training. It is what I prefer for leisure and public reading. Less popular, so often more expensive — but still where I would start you.
Legacy Standard Bible LSB	Word for word	Written in a formal style. Although it is relatively new, it is a direct update of the New American Standard Bible (NASB) 1995. I include it because it is my preferred study Bible; it is available with a Hebrew and Greek lexicon embedded for study.

“Approach” refers to the translation spectrum explained on the Translations page.