How the Church Got Here ยท Chapter 6
How did the Bible get from ancient languages into your hands?
The Bible was first written in Hebrew and Greek. For about a thousand years, churches in western Europe read it in Latin, a language most people didn't speak. Some people risked their lives to change that.
Start this chapterThe Bible for everyone
The Old Testament was written mostly in Hebrew, and the New Testament in Greek. Around AD 400 a scholar named Jerome translated the Bible into Latin. His translation, the Vulgate, was used in western Europe for a thousand years.
In the 1380s, followers of John Wycliffe made the first full Bible in English. They copied it by hand. Around 1455, Johannes Gutenberg printed a Bible on his new printing press. After that, books were much easier to make.
While hiding at the Wartburg castle, Luther translated the New Testament into German in about eleven weeks. It was printed in 1522, after he went home to Wittenberg. He wanted it to sound like people talking at home and in the market. His full German Bible came in 1534.
William Tyndale printed an English New Testament in 1526 and was executed for his work in 1536. Today the complete Bible has been translated into more than 700 languages, and part of it into thousands more.
Read it in your Bible
- Psalm 119:105. God's word is like a lamp that lights up the path ahead.
Words to know
- Vulgate. Jerome's Latin translation of the Bible, used for a thousand years. It was a gift in its day. Over time, fewer and fewer people could understand Latin.
- Wycliffe. John Wycliffe, whose followers made the first complete Bible in English. Their Bibles were copied by hand, so each one took months to make.
- Gutenberg. The inventor whose printing press made Bibles far easier to make. Without the press, Luther's writings could never have spread so fast.
- Tyndale. William Tyndale, who printed an English New Testament and died for it. Much of his wording lives on in English Bibles today.
- Wartburg. The castle where Luther hid and translated the New Testament into German. You can still visit the room where he worked.