Show CARING THE GOOD BOOK how the scripture scriptures were ivere preserved pre pro lou lous to their the books of the law were the first books of the bible dible to be collected by the priests and leaders of the israelites after the law came the written history of the people in the fifth contrary century B C the collection of the prophets by nehemiah and from hia his time onward the collection of the psalms proverbs job canticles Canti cles all of these had been preserved by the priests copied and recopied as occasion required and circulated in manuscripts as of course all writings were circulated in those days the dispersion of the hebrews and their acquisition of other languages and losa loss of the hebrew language necessitated the translation of the scriptures into other than the hebrew and previous to the second Secona century B C what we know as the septuagint translation the was completed in greek designed especially ally for the hebrews living in alexandria and other parts of egypt the septuagint comes from a tradition that seventy scholars seventy two actually made the translation translations and recen into the aramaic were also made and those translations were copied from time to time so that the oldest manuscript of the old testament now extant is only about 1400 year years old the caso case is the same with the new testament it was written again and again until now there are upward of 1000 manuscripts for the gospels and ae as man many more for the rest of the new T testament eay the oldest manuscripts are the codex Sin atticus ns and the codex batica nus which date from the fourth century A D so the books of the bible were handed down the old copies always being renewed before they wore out the language being hebrew greek and after A D latin the latter in the translation adopted by the roman church and known as tho the vulgate because commonly used in the christian churches was the first book printed in 1450 5 As far back as the sev seventh century portions of the vulgate were translated into english and the early versions by wyclif and his predecessors by purvey and others were translations from the vulgate tyndale used luthera luthers german translation of the greek bible the authorized version of king james was made by forty seven scholars and finished in 1611 the manuscripts so far as accessible were consulted the translators not restricting themselves to the tile vulgate but going to the hebrew and greek whenever they could pittsburg dispatch |