Versions of Scripture

VERSIONS of Scripture. It was late before the Books of the Old Testament were translated into a foreign Tongue. The Hebrews were always jealous of their Privileges, and of being distinguished from all other Nations of the World, as the only Depositaries of the Oracles of the Prophets, and of the Laws of God. They did not readily converse with Strangers, but kept shut up in their own Country, which they looked upon as the finest and best of the whole World. They made Excursions from hence as little as they could; and, contenting themselves with their own Language, and the Study of their Laws, they despised the Study of profane Sciences, and the Conversation of Foreigners. This is the Observation of their Historian Josephus.¹

They did not think of translating their Books into Greek, till the time of the Reign of the Successors of Alexander the Great. Before then, tho’ many of them were scattered in Persia, Media, Assyria,

1038, 1039. and Chaldea; yet they had no Thoughts of translating their Sacred Books into other Tongues; the Proximity and Relation of the Languages of these Countries with the Hebrew, or, rather, the Care they took to preserve the use of their own Tongue, in the midst of those People, was the Reason that they found no Necessity of translating the Hebrew Books into other Tongues. They satisfied themselves with expounding them, vivâ voce, to such as did not understand the Hebrew. This was the Method of Esdras after the Return from the Captivity, and this was continued by his Successors, or such as undertook to read and explain the Law to the People. Nothing of these Chaldee Paraphrases or Interpretations was committed to Writing till about the time of our Saviour, when Onkelos and Jonathan composed their Targums. See their several Articles.

But after the Conquests of Alexander the Great, when the Jews were dispersed through all the vast Empire of this Conqueror, and the Greek Tongue being now become the universal Language for all those Provinces, which had no relation to the Hebrew, many of the Jews were no longer in a Capacity of understanding the Sacred Books, and consequently were under a Necessity of having recourse to some Greek Translation. This first produced that Version said to be of the Seventy Interpreters, whose History and Criticism we have given under the Article SEPTUAGINT; then those of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, of which we have also treated under the Names of those Writers.

The other Versions of the Scriptures, both of the Old and New Testament, made into Latin, Syriac, Arabick, and into the Vulgar Tongues of Europe, Asia, and Africa, were procured and performed chiefly by Christians. These were urged by a Spirit very different from that of the Jews, and desired nothing more eagerly than to publish to the whole World the Truths belonging to Salvation, and to spread every where the Light of the Law and of the Gospel. We shall not here enlarge upon the several Translations of the Scriptures, because we have already done this under the Word BIBLE.

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