how many people translated the Bible from Aramaic to Greek? and how good are they ?

Question

how many people translated the Bible into Greek language? and how professional in the language are they?

Answer 1

Due to the Greeks building the first truly great school of learning at Alexandria in Egypt, (probably as a Macedonian, Alexander the Great thought this would not only win over the Egyptians, whose empire he replaced, but would also snub Athens!), and that upon John the Baptists death, Simon Magus had to be summoned from Alexandria to take over the cause, and that Judaisms roots lay in Egypt, large amounts of the original Old Testament were actually written in Greek. Some parts were in Latin, and some in Aramaic. Very little of it needed translating into Greek, and the translations are thought to be largely sound, because at the time of the translations, Christianity and Judaism were not the predominant religions of the Western world, and the translators would have been scholastically sound.
The major problems with the translation, and manipulation of words and their true meanings, comes about from the 6th Century AD onwards. Christianity had become the principle religion of the Roman Empire, and then the empire itself collapsed, leaving Europe and the Middle East with a multitiude of Christian Sects with localised beliefs, and a great difference in views. These gradually whittled themselves down to about half a dozen principle sects; Roman Catholicism, Byzantine (now Orthodox) Catholicism, the Bulgars, Cathars, Romany Gypsies, and a superb strange and mysterious cult that still exists in hiding in Iran, with approx. 5000 members. This was the situation of the Bible at the turn of the first millenium AD, the previous 400 years had been focussed on removing female power from the New Testament Gospels; ie the removal of the Gospel of St Thomas, the writing of the Gospel of St Luke, the corruption of the word 'celibate' to mean abstaining from sex, not abstention from marriage, as St Peter & St Paul advocated.
The Bible was not only rewritten & editted, but the Roman Catholic church started adding new texts to it's library, claiming these texts to be as divine as the Bible, though written for purely religious political reasons, the Malleus Malefactorum being possibly the most famous. There were other books which listed all the depths of purgatory, a hierarchy of angels, the identities of the devils servants, the Black Masses etc. The RC church now denies these books ever existed, never mind that they wrote them.
As to mistranslation by an inept translator, that comes from the 16/17C and the translation of the original texts from Latin, Greek and Aramaic into European languages, English and German principally. Here mistakes were made purely by accident, not by design and several of these slips are famous among theologists, and I shall give a couple of examples below;
1/ Lucifer is the name given by Meditarranean fisherman to the planet Venus, or the 'Morning Star' as many North European fishermen refer to her. How was a German to know of this tradition, so when encountering the line 'O Lucifer, though art fallen from the sky', instead of knowing this meant it was pm that day, he came up with the whole concept that Lucifer was the devil and had been an angel cast out of heaven! Quite a big leap of ignorance, with very long reaching impact on the learning of subsequent generations.
2/ Of little consequence, except possibly to make it one of the Bibles best known phrases, due to its stupidity, is the mistranslation of 1 word, with its very similar symboled counterpart. If I were to tell you that the symbol for 'rope' and 'a camel' are both squiggly lines, but the camel has a line through it, you may have already guessed that it is in fact 'harder for a rich man to enter heaven, than it is to thread a ROPE through the eye of a needle', a rope being a very thick thread, a needles eye being small. So, be reassured that Jesus did not support animal abuse, and that people should really attempt to crush camels!
As I hope you see, the Bible as read in the English language today (whether St James, Good News or whichever) bears little relation to the actual words written at the time of Moses, Isaiah, Jesus, and that this is because of both the purposeful corruption of the book, and also due to innocent errors in the translators. A language carries not only a history, but localised cultural baggage, and any translator MUST be attuned to that baggage, not just good at language.
After all, today in England most people know that the response to the question 'Can we build it?' is 'Yes, we can', and that 20 years ago 'Who loves you baby?' was a rhetorical question, both based on tv of the time. Ask a chinese student of English these same 2 questions and he should simply look baffled. That is cultural baggage.

Answer 2

I don't think anybody really knows how many people translated the Bible from Aramaic to Greek or how "good" they were, because :
1] The Bible was in more than one language. The Testaments, by different people were in different dialects and languages. Aramaic was just Jesus' mother tongue.

2] The Bible was translated into Latin, Greek, English and virtually every Language of the World; where the Translators made every effort to do a good job.

To err is human.

Answer 3

I assume the questioner means the original translation. From the Hebrew and Aramaic into Greek. Which was done some 2 or 3 hundred years before Christ.

There were two different rabbis in two different cells so they could not compare notes. They were the the best of the best. But to the Jews of their day, they were big sinners because the Jews did not want to share their scripture with the heathen Greeks.

The first responder, Anya, makes a grave error. At the time the Septiguint was written, if an unmarried young woman was NOT a virgin she could be killed. All young girls were virgins. Even to this day in that part of the world, some very young girls are murdered by their families because their fathers discover they have had sex.

Hope that helps.

Answer 4

Actually, there was a document called the Septuaguint which was the translation of the first five books of the bible from Hebrew to Greek by 70 Hebrew scholars. Later, the remainder of the Old Testament was translated by a group of Greek Scholars and also given the name Septuaguint.

There are also extant translations from Hebrew to Aramaic. I don;t know of any direct Aramaic to Greek translations.

Answer 5

In the beginning the new testament, the stories of Jesus and his ministery, were verbal stories ... often told in Aramaic. However, as the word spread, individuals would tell the stories (heard in Aramaic) in other languges too -- I'm sure making adjustments as needed (ever play telephone). It wasn't until a long time that these stories got written down.. often in common Greek... because that was the common language shared by most!

Answer 6

Zero. Original languages were Hebrew, Chaldee, and Greek. Seventy people translated the Hebrew canon into Greek during the Helenistic era.

Answer 7

I do not know how many people worked on it. BUT! They did make one mistake that changed two major religions. The original word for''young woman'' was mis-translated as ''virgin''. A young woman may, or may not, be a virgin. She may, or may not, be married.