Language of the bible?

Question

I have discovered after reading some answers that the bible was originally in Greek. If Jesus is from Palestine, then why do people say the original is in Greek. When i was growing up, i was taught the original bible was written in Latin, then i was told it was written in hebrew and now today there seems to be more confusion caused as people say it was written in Greek. What language was the original bible written in and by it being translated many times over, has some of the meaning not been lost as one bible from 10 years ago is not the same as todays?

Answer 1

People spoke Arameic in Jesus's time,but not many people could write, so presumbably it was spoken until the times when more people could speak and write Latin or Greek!

Answer 2

For the most part, the Old Testament of the Bible was written in Hebrew, and the New Testament was written in Greek.

The reason for the Greek for the New Testament is because back in that time, Greek was the language of learning and knowledge. Most learned men of that time knew Latin (the language of the Empire), Greek (the language of knowledge), and their own local language or dialect.

The scribes of the early Roman Catholic Church translated all of the Bible - both the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament - into Latin, and it was those Latin translations that were the basis of most of the later translations of the Bible. In recent times, however, say for the past 100-120 years, Biblical scholars have translated the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek scriptures, and not from the intermediate Latin, so the Bible is actually more accurate today than it was in the past.

As far as meaning being lost from the original scriptures through translation, there will always be a small loss of meaning, simply because some words don't translate well from one language to another, so the scholars have to give their best effort. Some meanings may also be tweaked a bit depending upon who is doing the translation and for what audience the translation is being performed.

Answer 3

Originally, O.T. Hebrew, Aramaic. N.T. in Greek.
There is some serious point that Matthew had been written originally in Hebrew as the intended audience were the Jews.
The Septuagint is the Greek version of the O.T. and was in common use.
Eventually, the Bible was put into Latin, and then other languages.
As far as meanings are concerned- the people that translated were of course believers, and were very careful to get the exact and precise meaning, if not the actual wording. The trouble with English is that we do not have the same descriptive words that the Greek has.
Examples would be, ( an often used illustration) the word love in English has several different words in Greek to mean different types of love.
It was so much more specific.
Haddon W. Robinson, in his book "Biblical Preaching" put it this way, that going from English to Greek was like going from black and white television to colored television. There is that much more definition.
We can still know the Word of God.

Answer 4

Actually the old testament is mostly aramaic or hebrew. With the odd word from other cultures added here and there where they have been adopted by isreal. The new testament is actually Greek which was the written language during the roman occupancy. Which is why sometimes people may refer to the greek translations and sometimes to the hebrew.
And yes, much of the meaning is lost today to many people who have gone with mistranslation errors and misconception through not understanding the Hebrew and Greek languages and the cultures of the time. You see, much of the bible is written as symbolic references. Some of it as figures of speech (over 220 different figures of speech used all over the place). Some of it is literal and some as parables (stories of wisdom). To get as near to the truth as possible, we need to rightly divide Gods word. Some parts of the bible refer to different ages and can not be applied to the present age. There is a whole lot more to this and it would take far too long to explain it here. If anyone does truly desire to know then message me and I will try ot teach in a series of emails or lessons. It may take a while though it took me many years to understand as much as i do and there is still so much I can learn.

Answer 5

It was written in a number of languages. Jesus actually spoke Aramaic, so even the "original" Greek writings of the New Testament are, at best, translations from Aramaic. Plus, the Old Testament was mostly written in Hebrew.

Eventually, Latin was spoken very widely and it was decided that the whole bible should be translated to Latin so that everybody could read it more easily. Then Latin became more and more scarce and so it was then translated into other languages.

So, your English Bible has plenty of phrases that were translated from Latin after being translated from Greek after being translated from Aramaic.

A bible from ten years ago and one from today may both contain errors, but they won't be compounded errors because they will both be translations from the Greek, which hasn't changed since it was first written. You would never take a modern English bible and use it as a basis for translation to another language. You always start with the oldest available writings so as not to compound the inevitable problems.

A good example is the recent translation of the Bible into Creole, the language spoken by much of the aboriginal population of Australia. The phrase "love Christ with all your heart" would make as much sense to them as "love Christ with all your kidneys", because in their language and culture love is not associated with the heart. It is associated instead with your "insides". So in their translation, it says "love Christ with all your insides". If you used that phrase in an English translation, it would make little sense. This is why all translations should be made from the oldest available sources.

No translation will be perfect, and that's why each one is made by a team of scholars instead of by a single translator. Every word and phrase is carefully translated and the entire group must come to an agreement that the translated phrase is the closest possible thing to the original.

Answer 6

The Bible has been translated into many different languages, the old Testament was orginally in Hebrew. The New Testament was not written down immediately but was taught through oral Tradition because they new Christians really thought the world was going to end soon after Jesus's Ascenion into Heaven. After 60 years or so it was written down it in Syriac, a form of Aramaic(which was the official language of the nations at that time) and Greek.
Then it was translated into Latin by St. Jerome and into German during the Protestant Revolution. Other languages for the missionaries as they learned them and for us, English, or what is called the venacular. They found the Dead Sea scrolls in the 40s and found out that the books were pretty much translated exactly how it is in the present version. It is miraculous but people who had charge of translating certainly were guided by the Holy Spirit.
No book would hold every event that occured during Jesus' life, in fact John's gospel mentions that in the final paragraph.

Answer 7

The original texts that would later become the Bible were written in Aramaic and Hebrew. However, the actual Bible was written in Greek in Alexandria, Egypt by a bunch of Hellenistic scholars. St. Jerome then translated the Bible into Latin later.

Answer 8

The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, and the New Testament was written in Greek, not Latin. Greek was a general language that most of the people living in Palestine spoke. Most people did not just speak one language. The NT was written in Greek because most everyone during that time understood it.

Answer 9

The original Old Testament was written in an ancient form of Hebrew and Aramaic (a closely related language) and the New Testament was written in Greek.

The Bible was translated into Latin as the next paragraph explains. (I copied this from another answer I posted)

By 500 AD the Bible had been translated into over 500 languages. Just one century later, by 600 AD, it has been restricted to only one language: the Latin Vulgate! The only organized and recognized church at that time in history was the Catholic Church of Rome, and they refused to allow the scripture to be available in any language other than Latin. Those in possession of non-Latin scriptures would be executed!

Rather than repost my entire answer from the other question, you can read it here if you'd like.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AunwimjUDE5ZKHR68tN3Gyzsy6IX?qid=20070529005324AAapleU&show=7#profile-info-jsRRgueZaa

If not, I hope I've given enough information to answer you questions

Answer 10

The Holy Bible is comprised in two major sections...Old Testament (testimony) and New Testament (testimony). The history of man was not lived in one language. The main languages that ancient texts were written in were Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Greek was the common language in the day of Jesus and the Apostles, and over most of the Meterainian area. When Jesus spoke, not everyone spoke the same language, but they heard his teaching as if they did.

Answer 11

Every time the bible was translate (which is innumerable) some of it was lost in translation. There is no way to know whether or not the bible as people know it today is even remotely similar to the original message as it was laid out over 2000 years ago. I knwo that if I wrote a letter now that was found and retranslated as many times as the bible was 2000 years from now, it would not say anything remotely similar to what it said when I wrote it. Think about that for a while.