History Book: Translating Scripture

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, September 30th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up next, the WORLD History Book. On this National Translation Day, WORLD’s Emma Perley has the story of three God-fearing men who set out to translate the Bible, even at the risk of their lives.

But first, a missionary shares his story of translating the Bible for the African Bakwe people.

LEIDENFROST: I think it's very important for people to be able to have God's Word in their own tongue, which they can't hide from. They can't hide from the words because they're penetrating.

EMMA PERLEY: When Csaba Leidenfrost first began translating the Bible, the Bakwe language didn’t even have an alphabet.

It does now. It took 35 years, but Leidenfrost has translated and published the New Testament into Bakwe. And he’s seen firsthand how the power of language can transform people. One day, a woman showed Leidenfrost that she had learned to read.

LEIDENFROST: She reached into her purse and pulled out the Gospel of John that we had translated and printed in a booklet form. And I saw it. The pages were all dirty. The edges were dog eared, you know, it was like really well used. And she opens that up to John I, and she starts to read, and I just start crying. And she read for a while, and I was, I was very thankful, and just blessing, blessing and blessing God. And then she said, “Thank you so much for coming and translating the Bible for us, the New Testament.”

It wasn’t that long ago really, that most of the world couldn’t read a Bible, let alone own one. But translators like Leidenfrost have worked to change that throughout the generations.

In the early 700s A.D., the Bishop Eadfrith spent hours every day carefully inscribing, drawing, and painting. He was working on an illuminated manuscript called the Lindisfarne Gospels.

Eadfrith lived on Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, off the coast of England. He spent many years planning and transcribing the Gospels in the remote monastery there.

Each page held detailed, colorful images of birds and beasts, as well as inked Latin text. Audio here from a documentary by Illuminations studio.

AUDIO: To design his complex layout, he invented the lead pencil. And a technique of drawing on the backs of the pages and painting on the front, using the equivalent of the modern light box.

The Gospels were bound with ornate gold and gems. It was displayed in Lindisfarne for more than a hundred years until a Viking raid, when monks safely smuggled it out to the town of Durham.

In the 900s A.D., the priest Aldred inserted Old English translations between the lines of Latin text. It’s the first time that portions of the Gospels had been translated into any form of English.

Next, nearly five hundred years later. John Wycliffe goes head to head with corrupt church practices and produces the first ever English Bible translation. Audio here from a Vision Video documentary.

AUDIO: For John Wycliffe, the Bible stands above every authority. And if it’s not in the Bible, then the church needs to radically reshape its life in the light of holy Scripture.

Wycliffe has spent most of his life challenging the Roman Catholic church from its powerful and wealthy clergy to the doctrine of transubstantiation.

At this time, the Bible is only available in Latin, and most only hear Scripture as it’s read aloud at church. Wycliffe believes everyone should be able to read the Bible for themselves. Here’s a passage from his book, The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture …

AUDIO: The Bible is superior to all human thought. It is from God; it is true; it is the foundation for all society, and most especially all Christians have a right and duty to read it.

Wycliffe translates the Bible from Latin to Middle English with help from friends before his death in 1384, but he can’t rest in peace. Nearly 60 years later, Pope Martin V digs up Wycliffe’s remains to have them burned for heresy. But it can’t stop what Wycliffe started.

After the invention of the printing press, William Tyndale begins his translation of the Bible into English during the Protestant Reformation.

AUDIO: He realized that now that we had the printed Greek New Testament, he could translate from the original Greek, from the original language in which the New Testament was written, into English. Even though, at that time, even to translate a sentence into English was against the law and to be severely punished.

Sketch of William Tyndale from Wycliffe to Wesley; Heroes and Martyrs of the Church in Britain by Gregory J. Robinson whitemay/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images

Tyndale is a skilled Oxford trained linguist. He starts by asking the church to start working on a translation, but authorities deny the request.

AUDIO: One of the reasons for keeping it in Latin, keeping the Scriptures in Latin, was control. So that if the people didn’t know what the Scriptures said, they couldn’t realize what the church was doing which was not in Scripture.

So Tyndale packs up and moves to Germany, where he completes an English translation of the New Testament from Greek in 1526. It’s the first known version of its kind.

AUDIO: But Latin, the church said at that time, was the language of the Bible. This is absolutely untrue. The language of the New Testament is Greek, the language of the Old Testament is Hebrew …

Copies are smuggled into England for printing during the next few years. And Tyndale sets to work on translating the Old Testament. He evades arrest several times, eventually arriving in Belgium. But a friend betrays Tyndale to the church authorities, and he’s thrown in prison. He’s strangled and burned at the stake for heresy before he can complete the English Old Testament.

But Tyndale’s work becomes the basis for later Bible translations. It’s estimated that Tyndale’s words make up about 83% of the New Testament—and 76% of the Old—in the King James Version published in 1611.

AUDIO: Tyndale, we know, gave his life for translating the Bible. And we must always remember when we hold a modern English Bible in our hands that the English Bible was made in blood. It’s very important to remember that. At the same time we rejoice that what Tyndale opened has never been shut up since.

Missionaries like Leidenfrost continue this immense work of translation. His time on the Ivory Coast has given him a greater appreciation not just for the importance of language, but simply the act of reading the Bible itself.

LEIDENFROST: I think that's how people can really be thankful today for our English translations. It's to basically become a Bible reader, a regular Bible reader, and and get to know God better that way. Each time you go through it, you learn more things. And though the goal is not just to get through but it's to be more and more obedient and learn more about God who loves us so much.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Emma Perley.

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