Earliest Known Handwritten Draft Of King James Bible Discovers - It Was A Translator's Collaboration

[Electric Monk]

(cross-posted from GD and Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity)

Earliest Known Draft of King James Bible Is Found, Scholar Says

The earliest known version of The King James Bible, perhaps one of the most influential and widely read books in history, has been discovered mislabeled inside an archive at the University of Cambridge. The find is being called one of the most significant revelations in decades. It shows that writing is a process of revising, cutting, and then more rewriting. The Bible is no different in this regard, even though some conservative Christians claim it is the divine word of God himself. Perhaps God, then, is a revisionist. This find certainly seems to suggest that.

.............

“You can actually see the way Greek, Latin and Hebrew are all feeding into what will become the most widely read work of English literature of all time,” Professor Miller said. “It gets you so close to the thought process, it’s incredible.”

The draft, he argues, also complicates one long-cherished aspect of the “mythos,” as he put it, surrounding the King James: that it was a collaborative project through and through.

The companies were charged with doing their work as a group, rather than subdividing it by assigning individual books to individual translators, as was the case with the Bishops’ Bible. But the Ward notebook, Professor Miller said, suggests “beyond a reasonable doubt” that at least some of the companies ignored the instructions and divided up the work among individuals, at least initially.

Further, he said, the notebook contains a complete draft for the book of the Apocrypha known as 1 Esdras, but then, after a run of blank pages, only a partial manuscript for the book known as the Wisdom of Solomon, suggesting that Ward picked up the slack for another translator.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/books/earliest-known-draft-of-king-james-bible-is-found-scholar-says.html
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/10/28/handwritten-draft-of-king-james-bible-discovered-reveals-no-divine-powers/

[Yorktown]

1. Minimum of 40 authors of the Bible + 5 for NT's + countless translators

One couldn't dream more rationally assembled holy books.

[truebluegreen]

3. I remember reading that there are more versions of the NT

than there are words in it (many differing only by a word or two, but still: in this fashion "maiden" became "virgin"....).

But of course it is the unalterable revealed Word of God.

[Yorktown]

4. Idea of new book: an abridged digest of all the apocryphal gospels

I would like to learn what part of the unalterable revealed Word of God has been kept away from us by a fiat decision of some council in the IVth century.

The masses want more gospels, say I.

[truebluegreen]

5. I agree.

Too many are unaware that Christianity at that time was the established religion of imperial Rome...no wonder the simple people's social reformer disappeared from view.

[happyslug]

6. The books that were "banned" were still read long after the 4th century....

Most of the books are on line. Many disappeared in the Dark Ages, do to neglect than any other reason. Parchment only lasts about 1000 years, thus unless a book was copied in the dark ages (or early Middle ages) it did not survive till the time of the printing press.

Now, some have been rediscovered in the Middle East. These were on papyrus, the other "paper" of the Roman World. Papyrus lasts as long as Parchment in dry conditions, like in Egypt, but deteriorates quickly in any place where rain occurs. Thus Europe used Parchment from about 200 AD onward, through Papyrus was used till about 600 AD when it fell from favor with the lost of Egypt to the Arab Conquest (Papyrus use had been on the decline since the Vandals took Carthage in 450 AD, splitting the Mediterranean sea in two and killing off most of the East- West trade that had been a main source of wealth for the Roman Empire since the defeat of Hannibal in 202 BC).

Now, in the 1666 it was decided in England that some books in the Catholic Bible should NOT be in the bible. These books have always been "suspect" since the 400s, but the Catholics kept them in for these included the Maccabees (which is the story of the Jewish Revolt against the Greeks about 100 years after Alexander the Great, which was successful and where Jewish Holiday of Hanukkah derives) and the story of Judith (where the Jewish holiday of Purim derives). Luther had also kept them in the bible, but in the section between rest of the Old Testament and the New Testament. This has been followed by almost all western bibles since. The biggest exception in the post 1666 King James Bible (the pre 1666 King James bible contain these books)"

http://sacred-texts.com/chr/apo/index.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_apocrypha

The Ethiopian Bible contains books NOT in the Catholic Bible:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodox_Tewahedo_biblical_canon

Now, the Koran has some books that are "Christian" in nature, including the Companions in the Cave, which is a retelling of the Christian Story of the "Seven Sleepers":


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sleepers

We also have "Gospels" that the church fathers thought were duplicative of the four Gospels and/or written after the present four Gospels. These books were not technically banned, many were read and copied for centuries (and thus why we have them) but they were also NOT viewed can valid as the four gospels:

http://notinthebible.com/

Just a comment that most Books NOT in the Bible did not mean they were banned. In most case other books were considered better OR the books were seen as duplicative and adding nothing to the bible as a whole.

Now we do have a set of books actually banned, but these appear to be tied in with the fight between Catholics and Gnostics. The Gnostics made Mary Magdalene their "founder" as oppose to St Peter. The Gnostics then wrote books that they attributed to Mary Magdalene (this was a common practice, some of the books mentioned above were attributed to various apostles and that may be true of the some of the books that actually made it into the New Testament).

Most of these books were found in 1945 in Egypt:

http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html

The actual books:
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhlcodex.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism

[Yorktown]

9. Great post

[keithbvadu2]

10. Very interesting bits of history.

Sometimes as interesting as the subject.

[pangaia]

11. All very enlightening, so to speak.

This is more complicated than the Tokyo subway system.

[xocet]

7. That sounds like a good theme for Nanowrimo 2015...

http://nanowrimo.org/

[happyslug]

8. The Vulgate, the "most accurate" translation

The Vulgate is in Latin translated from the Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic. In the original Hebrew stories, Moses's wife's name is Marium. That is the name used in the Vulgate for Marium Magdalene, and the other Mariums in the New Testament EXCEPT for Jesus's Mother who is referred to as Mary. Thus the Vulgate is a 100% accurate translation...

In Hebrew the name is Mariam, and it was the most common name for women in the Jewish world. Till the 1980s, Mary was the most common name for women in the United States (and today there are three times as many Marys as there are any other single name for women). Thus Mary's name show the accuracy of the Vulgate, for there was only one Mary, the other women were Mariums.

Anyway, Catholic long viewed the Vulgate as the "Most Accurate" translation mostly do to its exclusive use of Mary for Jesus's mother only and why should we question it today,,

On a more serious note, the main translator of the most recent translation made the comment that the bible should be translated every 20 years, do to changes in how we speak and use our own language. The meaning of certain words slowly change, thus what was a good translation 100 years ago, may be a terrible translation today. You must remember that when reading any translation. Furthermore most translations are NOT translations of words or sentence, but of whole sections and thus concepts. What we call periods, commas and other punctuation is attributed to Charlemagne around 800 AD, prior to that time period you just had words and spaces between words.

Side note: Aristophanes of Byzantium around 200 BC, while in charge of the Library of Alexandria developed punctations, but mostly on how non greek speakers should speak greek as opposed to when a sentence ends. This developed over the next 1000 years till the time of Charlemagne when what we would call punctuation is first seen.

https://books.google.com/books?id=7kJkBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA14&lpg=PA14&dq=charlemagne+punctuation&source=bl&ots=RCo8iZs2vB&sig=658pGfneycqDPoEUcEXIGDl3J64&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAjgKahUKEwiW8N_BqujIAhXDoD4KHVxbBS8#v=onepage&q=charlemagne%20punctuation&f=false

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristophanes_of_Byzantium

While Charlemagne is credited with the start of Punctuations, proper punctuations did not really start till after the invention of the printing press c 1400.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuation#Medieval

Thus, while periods and other punctuations existed prior to the printing press, the need to standardized punctuation was only needed with the invention of the printing press. Thus anything prior to 1400 you have to be careful about, when one sentence ends and the next begin were not quite defined till about 1450. This is a complication in any translation.

[still_one]

2. The most accurate translation is the revised standard edition