You might think the Latin Vulgate doesn’t have much relevance to our English translations, but it has had considerable influence that continues to the present. The masses were largely illiterate, and Latin began dying out as a language in common use after the fall of the Western Roman Empire by invasions from Germanic tribes in September 476. The various editions of the Latin translation became known as the Vulgate.įor over a thousand years, the Vulgate was the main translation in circulation and is one reason why the authoritarian church held so much power over the masses. 345-420 AD), who began compiling Latin texts dating from the second century.

Over the following few articles, we’re going to go through the history of when the Bible was first translated into English and see how that process became part of the need and desire for textual criticism.įirst, let’s consider the history of Bible translation in general.ĭuring the early Church in the Roman Empire, Bible translations were dominated by Latin versions, springing from the work of a Latin priest named Jerome (c. Let’s look at it against the backdrop of the story of the English Bible. Textual criticism helps us unravel questions like “Why do we have different Bible versions?,” “Why do some people want to cling to the King James Version?” and “What are we meant to make of the differences between Bible versions?” Textual criticism scholars look at variations and, using several techniques, determine what was part of the original text and what are scribal errors. Let’s look at textual criticism against the backdrop of the story of the English Bible There are hundreds of thousands of variances between those manuscripts, and textual criticism helps ascertain what was most likely to be the original wording. Discoveries have been made of thousands of Old and New Testament manuscripts stretching over hundreds of years.