BEHIND EVERY TRANSLATION
Translations can differ before English style ever enters the picture because manuscripts sometimes preserve variant readings. These are the major textual milestones a reader should recognize.
3rd–1st centuries BC
Ancient Greek translations of Jewish Scriptures, produced over time rather than in one event.
Why it matters: The LXX is an early witness to the Hebrew textual tradition and the form of Scripture often quoted or echoed by New Testament writers. It also contains books beyond the later Jewish Protestant Old Testament canon.
Source →c. 3rd century BC–1st century AD
Jewish manuscripts discovered beginning in 1947 near the Dead Sea, including biblical manuscripts.
Why it matters: They provide Hebrew and Aramaic manuscript evidence roughly a millennium older than the medieval Masoretic codices and show both remarkable continuity and real textual variation.
Source →late 4th–early 5th century
Latin Bible associated especially with Jerome, who revised the Gospels and translated much of the Old Testament from Hebrew.
Why it matters: The Vulgate dominated Western Christianity for centuries and strongly influenced Catholic liturgy, theology and early English translations.
Source →medieval codification of an older Hebrew tradition
The consonantal Hebrew text with vocalization and notes transmitted by Masoretic scribes, especially the Tiberian tradition.
Why it matters: It is the principal Hebrew base for most modern Old Testament translations, compared with the Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint, Samaritan Pentateuch and other witnesses when variants matter.
Source →1516 onward
The first published printed Greek New Testament, edited by Desiderius Erasmus.
Why it matters: Its editions helped launch the printed Greek tradition that later fed the Textus Receptus and Reformation-era translations, although the earliest edition was produced quickly from a small manuscript base.
Source →16th–17th centuries
A family of printed Greek New Testament editions descended from Erasmus, Stephanus, Beza and others; the label “Textus Receptus” came later.
Why it matters: This printed Greek tradition stands behind the New Testament of the KJV and remains preferred by some translators and churches.
Source →1881
Critical Greek New Testament prepared by B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort.
Why it matters: It was highly influential in nineteenth-century textual criticism and the English Revised Version, emphasizing earlier manuscript witnesses than the Textus Receptus tradition.
Source →20th century–present
Continuously revised critical Greek New Testament editions drawing on manuscripts, ancient versions and patristic citations.
Why it matters: Modern translations commonly use Nestle–Aland and/or United Bible Societies editions as their principal Greek New Testament base while considering variants in the apparatus.
Source →20th–21st centuries
Scholarly editions of the Masoretic Hebrew Bible with critical apparatus.
Why it matters: BHS and the ongoing BHQ are standard scholarly tools for Old Testament textual work and are frequently named in modern translation prefaces.
Source →Different ancient manuscripts preserve different readings, and editors must judge which most likely represents the earlier text.
A Hebrew or Greek word may have several legitimate senses.
A sentence can sometimes be parsed more than one way.
One team may preserve form while another makes an idiom explicit in natural English.
