Linguistics & Languages

Translation Traditions

No scripture reaches its readers unmediated. These are the great passages of the texts between languages — the versions that carried them, fixed their vocabularies, and sometimes decided their canons.

Greek The Septuagint (LXX) The Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible made in Alexandria — the Old Testament of the early church and of Orthodoxy. Biblical Hebrew → Greek Aramaic The Targums The Aramaic paraphrases of the Hebrew Bible that accompanied synagogue reading and preserve ancient interpretation. Biblical Hebrew → Aramaic Syriac The Peshitta The Syriac standard Bible, the first complete Bible translation of the Christian era, still read across the Syriac churches. Hebrew and Greek → Syriac Latin The Vulgate Jerome's Latin Bible, the text of Western theology for a millennium and the Catholic Church's declared rule of faith at Trent. Hebrew and Greek → Latin Latin Vetus Latina (Old Latin) The Old Latin versions that preceded the Vulgate: the first Latin Bibles, and early witnesses to the Greek text. Greek → Latin Coptic, Ge'ez, Armenian, Georgian, Church Slavonic The Ancient Church Translations: Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic The early versions of the daughter churches, which preserved texts lost elsewhere and made the Bible a literature in five more tongues. Greek (with Hebrew behind it) → Coptic, Ge'ez, Armenian, Georgian, Church Slavonic Arabic Arabic Bible Translations A thousand years of Arabic versions, differing by community and confession, down to the Van Dyck Bible of 1865. Hebrew and Greek (often through Syriac and Coptic) → Arabic The languages of the world Modern Missionary and Vernacular Translation The worldwide vernacular translation movement and the translation theory it produced, with its contested history. The biblical languages → The languages of the world

All languages