Arabic Bible Translations
A thousand years of Arabic versions, differing by community and confession, down to the Van Dyck Bible of 1865.
Under Islam, Arabic-speaking Christians needed their scriptures in Arabic, and from the eighth century translations multiplied — from Greek, Syriac, Coptic, and Latin exemplars, in Jewish, Melkite, and other hands. The versions differ by community and confession, and their study is a field of its own.
The great printed Van Dyck translation of 1865, made in Beirut, became the standard Arabic Bible of the modern Arab world, read across the churches.
References
- Arabic Bible resources (see the Libraries page) Free / open access
Other Translation Traditions
- The Septuagint (LXX) — The Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible made in Alexandria — the Old Testament of the early church and of Orthodoxy.
- The Targums — The Aramaic paraphrases of the Hebrew Bible that accompanied synagogue reading and preserve ancient interpretation.
- The Peshitta — The Syriac standard Bible, the first complete Bible translation of the Christian era, still read across the Syriac churches.
- 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.
- Vetus Latina (Old Latin) — The Old Latin versions that preceded the Vulgate: the first Latin Bibles, and early witnesses to the Greek text.
- 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.
- Modern Missionary and Vernacular Translation — The worldwide vernacular translation movement and the translation theory it produced, with its contested history.