בראשית
Biblical Hebrew
The language of most of the Old Testament. Ancient Hebrew differs from Modern Israeli Hebrew in grammar, vocabulary, and usage.
A story across languages & generations
From ancient
scrolls to the Bible
in your hands.
Before there was a Bible on your shelf, there were scrolls, letters, scribes, and a long journey of translation.
Open the story ↓Read the story. Open the details. Follow your curiosity.
ONE STORY · MANY WITNESSES
The thread to hold onto
The Bible did not begin in English. Its journey involves original writings, surviving copies, edited source texts, and translations. These are different stages of the story—and each has something to teach us.
01
The story begins
Words in a real world.
Law and poetry. Prophecy and history. Gospels and letters. The books of the Bible arose across generations, in the languages of their writers and first hearers.
אֱלָהּ
Biblical Aramaic
A related but distinct Semitic language: Daniel 2:4b–7:28; Ezra 4:8–6:18 and 7:12–26; Jeremiah 10:11; and the place-name Jegar-sahadutha in Genesis 31:47.
ἐν ἀρχῇ
Koine Greek
All 27 New Testament books survive in Koine: the common Greek of the Hellenistic and Roman eras, with varied literary styles.
Written then. Copied later. A book’s composition date is different from the age of the oldest physical copy we possess. No original biblical autograph is known to survive.
02The words are copied.
Ink, hands & centuries
The words are copied.
The witnesses remain.
What survives is a remarkable collection of scrolls, fragments, and books. Some preserve a few lines. Others preserve whole collections.
Scrolls beside the Dead Sea
Ancient biblical manuscripts bring us much closer to the world before our surviving complete medieval Hebrew Bibles.
BIBLICAL COPIES FROMc. 250 BC
COMPLETE ISAIAH SCROLLc. 125 BC
A fragment. Then a book.
P52 preserves part of John 18. Much later, Codex Sinaiticus gives us the earliest surviving complete New Testament.
P52 · COMMON DATINGc. AD 100–200
SINAITICUSc. AD 350
Preserving the Hebrew text
Generations transmitted the consonantal text. Masoretic scholars added vowel points and detailed notes.
ALEPPO CODEXc. AD 930
LENINGRAD CODEXAD 1008–1009
03
Across a language boundary
Scripture finds new voices.
Long before English Bibles, Scripture was translated into Greek, Latin, Syriac, and other languages. Translation is an ancient part of this story.
A turning point · the Septuagint (“the Seventy”)
Hebrew Scripture in a Greek-speaking world.
The Greek translation of the Torah began around 300–200 BC; other books followed. Its beginnings are earlier than the oldest surviving biblical Dead Sea Scrolls—but a translation’s beginning is not the date of its surviving manuscripts.
Latin & Syriac
Old Latin translations appear from about AD 150–200. Syriac Gospel translation has early roots; Jerome’s Latin Vulgate followed around AD 382–405.
The Gothic Bible
Wulfila’s translation from Greek belongs to approximately AD 300–400. Surviving witnesses preserve portions rather than a complete Bible.
Before Wycliffe
English readers encountered portions of Scripture long before a complete Middle English Bible: glosses, Gospels, and Old Testament selections.
04Which reading?
Where the paths branch
Which reading?
Then, which English words?
These are two separate decisions. A translation can use modern English while retaining a traditional Greek source text. A close translation style does not by itself tell you which manuscripts it follows.
Textus Receptus
The printed Greek tradition associated with Erasmus, Stephanus, and Beza. Broadly part of the Byzantine stream, with some distinctive readings.
KJV · NKJV · MEVByzantine / Majority
The Byzantine tradition represents the overwhelming numerical majority of surviving Greek NT manuscripts. Majority editions seek to represent it.
EMTV · Byzantine Text VersionCritical editions
Editors compare witnesses passage by passage, giving weight to age, relationships, and other evidence rather than following the numerical majority.
ESV · NIV · NASB · CSB · NLTMany witnesses. Different judgments. At some disputed readings, critical editions favor a much smaller group of early witnesses over a large Byzantine majority. Wider consultation does not necessarily mean wider numerical support.
A small glossary for the journey
Manuscript: a handwritten physical witness. Textual tradition: a recurring pattern of readings among witnesses. Edited source text: a scholarly edition that selects readings using manuscript evidence. Translation: a rendering into another language. Canon: the collection of books received as Scripture; this is a separate question from wording.
05One language.
A growing English bookshelf
One language.
Many windows into the text.
From handwritten Middle English to the printed Bibles of the Reformation and the translations familiar today. Open any volume for its place in the story.
Style labels are broad guides, not rankings of accuracy. Methods vary within translations. Dates mark a first complete Bible or named complete edition; this is a selected survey.
The story reaches you
From their hands to yours.
From the page to your heart.
Knowing how the Bible came to us can deepen both gratitude and careful reading. The next chapter is wonderfully ordinary: open it, read it, pray it—and let its words take root.
Learn Scripture by heart ↗ The Word in the Words ↗Sources, scope & further reading
Dates are approximate, and some composition dates and manuscript datings remain disputed. The examples describe textual approaches without ranking a reader’s preferred Bible.
German Bible Society · editionsCSNTM · Greek manuscriptsCodex SinaiticusManchester · P52TBS · Received TextBoyd · textual comparisonsESV prefaceWorld English BibleTranslation introductions
New details: NET textual notes · Jeremiah 10 · Alexandrinus Gospel research · Orthodox Septuagint project · Project Wulfila · Helsinki Corpus · West-Saxon Gospels.
Image credits and license links appear beside each image and in its enlarged view. Public-domain reproductions and a CC BY-SA photograph are used; manuscript images are historical witnesses, not invented reconstructions.