David Crawford

Creator

Passionate about the history of the Bible.

Check out David's theology blog at davealdon.com

If you have comments or corrections for this site, you can contact David at davealdonbooks@gmail.com

An effort to show, in an easy to understand way, where your favorite translation comes from, what manuscripts were used to create it, and why it was made in the first place.

The history of the Bible is a part of history.

From a secular perspective, consider how influential the Bible has been for the past 2000 years. Learning about different societies and cultures and how they interacted with the Bible is a great way to learn about the evolution of literature, literacy, religion, and palaeography - the study of ancient writing systems and the deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts.

From a Christian perspective, God is the author of history and the Bible. With that said, the Bible has also been interpreted and translated countless times over by flawed people, with God's help. We have faith that the word of God, through oral tradition and writing, has been preserved and passed down to us today, as He intended. However, in history there have also been attempts to change the Bible to fit a certain narrative or agenda. These biases have influenced the way we read and understand the Bible today, because all modern Bibles come from many different manuscripts. Therefore, learning more about where our Bibles come from can help us be more intentional about how we read and understand God's word, and to see potential biases that we may have never been conscious of before. God can speak to us through the Bible, and through the history of the Bible.

This project does not endorse any particular translation, but instead seeks to give you the tools to understand the history and sources of all of them openly, without hiding anything or trying to marginalize a random translation.

Reducing translation bias is one of the goals of this project. We hope that each translation is represented as honestly as possible, with the intention of helping people learn.

Translation bias is when you believe that a certain translation is the only "true" word of God. The reality is that when you learn about where this particular translation comes from, you'll find that it is just like all the rest and was pieced together from many different manuscripts, which all come from other manuscripts, and so on. If a given translation is the only true translation, what about its source material? What about the manuscripts which are closer to the original source?

You could also argue that the oldest manuscripts are the most accurate, and therefore the "true" word of God. You'll find that while older manuscripts are indeed closer to their original sources, they themselves are based on oral tradition, apostles dictating to scribes, or are missing entire books of the Bible. We also have to consider that direct translations from ancient manuscripts requires a spectrum between exact translation word-for-word (which loses meaning due to the limitations of language), original author intent (which relies on accuracy of interpretation), and paraphrasing (which is the furthest from a manuscript source).

Our hope is that learning about the history of Bible translations widens your view of how God can speak to us, and inspire you to ask questions about where things come from, who wrote them, and why.

This project is still in its infancy, and we're working on adding more and more translations as we go. There are hundreds and hundreds of different translations, manuscripts, and languages to cover, so it will take time to organize them all. If you have a translation you'd like to see added, please let us know!