BrunleaBooks - The HOLY BIBLE - From Quill Pen to PDA

From Quill Pen to PDA

The Bible is the most translated book in human history, and still heads the global all-time best seller list by a long margin. More than a billion copies have been sold of the King James version alone. By way of contrast six hundred years ago, in 1407, English law made it illegal either to translate or to read the Bible in English, whether in private or in public. The Latin text prescribed by the institutional church of the time was, of course, unintelligible to the majority of people, and the religious and political elite of the time preferred to keep it that way. Later, however, the situation was to change dramatically, especially during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Thanks to the courage and determination of men such as William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale in the early 1500s, the English language got its Bible. Then the "Authorised Version" was translated in the early seventeenth century by a large team of clergy and university scholars working under the sponsorship of King James I of England. For more than three centuries this translation of the Holy Bible (its final text more or less fixed by the Oxford edition of 1769) was to be at the heart of English literature and culture as well as providing the source of spiritual guidance and vitality for Christians around the world.

This "King James Version" is still very widely valued and read today, both by individuals and in churches. We include several editions of it in our listings here, in different print sizes and bindings. By the second half of the twentieth century, however, as the English language developed, vocabulary and sentence construction which had been common in earlier years was for many becoming increasingly difficult to follow. People brought up in the habit of Bible-reading from a young age still learned its language instinctively, almost like learning a foreign language from early childhood, but for the majority this was not the case. It was not only a question of the "Thees and Thous" sounding archaic, but over the centuries some words had even changed substantially in meaning. It was time to have the Bible in twentieth century language.

Many attempts were made to produce such a version in modern English. These varied in quality with respect to both accuracy of translation and dignity of style. It is probably true to say that none has matched the grandeur of phraseology characteristic of many favourite passages in the old "A.V." but the New International Version (NIV) has become widely used worldwide, and in the UK is almost certainly now the most commonly used translation. As with the A.V., we list in these pages a wide range of different sizes and bindings, including study Bibles with space for personal notes. A further page contains a listing of some available editions of the highly popular Good News Bible.

A third translation highlighted here is the English Standard Version. Although less widely known than the NIV it is a valuable addition to the equipment of the Bible student. The ESV was developed by an international team of eminent Bible scholars from many Christian denominations. Their aim was to produce a version which was true to the latest textual scholarship, to ensure intelligibility to the modern reader, and to retain as far as possible the literary quality of the AV. The translators were also determined to allow the Bible to speak for itself, in its own terms, and to avoid changes of expression to match contemporary fashions of political correctness. As with the NIV, versions are available with both standard English and American English spellings (such as 'saviour' and 'savior').

In this page so far we have focused on Bible translations into English. At present the whole Bible is available in around 425 languages, the full New Testament in about 1100, and smaller portions in at least another 850. We include a page on which you can purchase Bibles in a range of major world languages. The work of translation continues, with many agencies around the world collaborating to bring the Bible to all language groups. The story is fascinating, going back more than two thousand years to when the "Old Testament" Hebrew scriptures were first translated into Greek. We have included a page here on the history of the English Bible. Searches on Amazon or AbeBooks using the forms below would discover many more sources for the story. You can also use the search bars to find editions of the Bible which we do not yet feature on this site.

Finally, technology continues to develop. Six hundred years ago no-one could have imagined the impact on the world shortly to be made by the invention of the printing press. The days of the quill pen and parchment were quickly to fade into history. The monastic scriptorium, filled with monks and brothers painstakingly crafting ornate illustrated manuscripts, was gone. In the twentieth century the development of digital technology is having a similar massive effect. Today, the Bible is available on the internet. Study and research software has reached a high degree of sophistication. No longer does the typical preacher labour with pen in hand to write sermons on paper, but sits at a computer screen with a vast array of study materials available at the press of a key or the click of a mouse.

Many a Christian believer carries a pocket New Testament, but not always nowadays as a small black leatherbound India-paper book. Rather it is often a set of several translations of the whole Bible on a PDA such as a Palm handheld computer or a Treo phone or a BlackBerry. Bibles for handheld devices (PDAs) are given a page of their own.

We also have a page devoted to desktop/laptop Bible software, ranging from fairly basic applications consisting of the text plus search and note-taking facilities, through to massive suites of software for the academic researcher or other serious Biblical scholar.

BIBLES

From Quill Pen to PDA