What if I told you that you can take the Bible seriously but not literally? I’m Rev Darcy, a Universalist pastor from rural Alabama, and I’m inviting you on a journey with me through the Bible where we’ll dive deep into all of the drama without the spiritual trauma. Come with me to learn about just how much you are loved, just as you are in this moment, as we spend the next eleven minutes in heaven.
Listen to what the Spirit is saying to you through this sacred word from the Acts of the Apostles:
There was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. (Acts 8:27-31, CEB)
Beloved, I’m Rev Darcy (she/hers), and I am blessed to be with you once again for another Eleven Minutes in Heaven. I am sorry this episode is a couple days late! I’ve been recovering from a bout of bronchitis, but am feeling much better. We are coming to the end of the preparation for our journey through the Bible. We’ve discussed our basic framework for interpretation (the world behind, of, and in front of the text), we’ve explored how the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament became the written text we have today, and we’ve uncovered who decided which books made it into the Biblical canon. Today, we will finish our preparation by tracing the path the Bible took to make it into your hands here in the 21st century by examining several— but not all— of the key historical moments that form the foundation of today’s Bible.
Sermon Note: As always, I encourage you to do your own studying from a reputable source. I recommend Jerry L Sumney’s The Bible: An Introduction (3rd ed.) from Fortress Press (ISBN13: 978-1506466781).
The Septuagint
The first key historical moment we will discuss today is the translation of the Septuagint. The Septuagint— or the translation of the seventy— is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. It was composed between 285–247 BCE at the order of Pharaoh Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt.
Sermon Notes: The legend behind it’s translation— recorded in the Tractate Megillah of the Babylonian Talmud— is this:
King Ptolemy once gathered 72 Elders. He placed them in 72 chambers, each of them in a separate one, without revealing to them why they were summoned. He entered each one's room and said: ‘Write for me the Torah of Moshe, your teacher.’ God put it in the heart of each one to translate identically as all the others did.
The creation of the Septuagint was a significant moment in the history of the Bible because most Jews didn’t speak or read Biblical Hebrew in the 2nd Temple Period, but almost everyone spoke koine Greek. This made the Bible, as it existed before the life of Jesus, accessible to pretty much everyone in the Roman Empire. It’s also important to note that when the New Testament refers to “the scriptures” it is referring to the Septuagint. So the prophet Isaiah the Ethiopian Eunuch, traditionally called Simeon Bachos, was reading in our sacred word was most likely from the Septuagint!
Vulgate
Until the end of the 4th century CE, the Christian Church primarily read the Bible in Greek using a combination of the Septuagint and assorted collections of manuscripts of New Testament books. Over time, they were translated into Latin, the official language of the Roman government and church. In 382 CE Jerome of Stridon was commissioned by Pope Damascus I to revise the Vetus Latina Gospels, the Latin translation of the Gospels. Jerome expanded this project into his Vulgate, or common Bible, which was a Latin translation of the entire Christian Biblical canon— the first of its kind. What was ground-breaking about this translation is that the Hebrew Scriptures were translated directly from the original Hebrew rather than the Septuagint, meaning the Vulgate was a widely-used translation where there was only one-degree of language separation from the reader to the original text. While generally seen as the official Bible of the church, the Vulgate was formally made the official translation of the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent between 1545–1563 CE.
Sermon Note: The Vulgate was the official translation of the Roman Catholic Church until 1979 when it was replaced by the Nova Vulgata.
The Printing Press
Remember, until very recently if a word was written down it was literally written! There was no mass production of text like there is today until about 580 years ago. You could not take a piece of paper and make 500 copies in a couple of minutes like you can today. Before the 1400s CE, if you wanted to copy something it was literally hand copied. Thus, owning any written word, like the Bible, meant spending a lot of money. Until this point, most people received the scripture by hearing it read to them, and even then it was only read to them in Latin, so if they didn’t speak Latin— which the ordinary person didn’t— they didn’t know what it meant. The sermon or homily in a church service was meant to explain the meaning of the scripture to ordinary people in their own language. Thus, the Bible was not accessible to most people, and what they were told it said was influenced by the interpretation of the preacher. All of this changed around 1440 CE when the printing press was invented in Germany by Johannes Gutenberg. The printing press revolutionized the exchange of knowledge by allowing the mass production of written text. It could produce 3,600 pages per workday as opposed to the 40 pages hand copying could produce in the same amount of time. This spurred on the Protestant Reformation which had as a goal, among others, to put the Bible in the hands of the ordinary people in their own language.
Textus Receptus
After the Vulgate, the second major translation that influenced the Bible you have today is the Textus Receptus or the received text. Textus Receptus is the translation of the New Testament into a Latin and Greek print edition by Erasmus starting in 1516 CE. It was the foundation for the Luther, Tyndale, and King James translations of the Bible. While Erasmus’ work was considered top scholarship in the 16th century, it is now considered an inferior translation. Why? Because there are several additions or variants in the Textus Receptus that were present in the Vulgate but not Greek manuscripts. This renders the Luther, Tyndale, and King James translations less reliable translations than more modern versions.
Dead Sea Scrolls
More than anything, the Bible you hold in your hand today was influenced by a holy accident that occurred after World War II. In Qumran, on the west bank of the Jordan River in modern-day Palestinian territories Jewish manuscripts were found between 1946-1956 CE. These manuscripts date from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE and are the oldest surviving manuscripts of many Biblical books in the Biblical canon. Of these manuscripts— most written in either Hebrew or Aramaic— 40% are from the Hebrew Scriptures, 30% are from the Apocryphal Scriptures, and the remaining 30% are manuscripts relating to sectarian rules and beliefs which give us an exciting look into second Temple Jewish life. By providing us with older copies of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Dead Sea Scrolls allow for the Bible you are holding today to have the closest text to the original Hebrew Scripture narratives than any previous generation.
Your Bible Today
Unlike the Vulgate, Textus Receptus, Tyndale, Luther, and King James Bibles which were composed by one person or a small committee of theologically similar scholars, today’s gold star translations tend to be composed of large cross-denominational committees. These committees assign sub-committees to translate portions and hammer out differences in translation until they find consensus. However, this process isn’t fool-proof. In 1946 the word arsenokoitai— a word with no clear English counterpart but probably references sexual intercourse between older men and young boys— was first translated as “homosexual” in the Bible, a decision that was even controversial then.
Sermon Note: I recommend checking out the film 1946 to learn more about the controversial decision to translate arsenokoitai as “homosexual.”
Translations are never finished, with many being revised and republished periodically like the NRSVue in 2021. There is no perfect translation. The work of understanding the Bible is never complete, so be weary of people who claim the Bible is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That’s a claim only Jesus— and by extension God— can live up to.
As we journey together through the Bible, I pledge to be like Philip in today’s sacred word. I will come and sit beside you and guide you through the Bible using my advanced training and knowledge as a pastor. I will do my best to intersect my interpretation with cutting-edge human science knowledge so that we can best determine, together, what the Spirit is telling us through the sacred word here and now.
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Beloved, go about your day knowing you are loved more than you could ever ask or imagine. Be kind to yourself and to one another. Have a snack, and take a nap. Above all, dwell in peace. May it be.
Eleven Minutes in Heaven is © Copyright 2024 Darcy Corbitt, LLC, PO Box 23, Camp Hill, AL 36850. All rights reserved. Support Rev. Darcy and gain access to even more content by becoming a paid subscriber at revdarcy.substack.com/subscribe.
All scripture quotations come from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE which is © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission. (www.CommonEnglishBible.com).
Music included in this podcast is by Julius H used under the Pixabay Content License.
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