Genesis of a holy tome

"BRING ME the book", said Walter Scott, when he was about to breathe his last. When asked "Which book?", he reiterated "The Book". The Bible was referred initially to as the book. It was only later that it came to be known as "The Holy Bible".

This past weekend, an exhibition was held at the Scottish Kirk in Egmore, highlighting the history of the writing of the Bible, the Word of God. The exhibition is the outcome of J. D. Arulmani's research on the subject.

The Bible History Exhibition and the video, "A lamp unto my feet" by Arulmani of Bangalore, provides a window to the 4,000-year old history of the Bible, right from the initial stages of writing, on stone, clay, letter and papyrus to its present stage of the printed and computerised version.

The Bible was the first ever book to be printed. The full Scripture has been translated and published in 364 languages, the New Testament in 908 and portions of the Bible in 924. The Bible is a library of 66 books in two sections of the Old (39) and the New Testaments (27). The second section consists of the writings about Jesus Christ and the first Christians. The Bible was written mainly in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.

At the exhibition, one found miniature models of clay tablets, which Arulmani painstakingly created after careful study, charts, leather and parchment scrolls, even Bibles in languages such as Chinese and Japanese.

According to Arulmani, if the veracity and authenticity of the Scripture needed the contents being historically verifiable, then archaeological findings, especially in the last two centuries, have amply borne this out.

In 1947, the Dead Sea scrolls came to light and whatever scepticism remained was wiped out. When an Arab shepherd boy searching for his lost sheep casually pelted a stone, it hit the earthen pot hidden inside the Qumran caves on the periphery of Dead Sea. Thus were unearthed leather scrolls which were Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament books. It is interesting to learn that the modern translations are based on the original Hebrew manuscripts.

The exhibition at the Kirk traced an early development: around 285 B.C., the Bible was translated from Hebrew into Greek. The first translation of the Bible was produced by the linguist, Jerome, around 400 A.D. He translated it into Latin, the everyday language of the people. The Latin 'Vulgate' as it was called, was used in Europe for over a 1,000 years and became the standard Bible of the Roman Catholic Church.

By the 14th century, the Church passed a decree: "The Holy Scripture is not to be translated in the vulgar tongues ... under pain of excommunication and the stigma of heresy." But John Wycliff, a priest and scholar, was determined to give to common people the Bible in a language they could understand. He worked secretly and after 22 years, produced the first complete translation of the Vulgate in English, in 1382.

In 1522, Martin Luther, the founder of Reformation and the Protestant Movement, printed his translation of the Greek NT in German. William Tyndale gave a printed Bible, translated directly from Hebrew and Greek. The Englishman was able to accomplish his task only in Germany. One copy of this NT is available today. This was in the possession of Bristol Baptist College for several centuries; in 1994, it was bought by the British Library.

Tyndale was later tricked, arrested and burnt at the stake. However, immediately after Tyndale's martyrdom, King Henry VIII gave the licence for a Bible in English. It is King James the First who commissioned 47 scholars to review the existing translations and produce a new version that would be scholarly, authentic and free of errors. The result was the King James version of the English Bible in 1611. This version is widely used even today.

Several well-researched versions have been produced in the second half of the 20th Century. The New International Version, 1972, is very popular with the present generation. The first Tamil translation was done by the German missionary Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg, who came to India in 1706. Fifty years later came J. P. Fabricius, also a German and his version is called the Golden translation. The exhibition was presented by the International Fellowship of Christian Professionals, India Chapter.

SELINE AUGUSTINE

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