4000 BC

2348 BC

2242 BC

Unknown

1996 BC

1745 BC

1491 BC

254 years after Joseph.  Moses flees Midian 1490, Exodus 1450, Wilderness 1410 (40 years), 

Receives the Pentateuch and the Law

1410 BC

1200 BC

1245

1095 BC

Saul 1095-1015, David 970, Solomon 930.

165 years united under one king.

930 BC

North – Israel.

Assyrian Destruction of Israel 722 BC. 

• Prophets Elijah, Obadiah, Elisha, Jonah, Hosea

South – Judah

• Joel, Amos, Micah, Zephaniah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Jeremiah 

Jonah and the great fish. 

Nineveh repents to Jonah approximately 760 BC.

Nahum prophesies Nineveh destruction approximately 660 BC, 2 generations later.

600 BC

586 BC

336-320 BC

1 BC

Early saints used the OT and NT books

155 AD

Polycarp martyred  and is known to have quoted 20 of the 27 NT books.  When examining the letters to these early saints we find them using the same basic books of the NT we do today.  And, the OT was well established.

Septuagint or LXX 

240-150 BC

OT Hebrew

100 – 1,000 AD

It is considered the authoritative text of the Hebrew Scriptures. Its accuracy was later supported by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947.

The Masoretes combined numerous books and reduced the total number to 24. 1 and 2 Kings are combined into one book, and so are 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Chronicles. Nehemiah and Ezra are a single book as well. All twelve of the Minor Prophets are bundled into one book.

Protestant Bibles treat these as separate books for a total of 39.

393-397

Erasmus

NT Greek

OT Hebrew

If you own any English version of the Bible you are indebted to William Tyndale. In fact, if you read or speak English at all you are indebted to him. His work standardized the English language and gave us a number of phrases that we continue to use today: “The powers that be”; “eat, drink, and be merry”; “the salt of the earth”; “the sign of the times”; “it came to pass”; “fight the good fight.” When an English word did not exist, he invented it: “scapegoat, atonement, Passover, peacemaker” and many others.

William Tyndale was the first man to ever print the New Testament in the English language. Tyndale also went on to be the first to translate much of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew into English, but he was executed in 1536 for the “crime” of printing the scriptures in English before he could personally complete the printing of an entire Bible. His friends Myles Coverdale, and John [Thomas Matthew] Rogers, managed to evade arrest and publish entire Bibles in the English language for the first time, and within one year of Tyndale’s death. These Bibles were primarily the work of William Tyndale.

Tyndale corrected where the Latin called for Christians to “do penance,” and rightly translated this Greek word as “be penitent” or “repent” – which means to turn away from sin rather than perform works to undo the guilt of sin. Furthermore, he taught against the existence of Purgatory, denied that we needed priests to mediate on our behalf, and denied praying to Mary. Clearly, Tyndale was undermining the teachings of the church. And so the church authorities decided that Tyndale had to be stopped. As you can see, this laid the groundwork for the reformation.

Tyndale did much of his work in Belgium as he had to leave the UK due to persecution. A man named Henry Phillips had gotten into debt and was offered money if he tracked down Tyndale.  Eventually, he found Tyndale in Antwerp, got into Tyndal’s inner circle, and planned an ambush.  Tyndale was imprisoned for 500 days, then executed by strangulation then burning on Oct 6, 1536.

His last words were “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes!” To his credit, his work would later be accepted by England and become the basis for many English language bibles that followed.

Just two years later Tyndale’s dying prayer would be answered. Henry VIII decreed that a copy of the Bible in English be created.

The Coverdale Bible, compiled by Myles Coverdale and published in 1535, was the first complete English translation of the Bible to contain both the Old and New Testament and translated from the original Hebrew and Greek.

Tyndale never had the satisfaction of completing his English Bible; but during his imprisonment, he may have learned that a complete translation, based largely upon his own, had actually been produced.

Catholic church meets in response to calls for reformation.  They affirm the Bible and Tradition of the Church is coequal to scripture.  

Scripture canonized the apocrypha into scripture making it 46 OT books and 27 NT books, in large measure to fight against the reformation.

TR

Queen Mary’s persecution of her Protestant subjects caused many to flee to the continent to avoid imprisonment or execution. Geneva, Switzerland soon became a center for Protestant biblical scholars.   

The end result of Mary’s attempts to return England to Catholicism were rather to convince the vast majority of Englishmen in their resolution and determination never to again succumb to such tyranny, superstition, intolerance or error ever again. By trying to exterminate the Reformation, Bloody Mary only succeeded in entrenching it.

The Geneva Bible was translated in 1560 under the leadership of John Calvin. It is one of the most historically significant translations of the Bible into English and became strongly preferred over the Great Bible. In fact, it was one of the Bibles taken to America on the Mayflower. The Geneva Bible was a revision of the Tyndale translation. It was the first English bible to use modern chapter and verse organization.

King James appointed 54 learned scholars in the making of this new translation from the original Greek and Hebrew into English. It became the “Official Bible of England” and the only Bible of the English church.  It became known as the “Authorized Version” because the making of it was authorized by King James.

Held in order to settle a serious controversy in the Dutch churches initiated by the rise of Arminianism.

• After Arminius’s death, his own followers presented their views on five of these points in the Remonstrance of 1610. In this document and in later more explicit writings, the Arminians taught 
  1. Election based on foreseen faith
  2. the universal merits of Christ
  3. the free will of man due to only partial depravity
  4. the resistability of grace, and
  5. the possibility of a lapse from grace.
• The Synod of Dort concluded on May 9, 1619. The five points of Calvinism had been codified and the followers of Arminius had been univocally condemned. 
• The Canons, framed in express contradistinction to the five articles of Remonstrance, may be summarized as follows:
  1. God’s eternal decree of predestination is the cause of election and reprobation, and that this decree is not based upon foreseen faith;
  2. Christ died for the elect only;
  3. Men by nature are unable to seek God apart from the Spirit;
  4. Grace is irresistible;
  5. The elect will surely persevere in faith to the end.
• The only fundamental difference between the two theological schemas on that point was that the Remonstrants refused to establish a link between total depravity and irresistible grace, whereas the synod established such a link as the primary means whereby a person is drawn to the gospel.
• The immediate ramifications of these decisions were harsh and decidedly uncharitable. The Remonstrants and their allies were given an option: either recant, or submit to imprisonment or exile. Very few were willing to recant, and so over 200 Remonstrant teachers and preachers were banished.
• Calvinistic soteriology continues to dominate theological discussion and debates to this day, and reflects the logically deductive and internally coherent schema to which loyal Calvinists subscribe the world over. No doubt many today would decry the synod’s harsh and unchristian judgment on its opponents, but the Canons continue to be read, questioned, admired, and defended four centuries later.

Because of the printing technology available at the time, various misprints, variations in spelling, and other inconsistencies were common in early editions. Therefore, subsequent updates were necessary in 1613, 1629, and 1638. But the revisions made at Cambridge in 1762 and at Oxford in 1769 standardized the text, ensuring that the King James Version would remain immensely readable for generations to come.

Modern printed King James Bibles marked as ‘1611’ versions including those labeled as ‘400th year annversary’ are often not in the same old English language as the original 1611 printing. Rather, they most often are the 1769 version changes, directed by Benjamin Blayney from Oxford.

The Textus Receptus was primarily based on Erasmus’ Greek Bible, created in 1516 AD, and derivative works, including from Stephanus (1550), Theodore Beza (1598), and Cardinal Francisco Ximenes (Polyglot Bible 1520).

The TR Bible was an almost identical copy of Theodore Beza’s version. For centuries, the Textus Receptus was be the most influential basis for biblical translations.

The Mayflower departed Plymouth, England, on September 6, 1620, with 102 passengers and about 30 crew members in the small, 106 feet (32 m) long ship

In 1898 the German Bible Society (Nestle-Aland) began summarizing and categorizing Greek texts for use in Bible translations using critical Text.

In 1959, a group of scholars and pastors were organized to start work on the New American Standard Bible, based on the 1901 American Standard Version. In 1981 the New American Standard Exhaustive Concordance was published. In 1995, the NASB went through an update, removing the archaic language of “thee,” “thou,” and “thy”.  2021 LSB update to the text of the NASB ’95, based on the Critical Text.