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Manuscripts Translated into English
All Text Formatted for Online Use by: Street Witnessing Ministries
The Tanakh (Jewish Bible) contain all of the books of the Old Testament. The first five books, also known as the Pentateuch, where authored by Moses around the 14th century b.c. Even though we do not have the originally authored manuscripts, we have a number of manuscripts copies, such as the Septuagint (LXX), that dates back to the 2-3 century b.c.e.
We have countless texts from other manuscripts that where compiled and finalized around 1000 a.d that became the Masoretic texts (MT). Scholar estimate that the Masoretic texts originate from manuscripts that would have dated as early as the Septuagint. This is evident in proto-Masoretic texts found in the Dead Sea scrolls, which date as far back the 1-2 century b.c.
The Tanakh (from the Masoretic text and Septuagint) English translations are available on this site as follows:
· The Masoretic text on this site is a copy of the JPS (Jewish Publication Society) Holy Scriptures translation to English in 1917.
· The Septuagint on this site is a copy of the original text translation to English from Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton in 1885.
These documents contain the Jewish canonical books separated into their traditional categories of:
Torah - The Law
Navi'im - The Prophetic Books
Ketuvim - The Historic and Poetic Writings
The Septuagint contains the Apocrypha
The original manuscripts of the New Testament is estimated to have been written as early as 60 a.d. Scholars conjecture the first writing of the New Testament was the Gospel of Mark, written less than 30 years after Jesus death, burial and resurrection. There have been numerous fragments and incomplete copies of the earliest manuscripts gathered that date to the first century a.d.
The earliest complete manuscript we have to date is the Codex Sinaiticus that dates to around 325 a.d. The copy on this site has been translated to English by H.T. Anderson in 1861.
Utilizing numerous fragmented manuscripts and the most completed manuscripts discovered over the centuries, textual criticism was able to be performed to get as close to the original text as possible. This is the process of comparing multiple texts to get the phrasing and verbiage that agrees the most between the texts. It needs to be notated that all manuscripts and copies that have been collected over the years reveal evidence that Gods Word has been beautifully and miraculously preserved, as the texts all agree with each other to over 98% of the time. The differences found are simple spelling errors or grammar issues that differ between texts; no doctrine has ever been in question.
One of the earliest textually criticized works to have resulted from this methodology, was the Textus Receptus. The Textus Receptus on this site is the 1598 Beza edition (in Greek), with a corresponding 1769 KJV English translation next to it.
The Contents are as follows:
The Gospels
The Pauline Epistles
Book of Revelation
The Acts of the Apostles
The Other Epistles
The Sinaiticus also contains the additional apocrypha book of the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas.
