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Bible translations

19 April 2013

The Spanish Bible Translation Museum Returns!

Today was the second-last of the Where did the Bible come from? series. And so we had – the Bible Translation Museum of Santa Barbara, Ixtapaluca!

I made a few improvements from the last time, and added a new version or two. It really is interesting to see so many versions side-by-side, to see the differences in wording and sometimes differences in verse numbers and other interesting things. We saw some of the earliest Spanish Bibles (so early that my students couldn’t read the weird medieval Spanish!), modern translations, popular Bibles, forgotten Bibles, the first Mexican Bible… and we even talked about some of the worst translations out there (they’re out there in more ways than one).

I learned a few things tonight. I took the time to compare some of the translations (because, after all, I don’t have room to lay them all out like this in my house!), and there really are some interesting things that have happened through the Reformation, Independence, the Revolution, modern times – anyway, I won’t go into all the details here. 🙂

By the way, I updated my page on Spanish Bible translations online right here.

2 March 2011

Where did the Bible Come From? Week 6: Translations (video)

Jim Ministry glimpses, Prayer and Praise, Video Blogs 4

Last night was the second last part of the 7 week study – Where did the Bible Come From? The topic: translations. As you may guess, this was a bit of an adventurous topic for me to teach – that’s right, me with my poor Spanish teaching a bunch of Mexicans about Spanish translations! 😉

But of course it was really more about giving them the tools to find good versions to use, and not about me giving them all the answers.

As you’ll see in the video below, I set up a bit of a Bible translation museum, with 17 different Spanish translations throughout history, starting in 1432 AD. Most of them had the name, a date, the front page or cover, and a sample text. I ended up using the first part of Psalm 18 as the sample for most of them (there were a couple where I couldn’t find that specific text in time for the study). Of course, there were many many versions I left out!

So, of course there were some of the earliest translations, the first printed Spanish Bible, (actually, Old Testament only in that case, as I recall), the first Mexican translation (the Vence Bible, in 25 volumes!), the first official Roman Catholic Version, and many popular versions of today.

So everyone got to wander around and read and compare various versions. Then we talked about differences between versions, manuscripts, the Textus Receptus, thoughts about the pros and cons of various versions, things like that.

I was able to come up with a nifty list of Spanish translations available free online. I’m actually going to hand it out next week, because I didn’t have a chance to print it for this week. But I’ll try to post it here for those who are interested.

Next week is the last week of the study! I hope we can pull everything together in a very practical way – talk a bit about what exactly we mean when we say that the Bible is the Word of God, have some fun, and, one way or another, make food a part of the evening. 😉