Concept in Definition ABC

The original Bible was written in Hebrew and the first translation to the language Greek that took place was in the lll century. to. C. The rabbis who worked on the translation were seventy and carried it to completion by isolating themselves on the island of Elephantine in the Nile delta.

They were working for seventy days and seventy nights. For this reason This new Bible is known as the 1970s Version or Septuagint.

The first translation of the Bible

The initiative for this great work took place in Alexandria during the period of the Egyptian Ptolemies in the third century BC. C. It was a complex work, since it involved an effort in several philological questions: orthography, syntax, semantics, morphology, etc. Obviously, there were also difficulties of a theological nature.

It was Pharaoh Ptolemy Filaret who asked the high priest of Jerusalem for a translation of the Hebrew holy books for the library of Alexandria.

The large number of Jews living outside of Palestine quickly adopted this translation in their synagogues, as they had totally forgotten the Hebrew language. Some books that were originally written in Greek were also included by the translators and this This circumstance caused a problem, since these new books were not considered part of the Bible by the Jews.

The books that were incorporated into the Septuagint are known as Deuterocanonicals (the books of: Tobias, Maccabees I and II, Judith, Baruch, Daniel, Esther, Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom).

Other translations of the Bible

In the lV century d. C the Septuagint ceased to be of practical use, since most of the populationThe common people no longer knew Greek but spoke Latin. For this reason, Saint Jerome translated the Bible into Latin, the vulgar language of the people. This new edition is known as "the Vulgate". This version of the Holy Scriptures was of great importance and for many centuries it was used for the celebration of the Eucharist.

During the Middle Ages only those who knew Latin could read the Bible. Translations from Latin into the Romance languages ​​did not take place until the Reformation in the seventeenth century.

In such a context Martin Luther translated the Bible into German as one of the forms of protest against the official church

The first translation into Spanish was the work of two Spanish monks: Cipriano de Valera and Casiodoro de la Reina. Both religious walked away from the path of the Catholicism and joined the Lutheran protest. This edition of the Bible is known as "the Reina Valera".

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