until recent years is this fact: Until about the turn of the century scholars had a somewhat fuzzy understanding of the Greek in which the Bible was written. In the 1890’s archaeologists uncovered all kinds of documents in Egypt. From long-buried rubbish heaps outside ancient towns flooded forth papyri of all kinds—letters, bills, deeds, contracts, petitions, invitations, even copies of plays and poems. These papyri were written in Greek. Not until about 1895 did scholars realize what kind of Greek this was. It was the same kind of Greek in which the Bible was written.

Why was this a vital discovery? Because scholars had thought the Greek of the Bible to be of a special kind. They knew it was not classical or even the literary Greek of the first century A.D. They called it “Biblical Greek.” So thoroughly did many scholars believe Bible Greek to be a unique jargon that one German scholar even declared that the Greek of the Bible was a miracle language, a language devised by the holy spirit. But the discoveries in Egypt showed otherwise!

The documents of everyday life dug up in Egypt provided the clue to understanding Bible Greek. It was found that the Greek of all these documents was not classical or literary but the Greek of the Bible! And the Greek of the documents was the everyday language of the people of the first century! So the Christian Greek Scriptures were written in the koiné or common Greek of the people. Bible Greek was not a unique jargon after all. The Bible writers had put God’s message in the simplest language of all, the language of the common people.

This vital knowledge of Bible Greek was not available to the translators of the King James Bible. Hence many passages in that version sound odd or are hard to understand. For example, 1 Peter 2:2 speaks of the “sincere milk of the word.” Now from the papyri unearthed in Egypt it was found that the word here translated “sincere” was very often used in koiné Greek to characterize food or drink as pure. Hence modern translations give us a more understandable reading, rendering it “unadulterated milk belonging to the word.”

Another example is Matthew 6:27, where, according to the King James Bible, Jesus asks: “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?” Do normal persons worry about growing a full foot and a half taller? Actually this rendering is weak. What happened? When the King James translators came to the Greek word they consulted their dictionaries of classical Greek and came up with that word “stature.” According to classical Greek they were right, but they did not know the Bible was written in common Greek. Today’s scholars know that this particular word was in common use after classical times and that it then meant “life span.” So modern translations, such as the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures, render Jesus’ question: “Who of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his life span?”

There has been new light not only on the Greek language but also on the Hebrew as well. The knowledge of Hebrew available to scholars today is vastly greater than that which was at the command of the translators of the King James Version. So Bible translators today can also give us a better-understood translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.

“A PHENOMENAL DISCOVERY”

Discoveries have also cleared up errors and obscurities in the Hebrew text by giving us scrolls or fragments older than those on which the King James Bible is based. Until recent years scholars had no manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures that were dated earlier than the ninth century A.D. For 336 years, from 1611 to 1947, practically no new evidence to correct already available sources on the Hebrew text came to light. Then in 1947 came what one archaeologist called “a phenomenal discovery.”

Two Bedouins were out searching in the wild and stony desert toward the Dead Sea for a strayed goat. They tossed a rock into a small opening in a cliff and heard sounds that suggested a room. They found a cave; inside they saw three large jars. Peering inside they saw long, round objects in a linen wrapper. Hoping for treasure, they tore off the wrappings and to their disappointment found scrolls instead of jewels. In time they sold them to the archbishop of the monastery of Saint Mark in Jerusalem.

But the 1947 discoveries were just the beginning. In 1949 the cave was rediscovered and explored. Hundreds of scroll fragments were found. In 1952 to 1953 other caves were explored. So many manuscript fragments have been found that every book of the Hebrew Scriptures, with the possible exception of Chronicles, was represented.

Most important of all the scrolls was a complete scroll of Isaiah from about the second century B.C. There was also a commentary upon the book of Habakkuk; it gives us the oldest text of that book that we have. Indeed, the scrolls are about a thousand years older than the Hebrew manuscripts on which the King James Version is based.

The scrolls have already been put to use. For example, thorough study of the Isaiah scroll enables today’s translators to correct a copyist’s error at Isaiah 3:24. The King James Version says: “There shall be . . . burning instead of beauty.” Modern translations made before 1947 often use the word “branding” instead of burning. Still it is not clear. As the 1956 edition of The Encyclopedia Americana explains, the word “branding” “assumes a meaning for the common Hebrew word ki, . . . which it has nowhere else in the Bible. The Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah contains an additional word to the last line, which makes it possible to render it as follows: ‘for instead of beauty (there will be) shame.’”

Some questions now confront us: Are we to take advantage of all this amazing wealth of new knowledge about the Bible? Is it to be brought to bear toward a better understanding of God’s Word? How, then, can we individually discover this better-understood Bible?

Much of the new knowledge has already been applied. Modern-speech translations not only use the common language of the people today, but they also are providing us with more accurate Bibles, and that means more understandable ones. So you can discover the better-understood Bible by obtaining a modern-speech translation for your own Bible study. Do not let a supposed desire for familiar words or a poetical effect bind you to the exclusive use of the King James Version. In the words of the King James translators themselves, to quote again from their almost-forgotten preface—“Is the kingdom of God become words and syllables? Why should we be in bondage to them when we may be free?”

Insight into the World’s Woes

Historian Arnold J. Toynbee made a statement a few years ago that was apt then but even more apt today, as we see the world blazing with the fires of nationalism. “One of the reasons why our times are dangerous,” Dr. Toynbee said, “is that we have all been taught to worship our nation, our flag, our own past history. Man may safely worship only God.”—Look, August 17, 1948.