Versions of the Bible and Tools to Read the Bible

More Old Testament Basics

1. The Masoretic Text

The Hebrew version of the Bible completed by the Masoretes, hence the name. The Masoretes were a school of Jewish scholars who worked between 500 and 1000CE. Updating the ancient Hebrew texts, these scholars added vowel signs, accent markings, and marginal notes.

This version of the Bible is the authoritative Jewish version. Additionally, all translations of Protestant Bibles are derived from the Masoretic Text.

This is why Protestants do not have the Deuterocanonical Books (which Protestants call ‘apocrypha’), since the Masoretic Text does not contain these books.

1. The Masoretic Text

2. The Septuagint (LXX)

‘septuagint ‘ is a Greek word meaning “seventy”LXX is the Roman numeral for 70

Why 70?This refers to a legendary story: In the 3rd Century BC (200s BC) the Greek King of Egypt Ptolemy II picked 72 scribes (6 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel) to translate the Torah from Hebrew into Greek. Ptolemy did not tell the scribes why they were called to Alexandria (a city in Egypt). When they arrived he placed them in 72 separate rooms and then entered each room, one by one, saying to them: “Write for me the Torah of Moses, your teacher." The Legend ends by stating that each of the 72 scribes translated the text identically as all the others did.

The LXX was once used by all Christians, but now is mainly only used by Orthodox Christians. Catholics have the deuterocanonical books of the LXX, but rely on St. Jerome’s Vulgate, which was translated from the Hebrew text.

2. The Septuagint (LXX)

3. The Vulgate

Vulgate is a latin term meaning “common”

In 382 AD Pope Damasus I commissioned St. Jerome to revise older Latin versions of the Bible. Jerome began this task in Rome, but on December 10, 384 Pope Damasus I died. Shortly after this in 385 AD, Jerome was forced out of Rome and moved to Bethlehem to complete his work.

Jerome used the Hebrew version of the Old Testament in order to create his Latin translation.

The Vulgate is the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church (it became the official version at the Council of Trent in 1546).

3. The Vulgate

The Dead Sea Scrolls

Though not an official version of the Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls are important for the study of the Bible.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest Biblical manuscripts ever discovered, some dating back to 400 BC. They contain manuscripts written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Some scholars believe that they were written by a Jewish group called the “Essenes.”

The DSS were discovered in 1946 at a cave at Qumran (near the Dead Sea) by a Bedouin goat-herder name Muhammed Edh-Dhib.

The Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS)