The remark, attributed to him, that ‘ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ’ reveals something of his passion. He learnt Hebrew and, thanks to the work of Origen, was able to access Scripture texts in both Hebrew and Greek. Jerome set about the task with reported trepidation, but also with great seriousness. Around 382 AD the Pope commissioned his secretary, Jerome, to produce a new translation in Latin, as the Septuagint-based versions were, shall we say, rather messy. One man not convinced by this argument was Jerome. You know what they say: ‘If it was good enough for Paul, it’s good enough for…’ Making the Scriptures available to ordinary people It was what Paul used when quoting the Old Testament. This was a translation from Hebrew into Greek, completed around 130 BC, for Greek-speaking Jews.
The Septuagint was almost always the source text for the Old Testament at this stage. The first translation of the Scriptures in the Christian era was into Syriac around 170 AD, as spoken in Damascus!īible translation activity then spread out from Syria over the following centuries into Armenia, Georgia, Samarkand and beyond. Amazingly, the Church that Saul intended to persecute in Acts 9 became a centre for mission. Nowhere is this more striking than in the early Syrian Church. It really does seem that Bible translation has always been integral to God’s mission.
