Bible translations

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The Bible has been translated into many languages from the biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. As of September 2023^[update] all of the Bible has been translated into 736 languages, the New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,658 languages, and smaller portions of the Bible have been translated into 1,264 other languages according to Wycliffe Global Alliance. Thus, at least some portions of the Bible have been translated into 3,658 languages.^[1]

The Old Testament, written in Hebrew (with some sections in the book of Daniel in the Aramaic language) was translated into Aramaic (the so-called Targums, originally not written down), Greek and Syriac.

The New Testament, written in Greek, was first translated into Syriac, Latin and Coptic – all before the time of Emperor Constantine.

By the year 500, the Bible had been translated into Ge'ez, Gothic, Armenian and Georgian. By the year 1000, a number of other translations were added (in some cases partial), including Old Nubian, Sogdian, Arabic and Slavonic languages, among others.

Jerome's 4th-century Latin Vulgate version, a revision of earlier Latin translations, was dominant in Western Christianity during the Middle Ages. The Latin-speaking western church led by the Pope did not translate the Scriptures or liturgy into languages of recently converted peoples such as the Irish, Franks or Norsemen. By contrast, the Eastern Orthodox Church, centred in Constantinople, did, in some cases, translate the Scriptures and liturgy, most successfully in the case of the Slavonic language of Eastern Europe.

Since then, the Bible has been translated into many more languages.

English Bible translations have a rich and varied history of more than a millennium. (See List of English Bible translations.)

Textual variants in the New Testament include errors, omissions, additions, changes, and alternate translations. In some cases, different translations have been used as evidence for or have been motivated by doctrinal differences.