The Struggle for a Bible in MODERN GREEK

You may be surprised to learn that in Greece, the land sometimes called  the cradle of free thought, translation of the Bible into the language of the common people has been the focus of a long and bitter struggle.  But who would resist the production of an easy-to-understand Greek Bible? Why would anyone want to stop it?




ONE might think that Greek-speaking people are privileged, since a considerable part of the Holy Scriptures was originally written in their language.  Modern Greek, though, is significantly different  from the Greek  of the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, and from that of the Christian Greek Scriptures.  In fact, for the past six centuries, most Greek-speaking people have found Biblical Greek to be as unfamiliar as a foreign language.  New  words have replaced older terms, and vocabulary, grammar, and syntax have changed.

A collection of Greek manuscripts dating from the 3rd to the 16th century testifies to an effort to translate the Septuagint into a later form of Greek.  In the third century, Gregory, bishop of Neocaesarea (c. 213-c.270 C.E.), rendered the book of Ecclesiastes from the Septuagint into simpler Greek.  In the 11th century, a Jew named Tobias ben Eliezer living in Macedonia translated portions of the Septuagint's Pentateuch into everyday Greek.  He even used Hebrew characters for the benefit of Macedonian Jews who spoke only Greek but read the Hebrew script.  A complete Pentateuch of this kind of published in Constantinople in 1547.

Next time: The Struggle for  a Bible in MODERN GREEK

The Watchtower, 2002