Since the original manuscripts of the Bible were written in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, the texts needed to be translated so that we could understand them. The history of the German language since the Middle Ages has closely been associated with the translation of the Bible. The most influential is Luther’s German Translation edition, which established High German as the literary language throughout Germany by the middle of the seventeenth century and which still continues to be most widely used in the Germanic world today. The German translation of the Bible was succeeded by Protestant versions in other European languages - French, Dutch and English. The Bible was no longer a book in a foreign language, it sounded natural when spoken as well as read, ordinary people felt it close and clear. Luther adapted the words to fit the capacity of the German public and thus, due to the pervasiveness of his German Translation of the Bible, he created and spread the modern German language.The Darby translation of the Bible is one of many translations that has been published ever since the Bible was written.
Educated at Wesminster School and Trinity College, in1825, John Nelson Darby was ordained deacon of the established Church of Ireland and the following year as priest. In 1827 he came to doubt the legitimacy of the churches and started to teach that that true Christians must separate not only from the churches, but also from those who were impure in faith or morals. He was dissatisfied with the existing Bible versions in French and German, and so he collaborated with German and French followers in the creation of new versions in those languages. Darby’s German Translation of the Bible is called “Elberfelder Bible,” and the French Translation version - the “Pau Bible”, work done primarily for the needs of the numerous Brethren in French-Switzerland.The Elberfelder Bibel has long been the most literal German Translation of the Bible. While Luther used both interpretive and word-for-word approaches, Darby kept to the principles of word-for-word translation, accounting for the grammar peculiarities of the underlying Greek verbs.
Darby thought that it is not necessary to make a new English version of the Bible because he considered King James Version quite good and advised his associates to use it. However, he deemed it necessary to make a more word-for-word translation of the New Testament for the ones who wished to study it. This New Testament, first issued in 1867 and followed by two revisions in 1872 and 1884, was abundantly supplied with text-critical annotations, by far the most comprehensive and detailed to be found in an English version.
The first printed Bible (Venice, 1471) was due to Nicholas Malermi and was an Italian Translation version of the Latin Bible, or Vulgate. The most popular Italian Translation of the Bible among Evangelic and Protestant Christians is the revised in 1994 version of La Riveduta by Giovanni Luzzi. Since 1971 the Italian Catholic Church has its official version - the Bible of CEI, a totally new version of which was published in 2008 after a revision of both the Testaments started in 1997, considering newly discovered documents for the New Testament.
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