If you are a Christian, and even if you are not, you probably know there are many translations of the Bible. The Bible was originally written in Greek, Aramaic/Syriac, and Hebrew and has been translated into other languages so that people in all languages can understand it. It is important as a Christian to know why there are so many versions, where they came from, and how they are different.

The first translations into English did not come from the original languages. The Bible was translated from its original language into Latin. Then, it was translated the Latin into English. This did cause some problems though, as whenever we translate, certain things are always lost, as languages are extremely different from each other. So, not only do we lose things from Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic to Latin, we now lose even more by going from Latin to English! This includes the Catholic Bible.

So, some Bibles, such as the Geneva Bible, decided to write English Bibles from the original Greek and Hebrew. These were very different from the Latin one translations. For example, these Bibles use repent, which means to change or to feel sorry for. In the Latin translated ones though, they use "penance" which ALWAYS means to feel sorry for. That's because, like English, Latin uses one word for both, and the translators thought that it always meant to feel sorry for, even though the Greek said something different.

After this, King James wanted to write a Bible would be as close to the originals as possible. So, he had seventy-two men work together to translate and then edit the King James Bible. This came, again, from the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, and added italicized words whenever a word was added for grammar purpose (for example, in Hebrew, the words "a" and "the" do not exist, so the translators added them in English and italicized them so that one could understand what had been added and what was there originally.)

This was the standard Bible for a long time. The King James was translated out of hundreds of compared Bibles from Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, which were also compared to nearly identical French, German, and Italian Bibles. This was to make sure they knew what was true and what wasn't. All Bibles after the King James Bible come from somewhere else though.

Any Bible after the King James Bible come from manuscripts discovered in the Vatican (though purposely not used by the Vatican) and on Mt. Sinai. They are older, but they leave out and add a lot of verses that are in the hundreds of nearly identical Bibles. This is because the man who copied the manuscript found on the Vatican, Eusebius, did not believe properly in Jesus as part of the Trinity, while we don't even know who wrote the other one. If one looks at pictures of the manuscript, one can see places where words were crossed out, overwritten, and where footnotes are added in odd places.

All new Bibles come from these two manuscripts, as many assume that because they are older, they are right. That is not necessarily true though. They are only older because they were written on vellum, while the hundreds of matching were written on papyrus, which does not last near as long. This caused the papyrus ones to need to be rewritten and made newer, as older ones fell apart. Another problems is that the two of them do not agree with the European translations, which came from different and older Greek and Hebrew than the ones that exists now, yet still mysteriously match the Greek and Hebrew of our manuscripts perfectly. Finally, the two manuscripts greatly contradict each other, even though they are used together to write all modern Bibles. Rather than accept these two Bibles as true, we should know that the Vatican and Mt.Sinai manuscripts, the latter which was nearly burned as trash, are phonies or very inaccurate because they are so different, were written by heretics, and are so contradictory rather than assume they are superior.

In conclusion, I therefore think that a Bible is safe if translated from the write source in the right way, which I believe of the King James Bible, the newest edition translated from the original nearly always in agreement Bibles.