You probably have heard of John Wycliffe. You could easily argue that Peter Waldo should have that title “morning star of the reformation” one hundred years earlier, but John Wycliffe had more impact than Waldo. Waldo believed much the same as Wycliffe. Born in England, Wycliffe abhorred the corruption in the Roman Catholic church. He taught that Christ, not the pope, is the head of the church. He taught that the Scriptures, not the Catholic church papal decrees and tradition, are the sole authority for faith and practice. He taught that the Catholic church should excommunicate immoral clergymen and give away the church’s excessive wealth and property. He taught against the selling of indulgences and he rejected transubstantiation. He began voicing his teaching at Oxford University where he had taught for many years. He began writing pamphlets in English that a farmer or shopkeeper could read. The common people only had the Latin Vulgate, so Wycliffe translated or was responsible for translating the Bible into Middle English (a version now called the “Wycliffe Bible”) so the common man could read it and decide what it meant instead of relying on the priests. “Wycliffe’s followers were called Lollards because the name, derived from the Dutch word “lollaert” meaning “mumbler,” was used pejoratively by critics to describe their practice of reading scripture and making long prayers.” (AI) His preachers went throughout England carrying copies of his English translation. They were called “Poor Preachers” b/c they dressed in simple clothes and lived with the common people, unlike the Roman priests who lived apart from the people and dressed in clerical garb. He was finally expelled from Oxford and was persecuted by the Catholic church, but the church was afraid to kill him, fearing it. would cause an uprising. He never left the Catholic church; he even died of a fatal stroke while at Mass. But 17 years after his death, anyone preaching Wycliffe’s ideas was punished by death by the Catholic church. In 1415, thirty years after his death, a Catholic council ordered that his books be burned and that his remains be dug up and burned. His ashes were thrown into the River Swift.

We take it for granted that we have so many translations of the Bible into English so we can read it for ourselves and decide what we think it means. It is hard to imagine a time like in the 14th century when there were no Bibles in English. Since the 16th century, there have been around 250 translations into English alone (900 if you count revisions and partials)! The Catholic church actually did its own Douay-Rheims English version of the Bible in 1609, maybe partly as a result of the work of Wycliffe 200 years earlier. That version is older than the famous King James Version of 1611. Both versions used the Latin Vulgate as the main source. Wycliffe’s translation used the Latin Vulgate also.

The original Old Testament books were written in Hebrew mainly and the New Testament in Greek. We don’t have any of the original books of the Bible. Can we trust the English translations that we have? Yes we can. We have over 5,700 complete or partial manuscripts made or translations into other languages from which to come up with an accurate translation that we can trust. The New Testament sources go back to within 100 years of the original New Testament books in many papyri. When we compare the thousands of copies of the New Testament, they are 95 to 99% the same. The errors are typically small copyist errors. The Old Testament books were copied with extreme care for accuracy. The Dead Sea Scrolls (1948) show that the Old Testament was copied accurately over the centuries. For example, the complete copy of Isaiah called the “Great Isaiah Scroll” found in the DSS is 95% the same as the earliest Hebrew copy of Isaiah that we had, which was in 930 AD, over 1,000 years later than the Great Isaiah Scroll which was carbon dated as 125 BC. That shows that the book of Isaiah had been accurately copied for that 1,000 years and gives us confidence that the original book of Isaiah done in 800 BC was copied accurately over the centuries. There are at least portions of all the OT books except Esther in the DSS. So, yes you can trust a good English translation of the Bible. Be careful about paraphrases. There is a lot of debate about which English translation of the Bible is the most accurate. Jesus and the apostles quoted from the Septuagint, which is the translation of the Hebrew OT from Hebrew into Greek, done between the 3rd and 1st century BC. That shows that you can trust a good translation of the original languages even if you know it is not 100% accurate.

I hope this helps us appreciate our Bible translations. More importantly, I hope it encourages us to read and study those translations since we have been blessed with the Bible in our own English language.