bible-translations
Rediscovering the Bible Beyond the Watchtower
Back in the 1960s, many Jehovah’s Witnesses vividly remember the release of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures. It came as a compact green hardcover Bible, and at the time it was presented as a major advancement because it used what was considered more modern English. Comparisons were often made with the King James Version, especially with archaic words such as “shambles,” which in older English referred to a meat market.
400 Bible Translations Later… Have You Actually Read It?
Most people today who identify as Christians own a Bible. That’s something we often take for granted—but it hasn’t always been this way.
In the first century, believers did not possess a complete, bound Bible as we know it today. The Hebrew Scriptures existed, but they were preserved primarily in scrolls housed in synagogues or the temple. Early Christians relied on oral teaching, eyewitness accounts, and eventually individual letters—what we might think of as “books”—circulating among congregations. The Christian faith grew and spread long before a compiled New Testament ever existed.