Occasionally, a major variant happens when a portion of a text was missing or for other reasons. Most variants among the manuscripts are minor, such as alternative spelling, alternative word order, the presence or absence of an optional definite article ('the'), and so on. The three main textual traditions of the Greek New Testament are sometimes called the Alexandrian text-type, the Byzantine text-type, and the Western text-type.

Scholars surmise the original Greek text from the manuscripts that do survive. The autographs, the Greek manuscripts written by the original authors, have not survived. The New Testament was written in Koine Greek. In antiquity, variant Hebrew readings existed, some of which have survived in the Samaritan Pentateuch and other ancient fragments, as well as being attested in ancient versions in other languages. This sometimes required the selection of an interpretation since some words differ only in their vowels their meaning can vary in accordance with the vowels chosen. The Masoretes also added vowel points (called niqqud) to the text, since the original text contained only consonants. A series of highly similar texts eventually emerged, and any of these texts are known as Masoretic Texts (MT). From the 6th century to the 10th century AD, Jewish scholars, today known as Masoretes, compared the text of all known biblical manuscripts in an effort to create a unified, standardized text. The Hebrew Bible was mainly written in Biblical Hebrew, with some portions (notably in Daniel and Ezra) in Biblical Aramaic. In some cases, different translations have been used as evidence for or have been motivated by doctrinal differences. Textual variants in the New Testament include errors, omissions, additions, changes, and alternate translations. (See List of English Bible translations.)

Since then, the Bible has been translated into many more languages.Įnglish Bible translations have a rich and varied history of more than a millennium. Jerome's 4th-century Latin Vulgate version was dominant in Western Christianity during the Middle Ages. Įarly translators rendered biblical texts into Syriac, Latin, Ge'ez, Gothic and Slavonic languages, among others. Thus, at least some portions of the Bible have been translated into 3,589 languages. As of September 2022 all of the Bible has been translated into 724 languages, the New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,617 languages, and smaller portions of the Bible have been translated into 1,248 other languages according to Wycliffe Global Alliance. The Bible has been translated into many languages from the biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.

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