This book gives an excellent general view.

This book gives an excellent general view. Many people are unaware, and Edmond Jacob points this out, that there were originally a number of texts and not just one. Around the Third century B.C., there were at least three forms of the Hebrew text: the text which was to become the Masoretic text, the text which was used, in part at least, for the Greek translation, and the Samaritan Pentateuch.

In the First century B.C., there was a tendency towards the establishment of a single text, but it was not until a century after Christ that the Biblical text was definitely established. If we had had the three forms of the text, comparison would have been possible, and we could have reached an opinion concerning what the original might have been. Unfortunately, we do not have the slightest idea.

Apart from the Dead Sea Scrolls (Cave of Qumran) dating from a pre-Christian era near the time of Jesus, a papyrus of the Ten Commandments of the Second century A.D. presenting variations from the classical text, and a few fragments from the Fifth century A.D. (Geniza of Cairo), the oldest Hebrew text of the Bible dates from the Ninth century A.D. The Septuagint was probably the first translation in Greek. It dates from the Third century B.C. and was written by Jews in Alexandria.

It Was on this text that the New Testament was based. It remained authoritative until the Seventh century A.D. The basic Greek texts in general use in the Christian world are from the manuscripts catalogued under the title Codex Vaticanus in the Vatican City and Codex Sinaiticus at the British Museum, London. They date from the Fourth century A.D. At the beginning of the Fifth century A.D., Saint Jerome was able to produce a text in latin using Hebrew documents.

It was later to be called the Vulgate on account of its universal distribution after the Seventh century A.D. For the record, we shall mention the Aramaic version and the Syriac (Peshitta) version, but these are incomplete. All of these versions have enabled specialists to piece together so-called 'middle-of -the-road' texts, a sort of compromise between the different versions.

Multi-lingual collections have also been produced which juxtapose the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Aramaic and even Arabic versions. This is the case of the famous Walton Bible (London, 1667).