Blog #2 – Facing the Source of the Problems

After completing the first edition of the 21st Century New Testament, I realized that most of the problems in traditional translations have roots in translation errors that occurred about 1,600 years ago. When the Bible was translated into Latin, the Christians in Rome and throughout the empire had seen a major influx of new converts. The pagan traditions that had been part of life for these new converts influenced their ideas about what Christianity should be, and that influenced the new Latin translation of the Bible. That translation was done between AD 383 and AD 404, about 350 years after Jesus’ resurrection.

That Latin translation of the Bible became the only authorized version of the Bible in the vast majority of Europe, and people could be executed for creating or publishing anything else. All religious writing was required to be in Latin. A thousand years later, when John Wycliffe translated the Bible into English languages, the only available Bibles to work with were Latin Bibles, so the problems in the Latin Bibles were brought into this new translation.

Over a hundred years later, a scholar named Erasmus published a copy of the Greek New Testament for use in Europe, and William Tyndale created a new English translation working from the Greek, but by that time the problems in the Latin Bibles had taken such deep root that they influenced all new translations. Over time, these traditions with roots in paganism have caused worse and worse problems until more and more people now doubt that the message of Christianity is of any value.

Understanding the roots of these problems will help overcome them. Since the problems now have roots in our English translations of the New Testament, a better translation of was needed, and the 21st Century New Testament provides that better translation.

However, this new translation isn’t enough if it doesn’t lead people to a better understanding and implementation of what Christianity was always supposed to be and is not as of this writing. Christians need all sorts of study and devotional material to support the use of this translation. In reading the 21st Century New Testament, Christians should see that they need to be active in ministry teams. New Century Ministries senior director Charlie Webster has established a goal to develop training materials for use in Christian ministry teams and in Christian training for children and youth.

So the bottom line is that we know how the errors got into our New Testaments, and now we need to free ourselves of those errors and do everything we can to help the whole world celebrate the joyous good news of Jesus. To accomplish its goals, this ministry needs a team of people, starting with volunteers, to help with the work. If you’d like to be part of that team, please go to www.NCM-21.com and send a message using the Contact form. You will have to read the 21st Century New Testament and understand the core values of Christianity: Faith that’s faithful to God, caring love for others, and confident hope in God’s eternity as addressed in the Blog #3.