Since the original manuscripts of the Bible were written in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, the texts needed to be translated so that we could understand them. By the end of the Middle Ages in Europe, there was a movement to translate the Scriptures into English and German. Although the Luther’s German Translator edition of the Bible is not the first translation of the bible into German, it is maybe the most important and of greatest influence on the development of the literary German language. The German translation of the Bible was succeeded by Protestant versions in other European languages - French, Dutch and English. The Bible ceased to be a foreign book in a foreign tongue, and became naturalized, and hence far more clear and dear to the common people. Luther’s German Translation of the Bible has been hailed as the first German classic, the impact on the German language of which is comparable to the King James version of the Bible which became the first English classic. The Darby Bible refers to the Bible as translated from Hebrew and Greek by John Nelson Darby.
Having finished Trinity College in Dublin with medal, John Nelson Darby was appointed as a priest in the Irish church in 1825, and attended to the needs of people in remote places. In 1827 he started to believe that the church he belonged to was corrupt and the clergy unconcerned and joined the movement of the “brethren” in Dublin and by 1830 he became its dominant leader and shaped its history. Seeing the drawbacks of the existing translations of the Bible, together with some followers he managed to produce new modern French and German translations directly from the original texts in Hebrew and Greek. Darby’s German version of the Bible is known as “Elberfelder Bible,” and theFrench Translation version - the “Pau Bible”.The ‘Elberfelder Bibel’ has been considered one of the most accurate and literary German Bible translations. Whereas Luther used both dynamic and formal equivalence approaches in his German Translation, Darby strictly adhered to the formal equivalence approach, also trying to account for the tense, mood and voice of the used Greek verbs.
Darby did not feel such a need for a new translation in English, because he considered the King James Version to be adequate for most purposes, and he encouraged his followers to continue to use it. However, he found it necessary to make a more literal translation of the New Testament for study needs. Darby’s version of the Old Testament was published in 1867 with two cosequent revisions in 1872 and 1884 and after his death in 1882, certain of his followers produced an English version of the Old Testament based on his French and German translations.
The first printed translation of the Bible into Italian was the Malermi Bible in 1471 from the Latin version Vulgate. The most popular Italian Translation of the Bible among Evangelic and Protestant Christians is the revised in 1994 version of La Riveduta by Giovanni Luzzi. The official version of the Italian Catholic church - the Bible of CEI was published in 1971 and revised in 2008, in view of the newly discovered New Testament documents.
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