rthern Syria there was a body of Christians who used the
Syrian language. Somewhere in the second century they made, or had
made for them, a translation of the Bible to aid them in their
Christian growth. The translation from Hebrew Old Testament into
Syriac was a translation from one sister tongue into another, and was
thus quite freely rendered. If one should to-day translate from Dutch
into German, he would feel free to vary from the literal if thereby he
thought he could help bring out the meaning of the original language.
This Syriac translation, while a beautiful piece of work, was most too
freely done to be of much value to scholars who are to-day trying to
find out what the text could have been from which it was made. There
are none of the Latin Bible apocryphal books in the Syriac version.

#8.# These facts show us that the early Christian church in Egypt,
Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and Europe used the Bible mainly in
three versions, viz.: Septuagint Greek, Latin Vulgate, and the
Syriac--all valuable, prominent texts. Of Greek texts there were
several translations current among different branches of the early
church.

#9.# When the peoples on the outskirts of civilization became
Christianized they also were provided with the Scriptures, translated
into their tongues from one of the three or four great versions of
that day. Thus we have the Bible in Arabic, Ethiopic, Armenian,
Gothic, Slavonic and a lot of other border languages.

#10.# The Bible was introduced into England very early in the
Christian centuries, and it was one of the Latin versions current in
the Western world. This was succeeded by the Vulgate Latin. Preachers
and teachers were obliged to interpret this in the language of the
native peoples. Some fragments of these interpretations, paraphrases,
and translations remain to the present day, preserved in the
Anglo-Saxon or early English tongue. In the fourteenth century,
Wycliffe (1320-1384) gave us the first English Bible, translated, not
from the original Hebrew and Greek, but from the Latin Vulgate,--a
translation of a translation. This was received with slight favor by
the churchmen of that day.

#11.# Not until the sixteenth century do we have an English Bible
translated out of the original languages of the Bible. After great
opposition and severe trial Tyndale succeeded in printing in Germany
and distributing in England an English New Testament translated from
the Greek. But his books