The Advent of Printing Bible

“God suffers because there are such multitudes of souls to whom His sacred Word cannot be given; religious truth is captive in a small number of little manuscripts, which guard the common treasures instead of expanding them. Let us break the seal which binds these holy things; let us give wings to truth that it may fly with the Word, no longer prepared at vast expense, but multiplied everlastingly by a machine which never wearies --to every soul which enters life!”  - Johann Gutenberg

There was a time when Bibles were only in Latin, copied by hand, and owned only by the church.
In year 1450's in Mainz, Germany, an invention developed under the hands of a man named Johann Gutenberg which would change the course of history forever.
Johannes Gutenberg combined moveable metal letters with an oil-based ink and a wooden hand press, he created the first practical and widely used printing press. This man “broke the seal to the treasure house and let the truth fly with the wings of the Word,” yet he died a penniless man. However, the effects of this invention, though small at first to a largely illiterate Europe, soon grew to massive proportions. All of culture was changed and became defined by this new invention. Information could be printed in mass quantities, people could analyze and study the Bible outside of the church, and reading now became the culture’s “conversation.” Literacy rates for sixteenth century Western Europe averaged from %5 to %10 of males and grew to %50 after the invention of the printing press.

God’s word was available to both clergymen and laymen, rich nobles and poor farmers.

More than one scholar has argued that, without the mouthpiece print provided Martin Luther, his challenge to the Church hierarchy would probably have failed to reach a broad audience and would have remained a local event.

Printing greatly aided the transmission of the Biblical texts.

1456 A.D. Gutenberg produced the first printed Bible in Latin. Printing revolutionized the way books were made. From now on books could be published in great numbers and at a lower cost.

1514 A.D. The Greek New Testament was printed for the first time by Erasmus. He based his Greek New Testament from only five Greek manuscripts, the oldest of which dated only as far back as the twelfth century. With minor revisions, Erasmus' Greek New Testament came to be known as the Textus Receptus or the "received texts."

1522 A. D. Polyglot Bible was published. The Old Testament was in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin and the New Testament in Latin and Greek. Erasmus used the Polyglot to revise later editions of his New Testament. Tyndale made use of the Polyglot in his translation on the Old Testament into English which he did not complete because he was martyred in 1534.

1611 A.D. The King James Version into English from the original Hebrew and Greek. The King James translators of the New Testament used the Textus Receptus as the basis for their translations.

1968 A.D. The United Bible Societies 4th Edition of the Greek New Testament. This Greek New Testament made use of the oldest Greek manuscripts which date from 175 A.D. This was the Greek New Testament text from which the NASV and the NIV were translated.

1971 A.D. The New American Standard Version (NASV) was published. It makes use of the wealth of much older Hebrew and Greek manuscripts now available that weren't available at the time of the translation of the King James Version. Its wording and sentence structure closely follow the Greek in more of a word for word style.

1983 A.D. The New International Version (NIV) was published. It also made use of the oldest manuscript evidence. It is more of a "thought-for-thought" translation and reads more easily than the NASV.