Demonstration version—prototype quality only—still in development

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Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary

BIBLE*, Versions of the (Ancient)

To get a picture of how the Bible has come to different peoples in the world, spread out a map of the eastern hemisphere and imagine Palestine as the center of a pool. Think of God’s revelation of himself through the prophets, the Christ, and the apostles as a pebble dropped into the center of that body of water. In your mind’s eye watch the advance of the concentric circles out across that world pool from Palestine and call out the languages covered by the fast-spreading ripple: to the south, Coptic, Arabic, Ethiopic; to the west, Greek, Latin, Gothic, English; to the north, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic; and eastward toward the rising sun, Syriac. The farther the Bible moved from its Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek center in Palestine, the later the date of its translation into yet another language.

That pebble of God’s revelation, the Bible, was produced in the Middle East predominantly in two of Palestine’s languages. The OT was written in Hebrew with the exception of portions of the books of Daniel and Ezra, which may have been written in Aramaic, the language of the Captivity. Probably the entire NT was written in common Greek (koine), which was the dominant language of the eastern half of Caesar’s domain and understood almost everywhere else in the Roman Empire. Therefore every person who did not speak Hebrew or Greek was apt to remain untouched by God’s written revelation until someone translated the Bible into his language.

The process of Bible translation began even before the birth of Christ, with translations of the OT being made into Greek and Aramaic. Many of the dispersed Jews who lived prior to the coming of Christ did not know Hebrew and therefore required a translation in Greek or Aramaic. The most popular Greek translation of the OT was the Septuagint. It was used by many Jews, and then by many Christians. In fact, the Septuagint was the “Bible” for all the first-generation Christians, including those who wrote various books of the NT.

The early Christian missionaries carrying a text of the Septuagint (or Hebrew Bible) and the Greek NT (or portions thereof), which they themselves could read, moved ever outward from those early churches at Jerusalem and Antioch about which we read in the book of Acts. They moved out among peoples whose language they learned to speak. Such missionaries orally translated or paraphrased Bible passages necessary for instruction, preaching, and liturgy. Converts were made. New churches sprang up. Feeling an urgent need for the Bible to be put in the language of the new believers, missionaries would soon set about translating the whole Bible into their language. The impulse behind our modern Wycliffe Bible Translators has always been at the heart of missions, and in that way the major Bible versions were born.

Bible translation was thus spontaneous, invariably informal and oral at first, and sharply evangelistic in its motivation. The early church enthusiastically encouraged and undertook translating efforts. Even as late as the birth of the Slavonic version in the mid-ninth century, popes Adrian II (867–72) and John VIII (872–82) endorsed the project. But an amazing change came in the Western church in regard to Bible translation. Latin took over as the dominant language—such that no one read Greek anymore. Then, as learning became the province of only the wealthy nobility and prelates (churchmen of high rank, such as bishops), as the splendors of classical civilization were lost in the ferment of feudalism in Europe, and as the Roman Catholic hierarchy—headed by the pope—claimed a firm grip on Western Christendom, the Bible was removed from the hands of the laity. Therefore, as long as the priests could read the Latin texts and speak the liturgy in Latin (at least at a minimal level), there was no longer significant motivation for translations into the vernacular.

Latin came to be considered almost a sacred language, and translations of the Bible into the vernacular were viewed with suspicion. Pope Gregory VII (1073–85) gave voice to such suspicions when, only 200 years after Adrian II and John VIII had called for a Slavonic translation, Gregory attempted to stop its circulation. He wrote to King Vratislaus of Bohemia in 1079:

For it is clear to those who reflect upon it that not without reason has it pleased Almighty God that holy scripture should be a secret in certain places lest, if it were plainly apparent to all men, perchance it would be little esteemed and be subject to disrespect; or it might be falsely understood by those of mediocre learning, and lead to error.

Meanwhile in Palestine and northern Africa, the inexorable march of Islam changed the religious texture of the Mediterranean’s eastern and southern littorals. Within 100 years of Muhammad’s death (570–632), over 900 churches had been destroyed and the Koran became the “bible” in the great circle from the walls of embattled Byzantium round to the west—to the Spanish end of Europe.

Cramped by official opposition in the West and hindered by Islamic conquest in the Middle East, Bible translations slowed to a trickle for half a millennium. Translation efforts did not regain vitality until the Protestant Reformation of the early 16th century, at which time missionaries took advantage of movable-type printing (invented by Johannes Gutenberg) to produce multiple translations of the Bible. Erasmus expressed the desire of all Bible translators in the preface of his freshly published Greek NT (1516):

I wish that even the weakest woman should read the Gospel—should read the Epistles of Paul. And I wish these were translated into all languages, so that they might be read and understood, not only by Scots and Irishmen, but also by Turks and Saracens. To make them understood is surely the first step. It may be that they might be ridiculed by many, but some would take them to heart. I long that the husbandman should sing portions of them to himself as he follows the plough, that the weaver should hum them to the tune of his shuttle, that the traveller should beguile with their stories the tedium of his journey.

But what materials were used by the early translators and copyists who worked so painstakingly over their Bible translations? At the time of Christ and through the first two centuries of the church, the most popular writing materials were ink on papyrus. Until the first century, “books” were actually scrolls with long sheets of papyrus paper glued end to end and rolled up on paired spindles. Then, later in the first century, another form of a book was created—called the codex (the precursor to the modern form of a book with folded sheets and stitched spine). Christians were among the first to use this form for books. In AD 332 the first Christian emperor, Constantine I, ordered 50 Bibles for the churches of his new capital city, Constantinople. He ordered those from Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, and specified that they were not to be scrolls, but codexes (or codices). They were also to be not of papyrus but of vellum, carefully prepared sheep or antelope skins, for it was right about this time, in the late third and early fourth centuries, that codexes and vellum almost universally replaced scrolls and papyrus.

For centuries scribes laboriously copied Bibles all in capital letters; the earliest surviving manuscripts of Bible versions are of that type, called “uncials.” In the ninth and tenth centuries it became the fashion to write in lowercase letters; surviving manuscripts of that type are called “minuscules” or “cursives.” (There were, however, occasional cursive manuscripts as far back as the second century before Christ.) Minuscules dominate the surviving biblical manuscripts from the 10th through the 16th centuries.

It was in 1454 that Johannes Gutenberg made manuscript writing obsolete by using movable type for the first time. His first printed book appeared in 1456, a splendid Latin Bible.

Our printed Bibles today contain chapter and verse divisions that were a relatively late development. Chapter divisions began in the Latin Vulgate and are variously credited to Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1089), to Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1228), or to Hugo de Sancto Caro of the 13th century. Verse numbers first appeared in the fourth edition of the Greek NT issued at Geneva in 1551 by Robert Estienne (Stephanus) and in the Athias Hebrew OT of 1559–61.

Preview

• Earliest Versions of the Old Testament

• Complete Bible Versions of Christendom

• Latin Versions

• Coptic Versions

• Gothic Version

• Syriac Versions

• Arabic Versions

Earliest Versions of the Old Testament

The first version to be considered, the Samaritan Pentateuch, cannot rightly be termed a translation because it is a Hebrew version of the first five books of the OT, the books of the Law. These books comprise the total canon of Scripture for the Samaritan community, which still survives and is now centered in modern Nablus in Palestine.

The Samaritan Pentateuch reflects a textual tradition different from that of traditional Judaism, whose Hebrew text goes back through the centuries to the work of the Masoretes. The Masoretes were a body of scribes charged with OT text preservation, beginning about AD 600 and extending to the first half of the 10th century. It was they who devised a pointing system to indicate the vowels missing from consonantal Hebrew. It is this so-called Masoretic Text that forms (as the “received text”) the basis for the King James Version OT.

The Samaritan Pentateuch, on the other hand, goes back to the fourth century before Christ. According to textual scholars, the Samaritan Pentateuch differs from the “received” or Masoretic Hebrew text in about 6,000 places. About 1,000 of those differences need to be taken seriously. Where the text of the Samaritan Pentateuch agrees with the Septuagint or one of the other ancient versions against the Hebrew of the Masoretic Text, its witness must be regarded as important. The two oldest manuscripts of the Samaritan Pentateuch outside of Nablus are both codexes. One copy in the John Rylands Library in Manchester, England, bears a date corresponding to AD 1211 or 1212; the other is somewhat older than 1149 and is presently in the University Library at Cambridge, England. Two minor translations of the Samaritan Pentateuch also exist; one is the Aramaic Samaritan Targum from early Christian times, the other an Arabic translation from about the 11th century.

The second OT version, the Septuagint, is an actual translation from the Hebrew into the Greek. It is the first translation of the OT known. It was the Bible used by the apostles, the version from which most OT quotations in the NT come, and the Bible of the early church as far as the OT was concerned.

The story of its production, from which it draws its name, is told in “The Letter of Aristeas” (written around 150–100 BC). Aristeas purportedly was an official of Egypt’s Ptolemy Philadelphus (285–247 BC). Ptolemy was attempting to gather all of the world’s books into his great Alexandrian library. The OT was not on hand in translation, the letter says, so Ptolemy sent to the high priest in Jerusalem for texts and scholars to translate. Texts and six elders of each tribe were sent. After being royally entertained by Ptolemy, these 72 elders were cloistered and in exactly 72 days produced the full Greek translation of the OT, called Septuagint (“Seventy”) and usually abbreviated LXX in Roman numerals.

The truth of the matter is probably more prosaic. The Septuagint is a translation done for Hellenized Jews of the Diaspora who, no longer understanding Hebrew, wished to hear and teach the Bible in their language. Scholars argue over the date of the translation, placing portions as early as 250 BC and other parts as late as 100 BC. Most concur that it was translated in segments by many translators over a couple of centuries and then was gathered together into one library of scrolls or one codex. The Septuagint follows a different order from English Bibles and usually includes up to 15 apocryphal or noncanonical books.

The third OT version is the Aramaic. Biblical Aramaic, called Chaldee up through the 19th century, was the language of the conquerors that gradually became the household speech of the conquered. When the Jewish exiles began to return to Palestine from Babylon in 536 BC, they brought Aramaic with them. Many scholars believe that when Ezra and the Levites “explained the meaning of the passage” as the Book of the Law was read (Neh 8:8), they were paraphrasing the Hebrew into Aramaic so all could understand. Aramaic remained as the living language in Palestine up to the Bar-Kochba revolt against the Romans (AD 132–135), and Hebrew became increasingly a religious language for synagogue and temple specialists. As priests and scribes read the Law and Prophets, the custom of following the reading with an Aramaic translation spread. Such translations were called targums.

Rabbinical leadership was very loathe to formalize and write down the targums, but inevitably they were collected and standardized. The earliest standardized Targum was that of the Law done by someone known as Onkelos, sometime in the second or third century AD. Targums on the historical and prophetic books were crystallized in the third and fourth centuries AD, with the most important one called the Targum Jonathan ben Uzziel. Evidently no Targums of the Wisdom Literature (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, some Psalms) were completed earlier than the fifth century AD. Finally rabbinical Aramaic Targums included all of the OT except Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Meanwhile, the Islamic conquest of the entire Middle East gave people a new common language, Arabic. Rabbis were apt to find themselves beginning to produce informal oral Arabic targums, and Aramaic faded from the synagogue into religious history.

Complete Bible Versions of Christendom

As the church gathered the NT together and added it to the Old, there began the process of Bible translation that has marked the growth of Christianity from Jerusalem through Judea to Samaria and on toward the “uttermost part” of the world.

Latin Versions

Like the Aramaic Targums of Jewish worshipers, the Old Latin Bible was an informal growth. In the early days of the Roman Empire and of the church, Greek was the language of Christians. Even the first bishops of Rome wrote and preached in Greek. As empire and church aged, Latin began to win out, especially in the West. It was natural that priests and bishops began informally to translate the Greek NT and Septuagint into Latin. The initial Latin version is called the Old Latin Bible. No complete manuscript of it survives. Much of the OT and most of the New, however, can be reconstructed from quotations of the early church fathers. Scholars believe that an Old Latin Bible was in circulation in Carthage in North Africa as early as AD 250. From the surviving fragments and quotations there seem to have been two types of Old Latin text, the African and the European. The European existed in an Italian revision also. In textual study the major importance of the Old Latin is in comparative study of the Septuagint because the Old Latin was translated from the Septuagint before Origen made his Hexapla.

From every quarter, church leaders voiced the need for an authoritative and uniform Latin translation of the whole Bible. Pope Damascus I (366–384) had an exceptionally able and scholarly secretary named Jerome (c. 340–420), whom he commissioned to make a new Latin translation of the Gospels in 382. Jerome completed the Gospels in 383; Acts and the rest of the NT evidently followed. The Gospels were a thorough and painstaking retranslation based on the European Old Latin and an Alexandrian Greek text. The rest of the NT, however, was a much more limited effort with the Old Latin remaining dominant unless the Greek text demanded change. In all probability it was not the work of Jerome himself.

Jerome left Rome in 385, and in 389 he and a follower, Paula, founded two religious houses near Bethlehem. At one of these Jerome presided. There he turned his attention to the OT. He realized that what was needed was a retranslation from the Hebrew, not a revision of the Greek Septuagint. He used Jewish rabbis as consultants and completed work through the books of Kings by 390. Jerome reworked an earlier translation he had made of the Psalms and completed the prophets, Job, Ezra, and Chronicles in 390–96. After a two-year illness, he picked up the task again and translated Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs. In 404 he worked through Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and Esther. Soon afterward he did the apocryphal parts of Daniel and Esther and translated the apocryphal Tobit and Judith from Aramaic. He did not touch the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, or the Maccabean literature, so those apocryphal books passed into the official Latin Bible in their Old Latin form. Jerome’s work was not uniform in quality, nor did he gather it all together into a unified Bible.

Jerome’s work was fiercely criticized, and though he defended it with facile pen and ready temper, he did not live long enough to see it win universal respect. Yet his life’s work passed into what is now known as the Vulgate Bible (vulga meaning the “vulgar,” or everyday, speech of the people). Evidence seems to indicate that the compiling of all of Jerome’s work into one book may have been done by Cassiodorus (died c. 580) in his monastery at Scylacium in Italy. The earliest extant manuscript containing Jerome’s Bible in its entirety is the Codex Amiatinus written in the monastery at Jarrow, Northumbria, England, around 715. The old texts of the Vulgate are second only to the Septuagint in importance for Hebrew textual study, for Jerome was working from Hebrew texts that antedated the work of the Jewish Masoretes.

Only very gradually did the Vulgate supplant the Old Latin Bible. It took 1,000 years before the Vulgate was made the official Roman Catholic Bible (by the Council of Trent in 1546). That council also authorized an official, corrected edition, which was first issued by Pope Sixtus V (1585–90) in 1590 in three volumes. It proved unpopular, however, and Pope Clement VIII (1592–1605) recalled it and issued a new official Vulgate in 1592, which has been the standard edition to recent times.

Coptic Versions

Coptic was the last stage of the Egyptian language and thus the language of the native populations who lived along the length of the Nile River. It was never supplanted by the Greek of Alexander and his generals or even threatened by the Latin of the Caesars. Its script was composed of 25 Greek uncials and 7 cursives taken over from Egyptian writing to express sounds not in the Greek. Through the centuries it developed at least five main dialects: Akhmimic, sub-Akhmimic (Memphitic), Sahidic, Fayumic, and Bohairic. Fragments of biblical material have been found in the Akhmimic, sub-Akhmimic, and Fayumic. No one knows whether or not the whole Bible ever existed in these dialects. They gradually faded out of use until—by the 11th century—only Bohairic, the language of the Delta, and Sahidic, the language of Upper Egypt, remained. They too, however, had become largely forgotten or strictly religious languages used only in Coptic churches by the 17th century because of the long dominance of Arabic that began with the Islamic conquest of Egypt in 641.

The earliest translation was in Sahidic in Upper Egypt, where Greek was less universally understood. The Sahidic Old and New Testaments were probably completed by around AD 200. Greek was so much more dominant in the Delta that the translation of the Scriptures into Bohairic probably was not completed until somewhat later. Since Bohairic was the language of the Delta, however, it was also the language of the Coptic Patriarch in Alexandria. When the patriarchate moved from Alexandria to Cairo in the 11th century, the Bohairic texts went along. Bohairic gradually became the major religious language of the Coptic church. The Copts had separated from the Roman Empire, or the so-called Great Catholic Church, over doctrinal issues after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and had then been isolated from Western Christendom by centuries of Islamic rule.

Gothic Version

The Gothic language was an East Germanic language. The earliest literary remains known in any Germanic tongue are the fragments of the Bible done by Ulfilas (or Wulfila), who made the translation to bring the gospel to his own people. Ulfilas (c. 311–83), one of the early church’s most famous missionaries, was born in Dacia of Roman Christian parents who had been captured by the raiding Goths. He traveled to Constantinople from his tribal area, and he may have been converted there. While in the East, he was ordained as bishop around 340 by the Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia. Ulfilas himself was of the Arian persuasion (believing that Christ was Savior and Lord by divine appointment and by his obedience, but that he was less than God or was subservient to God).

Ulfilas returned to preach to his people, evidently invented an alphabet for them in order to reduce their language to writing, and then translated the Scriptures into that written language. Records from that time say Ulfilas translated all of the Bible except the books of the Kings, which he excluded because he felt they would have an adverse influence on the Goths, who were already too warlike. Scattered fragments of his OT translation survive and only about half of the Gospels are preserved in the Codex Argenteus, a manuscript of Bohemian origin of the fifth or sixth century now at Uppsala in Sweden.

Syriac Versions

One of the family of Semitic languages, Syriac was the predominant tongue of the region of Edessa and western Mesopotamia. The version known today as the Peshitta Bible (still the official Bible of Christians of the old Assyrian area churches and often lacking 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation) developed through several stages. One of the most famous and widely used translations in the early church was the Syriac Diatessaron, done by Tatian, a man who had been a disciple of Justin Martyr at Rome. The Diatessaron, Tatian’s harmony of the Gospels translated from the Greek about AD 170, was very popular among Syriac-speaking Christians. Syrian bishops had an uphill battle getting Christians to use “The Gospel of the Separated Ones” (meaning the manuscript in which the four Gospels were separated from one another rather than blended) in their churches.

Other portions of the Bible were also put into Old Syriac. Quotations from the church fathers indicate that some type of second-century Old Syriac text existed along with the Diatessaron. In fact, the OT may have been a Jewish translation into Syriac that Syrian Christians made their own, just as Greek Christians had done with the Septuagint. It then underwent a more or less official revision around the end of the fourth century, emerging as the Peshitta (meaning “basic” or “simple”) text. Tradition indicates that at least the NT portion of that version may have been made at the instigation of Rabbula, bishop of Edessa (411–35).

In the meantime, Syrian-speaking Christians underwent a schism in AD 431 when the Monophysite (or Jacobite) groups split off from the Nestorian believers (the battle was over the view of the Person of Christ). For a time both groups used the Peshitta, but the Jacobite groups began to desire a new translation. Working from the Septuagint and Greek NT manuscripts, Bishop Philoxemus (or Mar Zenaia) of Mabbug (485–519) on the Euphrates River did a new Syriac translation that was completed in 508. The importance of that version was that it included for the first time 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude, which then made their way into the standard Peshitta text.

Though the Peshitta has been in continuous use since the fifth century, and reached as far as India and China in its distribution, it has not been nearly so important a source for textual scholars as the Septuagint. That is because it had undergone constant revision through comparison with various Greek texts at Constantinople, Hebrew texts, Origen’s Hexapla Septuagint, and the Aramaic Targums; therefore, its witness to an early textual source is very difficult to trace. One of the most valuable Peshitta manuscripts extant is the Codex Ambrosianus of Milan, which dates from the sixth century and contains the entire OT.

Armenian Version

Syrian Christians carried their faith to their Armenian neighbors in eastern Asia Minor. As early as the third century, with the conversion of Tiridates III (reigned 259–314), Armenia became a Christian kingdom—the first such in history. Sometime during the fifth century, an Armenian alphabet was created so that the Bible could be translated into the language of these new believers. The Armenian translation is considered one of the most beautiful and accurate of the ancient versions of the Greek, even though textual evidence indicates it may have been done from the Syriac first and then modified to the Greek. (The Armenian language is allied closely with the Greek in grammar, syntax, and idiom.) An old tradition says that the NT was the work of Mesrop (a bishop in Armenia, 390–439) who is credited with inventing both the Armenian and Georgian alphabets. The book of Revelation was not accepted as part of the canon in Armenian churches until as late as the 12th century.

Georgian Version

The same tradition that credits Mesrop with translating the Bible into Armenian also credits an Armenian slave woman with being the missionary through whom Georgian-speaking people became Christian. The earliest manuscripts for the Georgian Scriptures go back only to the eighth century, but behind them is a Georgian translation with Syriac and Armenian traces. Evidently the Gospels first came in the form of the Diatessaron; therefore, Georgian fragments are important in the study of that text. There is a whole manuscript copy of the Georgian Bible in two volumes in the Iberian Monastery on Mt Athos.

Along with the Armenians and Georgians, a third Caucasian people, the Albanians, apparently received an alphabet from Mesrop for the purpose of scriptural translation. Their church, however, was wiped out by the Islamic wars and no remains of that version have ever been found.

Ethiopic Version

By the middle of the fifth century, a Christian king ruled in Ethiopia (Abyssinia), and until the Islamic conquests close ties were maintained with Egyptian Christianity. The OT was probably translated into Old Ethiopic (called Ge’ez) by the fourth century. That version is of special interest for two reasons. It is the Bible of the Falashas, that remarkable community of African Jews who claim to be descendants of Jews who migrated to Ethiopia in the time of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Further, the Old Ethiopic version of the OT contains several books not in the Hebrew Apocrypha. Most interesting of these is the book of Enoch, which is quoted in Jude 1:14 and was unknown to Bible scholars until James Bruce brought a copy to Europe in 1773. The apocryphal 3 Baruch is known only from the Ethiopic also.

The NT was translated into Old Ethiopic somewhat later than the OT and contains a collection of writings mentioned by Clement of Alexandria, including the Apocalypse of Peter. Both Testaments are extant in Ethiopic manuscripts. None, however, is earlier than the 13th century, and these manuscripts seem to rest rather heavily on the Coptic and the Arabic. Nothing survived the total chaos that reigned in Ethiopia from the 7th to the 13th centuries. Because they are so late, the Ethiopic manuscripts have had little value for textual study.

Arabic Versions

Around AD 570 Muhammad was born in Mecca. At the age of 25 he married a wealthy widow, Khadijah. His “call” came at the age of 40. In 622 the “Hegira” to Medina took place. In 632 he died, the undisputed master prophet of Arabia. Within a hundred years, Islamic domains stretched from the Pyrenees through Spain, jumped the Gibraltar Strait, embraced all of North Africa, and captured Egypt and the Bible lands. Thus began a relentless pressure on Byzantium that culminated in the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Eventually, the Islamic conquest extended to lands as far east as India. Arabic became the most universal language the world had seen since Alexander had spread Greek over nine centuries earlier.

There were a number of strong Jewish communities in Arabia in the time of Muhammad, and the vast conquests engulfed hundreds of Christian communities, a few of which stubbornly survived. Yet the Bible in Arabic evidently did not come into existence until the work of Saadya Gaon. Saadya was born in the Fayum in Upper Egypt in 892 and died in Babylon in 942. He translated the Pentateuch from the Hebrew. Other parts of the OT followed—Joshua from the Hebrew; Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Job from the Peshitta; and the Prophets, Psalms, and Proverbs from the Septuagint—not necessarily the work of Saadya. The resulting version has been used by Arabic-speaking Jews down to this century. The Qara’ites, disapproving of Saadya’s rather free work, made rival translations, the most notable that of Japheth ben-Eli-ha-Levi in the tenth century. NT translations into Arabic sprang up from Syriac, Greek, and Coptic sources in the seventh to the ninth centuries. Arab writers say that John I, a Jacobite patriarch of Antioch (631–48), translated the Gospels from Syriac into Arabic. Another John, Bishop of Seville in Spain, is said to have produced Arabic Gospels from the Vulgate around 724. The final form of the Arabic NT rested most heavily on the Coptic Bohairic. Because of their late date and mixed background, Arabic texts have had little importance in textual studies.

Slavonic Version

Though the Slavs were one of the great ethnic groups contiguous to the centers of early Christianity, Bible translations into Slavonic cannot be traced earlier than the ninth century. Two brothers, Constantine and Methodius, sons of a Greek nobleman, began by putting church liturgy into Slavonic. With the approval of popes Adrian II and John VIII (as noted above), they translated the Bible. Constantine (who later changed his name to Cyril, 827–69) and Methodius (826–85) worked among the Slavs and Moravians. Constantine (Cyril) invented the alphabet that bears his saint name—Cyrillic—to facilitate the translation. Manuscript portions from the 10th or 11th centuries survive, but the oldest manuscript of the whole Bible is the Codex Gennadius in Moscow, which is dated 1499 and is too late to be of much value for textual study.