Textual, canonical, and translational turning points in the history of the Bible.
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Hebrew & Greek Origins
pre-AD 1004 entries
Manuscript Traditionc. 5th–2nd century BC
Samaritan Pentateuch
An independent Hebrew text of the Five Books of Moses preserved by the Samaritan community. It differs from the later Masoretic Text in roughly 6,000 places, most minor but some theologically significant.
Reason
Religious separation between Samaritans and Jews after the exile produced a parallel textual tradition tied to worship on Mount Gerizim rather than Jerusalem.
Doctrinal Impact
Demonstrates that more than one Hebrew Torah text-form circulated in antiquity. Its readings sometimes agree with the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls against the Masoretic Text, complicating the idea of a single 'original' Old Testament wording.
Passages affected
Exodus 20 (Tenth Commandment about Mount Gerizim)Deuteronomy 27:4 (Mount Gerizim vs. Mount Ebal)Genesis 5 and 11 (patriarchal chronologies)
The Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, traditionally begun in Alexandria under Ptolemy II. The Torah was rendered first (c. 280–250 BC) and the remaining books over the next two centuries.
Reason
Most diaspora Jews in the Hellenistic world read and spoke Greek rather than Hebrew. The translation made scripture accessible and also served the Ptolemaic library project.
Doctrinal Impact
Became the default Bible of the early Christian church; most New Testament Old Testament quotations follow the LXX rather than the Hebrew. Differences from the Masoretic Text (most famously Isaiah 7:14's parthenos, 'virgin') shaped doctrines such as the virgin birth.
Manuscript Traditionc. 250 BC – AD 70 (discovered 1947–1956)
Dead Sea Scrolls (Qumran library)
A collection of roughly 900 Jewish manuscripts discovered in caves near Qumran, including the earliest known copies of every Old Testament book except Esther. They predate previous Hebrew witnesses by about a thousand years.
Reason
Hidden, likely by the Qumran community, before the Roman destruction of AD 68–70. Their accidental rediscovery by Bedouin shepherds in 1947 transformed Old Testament textual criticism.
Doctrinal Impact
Confirmed the remarkable stability of the Hebrew Bible over a millennium while also revealing genuine textual diversity in the Second Temple period. Influenced modern translations (e.g. RSV, NRSV, ESV) to adopt some non-Masoretic readings, and provided new context for early Christianity and LDS questions about ancient apocalyptic Judaism.
Passages affected
Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaᵃ)1 Samuel 11 (Nahash passage restored in NRSV)Deuteronomy 32:8 ('sons of God' vs. 'sons of Israel')
A rabbinic gathering at Yavneh traditionally credited with finalizing the 24-book Hebrew canon (Tanakh) after the destruction of the Second Temple. Modern scholars debate how decisive this 'council' actually was.
Reason
With the Temple destroyed in AD 70, Jewish identity reorganized around scripture and study. Disputes over books such as Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and Esther needed resolution.
Doctrinal Impact
Established the boundaries of the Hebrew Bible used by Jews and (later) Protestants, excluding the Greek deuterocanonical books that Christians inherited from the Septuagint. The contrast with the Christian Old Testament sets the stage for every later Apocrypha debate.
Disputed PassageEarliest attestation: 1st–2nd century
Doxology of the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:13)
The closing 'For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen' is absent from the earliest Greek witnesses to Matthew (Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Bezae) but appears in the Didache and in most Byzantine manuscripts.
Reason
Likely originated as an early liturgical conclusion drawn from 1 Chronicles 29:11 that was eventually copied into the biblical text. The Textus Receptus included it, so it entered the KJV.
Doctrinal Impact
Shapes Protestant liturgical practice (the doxology is sung or said with the prayer) while Catholic and modern critical Bibles typically omit it. Latter-day Saints recite it as part of the KJV Lord's Prayer.
Marcion of Sinope produced perhaps the first explicit Christian canon: an edited Gospel of Luke plus ten Pauline epistles. He rejected the entire Old Testament and any text he viewed as too Jewish.
Reason
Marcion taught that the God of the Hebrew scriptures was a lesser, vengeful deity distinct from the merciful Father of Jesus, requiring a purified Christian library.
Doctrinal Impact
Provoked the broader church to articulate which books were authoritative, accelerating the formation of a 'New Testament' that retained the four Gospels, the full Pauline corpus, the Old Testament, and the General Epistles in response.
An 85-line Latin list (preserved in an 8th-century codex) of New Testament books accepted in the Roman church. It names 22 of the eventual 27 books, including the four Gospels, Acts, the Pauline letters, and Revelation.
Reason
Local churches needed working lists of which writings could be read in worship; this fragment likely answers questions about disputed books such as the Shepherd of Hermas.
Doctrinal Impact
Earliest known canonical list of New Testament writings; shows that the core New Testament was substantially settled in the second century, well before any ecumenical council.
Great Codices (Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus)
Three of the earliest near-complete Greek Bibles. Codex Vaticanus and Sinaiticus (4th century) and Alexandrinus (5th century) are the foundational witnesses to the Alexandrian text-type.
Reason
After Christianity's legalization under Constantine, wealthy patrons could commission durable vellum codices containing the whole Bible — a major technological and ecclesiastical shift from individual scrolls.
Doctrinal Impact
These codices undergird almost every modern critical edition. Their omission of passages such as Mark 16:9–20 and the Pericope Adulterae drove later editors to bracket or footnote those texts.
In his 39th Festal Letter, Athanasius of Alexandria listed precisely the 27 New Testament books still recognized today, calling them 'canonized.' It is the earliest unambiguous enumeration of the modern New Testament.
Reason
Egyptian churches needed clarity about which books could be read liturgically during Easter, especially to distinguish scripture from popular but disputed works such as the Shepherd of Hermas and the Didache.
Doctrinal Impact
Provided a single influential authority whose list shaped subsequent regional councils. From this point the contours of the New Testament were essentially fixed in Greek-speaking Christianity.
Commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382, Jerome revised the Old Latin Gospels and then translated the Old Testament directly from Hebrew ('Hebraica veritas'), completing the work around 405.
Reason
Latin manuscripts of the Bible had multiplied into chaotic variant readings; Jerome aimed to produce a single reliable Latin text grounded in the original languages rather than the Septuagint.
Doctrinal Impact
Became the official Bible of Western Christianity for over a thousand years, fixing Latin theological vocabulary (sacramentum, justificare, gratia). Jerome's preference for the Hebrew canon also seeded the Protestant–Catholic Apocrypha debate.
African church councils, with Augustine prominent at Hippo, ratified a 27-book New Testament and a broader Old Testament that included the deuterocanonical books inherited from the Septuagint.
Reason
Local councils sought to standardize liturgical reading and resolve lingering disputes over books like Hebrews, Revelation, and the Catholic Epistles.
Doctrinal Impact
Cemented the Latin/Western Old Testament with the deuterocanonicals included — the canon later reaffirmed at Florence (1442) and Trent (1546), and the very issue Protestants would re-litigate in the Reformation.
The story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery is absent from the earliest Greek witnesses (P66, P75, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus). It appears in 5th-century Codex Bezae, in some manuscripts after Luke 21:38, and at varying locations in John.
Reason
Modern scholarship widely judges it a beloved oral tradition that floated between Gospels before being settled in John. Many also consider it historically authentic to Jesus even if not original to the Fourth Gospel.
Doctrinal Impact
Most translations now bracket or footnote it. The episode remains pastorally and theologically influential ('let him who is without sin cast the first stone'), and Latter-day Saints commonly cite it; the JST retains it without major change.
The twelve verses describing post-resurrection appearances, the Great Commission, and signs (speaking in tongues, handling serpents) are absent from Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus; Eusebius and Jerome both noted their absence from most Greek copies of their day.
Reason
Most scholars regard them as a 2nd-century addition supplying a fuller ending to a Gospel that otherwise ends abruptly at 16:8. A minority defends their originality based on later widespread attestation.
Doctrinal Impact
Modern translations typically bracket the passage. It is the source of several distinctive practices (snake-handling, baptismal regeneration debates) and is retained in the LDS KJV; Latter-day Saint doctrine on Christ's resurrection does not hinge on it.
Jewish scribes called the Masoretes, working primarily in Tiberias and Babylonia, added vowel points, accent marks, and meticulous marginal notes to the consonantal Hebrew text. The Aleppo Codex (c. 930) and Leningrad Codex (1008) are the great surviving witnesses.
Reason
To preserve the precise pronunciation and reading tradition of Hebrew scripture at a time when Hebrew was no longer a daily language and copying errors needed safeguards.
Doctrinal Impact
The Masoretic Text became the standard base for the Old Testament in Jewish, Protestant, and (with deuterocanonicals added) most modern Catholic translations. Its remarkable consistency was confirmed by the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The first complete English Bible, translated from the Latin Vulgate under the influence of Oxford theologian John Wycliffe. An 'Early Version' (1382) was followed by John Purvey's more readable 'Later Version' (c. 1395).
Reason
Wycliffe believed common Christians should read scripture in their own tongue rather than depend on clerical mediation, an idea later echoed by the Lollard movement.
Doctrinal Impact
Made the Bible accessible in English for the first time in over a millennium and became a touchstone for later Reformers. Church authorities banned the work and posthumously condemned Wycliffe at the Council of Constance (1415).
Erasmus' Greek New Testament & the Textus Receptus
Desiderius Erasmus produced the first published Greek New Testament in 1516, working under deadline pressure from five or six late Byzantine minuscules. Successive editions (1519, 1522, 1527, 1535) and the work of Stephanus, Beza, and the Elzevirs gave rise to what was advertised in 1633 as the 'Textus Receptus' — the received text.
Reason
The new printing press, Renaissance humanism's 'ad fontes' impulse, and a desire to challenge or correct the Vulgate created demand for a printed Greek New Testament.
Doctrinal Impact
Became the source text for Luther's German Bible, Tyndale's English Bible, the Geneva Bible, and the KJV. Erasmus' last-minute inclusion of the Comma Johanneum (1522) and reliance on late manuscripts fixed certain disputed readings in Protestant Bibles for centuries.
Passages affected
Revelation 22:16–21 (Erasmus back-translated from the Vulgate where Greek was missing)
Martin Luther's German translation of the New Testament (1522, drafted at the Wartburg in eleven weeks) and the complete Bible with Apocrypha (1534), made from Erasmus' Greek and the Hebrew Bible with collaborators including Melanchthon.
Reason
Luther wanted ordinary German speakers to read scripture for themselves, undercutting clerical monopoly and supporting Reformation theology (sola scriptura).
Doctrinal Impact
Reshaped the German language, standardized Reformation doctrine, and modeled the practice of separating Apocrypha from canonical books — placing them between the Testaments as 'useful and good to read' but not equal to scripture.
Passages affected
Romans 3:28 ('allein durch den Glauben' — 'by faith alone')
The clause 'For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one' appears in 1 John 5:7 in the KJV but is absent from every Greek manuscript before the 14th century and from all early Latin manuscripts before the 9th.
Reason
Likely originated as a marginal Trinitarian gloss in Latin manuscripts. Erasmus omitted it from his 1516 and 1519 Greek editions; under pressure he added it in 1522 after a Greek manuscript containing it was produced (now considered a back-translation).
Doctrinal Impact
Provided the most explicit proof-text for the Trinity in any Bible verse — and its absence in modern critical editions has fueled both Trinitarian and anti-Trinitarian debate. The LDS KJV retains the verse but Latter-day Saint theology does not depend on it.
William Tyndale's translation of the New Testament directly from Erasmus' Greek into English, printed at Worms in 1526 and smuggled into England. He went on to translate much of the Old Testament from Hebrew before his arrest.
Reason
Tyndale was committed to giving 'the boy that driveth the plough' access to scripture in English, against an English ecclesiastical ban on vernacular Bibles.
Doctrinal Impact
Provided perhaps 75–80% of the language later adopted by the KJV, shaping English biblical vocabulary ('passover,' 'scapegoat,' 'atonement,' 'mercy seat'). Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake in 1536, becoming a Protestant martyr.
Miles Coverdale's 1535 Bible was the first complete printed English Bible. The Matthew Bible (1537), edited by John Rogers, combined Tyndale's and Coverdale's work. The Great Bible (1539), edited by Coverdale, became the first English Bible officially authorized for use in churches.
Reason
Henry VIII's break with Rome created political space for an English Bible; reformers seized the moment to publish vernacular scriptures with royal sanction.
Doctrinal Impact
Made an English Bible publicly available in every parish church. Coverdale's lyrical Psalter survives in the Book of Common Prayer.
In its fourth session the Council of Trent dogmatically defined the Catholic canon, including the seven deuterocanonical books (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1–2 Maccabees) and additions to Daniel and Esther, and declared the Vulgate the authentic Latin Bible.
Reason
Counter-Reformation response to Luther and other reformers who had separated or removed the deuterocanonical books and challenged the authority of the Vulgate.
Doctrinal Impact
Made the Apocrypha question a formal dividing line between Catholics and Protestants. Doctrines such as prayer for the dead (drawn from 2 Maccabees 12) became enshrined as scriptural for Catholics but not Protestants.
Produced by English Protestant exiles in Calvin's Geneva, this was the first English Bible translated entirely from Hebrew and Greek, the first with numbered verses, and the first English study Bible with extensive marginal notes.
Reason
Marian persecution drove English Protestant scholars to Geneva, where they pooled humanist learning and Reformed theology to create a portable, annotated Bible for laypeople.
Doctrinal Impact
Became the Bible of Shakespeare, the Puritans, John Knox, and the Pilgrim Fathers (carried on the Mayflower in 1620). Its strongly Calvinist marginal notes annoyed the English crown, motivating the eventual KJV project.
Revision of the Great Bible authorized by the Church of England under Archbishop Matthew Parker, intended as the pulpit Bible of England. The 1602 edition served as the base text for KJV translators.
Reason
Elizabethan bishops needed an officially sanctioned English Bible to displace the popular but Calvinist Geneva Bible in church reading.
Doctrinal Impact
Never widely loved in households, but provided the literary substrate and base text from which the KJV translators worked, instructing them to alter it only when necessary.
Commissioned by King James I in 1604 at the Hampton Court Conference, produced by 47 translators in six companies working from the Hebrew, Greek (Textus Receptus), and the Bishops' Bible, and first published in 1611 with the Apocrypha between the testaments.
Reason
James sought a unifying English Bible without the Geneva Bible's anti-monarchical marginal notes; the project also served Stuart political stability and Anglican identity.
Doctrinal Impact
Became the dominant English Bible for over three centuries, shaping English literature, worship, and theology. For Latter-day Saints it is the foundational English scripture text and the Bible Joseph Smith used.
Cambridge editions of 1629 and 1638 corrected printers' errors. Benjamin Blayney's 1769 Oxford edition standardized spelling, punctuation, italics, and proper names, producing the form of the KJV used in nearly every modern printing — differing from 1611 in roughly 24,000 mostly minor places.
Reason
Original 17th-century KJV printings varied widely due to printer mistakes and evolving English orthography; readers and publishers needed a uniform standard text.
Doctrinal Impact
What most people today call 'the King James Bible' is in fact the 1769 revision, not the 1611 original. The LDS edition of the KJV is also based on the Blayney text.
Joseph Smith's prayerful revision of the King James Bible, undertaken with Sidney Rigdon and other scribes between June 1830 and July 1833. He worked from an English KJV, not Hebrew or Greek, and described the project as restoring 'plain and precious' things lost or altered over time.
Reason
Smith taught that the Bible had been transmitted imperfectly, and that revelation could restore lost truths — particularly about the premortal Christ, the priesthood, the Plan of Salvation, and ancient prophets such as Moses, Enoch, and Melchizedek.
Doctrinal Impact
Produced substantial additions including the Book of Moses (JST Genesis 1–7) and Joseph Smith–Matthew (JST Matthew 24), both canonized in the Pearl of Great Price. The LDS Church publishes selected JST excerpts in footnotes and an appendix of its KJV, while accepting only portions as canon.
Passages affected
Genesis 1–7 (Book of Moses)Genesis 14 (16 added verses on Melchizedek)Genesis 50 (prophecy of Joseph regarding latter-day prophets)Matthew 24 (JS–Matthew)John 1:1–18 (Christ as Word and Light)Romans 4–7 (changes on grace, works, and faith)
When the Book of Mormon was published in 1830, its long quotations from Isaiah, Malachi, and Jesus' Sermon on the Mount used the King James English as a base but varied from it in hundreds of small places, often by restoring or altering KJV italicized words.
Reason
Joseph Smith dictated the translation in English using the familiar cadence of the KJV. Latter-day Saints view many variants as restorations of an older Hebrew or Nephite text; critics view them as evidence of KJV dependence.
Doctrinal Impact
Established a Latter-day Saint hermeneutic that ancient prophets understood Christ explicitly and that biblical books such as Isaiah had been transmitted with losses. Smith later used the Book of Mormon's Isaiah readings to inform his Bible translation work.
German scholar Constantin von Tischendorf discovered and published Codex Sinaiticus at St. Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai (initial discovery 1844, fuller acquisition 1859), one of the two oldest near-complete Greek Bibles.
Reason
19th-century European scholarship and the rise of textual criticism prompted systematic searches for early manuscripts in monastic libraries.
Doctrinal Impact
Provided crucial evidence that famous KJV passages such as 1 John 5:7, John 7:53–8:11, and Mark 16:9–20 were absent from the oldest Greek witnesses. Forced theologians and translators to grapple with the gap between the Textus Receptus and the earliest manuscripts.
Modern Translation1881 (NT) / 1885 (OT) / 1901 (ASV)
English Revised Version & American Standard Version
Begun in 1870 at the request of the Church of England, the Revised Version was the first major revision of the KJV. American scholars participated and later released their preferred form as the American Standard Version in 1901, using 'Jehovah' for the Tetragrammaton.
Reason
Three centuries of new manuscript discoveries (especially Sinaiticus and Vaticanus), advances in Hebrew and Greek scholarship, and changes in English usage made revision essential.
Doctrinal Impact
Introduced English readers to the Alexandrian text-type and to bracketed or footnoted versions of disputed passages. Set the pattern for nearly every later mainstream English translation.
B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort published 'The New Testament in the Original Greek,' the first thoroughly modern critical edition, departing from the Textus Receptus in roughly 5,600 places and giving primacy to Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.
Reason
Westcott and Hort developed a genealogical theory of manuscript families, judging the Byzantine text-type to be later and more harmonized than the Alexandrian witnesses.
Doctrinal Impact
Set the methodological foundation for the Nestle–Aland / UBS critical editions used in virtually every modern translation. Their work is praised by mainstream scholars and resisted by KJV-only advocates who prefer the Textus Receptus.
Eberhard Nestle's 1898 Greek New Testament fused the major 19th-century critical editions. Successive generations (Erwin Nestle, Kurt and Barbara Aland, with UBS partners Metzger, Black, Wikgren, Martini, Karavidopoulos) developed it into the standard scholarly text, currently in its 28th edition.
Reason
Continuous discovery of new papyri (P45, P46, P52, P66, P75, the Bodmer and Chester Beatty collections) plus refinements in textual method required a regularly updated 'eclectic' base text.
Doctrinal Impact
The NA/UBS text underlies virtually every modern Bible translation — NIV, ESV, NRSV, NET, NLT, NASB. Its apparatus makes textual variants accessible and has effectively replaced the Textus Receptus in mainstream scholarship.
An update of the ASV by the National Council of Churches, drawing on Dead Sea Scrolls evidence and contemporary scholarship. Its 1952 publication ignited controversy, especially over rendering Hebrew 'almah' as 'young woman' in Isaiah 7:14.
Reason
To bring the ASV's English up to date and to incorporate a half-century of manuscript and lexical advances, including the freshly discovered Dead Sea Scrolls.
Doctrinal Impact
Sparked an enduring evangelical–mainline split over translation philosophy. Some critics burned RSV Bibles publicly; conservative responses included the NASB, NIV, and (later) the ESV. Catholic and Orthodox editions of the RSV are widely used.
Passages affected
Psalm 22:16 ('they have pierced my hands and my feet' footnoted)
Developed from 1965 by an interdenominational evangelical Committee on Bible Translation; published complete in 1978 by Biblica/Zondervan, with revisions in 1984 and a substantial 2011 update incorporating gender-inclusive choices from the TNIV.
Reason
Evangelicals wanted a contemporary, readable English translation outside the RSV's mainline-Protestant orbit, balancing formal accuracy with dynamic equivalence.
Doctrinal Impact
Became the best-selling modern English Bible, displacing the KJV in many evangelical pews. The 2011 gender-language update drew sharp criticism in some conservative circles and led some congregations to migrate to the ESV or NASB.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints published its own edition of the KJV in 1979 with chapter summaries, an extensive footnote and cross-reference apparatus, the Topical Guide, Bible Dictionary, maps, and a JST appendix. The 2013 edition updated study helps, footnotes, and historical introductions.
Reason
To present the Bible alongside the other LDS standard works (Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price) as a unified study system rooted in Restoration theology.
Doctrinal Impact
Defined how a generation of Latter-day Saints encounters the Bible: KJV text with JST footnotes, Book of Mormon cross-references, and Restoration-era doctrinal commentary. The 2013 revision quietly corrected hundreds of footnote, heading, and historical errors.
An update of the RSV by the National Council of Churches under Bruce Metzger, adopting gender-inclusive language for humanity (e.g., 'brothers and sisters' where the Greek refers to mixed groups) and incorporating new manuscript evidence.
Reason
To address shifts in English idiom, growing sensitivity to inclusive language, and three decades of scholarship since the RSV.
Doctrinal Impact
Became the standard translation for mainline Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox academic use. Its gender choices set a benchmark that influenced (and provoked alternatives to) every later mainstream translation.
Crossway's revision of the 1971 RSV produced by an evangelical translation oversight committee. The ESV pursues 'essentially literal' (formal equivalence) translation and largely retains traditional renderings (e.g., 'virgin' in Isaiah 7:14).
Reason
Many evangelicals wanted an alternative to dynamic-equivalence translations like the NIV and the gender-inclusive NRSV while preserving the RSV's literary heritage.
Doctrinal Impact
Quickly became the preferred translation of much of the Reformed and confessional evangelical world. Its 2016 'Permanent Text' was retracted within weeks after publisher Crossway pledged not to revise it further, an unusual chapter in modern Bible publishing.
Conceived in 1995 at the Society of Biblical Literature, the NET Bible was the first major modern translation distributed freely on the internet. Its hallmark is roughly 61,000 translator, textual, and study footnotes documenting the choices behind every difficult passage.
Reason
To make scholarly translation transparent — readers can see why translators chose a reading — and to provide a free, openly licensed Bible for the digital age.
Doctrinal Impact
Models radical transparency in Bible translation. The footnotes function as a built-in textual criticism course, helping readers understand variant readings, lexical ambiguity, and translation theory at a depth previously reserved for scholars.
Compiled from a range of scholarly and theological sources — see each entry’s links for further reading. Where modern scholarship and traditionalist views diverge, entries note the disagreement rather than picking a side.