Bible Translations (1)

A college student writes:

Yesterday I started a class called Intro to Spanish translation. And during the class the teacher was talking about the complexity of translating and how things can get lost in translation if you aren’t prepared and have the knowledge. 

Then he brought up this idea; During the Middle Ages what was the major thing being translated? The bible. And who were the people that were translating the bible? Usually the priest. Then he asked, do you think that these priests where ready/prepared to translate these texts and did they have bias in their translation to give them some benefit.  And then he went on to say that the bible (old testament) started in Aramaic and then translated to Greek and Hebrew and so on. He finished with saying do you think that the word of God got lost century after century with the translation and are we reading God's word or are we reading the words of the people. What do you say that?

First, you could have asked your teacher, “What evidence do you have that “unprepared priests” were responsible for translating the Bible?”  

Regarding the Old Testament, Encyclopedia Britannica reports that by the mid-3rd century B.C. “Greek was the dominant language, and Jewish scholars began the task of translating the Hebrew canon into that language, an undertaking that was not completed for more than a century. Because tradition held that each of the 12 tribes of Israel contributed six scholars to the project, the Greek version of the Jewish Bible came to be known later (in Latin) as the Septuagint.”

Note that these were “Jewish scholars” and not one unprepared priest writing down whatever he benefited him personally.