The word of God has been known by names such as the Old Testament, God’s laws, the laws of Moses, the laws of the Torah, the Torah, the Talmud, and Septuagint and arrived at the modern times. The fact that God has given the laws to govern His people carved on stone denotes on the one hand that God gives a strong consideration to writing while on the other, we think that writing is a big agenda for God. (Ex: 20)
The spiritual leaders of the ancient times have fulfilled their responsibilities with the help of God by writing down His word. The word of God has been passed on to generations by being written on papyrus, stone and leather. The Dead Sea scrolls have been collected and examined by people filled with the God’s holy spirit and have been the main source of evidence. They have been proved to be the word of God and made to reach the people of God. Since then, each generation has accepted the Word and paid much sacrifice to pass it on to the next generation. At first, several attempts were made to wipe out the jewish people, who were the custodians of the Word, in order to ensure that it was not passed on. When the people could not be wiped out, various other attempts were made by grinding down the stones one which the Word was written, destroying papyruses and washing out leather parchments. Nevertheless, the word of God has been defeating all these by the power of God and arrived at today. Bernard Ram wrote about the Bible saying “A thousand times over, the death knell of the Bible has been sounded, the funeral procession formed, the inscription cut on the tombstone, and committal read. But somehow the corpse never stays put.” From the book entitled (Protestant Christian Evidences = please check source)
The laws of God, which have been written extensively in Hebrew, in Hebrew, in Greek and in Latin has been published in modern printed presses, especially since the 17th century, hailing that Word of God is alive, and has arrived at our generation.
God has seen generations and leaders at different times who claim to have read and have knowledge of the Word and but have not assimilated it, twist the Word and interpret it the way they want thereby misleading the people who have a thirst for the God. Thus He has used various ways for especially the “common” people to understand the “Word”.
(It says that??) there are over five thousand copies of the New Testament Greek manuscripts in the book entitled “The Teachings of God” prepared by Reverend Mansel Collin.
It is thought that the first copies were written around 135A.D.; in general, the New Testament was found in the 4th century A.D. and the copies of Jerome is one of them. This is known as Vulgate.With this, various paragraphs have have been converted into two thousand prayer books of churches. Church elders have quoted the New Testament in writings over eighty six thousand times. Scholars, having examined this, have been able to find out what the first drafts of the New Testament say These scholars, having examined the ancient copies, have been able to confirm the correct conepts of the Hebrew and Greek drafts and thus have performed a great service. For this reason, they have said that we should praise God.
The Englishman John Wicliff, born in 1312, who came to be known in the 14th century and is also knowns as “The Morning Star”, put into practice the doctrine that the Bible should be interpreted into a language that all people can read so they can directly communicate with God, and for the first time dared to translate the Bible from “Latin Vulgate” into English and presented a convincing and inciting message.
John Wicliff had received objections from the religious leaders of the time for translating the Bible into a language that people could understand so that all those who had the opportunity to read it could read it.
After Wicliff had passed away, church leaders who were annoyed that people who had read the Bible demanded “ We should live according to what we have read, and things that need to be corrected have to be corrected” took their revenge on Wicliff’s corpse; that is, after 31 years, by having Wicliff’s bones exhumed, crushed and thrown into the sea.
John, who rose after Wicliff, followed his doctrine and “was burned at the stake together with the English Bible he was reading.”
This translation has been read by several people since then. For example, the famous preacher, John Wesley, who was born in 1795, who had read the Bible in the language he could understand and made it his life, said ““I want to know one thing, the way to heaven; how to land safe on that happy shore. God Himself has condescended to teach the way; for this end He came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. Give me that book! At any price give me the Book of God!”
“O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it: here is knowledge enough for me”, he said, and he showed his love for the Word with these emotional words.
One can say that it was after much sacrifice was paid, the bones of the saints ground to ashes and the flesh burned with fire that this work, which was started with the motto that the translation of the word of God should spread in the language of people of the modern times, has arrived at this point.
The generation that is not aware of the previous history , when it finds today that it has been translated into various languages, may consider this easy and not thank God.
I think that our fault lies in those of us who were aware of this because we did not do the following as God in his word commanded us to do.
Based on the words: “Tell your children and your grand children what God has done for you”, it is the responsibility of parents and elders to tell history; and the benefit of this is that we can properly use the time, money and materials given to us by God.
For example, Diocletion who rose in the year 305AD proclaimed saying “High churches should close and high idols should be opened” and had the bibles found at the time burned.
Following that, even though s a way of celebrating his victory he erected a large stellae where he had burned the bibles, in contrast, after 25 years, Constantin, the son of the new king and Queen Eleni, reverted the proclamation by saying, “High idols should close, high churches should open” and had about 50 bibles printed on his own expenses. (Taken from ‘The Bible and Medical Science, 2004.)
Thus, we consider our country and examine historical documents, we find that the translation of the word of God was started by the first Ethiopian Christian bishop, Abba Freminatus translating it from Greek to Ge’ez and that the Ge’ez translation was completed by the nine saints who immigrated to our country for various reasons.
There is plenty of evidence to show that there were Ge’ez bibles in the monasteries they established.
Ethiopian high churches especially owe these monks since they made a big contribution to the spread of the word of God at the time.
At the time, most people spoke and wrote Ge’ez, thus could understand the “word of God” read in Ge’ez.
Later, however, the language remained only among church scholars and things did not happen as planned; nevertheless, God brought out a historical thing out of this!What? We havet tried to inform you of people such as Abba Abraham, the Reverend Anasimos and Aster Genon and Aleqa Tewoldemedhin whom we had listed before.
According to current research, as explained at a seminar by the SIL translation adviser and director, in Ethiopia there are 33.1 million people without the bible.
It has not been translated into their languages. 35 languages do not have the Fidel. They still don’t have even one quote. These are probably 3.5 million of our people.
However, 23 languages are either work in progress or in the process of being translated. Translation into 22 languages have not yet due to a lack of budget.
As previously explained by the general secretary of the Ethiopian Bible Society, translating the Bible from one language into another requires about 2 million Birr and takes at least 10 years.
Today, we have to be diligent in the work that history requires us to do and also on His word, which can bring salvation to our people, because this is the time to use our right which was given to us by God and the opportunity opened to us by the government, with the help of God, equally and peacefully in our country, without differences in religion, language or tradition,.
High churches, can we not fight for these people for the sake of the love of the gospels, for the salvation of one soul and joining with the kingdom of God?
