How many languages was the Bible translated into by 500 AD?

Answer 1

The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the New Testament was written in Greek. In 382AD Pope Damasus I instructed a church father Jerome (later St. Jerome) to prepare a Latin translation of the Bible.St. Jerome's translation was completed in 405AD. The Latin version was called the Vulgate, meaning that it was written for common man to read. Interest in the Bible intensified and by 500AD the Bible had been translated into hundreds of languages. Just one century later in 600AD the Roman Catholic Church, the only organised church of the time, prohibited the availability of the scriptures in any language other than Latin. Anyone found with a non-Latin translation was executed! The Bible was to remain available in Latin only for nearly a thousand years until the great and courageous works by John Wycliffe, Disederius Erasmus, Thomas Linacre, John Collet, Martin Luther and William Tyndale brought the Bible to the common man in his own language. The King James or Authorised version of the Bible in English comprises about 75% of the translation done by William Tyndale whose beautiful English was a source of inspiration for Shakespeare and other English writers. William Tyndale was executed and his body burnt on the instruction of King Henry VIII for his temerity in translating the Bible into English.