Why was the Bible first translated into Greek and not English and after that to Latin?

Answer 1

Actually The Bible was translated to Latin not from it to Greek.

1. Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew & Chaldean (Babylonian language).
2. New Testament was originally written in Greek.

These were translated to Latin by the Catholic Church.

The first English translations were from Latin translations. Later translators went back to the original languages.

Answer 2

The Bible was translated into the primary language of it's day. What is generally called the 'Old Testament' was first written in Hebrew, for the nation of Israel (with a small section of Aramaic), which was later translated into Greek (Greek Septuagint). By the time Jesus lived on earth, the international language of the 'common man' was Greek, so the New Testament was mainly written in that tongue. Latin was spoken among the Romans, so the Latin Vulgate translation was the next language. As time went on, the scriptures were translated into Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic and Persian, down to OUR day when they can now be found, all or in part, in over 1800 languages around the globe, including, of course, English.

Answer2: The canon or official collection of inspired books of the Holy Bible was completed by the end of the first century A.D. Written translation of the Holy Scriptures followed in due course along with the missionary effort of the early Christians in obedience to Christ's command to make disciples out of all nations. The books of the Hebrew canon had already been collected at Jerusalem prior to its destruction A.D. 70, and now during the second century the collecting of the books of the inspired Christian Greek Scriptures took place, and translations proceeded. Translations in the Old Latin appeared. Portions of the Scriptures, such as the four gospel accounts and the letters of the apostle Paul, were brought together in codex form like books of our day, for convenient handling and use. The casing-in of books between lids in this style proved to be a marked specialty of the Christian congregation in the bookmaking industry, in that early second century.

Toward the end of the fourth century Eu·se'bi·us Jer·ome', commonly known as "Saint Jer·ome'", entered upon his work as a translator. In 383 he produced his new Latin version of the gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and in 405 he completed his entire translation of the Bible from the Hebrew and Greek into Latin. Despite widespread objection Jer·ome's' Latin Version won out and became the Bible of Western Christendom for the next thousand years. It became known as the Latin Vulgate or "common Latin edition"

The first Bible to be run off a printing press by Jo'hann Gu'ten·berg at Mainz, Germany, was this Latin Vulgate.