Why didn't Isaac Newton translate from a Greek Bible? I am under the impression that the Koine Bible (greek) is the oldest and original translation of the bible from these four sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_uncial_codices
Why did Newton translate the bible from Hebrew? Was it only the old testament he translated?
Did Newton have an old Hebrew bible that contained both new and old testament? If so what is this Hebrew version of the bible called? I had thought the bible was originally written in greek. or did newton just translate the old testament (torah) from hebrew and NOT the new testament?
I guess I'm confused why Newton would choose a Hebrew translation of the Bible. But for the Old testament this makes sense. I'm just not sure if newton was translating the entire bible ? or the old testament?
if it was just the old testament then i can see why translating it from hebrew makes sense.
but if it was the bible? wouldn't newton be a lot more likely to find a greek translation and see that as the original? or were there old hebrew bibles around? how much of the new testament did they have?
In the age of Newton the Hebrew old testament was not at all uncommon. Roughly 100 years earlier Luther retranslated the whole bible from both the Hebrew OT and the Greek NT.
Due to historical events Europe was full of Jews. Many of the classical Jewish commentaries on the Hebrew bible were in fact written by European Jews. Thus for a scholar such as newton it wasn't strange to be aquainted with the original Hebrew text.
As far as his NT knowledge he would either translate from Greek (AFAIK there weren't any Hebrew translation of the NT readily available ) or from Latin.