Welcome to the Spanish Bible Blog. Here you will find much information about the Spanish Bible, its inception, its texts, and those men who translated it into the Castellan tongue. You will also learn about the Valera 1602 Purified Spanish Bible, the only Spanish Bible which follows the texts of the Protestant reformation without any mixture of catholic, critical, or modern translation readings.

BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SPANISH BIBLE

The dream of a Bible translated into Spanish for all Spaniards to read was not an easy task to acheive. The Spanish Inquistion, as well as various Papal Indexes against translation of the scriptures into the vulgar tongue forbade those who desired to do the work, oftentimes leading to their being imprisoned, and even burned at the stake for their defiance to Papal law in translating the scriptures into the language of the common man.
Still, some courageous Spaniards with no regard for their own lives, and with a great evangelistic burden for their own people, translated the scriptures into Castellan Spanish for their own countrymen to read and absorb.
In their day, these men were labeled as heretics for their work, but today we remember them as heroes.
This blog will seek to give information about these men, who they were, what they did, how they did it, and why. And it is the hope of the author that this information will prove useful to the reader.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Where was the apostle Paul born?

I've recently finished my latest book about the Spanish Bible and the history of those old Spanish Protestant Corageous Men behind its inception.  It can be found on my website in both English and Spanish at:



I have such a new found respect for those old Spaniards of old who were willing to die for the truth of the Gospel, and who oftentimes willingly gave their lives for the word of God and the cause of Christ.

Yet there was one man who I never looked at as a Spaniard.  Who was he?  I'll get there.  But let me explain something first. 

I've been reading through some old books on the History of the Middle East from the late 1800's.  I've enjoyed learning about the conquests of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Medes and Persians, and more.  And towards the end of the book, it talked about the Phoenecians.

I knew some about them, but not everything.  And one thing I learned shocked me.  They started their kingdom on the mainland in Sidon.  But they later moved to an island offshore in which they built the city of Tyre.  These Sidonians or Zidonians were the best shipbuilders in the world, and they would travel everywhere in order to mine gold, silver, tin, and more, and then ship it back to their home, or sell it to other countries.  And did you know that they even founded colonies on the North West Coast of Africa and on the South of Spain?  That's right, they founded Carthage, a historic city.  They also found Cadiz, on the South of Spain, as well as the Spanish city of "Tarshish."

Okay, so what is "Tarshish?"  Well the Bible speaks about that city 21 different times.  (Look it up, I don't have time to list all the references).   Probably you remember the most famous mention of that place in the book of Jonah, in which the prophet Jonah tried to flee from the Lord and his calling for him to go to Nineveh.

So what's so important about Tarshish?  What's so important is that it is also is known by another name, that of "Tarsus."  The city in which the Apostle Paul was said to have been born in!  (Acts 9:11)  It is also known as "Tartessos" an ancient harbour city in the South of Spain!

So does that mean that the Apostle Paul was a Spaniard???  Could he have been born in Spain?

Well, I did some more digging, and it looked like it at first.  I mean, hey, he said towards the end of his ministry that he wanted to make his way unto Spain.  (Rom. 15:24 and 28).  This sure would make it appear that he was from there, and that's why he wanted to go back there towards the end of his life.

Sadly, I found some more verses that made me think otherwise.  For in the scriptures I found the following verses:

Acts 21:39 But Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city: and, I beseech thee, suffer me to speak unto the people.

Acts 22:3 I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye all are this day.
The apostle Paul of his own mouth clarifies exactly where he was born.  He was born in the city of Tarsus, in CILICIA, which is found in Asia Minor.  This means there are two cities named "Tarsus," one in Spain and one in Asia Minor, and they were both founded by the Phoenecians. 

So I was devestated when I saw this.  I wanted to believe so much that Paul was indeed a Spaniard.  But it appears he wasn't.  Still, I appreciate him for desiring to go to Spain.   Did he make it?  Who knows.

There are many who think he didn't make it there, for historically we hear nothing more of him, and whether he made it there or not.  Others think he did make it, and then journeyed unto England thereafter, preaching the Gospel in that country as well.  I guess we'll never know.  But the Bible does say he "turned the world upside down." (Acts 17:6).  Does this mean he did indeed make it over there, as that's part of the world?

I wish Paul were a Spaniard.  Alas, he's not.  But I also wonder how his visit (or non-visit) to Spain affected that country?  Could he have taken a pure copy of the scriptures in Hebrew and Greek into Spain with him?  If so, can it be found today in that country?  Or, if it existed, could it have been messed with by Catholic scholars and changed to read closer to the corrupt Latin Vulgate rather than the original Byzantine, Textus Receptus, Antiochian text?  (If you'll read my latest book, you'll see that's what Catholic Spain did to the Bible.  They "corrupted" it with the corrupt Catholic Alexandrian Latin Vulgate).

I guess we'll never know.  All we do know is we have a miracle in our blessed King James Bible, for it is God's pure and preserved word in English.  And I thank God for our Valera 1602 Purified Spanish Bible in Spanish, which follows those texts underlying the King James Bible, texts which would have been in agreement with those texts the apostle Paul would have carried with him.

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