Jesus was born at a very important time of world history. The Roman Empire controlled a vast area around the Mediterranean Sea. Whilst the Romans brought a measure of law and order, Greek culture had brought a common language to the whole area. For this reason, the New Testament books were written originally in Greek, ensuring that they could be read and understood in most lands of the Empire.

Very soon, the New Testament was translated into Latin, which was, of course, the official language of Rome. Many Latin versions were produced, but eventually, an Italian named Jerome (Eusebius Hieronymus), who was born in 345 AD, made a standard translation of the Bible into Latin. From the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, and the Greek text of the New Testament, Jerome produced a Latin Bible called The Vulgate (meaning 'popular' or 'common').

This Bible became the Bible used in the Roman Catholic Church. It was also the Bible from which early translations into other languages were made. When Christianity first came to Britain, it was the Latin Vulgate which the Church used. In 1384, John Wycliffe made the first translation of the whole Bible into English - from the Latin Vulgate. For a thousand years or so before this, there had been no Bible in the language of the people. Parts of the Bible had been translated into Anglo-Saxon or local dialects. Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborne in Devon, had done some translation work in 700 AD. In the North of England, a monk called Bede began to translate the Gospel of John into Anglo-Saxon. The great English King Alfred(871-901 AD) translated parts of the Bible containing the Ten Commandments, some Psalms and extracts from the book of Acts

Eventually, people were not happy with having a Bible just in Latin, or of a translation made from the Latin translation of other languages. They wanted to translate directly from those original languages into their own, in order to ensure that what they read was as close to the original as possible.

The following is the first verse of John's Gospel chapter 1 in Latin: