Introduction
THERE are literally hundreds of English translations of the New Testament available today. What then is the need for a new translation, and how does the Anointed Standard Translation (AST) satisfy that need? To begin to answer this question, we must learn something of the history of the English translations that are today popular, and we must learn something of the advances in Biblical sciences that have been made only recently.
The earliest English translations were made from the Latin Vulgate, an early translation of the Greek New Testament made by Jerome. The Vulgate was a poor translation of questionable Greek manuscripts when it was made, and in the more than 1,000 years that passed since the time of Jerome to the time of the first English translation of the Vulgate, the text of the Vulgate suffered both accidental and deliberate tampering. The results were poor English translations filled with additions and omissions from the text which are even less useful today than when they were made due to the antiquated nature of the English they contain.