A more exacting uestion would be, "how did the Bible get translated at all"? considering the lack of literacy and the need a "certain translation"?
In a word: "badly".
It's a
very long story spanning several thousands of years but I will try to give you the short version.
The original Books of Moses (or the
Torah) were written sometime between 500 and 900 BCE presumably in Ancient Hebrew. I say "presumably" because a) we don't have any of the originals so there's no way to prove it although it seems logical, and b) because there is some scholarly debate regarding the Books of Moses being simply Jewish versions of even older texts from other cultures. Other Old Testament books were written before or after...the dating is kind of scattered and can sometimes be hotly debated.
Psalms for example was probably between 900-1000 BCE although some argue that it wan't written, at least in part, until around 500 BCE. Regardless, these were not all complied into one massive book as we have it today. That didn't come until the
Third Council of Carthage in 397 AD. So what we had was a bunch of individual books floating around for a thousand years or so. The books were passed down from generation to generation using mostly oral but also written tradition.
Now a few things we have to keep in mind here. The Jews are very picky about keeping the original wording of those books, especially the Torah so we can be reasonably comfortable that there wasn't a great deal of changes made intentionally. But that doesn't mean that errors were not made when copies of books were created (indeed they were), nor does it mean that Jewish culture stayed the same. No culture remains the same for 1,000 years. So even by the time Jesus was born there was certainly a significant cultural departure from when the books were first written, even though they may have been using the same words in the books. This would make a lot of sense because Jesus frequently made the point that (paraphrasing): "
Uh you guys have really got this fucked up. You may have heard this thing here, but you are missing the point." So we can logically and reasonably conclude that in that 1000 years culture and tradition, at the very least, had changed to the point where some things were getting messed up already.
The first big translation (that we know of or recognize) came with the Septuagint (or LXX) in around the 3rd century BCE. Now there's a great story that goes along with this about how King Ptolemy II sequestered 72 Jewish scholars into 72 different rooms and they all miraculously produced the exact same version in Greek. Well nice story, but bullshit. Who knows the exact way it happened but suffice it to say it was translated into Koine Greek at about that time. Now the problem was, as I mentioned in an earlier post, they didn't do a real good job of it. They were really focused on a literal word for word translation and as I said before there are simply words and concepts that don't translate from one language or culture to another.
The simple ritual of marriage in ancient Jewish culture is something that simply defies translation into Greek. The Jews had 18 stages of the marriage ritual starting with the marriage arrangement and ending with the girl being carried on a platform through the streets of the village and delivered to her new husband after which their bed linens would be paraded through the town so everyone could see the blood proving that the girl was a "
b'tulah" (virgin). But this could change according to time and tribe. Sometimes the husband had sexual rights to the woman prior to the last stage so the linens ceremony would take place at an earlier stage, and sometimes he had to wait until stage 18. And through all of this the woman's title may change. At one stage she may be a "b'tulah" and at another stage she may be an "
alma" (young woman) and at yet another she may be a "
na'arah" (girl).
Well this was a concept that just doesn't translate to Greek. Unlike the ancient Hebrews where you can be "kind of married", and a week later be "still kind of married but a little more married than you were last week", to the Greeks it was a pretty black and white thing; you were either married or you weren't. It was a "yes or no" question, not a shade of "sort of". So when translating in the LXX they just used the word "
parthenos" (virgin) for
all of those little variations even though in actual practice the woman may or may not have been a virgin depending on what stage the linens ceremony took place (and indeed whether she was a virgin to begin with).
So what happened next was that the books of the New Testament were written (usually in Greek again presumably since we don't have any of the originals) and again they were individual books scattered here there and everywhere and there were a lot more of them than we currently have in the modern Bible.
Then a major thing happened. The Hebrew language died out. The Jews were expelled from the Holy Land and they became scattered and as such they were forced to convert to a language everyone else was speaking in order to communicate. Ancient Hebrew flat out ceased to be spoken. Later the books were translated into Latin in what are known as the Vetus Latina but this was done individually and it was subject to the same problems as the LXX and indeed the LXX was used in part as a basis for translation. That meant in some cases they were badly translating an already bad translation.
Later that problem was enhanced with the Vulgate which attempted to combine it all into Latin but by then no one had spoken Ancient Hebrew for almost 300 years. The culture had been scattered....there was nothing to refer to. So the Vulgate was translated using a mixture of Hebrew texts, Greek texts, the LXX, and the Vetus Latina, but primarily the LXX. So now we have a translation of a bad translation of a bad translation. Now this coincided with Christianity becoming the official religion of Rome and now is when we start to enter a phase where the bad translations are not just simple errors or translation issues related to culture,
it starts to get intentional.
When Christianity was adopted by Rome there were two big things influencing it. One was the Roman Emperor (Constantine I) who wasn't really on board with this whole thing but saw it as a great way to control the people, and second was the Pope who correctly recognized that the Church suddenly had enormous power and influence. So they put together the first version of the Bible as we know it today, but in doing so they got rid of any book that could be interpreted as being "against Rome", "anti-establishment", etc. Where they could simply interpret a word to mean what they wanted they did that, but where they couldn't they just outlawed the book and made it a crime punishable by death to own it.
After the fall of Rome a power vacuum was created in Europe and the only power left to fill the gap was the Church and it just got worse from there. Bibles were only written in Latin but it was again a crime punishable by death for anyone but clergy and nobility to speak or read Latin or
even own a Bible. So what the Popes and kings did was to essentially create a situation where they could tell the people whatever they wanted, claim it was written in the Bible, and anyone who dared to go see for themselves got burned at the stake or tortured to death. Corruption was widespread as were the atrocities, but certain traditions became established whether they were in the Bible or not.
Finally, in 1517 a German monk named Martin Luther got fed up with all this bullshit and nailed a letter containing 95 ways in which the Church had corrupted the word of God and abused the people to the door of the All Saints Church in Wittenberg. This would spark the Protestant Reformation that was seized on by Henry VIII of England. Now it's important to note that Henry's motivation was not exactly a search for "the truth". He didn't agree with Luther and saw him as a heretic, but by embracing Luther's message he had the legitimacy to divorce Catherine of Aragon (a Catholic) and marry Anne Boleyn (a Protestant). Basically, England turned Protestant because Henry had an itch in his pants for a woman that wasn't his wife. Now it flipped back and forth a bit. Queen Mary (Catherine's daughter and a Catholic) restored Catholicism, but Elizabeth I (Anne's daughter and a protestant) restored a Protestant England after Mary's death. After Elizabeth's death James I became king of England and the next big thing happened.
James I commissioned what would become the King James Version in 1604 AD. It wasn't the first English translation but it would become the most dominant and most influential through the rest of history. Now a few things happened with this translation. First was the same problems other translations had. Ancient Hebrew had been a dead language for 1,500 years and the culture was gone as well. Koine Greek had been dead for about 1,200 years. Biblical Aramaic had been gone even longer...1,800 years or so. So the members of the clergy that translated it were in even worse shape than the ones who translated the LXX and the Vulgate. The other thing that happened was that
James instructed them to translate it according to traditional interpretations. James was no fool. He understood completely that if translated one way it could be a threat to government and power, so he wanted to ensure that the translation supported the traditions of the Church established after the fall of Rome instead of, for lack of a better way of putting it, "what the Bible really said", which they were having a ***** of a time figuring out in the first place. So the Bible was translated using Hebrew and Koine Greek and Aramaic, but the LXX, Vulgate, and Latin translations were the basis for interpretation and it was specifically crafted to preserve tradition. In other words what we have in the KJV is a traditional interpretation based on centuries of manipulation by the Vatican and kings, of a translation, of a bad translation, of a bad translation.
It gets worse.
The KJV was so dominant so for so many centuries that other versions are based, at least in part, and very heavily influenced by the KJV. So the New Living Translation for example, which is more concerned with the meaning rather than a literal interpretation and putting it into colloquial English, often cannot escape the traditional interpretations of the KJV. There are simply some concepts that are so central to the religion and so passionately insisted upon by Christians that they don't
dare suggest the Bible says anything else; whether it actually does or not. The Church and religious leaders propagate this still though their tactics have changed. They don't burn people at the stake anymore or shove red hot pokers up their ass, but they threaten people with eternal damnation if they dare listen to anything other than what
they insist a scripture means.
The good news in all of this is that, as I mentioned before, we are in a time now where we can crawl out from under all that darkness, manipulation, corruption, errors, etc. We have access to information in a manner never before seen on Earth. We have technology that allows us to solve some of the riddles that for thousands of years have gone unsolved. We have advanced in archaeology that allow us to get a far better understanding of ancient culture and language and as people go through all of this explosion of information the proverbial veil is being lifted. It's really a very exciting time.
Anyhow, that's a brief history of how the Bible was translated. I know it doesn't seem very brief, but in reality it's very brief and I skipped pretty much everything but the main points. There are lots of other nuances and smaller events that contributed here and there, but what I provided is a very basic history.
We are getting worse and worse here. The whole thing focuses around the word "green". The KJV translates it correctly as "green", but to understand what that means you have to know something about the culture. To the ancient Jews, "green" was related to green growth on plants and NIV makes that point by using the word "verdant" in place of green. But while they make the right connection they still miss the point. The new green growth was used to create images of abundance, fertility, plenty, etc. "Luxuriant" in the ASV is missing it. "The soft grass is our bed" in the NLT completely misses it. The point being made is (to put it in modern terms) "you **** me really good and often" possibly also indicating "...and we produce children".
Yeah I can attest to the fact that sin can be quite enjoyable. Of course I don't believe in the concept of sin to begin with...but we're doing good here. Why mess it up? 
