Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Bible Translation

  • A KJV-Only Comment on my Video

    For a video that includes nothing but me talking and some amateur (by me) captions, my Why I Hate the KJV video has done well on YouTube.  With 3563 viewings as of the time I’m posting this, and 231 comments.

    I must confess that I have not paid much attention to the comments thread, because YouTube doesn’t permit links and comments are short, and because most of the comments are quite inane, as is usual in KJV-Only discussions.  After all, what profound and informed argument actually favors KJV-Only?

    Comment 231 caught my attention, not because it was profound or informed, but because it was bad in a new way.

    The comment reads:

    The HIV (NIV) false “bible” is published by the same company that publishes the Satanic Bible by Anton LaVay. Jesus Christ said a corrupt tree cannot produce good fruit. If you think the HIV is good fruit, you’re calling Jesus a liar and you need to get right with God.

    I mean one of the translators of the HIV was an OPEN PRACTICING HOMOSEXUAL. How much more obvious does it need to get? Burn your HIV!

    Of course we have all the usual charm and logical structure of the normal KJV-Only comment.  I have written previously on the issue of having a homosexual translator on the team, which I regard as not only ad hominem, but largely irrelevant even as ad hominem arguments go.  The key point here is that when a Bible translation is released we have the source texts, we have the translation, we can look and see whether it is accurate or not.  (Usually there will be disagreements, but that’s translation.)

    Debating the quality of the translators, even if one is discussing their actual qualifications for translation work, is generally missing the point.  If I find a translation that is poor, and I look and see that the committee involved was underqualified, I might take that as an explanation.  I wouldn’t read the list of translators, decide they’re underqualified, and determine that their translation was lousy without reading it.

    But I find the whole tree and fruit thing very interesting.  Here are some questions:

    1. Is the “tree” that produces a Bible translation the company that publishes it?
    2. If so, would a Bible become corrupt if it was first published by a “righteous” company, but later  licensed to a “corrupt” publisher, however defined?
    3. What kind of sin must a publisher be guilty of to pollute otherwise pure scriptures that it might print?
    4. What kind of sin must a translator be guilty of in order to corrupt his translation?  For example, would the translation be corrupt if the translator was a gossip?  An adulterer?
    5. Is the translation corrupt if the translator is guilty of such sin, but we don’t know about it?

    While this KJV-Only argument may strike many of my readers as beneath comment–though when has that ever stopped me?–perhaps what we should think about is whether when we make what seem to be high moral pronouncements, we also say things that we really don’t want to say.

  • Interpreting the Bible III – The Impact of Inerrancy

    Update (1/15/09): For those in the habit of reading posts and skipping comments, I want to note that there is an important and substantial exchange of comments between Peter Kirk (Gentle Wisdom), Jeremy Pierce (Parableman), and myself that helps clarify this issue substantially.

    In my first post in this series, I made the following comment in response to a quote:

    While I certainly agree that the Bible is not inerrant, the rest simply does not follow. A simplistic idea of how one gets from scriptural text to doctrinal belief is posited and then discarded. An idea of the word of God that may or may not be correct (or more importantly held or not held by a community) is assumed and then dismissed.

    In that quote I kind of dismiss inerrancy from consideration and focus on the idea that one can automatically dismiss the Bible as God’s word because one has dismissed inerrancy. I will continue to make the second point–inerrancy isn’t necessary to regarding the Bible as God’s word–but I need to comment further on inerrancy.

    In my experience most people think that a belief in Biblical inerrancy is a critical dividing line, and that is one is asked what difference inerrancy makes, one should answer (misusing Paul in Romans 3:2): Much in every way!

    But inerrancy is something that is easy to misunderstand, and perhaps almost impossible to both understand and express in a way that is acceptable to everyone. Someone is going to claim misrepresentation somewhere, even if one uses an official statement such as the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. I’m not going to work through this statement right now, but suffice it to say for the moment that I reject inerrancy, even as defined in the Chicago Statement.

    But there are many different ways of defining inerrancy, and nobody really owns the term so as to control its meaning. Should one use the more academic definition? Or perhaps the most popular view is correct.

    In conversation, I usually find that folks would like to define inerrancy simply as “the Bible doesn’t have any mistakes in it.” That’s pretty simple and straightforward. But does it work? When someone nuances this position, they are often accused of some kind of weasel-wording in order to pretend that clear errors don’t actually exist.

    In fact, however, because of the complexity of the topic and the number of different claims that are made, one almost certainly must add some nuance to the definition in order to make any sense.

    The first question is simply what Bible one is referring to. Is this a particular translation? The KJV-Only advocates would claim that the KJV is without error, and they don’t accept a claim to believe in inerrancy from those who don’t make the claim of that particular translation. They will ask, “What is your final authority? Where is an inerrant document that I can get my hands on?” So at a minimum, one must specify precisely what Bible is inerrant.

    One can choose between many translations, the Bible in its source languages, some particular manuscript in the source languages, or the autographs. Each of these has interesting implications. There are few claims of inerrancy for translations in general, certainly not from anyone familiar with the process of translation. The “inerrant translation” idea is almost exclusively the product of the KJV-Only movement.

    Inerrancy in the original languages sounds good to those without acquaintance with the manuscripts, but quickly falls afoul of the facts of a variety of manuscripts, each with differences in the text. Thus you will only rarely find a simple claim to inerrancy in the original languages apart from some specific claim about which text outside of popular discussion. I do get this question from lay members in churches fairly frequently. Academics of whatever theological persuasion, however, know better.

    This leads to two options: 1) inerrancy of a particular text, usually asserted of the Byzantine or of the majority text, and 2) inerrancy of the autographs. Since inerrancy of a particular text also provides difficulties, such as differences in the manuscripts within that tradition, such a claim is again only rarely made, or generally nuanced so as to mean “nearly 100% accurate” which amounts logically to the second claim: Inerrancy of the autographs.

    With this there is the problem that we simply do not have the autographs. Nonetheless, for definition purposes, we have a precise text at a precise point of time, even if we can’t lay hands on the precise text. Opponents of the doctrine of inerrancy, including me, wonder just how important it can be to assert that an inaccessible text has a particular attribute. But that is beside the point for my discussion here.

    I hope you can see why someone who asserts inerrancy must provide some further data. When they say, “Inerrancy of the autographs” they aren’t tap dancing. They’re just getting to the point of being precise enough so that someone can understand and discuss their claim.

    But now we get to just what one would call an error. Here is where opponents of inerrancy outside the field of Biblical studies can get extremely impatient. What’s an error? Well, it’s a mistake! PI is 3.0 (1 Kings 7:23)? It’s a mistake! Seven literal 24 hour days? It didn’t happen. It’s a mistake!

    So let’s ask another question. It says in Judges 9:8 that “The trees once went out to anoint a king over them . . .” So did the trees “go out”? (Remember, this isn’t Narnia!) Did they anoint a king? Is it a mistake? Well, such a passage can be true on a couple of levels, including whether the words were spoken by the person quoted. If you quote a liar lying, is it a lie on your part? But of course the real point in this passage is that it is a parable, and you are not intended to believe that the trees actually did this.

    I chose that obvious passage that nobody would take literally, because one popular idea of inerrancy is essentially equivalent to “the Bible is all literally true.” Even “literally true” is problematic, because I have heard it interpreted to mean that the Bible is pretty much all literal (everyone has their exceptions) on the one hand, to someone who told me that “taking the Bible literally” meant “taking it as it is intended” so that he would take a passage figuratively, while claiming to take the entire Bible literally. Personally, I think he was using the very common equation of “literally” with “true” and “figuratively” with “not-so-much true.”

    There’s a very popular variant of this is to take the Bible literally at any point at which it can be taken literally. Tim LaHaye in his not-so-good book How to Study the Bible for Yourself, p. 160, says:

    . . . A good rule to follow is to try to interpret each passage literally. If this is obviously not the case, then as a last resort try to find the spiritual or symbolical truth it is communicating.

    Obviously he followed this principle in producing his interpretations of Revelation. I don’t have his book at hand, but I believe Dr. David Jeremiah recommended attempting literal interpretation first in the book of Revelation (Escape the Coming Night). Though I cannot recall for certain that he explicitly recommends it, I know that he practices it.

    Where this view of inerrancy can be best tested, however, is in passages that might easily be taken either way. These would, in my view, include Genesis 1-2, where one might quite justifiably argue various positions on the original intent, or passages that may be read as fiction or not, such as Jonah or Job. Many mainline students of scriptures would be surprised at how many people find the issue of Ruth, Jonah, Esther, or Job as fiction controversial. For some, however, having a story like that, which is not actually presented as a parable or illustration, not be true would violate their view of inerrancy.

    One of the best very short definitions of an academic notion of Biblical inerrancy is this: The Bible is without error in what it intends to convey. The problem with any short definition is that it lacks some details and nuance, but this one covers quite a lot of ground. For example, if Jonah is fiction and intended to convey certain theological truths rather than a narrative history of a certain person in a certain period, that doesn’t violate inerrancy. I have seen this stretched quite far, to the argument that one can accept inerrancy and date the book of Daniel in the 2nd century.

    This argument was made by Ernest Lucas in his commentary on Daniel from the Apolos Old Testament Commentary series. He doesn’t take sides himself, but he argues that one can use either dating for Daniel and still accept the doctrine of inerrancy. This would involve understanding a great deal of prediction as history, a great deal of the story as fictional, along with the whole setting for the writing of the material. Is it possible? Indeed, most scholars believe that the setting, the story, and the predictions are all fictional, except for a very small portion that would be contemporary with, or in the immediate future of, the writer. In general, however, these same scholars don’t claim to believe in inerrancy.

    I would add one more way in which one might state that the Bible is without error–by claiming that the Bible is precisely the way God wanted it, i.e. that if there is an apparent or even real error of fact, it’s in there because God wants it there. This would be hard even for me to disagree with, but I think it is so far from what anyone would hear me saying if I said “I accept inerrancy” that it would be lying for me to make the claim.

    So just how does Biblical inerrancy impact interpretation, which is, after all, the topic of this series? Well, actually, as you can see, the type of inerrancy which Ernest Lucas seems to espouse doesn’t really eliminate any possible interpretation that I might claim myself. I think that it does force one to be a bit disingenuous regarding the author’s intent.

    For example, if the writer of Daniel lived in the 2nd century BCE, wrote pseudonymously, invented an author and narrative or (more likely) borrowed it from folk tales, produced lengthy prophecies of the future but which weren’t really about the future, was the author lying in order to make his final prediction more convincing, or was he following literary conventions of his time? In other words, did he intend people to realize that what he wrote was largely fictional? One can debate this, but I’m afraid I would tend to support the idea that the “predictions” were developed to give weight to the rest of the book, and they would only give weight if people believed they had been written much earlier and had been fulfilled.

    But in terms of Genesis 1 & 2, there is next to nothing that I would claim in interpreting this passage that could not be claimed by someone who accepts inerrancy. In other words, inerrancy and the theory of evolution need not stand opposed, provided one accepts certain literary categories for the writings in question.

    Unless I get side-tracked again, which I probably will, I’m going to write on the Bible and scientific statements for my next post in this series.

    Previously posted: part 1 and part 2.

  • My Mother Reads Hebrew

    One of my disappointments as an undergraduate student was being told by my teacher, and Old Testament studies professor, that most people had learned and forgotten Hebrew many times.  It’s not my intent to criticize him–he’s one of my favorite people, and an outstanding scholar and teacher–but I was disappointed with the low expectations.

    The undergraduate Biblical Languages program I took had only two years of Hebrew available, an introductory year-long course and a year of Hebrew readings, but I managed to expand it by arranging a year of independent study, in which I followed the readings class again as they read different passages, and also memorized vocabulary, covering all words that occurred more than 5 times in the Hebrew Bible.

    While I’m at it, let me recommend vocabulary memorization.  I have found three ways of massively improving reading in a foreign language.

    First is just reading.  This is why I value “Reader’s Lexicons” at early stages of learning.  They allow you to cover a great deal of ground very quickly.  This is no substitute for seriously working over a text in some detail, but it does build skills.  Provided you don’t neglect studying other aspects as well, it will help.

    But second is simple vocabulary memorization.  Even though memorizing a “gloss” for a word has limitations, if you combine it with the first method, you will soon learn to combine the basic, memorized meaning, and a more sophisticated definition nuanced by the context.

    Finally, I recommend memorizing the actual text.  I was introduced to memorization at home and in a small Christian school, where I memorized chapter after chapter in English.  After I started learning Greek I began memorizing in Greek, then carried it over to Hebrew.  Since I often don’t get back to the same text at that level for some time, I often am not able to recite some of these texts without review, but I will remember specific words, phrases, and constructions even after the full text may have faded a bit.

    But what does any of this have to do with your mother?

    I’m glad you asked!  Aside from being the person who first taught me to memorize and love scripture, my mother has learned to read both Hebrew and Greek.  She started this at retirement, and during that year that I was taking third year Hebrew by sitting in with the second year class and doing extra work, she was taking her second year.  What a joy it was to sit with her in Hebrew class working through the scriptures in their original language!  (“Who’s that old lady learning Hebrew?”  “Watch who you’re calling old!  That’s my mother!”  A well justified retort seeing as she’s still going strong nearly 30 years later!)

    After she completed that formal Hebrew training, she taught herself Greek with a little bit of help from me, and got to the point where she could work her way through significant Greek texts.

    She is now 90 years old, and most times when I visit we’ll have some time to sit down and study some passages together.  She’ll have written up her own translation as she studied, and we’ll compare notes and discuss the language, the theology, and the application.

    I can only dream of being a sharp when I’m 90 years old!

    I try to balance a love for the original languages with the realization that not everyone has the time or the talent to learn them, especially if that is not part of one’s professional life.  My mother, for example, is a Registered Nurse.  Greek and Hebrew were not part of her daily life.

    By lack of talent I do not mean stupidity either.  Most of us find some activities quite challenging.  I’ve encountered the idea that if one learns Greek (or Hebrew), one must be able to do anything.  Occasionally, when I’m challenged by a task that’s outside my talents, and someone is pushing me, I’ll tell them, “You go learn Greek, and then I’ll try this again.”  Usually they get the point.

    But for those, like my mother, who can make the time, your going to find such a study very rewarding.  There are many means of helping you get close without knowing the languages, but in kissing and great literature, “close” and “touching” are by no means equivalent.

    This post was inspired by John Hobbins’ post Why it is important not to love the God of the Bible.  John has some other very important points to make in that post, besides talking about reading Hebrew with “fire in the belly,” so go read it all.

  • My Favored Translation Method

    John Hobbins divided translations into two classes in a recent post.

    Which do you prefer: (1) a translation that makes sense on its own, without off-site explanation, or (2) a translation that is a head-scratcher until an explanation is given which clears things up, and even then leaves you wondering if you have it right?

    Almost everyone I know, except J. K. Gayle whom I wish to congratulate for his well-earned doctorate, prefers, all others things being equal, a type (1) translation. …

    Now I have a bit of a problem with that division of the types of translations.  I’m guessing that John thinks I prefer type 1 translations, since he has responded to some of my comments and I’m not J.K. Gayle, so I’m going to respond as though his answer refers to me.  As for J.K. Gayle, he has produced a new blog on Bible translation, which I won’t claim to completely understand, but will certainly read regularly.

    That leaves me as a “type 1 preferer” by default.

    But is that actually the case?  Frankly I have a hard time understanding this division.  I am, in fact, an advocate of just about every variety of translation, depending on the purpose for which it is used.

    Thus when one is going to sit at one’s desk and study out a passage with commentaries, concordances, and other reference sources, I would often be quite happy with John’s variety #2.

    On the other hand, if I’m giving a Bible to a child or young person, or someone who has not previously read the Bible, I’m likely to start with #1.

    I frequently ask people to read lengthy passages from the Bible, such as whole books, and again for that purpose I like a Bible that is easy to comprehend without going to external references.

    Some may wonder if this is not giving people a wrong impression of the meaning of the various passages they read.  The problem here is the assumption that the result of one person’s long study of an obscure verse in a translation that leaves it obscure will result in enlightenment.  (John does not partake of this error.  He recognizes the tentative nature of conclusions in the post I cited above.)

    A person who uses an easy-to-read translation in order to get an overview will not discover all the possibilities for interpretation of the text.  That should be no surprise.  One won’t do that while reading for overview in any case.  Getting an overview of a passage or book is simply one part of studying the passage and should be supplemented by others.

    So I would have to say, if asked whether I choose the Bible versions behind door #1 or door #2, “Yes.”  On any particular occasion it would depend on the individual (or audience) and the purpose for which the translation would be used.

    No translation conveys all that the source text will convey, nor can it be expected to.  One must match what is conveyed to the needs of the situation.


  • Loving, but not Recommending, the REB

    There has been a good deal of talk in the biblioblogosphere about translation theory, and in connection with that support for the REB.  In particular, I would note John Hobbins post Why the REB is a Great Translation, and to his earlier posts (not directly on the REB but very relevant to this post), You need an excellent translation to understand the Greek New Testament, and Critique of “Natural English” as a Goal of Translation.

    I’m not going to respond in detail to these posts.  I think I’ve made my translation philosophy, such as it is, clear previously.  But it’s interesting to me that I can disagree quite profoundly with John Hobbins’ view of translation, and at the same time personally prefer the REB.

    But the answer is right there in my phraseology.  I prefer the REB, but I eschew terms such as “the best translation.”  The problem I see here is that such statements tend to ignore the audience for the translation, and at the same time prescribe goals that audience should have.

    For example, John presents some rather admirable goals in terms of literary allusions and quality, as well as in terms of understanding the source language.  As I always do about this point, let me simply note that if one wants to get the nuances of the source language, the only answer is to actually learn the source language.  This is something Hobbins has done, and done well.  But at the same time he thinks this will somehow be made widespread through a particular approach to translation.

    The problem, in my view, is that many people will miss these subtle, and even not-so-subtle, literary characteristics.  I believe most will miss them, but can’t prove it as I’m working from personal experience.  In my experience teaching Bible classes to lay people, I have found that there is a distinct limit on what you can expect people to do.

    This is not because they are stupid; it’s because they have other lives.  They don’t spend most of their time studying this sort of thing.  In general, when I point out details, people are happy to listen, but this doesn’t become a regular part of their Bible study.  In the best cases, such things come to them through commentaries.

    I would note the happy exception of my mother, who chose on retirement to learn to read both Greek and Hebrew.  She’s now 90 years old and continues to use both in her own devotions.  But I will note that she did this after retirement, though her retirement is a quite active time in her life!

    I think it is arrogant of me to expect people in general to learn my field or expect them to have the same goals that I do in Bible reading.  For some, the target will be reading for a general message, without concern with details.  For others, literary beauty will be the main issue, and literary beauty is in the reader’s eye or hearer’s ear, despite centuries of “experts” trying to make certain literature “good” and other literature “bad.”  (J. K. Gayle provided an interesting post on this.)

    For yet others, the issue is to get to the forms of the source language, and while I recommend that they learn the language if that is their goal, a more word for word translation will help in a limited sort of way.

    So how does this relate to the REB?  Quite directly.  I love the REB.  I read it regularly.  I think it does overall the best job of translating the Bible in well-formed literary language.  That is something that I personally like.

    But other people function differently than I do.  A literary translation may actually be a distraction for them in devotional reading.  I note that some congregations I’ve worked with find the REB not that easy to follow when read from the pulpit.  (It shares this characteristic with some other translations like the ESV or the unfortunately NKJV.)

    Now each of those translations has some things in its favor, though I find the NKJV the hardest to justify, but they also have drawbacks.  It depends on who is using the translation, including when the “who” is a community, and what they are using that translation for.

    I see no reason to be prescriptive here.  One simply has to match the characteristics of a translation with use and user, as far as possible.

  • Isaiah 64 in the Orthodox Study Bible

    I’ve begun using the Orthodox Study Bible in my lectionary reading, which brought me to Isaiah 64 a couple of days ago.  It’s been that kind of a week, so I haven’t had time to comment on it until now.

    First, let me note that having a study Bible with an overtly Christological interpretation of the Old Testament makes for a nice bit of variety in my reading.  I do have a couple of others, but this one is quite unapologetic about it.  I’m a little less satisfied with the quantity of the notes available.  For example, the New Interpreter’s Study Bible, which I also read regularly, has about 380 words of notes on the page with the major portion of Isaiah 64, while the Orthodox Study Bible has about 160.  In addition, one of the notes, on Isaiah 64:4 does nothing more than restate the message of the verse in other words and so doesn’t advance us that much.

    I wrote recently about how easy it is to trash translations, but I hope I can be allowed just a little bit of complaining here.  I knew that the New Testament of the Orthodox Study Bible was from the NKJV.  This makes sense because that is a translation of the majority text, more or less, though there are a number of devations in favor of the text behind the KJV.  The NKJV is not one of the most readable translations around, and I already knew what to expect there.

    But for the Old Testament, we have a new translation of the LXX.  The introduction (p. xi) gives us three key points about this translation, in my view:

    1. It is based on Alfred Rahlf’s edition of the LXX.  Since I have this text, I am reading the Greek alongside the translation as I review the book.  I’m going to assume until I’ve had time to research this more fully that this was a good textual choice for the purposes of this Bible, i.e. that Rahlf’s is close enough to the text used in Orthodox liturgy.
    2. It uses NKJV renderings where the Masoretic text of the Hebrew is the same as the LXX text.  This seems a less useful goal, due to the somewhat stilted nature of the NKJV English.
    3. The introduction states that “[t]he Old Testament text presented in this volume does not claim to be a new or superior translation.  The goal was to produce a text to meet the Bible-reading needs of English-speaking Orthodox Christians.”

    My problem is with the last one.  But first let me simply note that few Christians outside of the Orthodox tradition will realize just how many differences there are in the LXX text and the Hebrew.  It is fortunate that the introductory materials provide a chart of the differences in chapters and verses, and I hope English speaking readers who are accustomed to our western Bibles will read those materials.

    But the real problem here is with English.  I’m not arguing here that the Greek was not correctly understood by the translators.  I’m also not asking for a functional equivalence translation where a formal equivalence translation has been presented.  But even formal equivalence translations can make good, meaningful word choices.

    These remarks are preliminary.  I’m basing this on comparison of just two passages, Isaiah 64 and Psalm 80, and all examples are from the former.  But it is not encouraging to find this many examples in just the Psalms and OT reading from this week’s lectionary.

    As examples, consider Isaiah 64:8[9]:

    Do not be exceedingly angry with us, and do not remember our sins in an opportune time. [emphasis mine]

    What does it mean for God to remember sins in an opportune time?  If one did not imagine that the translators know Greek well, one might guess that they had opened a lexicon and simply chosen the first possibility that jumped out at them.  Surely “kairos” here must have some more relevant meaning.  BDAG includes things like a “time of crisis,” though I actually don’t think that is the intended nuance here.

    Then in verse 9 we have:

    Zion is like a desert, and Jerusalem is for a curse.

    Again, in English, what does “Jerusalem is for a curse” mean?  It would seem like a few minutes checking with ordinary speakers of English would suggest some alternative was of phrasing this.  And bluntly, this looks a bit much like a class exercise style of translation for “eis kataran.”

    Finally, in verse 10, we find:

    . . . and all our glorious things have become extinct.

    Were they animal species or something?  Again, I don’t get this.  The Greek word here is “sumpipto/sunepesen” and I don’t see how one would get such an inappropriate English word to use in this context.

    The bottom line is a bit like I expected, knowing the translation used as the foundation, and assuming that a similar process was followed in this translation.  I’m frankly enjoying the introductory articles and the excurses in the text.  The translation, on the other hand, is frequently jarring and sometimes puzzling.

    I will continue to write notes as I read.

  • Received: The Orthodox Study Bible

    . . . and it’s even more interesting than I anticipated.  This is obviously not the intended review, but I do find the idea of a Bible with a strong flavor of the Orthodox doctrine quite interesting, and the Bible looks fascinating.  The New Testament is NKJV, but the Old Testament uses the St. Athanasius Academy Septuagint, with which I am not too familiar.  I’ll probably have my Septuagint beside me as I study!

    I did write up a few descriptive notes on my Energion.com Book site.  They are just a description, not an evaluation.

    I expect I will be referencing this Bible quite a bit as I work my way through it.

  • Reading Psalm 100 Out Loud

    One of my Bible study methods, though most important for devotional reading, is to read a passage aloud.  Since the lectionary Psalm for this week is Psalm 100, which is very short, I thought I’d read it aloud in a number of versions and then write my subjective impressions.

    I chose to read it from the REB, NJB, CEV, NRSV, The JPS Tanakh, and the NLT.  There was very little method to all this; those versions were just nearest my computer at the time.  I could have read from more by either walking farther or by using my Logos library, but I didn’t.

    Prior to reading these aloud in English I had read the Psalm a few times in Hebrew and had done a draft literal translation myself.

    The purpose of the exercise, beyond “whatever” was to get a feel for how each version would function in public reading.  I’m frequently asked what the “best” translation is, and one obvious question is always “best for what?”

    First, whether more functional or more formally equivalent, the translations were more similar than I would have expected when read side by side.  The NJB was fairly choppy.  I like its use of “Yahweh” in the Psalm, though I don’t use that as a rule in reading publicly.  The REB was similarly a bit choppy and appeared to use vocabulary that didn’t fit well.  (Note that I normally prefer the REB, though today was an exception.

    I disliked the use of “love” to translate Hebrew “hesed”, as was done by the CEV and the REB.  I understand the reason in the CEV, but the REB uses “acclaim” in verse 1, “acknowledge” in verse 3, I think they might have employed a few more letters on “hesed.”

    The very positive thing about the CEV is that it is very easy to understand when heard, with no difficult vocabulary.  At the same time, it loses all sense of Hebrew rhythm and parallelism.  This is one of those necessary trade-offs in translation.  You’re going to lose something, and if your goal is to translate for a fairly basic set of English vocabulary.

    The JPS Tanakh is an excellent translation, though it didn’t seem to read as well as the NLT read aloud.  The NRSV sounded remarkably good to me, which again is not usual.  I usually like the NRSV for the formal equivalence, but dislike its sound.  Unfortunately, it is the Bible used for most scripture readings at my church.

    Overall I would give the edge to the NLT as a compromise between easy to understand, decently flowing English text, maintaining some sense of the parallelism, and not translating any of the Hebrew words in too jarring a manner.

    All this is, as I have said, very subjective.  One impression is very strong–all of the translations seemed less smooth and readable when read aloud than when read silently.  I know the CEV is designed to be read orally, but I think there it is very hard for me to come from reading the Hebrew text with the parallelism and some sense of similar length poetic lines, and then go to a translation that deliberately eliminates both elements.

    I suspect that a major reason why the NRSV sounds good to me in this case is that this is one of those Psalms I memorized in the KJV as a child, and the NRSV is the closest to the KJV amongst those I read.

    One thing I believe I should think about is the quality of reading involved.  There are some readers who can make a scripture reading really resonate.  I wonder how much my own inclinations about reading impacted the way I felt about what I read aloud?

  • Trashing Bible Translations is Trivial

    . . . not to mention easy.

    In the just completed presidential election here in the U. S., were I to list all of the reasons why I might not vote for the candidate for whom I eventually did vote, the list would be fairly long, and might convince someone I thought that candidate was quite a scoundrel.

    Similarly, I could quite easily make a list of only the positive points of the candidate for whom I did not vote, and make someone think he was the man!

    Candidates are rarely perfect.  They rarely fully reflect one’s own views, so there is some compromise involved when one goes out to vote.

    So what does this have to do with Bible translation? Quoth the apostle Paul:  Much, in every way!

    Critics of one Bible translation or another, or even one method of translation or another often simply find cases in which the particular translation or method produces results they regard as less than the best, or perhaps just plain bad.  Like negative political ads, these notes are supposed to add up in our minds to an eventual rejection of that particular translation or method.

    The problem is that every translation is susceptible to this approach, as is any particular mix of translation methods.  That’s because, like political candidates, translations are imperfect.

    It’s very easy to get into advocacy rather than evaluation.  I know.  I do it all the time.  But no accumulation of negatives ever turns into a positive message.  Unless, that is, in Bible translation it turns into motivation to learn the Biblical languages.  Since I suspect that isn’t going to happen as a mass movement, we’ll probably be living with translations for the forseeable future.

    A particular example of this kind of criticism of translation can be found in the preaching and teaching of many pastors who are well-versed in the Biblical languages.  Because of their extensive knowledge, and based on their extensive study, they can proclaim some particular translation misleading or just plain wrong.

    Now doubtless they have good reason for making this claim.  I recently heard it made and I agreed fully with the speaker.  The translation in question was, in my view, unfortunate.

    Since I have studied the process of Bible translation, however, I know that the rendering that the speaker and I both thought was poor, was actually produced by a committee of well-qualified scholars in the relevant field.  Their decision was reviewed by many others.  Comments were gathered, and then a final rendering was chosen.

    Does the speaker wish to take on that powerful committee?  Does he wish to suggest he knows better?  Of course he does!  So do I!  It’s fun.  It’s what this study is all about.  That’s the normal give and take of scholarship.

    But the congregation doesn’t really hear it the way we do.  First, most of them are not so well aware of how translations are made.  What they actually hear is that the translators are wrong, and they may infer possibly that those translators are less intelligent, less well-trained, and or less careful than their pastor or teacher.  They learn to distrust the translation, and instead of trusting the source languages instead, they have to trust their pastor.  Of course, in their personal study, they still have to trust some translation.

    I have written before about those who know very little Greek or Hebrew and yet proclaim, based on some commentary or other reference, that a particular word means some particular thing, contrary to the text of their translation.  In that case I’m talking about people with inadequate knowledge misleading because they are not fully competent to say what they say.  In this case, however, I’m talking about people who are very competent accidentally misleading people.

    What do I suggest?  To pastors or teachers skilled in the Biblical languages:

    1. Moderate your vocabulary.  Even when you are very certain, claim your statements about translation as your opinion.  “I believe” goes a long ways here.
    2. Don’t just work from the source languages.  Educate people on translation and on how to make effective use of the numerous English translations.
    3. Make both positive and negative statements about translations, when they are applicable.  Don’t just talk negatively about the ones you don’t like.

    To Bible students I suggest:

    1. Use multiple translations.  If you don’t know the source languages, try to get a better idea.  Choose translations that use different philosophies as well.
    2. Read prefaces, introductions, and footnotes.  Know the strengths and weaknesses of your particular Bible version(s).
    3. Learn as much as you can about the Biblical languages even if you don’t have time to actually learn them.  This will help you sort through the many, many claims.

    Note that I’m not talking about blog posts here for the most part.  You can’t always cover everything in a blog post, so you might simply include something negative from one verse but cover something positive at another time.  In that case the balance is in reading more than one post.

  • Valuable Summary Post on Bible Translation

    Brian Russell of Real Meal Ministries has posted a summary on Bible translation that is quite good.  It’s hard to keep things straight in a short, readable essay.  (HT:  Methodist Blogs Weekly Roundup by Allan Bevere.)

    I would note that he uses the popular rather than any of the technical definitions of “paraphrase,” but I find it necessary to deal with that term when publicly discussing Bible translations as well.  Many will find his answer to the question of what Bible translation he uses inadequate, but there’s no way around that!

    Overall, this is a good overview.