Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Bible Versions

Comments on various translations of the Bible and relation translation issues.

  • Rick Mansfield on the TNIV and NIV2011

    He has some good thoughts here, more on the technical and marketing side.

  • New Revision of NIV Announced

    Everybody is writing about this so I might as well get on the bandwagon.  I’ll credit the hat tip to Better Bibles Blog.  I’m pretty sure that’s where I read about it first.  I’ll let you go there for the details.

    To be honest, though I’m obviously pretty intensively interested in Bible translation, having written a book, and created a web site on the subject, I’m getting a bit weary of new translation projects.  Zondervan has already done a rather poor job of supporting and marketing the TNIV, so what’s to say that this new version is going to do that much better?

    More importantly, though I’m aware there are flaws in all English translations, that’s simply a symptom of the fact that there are, and always will be, flaws in any translation.  I don’t see anything added to the process that will actually make more people satisfied with translations.  Any time a committee does the work, individuals such as myself will find something to complain about.

    It seems to me that there is a bit of excess in English Bible translation and marketing.  I don’t want to target any translation committee for being the “excess,” but my question is how much better things will get with each new translation.

    If the NIV revisers use gender neutral phrasing in their revision, they will become the target of the same folks who criticized the TNIV.  If they don’t, the audience for which the TNIV was intended are unlikely to appreciate the new version.

    So, folks, just how much further along will we be in Biblical scholarship when this new version is published?  How much will the kingdom be advanced?

    I think I need to add here a quote from Eddie Arthur on Kouya Chronicles:

    So English, a language which already has more scholarly translations of the Bible than you can shake a stick at, is to get yet another translation. No doubt the publishers will also make a small fortune.

    Meanwhile, there are still two thousand languages spoken by two hundred million people without a word of Scripture. Our priorities are all messed up!

    I love Bible editions.  I have a fair collection of them.  But I am wondering more and more whether some portion of our Bible translation and marketing process is a symptom of some of the things that are wrong with the western church.

  • MyBibleVersion.com Update

    It has been some time since I discussed the MyBibleVersion.com site, and indeed it has been some time since I updated it.

    Today I added Google FriendConnect and the ability to comment.  Comments are active on the index page and on each of the Bible version detail pages.

    I believe this will give me the facility to have decently secure login, which is a prerequisite for my planned personalization.  If I am successful in implementing this, each user will be able to enter values for the various translation attributes and compare versions using the same system I do.

    Don’t hold your breath–this has to be done in my spare time.

    In addition, I plan to add the ISV within the next few days.  I delayed doing the ISV because the Old Testament was scheduled to appear.  At this point I have enough material to work with.

  • Yet Again Comments on my KJV Video

    I’m not going to embed it again, but there were a couple of recent comments on my video Why I Hate the KJV.

    I can’t believe you hate the KJV. Ridiculous. Not fond of, understandable, but regardless of your use of it, the KJV is a masterpiece.

    This sort of comment was only to be expected, considering the provocative title I used, but at the same time it demonstrates that the commenter didn’t actually watch the video.  In fact, the video is a response to those who ask me “Why do you hate the KJV?” as I state right at the beginning.

    Indeed the KJV is a masterpiece, but it’s a masterpiece of translation with tremendous literary qualities, and should be treated as such.

    But the second comment is one of those moderate sounding ones that I think is somewhat dangerous, and it was the reason I decided to respond:

    I often use the lesser modern versions when trying to get various facets of a text or passage. Admittedly they can be of some use though they need to be used advisedly as if they are not potentially they can do more harm than good!!

    (You can find both of these comments and many more at the video page to which I link above.)

    Of course one must be careful with modern translations.  One must be careful with any translation precisely because it is a translation and something is lost no matter how well the job is done.  That is why I recommend using multiple translations if you cannot learn the source languages.

    But that is not a characteristic just of modern translations; it is a characteristic of all translations, including the KJV.  A translation does not become more authoritative than the source text.

    And that is the danger here–that someone will take the KJV as the reliable source against which modern translations will be tested.  It too is a translation with all of the failings that entails.  It’s a wonderfully literary translation, perhaps the single greatest accomplishment in Bible translation (though I can think of some good competitors) but it doesn’t replace the texts from which it was translated.

  • Abundance of English Translations but …

    … others not so much.

    On his blog today, Eddie Arthur laments the lack of comment in the blogosphere about the need for Bible translation for language groups that do not have any portion of scripture translated. While many of us discuss with some vigor the merits of various approaches to translation and of renderings of specific verses, some people have no translation at all.

    Since I am certainly guilty of extensive work comparing one English translation to another, I feel a bit like I’m in the bullseye of Eddie’s rant, as he calls it. So first let me tell you why I talk a lot about English Bibles, and why I will probably continue to do so, despite the fact that I think Eddie is mostly right. Then I’ll make a suggestion to help adjust our priorities a bit.

    In spite of the number of Bibles that we have in the English speaking world, knowledge of the Bible amongst the general population and even church membership seems to be diminishing. I’m not going to spend time backing that up right now; numerous studies and my own personal experience suggest it. If you disagree, I’d be interested in hearing from you.

    My personal mission is not the production of Bible translations. I believe I’m called to get Christians more and more involved in Bible study. The abundance of Bible translations is one area in which our blessing can also be a curse. We have so much material, so many options, yet we don’t actually make use of what we have.

    For many people, the many Bible versions is an impediment rather than a help. They wonder how to choose a translation, and whether they can trust the text of the one they choose. I have often told classes that they can go to a Christian book store, enter the Bible section, and select a Bible blindfolded, and it will be usable.

    Now I don’t prefer that they do that. Given the number of English Bibles available, I prefer that they find a Bible translation that makes it most likely that they will read and understand. This is one reason I’m turned off by detailed theological criticism of various translations. I like the CEV, for example, yet in reading it for my own use, I’ve found plenty of places where I think the translation is less than the best. But there are two things to note here—this is my personal opinion. It doesn’t mean that the translators were wrong; it simply means I disagree with them. But even more importantly, I’m generally arguing minor points of theology that can be settled effectively by reading in context, while there are millions of Christians who would be uncertain how to find that particular book of the Bible, were they called upon to do so in a Bible study.

    Given this, I’m going to continue to try to provide information that helps people choose a Bible that works for them. I’ve found that to be helpful in getting people to go deeper into Bible study.

    But that plays right back into Eddie’s point. While I feel my mission is to my fellow mainline Christians here in America, his mission is translating the Bible into these other languages. While the American reader has a problem because he sees so many Bibles and doesn’t know which one to follow, there are millions of people who will have to use a Bible in some other language if they want one at all.

    I think that if even a small portion of the money used to produce new Bible translations in English were instead donated to groups working in other languages, it would be a tremendous blessing both to those who give and to those who receive.

    I’ve noticed that one of the best ways to get American Christians involved in Bible study and in various spiritual disciplines is to get them involved in service to folks who are less well off, whether those people are overseas or just down the street. So I’m going to combine this with Eddie’s suggestion that we add a note about those with no translation at all to our comparison’s of English translations.

    How about this? Whether we like it or not, economics is a powerful motivator. When you go out to buy that new English Bible, try donating an amount equal to what you paid for it to an organization like Wycliffe Bible Translators. The extra expense might make you value your new purchase even more!

  • Psalm 50:3 in The Message

    One of my criticisms of The Message is that it tends to blunt the force of many scriptures, making them more palatable than they are.  Now don’t get the idea that I’m a critic of The Message in general.  In fact, I think it makes a great contribution to the literature available for rapid reading and overview.  Many of its expressions are quite beautiful.

    As one might expect, some of those are beautiful–and inaccurate.

    Psalm 50:3 is one such case.  Here it is from The Message:

    Our God makes his entrance, he’s not shy in his coming. Starbursts of fireworks precede him.

    That’s nice, cool, and contemporary.  But is it accurate?  In this case, I think, far from it.  I could debate whether “not being shy” adequatey expresses what the Psalmist means when he says God will not be silent.  But that would be a longer post.

    Let’s just compare to the NRSV:

    Our God comes and does not keep silence, before him is a devouring fire, and a mighty tempest all around him.

    My question is whether “starbursts of fireworks” adequately conveys the “devouring fire” thing.  I don’t think it does.  The idea of fireworks today conveys celebration, joy, excitement, and beauty.  In this case, I think the fire says something both about God’s power and about what he is going to do with it.

    I think this one could be translated in contemporary language but more accurately.  Perhaps it would be less beautiful, but more accurate.

    Take the CEV for example:

    Our God approaches, but not silently; a flaming fire comes first, and a storm surrounds him.

    It lacks some of the zing, but it’s clear and natural contemporary English.  And it’s fairly accurate.

  • 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.

  • 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.