I think there’s considerable confusion about the way texts in scripture can/do relate to one another. Often people simply take the Bible as a simple, flat space in which one can bring any set of texts or passages together to create a valid theological result. (I should pause to reflect on the notion of a “valid theological result, but, hmmm, some other time!)
So let’s just look at the ways in which texts might relate:
Quotation. One text can quote from another. In some cases this is clear, especially with quotations of Hebrew scripture in the New Testament.
Paraphrase: Similar phraseology is used. This may involve simply use of a familiar turn of phrase, or it can be a substitute for quotation. This, and quotation can present a problem for translators who translate the Hebrew text in the Old Testament, but then deal with an Old Testament quotation which is taken from the LXX. I commented on this in Hebrews 2:6-8 here and here.
Allusion. A word or idea brings to mind words or ideas in an earlier book, but doesn’t directly quote or paraphrase.
Similar imagery. This is a sort of common technical language, and can be hard to trace or prove. It is more a matter of a similar well drawn from by both texts.
Canonical relationship. A text may show no knowledge of another, but it is related in the way the overall canon of scripture is understood. Here we are looking much more at how the people using the text perceive the combined message of various books than at anything in the mind of the various writers.
Ideas. There may be ideas held by multiple writers that we cannot trace to an exposition by any one of them, but that form part of the basis for thought.
Theological. The relationship may reside largely in the reader’s theology, in that they see various doctrines expressed, usually in part, through various texts that really only relate in that theological connection. The connection may be one none of the writers conceived of.
Not related. Just for completion.
It’s important to be aware of these and other relationships between texts, because the specific way in which texts relates impacts our answers to questions of interpretation. For example, a brief quote might draw in thoughts from the source text, carrying more freight than the simple text conveys. Unfortunately, this sort of “umbra” drawn in with a text is easy to exaggerate or imagine completely.
I post this list simply to suggest things to think about as you read. If you see some connection between texts, think of just what that connection might be, and whether the author of the text you’re reading might have been aware of it and intended it to be part of the meaning of his text.
Folks such as myself who emphasize exegesis and critical Bible study tend especially to look negatively on #7, but we should remember that whether we attribute our theology to specific Bible writers or not, we do have a theological view. Everyone partakes of #7 at some point.
Key point: Be aware of the sort of relationship you are either using or creating when going from scripture to theology.
(Featured image credit: yra1111 from iStockPhoto.com)
Follow the links above to see my rating of The Passion Translation, which also provides an example of how I do such a rating. I do not designate Bible translations as “good,” “bad,” “ordinary,” or some other generic designation without regard to context. I prefer to rate a translation for strengths and weakness in different areas.
The chart provided shows numeric ratings. Many of these are themselves subjective. I use word counts to determine how formal or functional a translation is. By functional, I don’t mean that the translation works, but rather that it translates in order to provide equivalent impact on the target audience to the original. A formal translation attempts to match specific words or phrases to source words in the Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic text.
But having done a word count in a specific passage (I start from Hebrews 1:1-4, which tends to force some rewording), I also look at other passages to see if that number works. Thus the numbers provided should be considered a personal opinion on each item.
Specific Notes on TPT Ratings
In the case of The Passion Translation, my own key takeaway was that the overall impact of a translation may be badly skewed by either its critics or its proponents. In the majority of cases, I found that passages were precisely what I would expect of a missionary translator. This doesn’t mean that the translator’s theology has no impact. Everyone’s translator’s theology has an impact. One cannot translate without interpreting, and one’s interpretation and theology will be tied together. What surprised me, after first having heard the hype, was how expected the renderings were.
Of course, ratings such as whether a translation is by a committee or an individual were fairly clear–this is an individual translation. In addition, it’s clear that the translator is in the charismatic movement, and specific related to the New Apostolic Reformation. Nonetheless, as I’ve stated before, when you have the translated work in front of you, the proper approach is to examine that work.
In terms of formal vs functional, I found that TPT was closer to formal and less free in rewording than I would have expected from the criticisms. It definitely reflects a willingness to reword and rework passages for the target language and audience. Yet I found it less likely to do so than The Message.
My initial word counts from Hebrews 1:1-4 actually indicated considerably less rewording than I expected, and after reading a number of other passages, I edged the ratings a point higher on the “functional” scale and a point lower on “formal.” One might describe this as a dynamic or functional translation with some significant deviations.
Specific Renderings
Ephesians 5:22
In my previous post regarding the hype about this translation I included a video. In that video, the translator claims to have received a new translation from God (discussion starts about minute 20:00). I won’t go into this in detail, but on linguistic grounds, I would have to reject his suggested translation.
Why? First, I would not accept his claim that Jesus and the apostles worked entirely in Aramaic, and certainly not that the book of Ephesians was written in Aramaic. There is no evidence to support the latter at all, and I find any evidence regarding the gospels to be quite weak. Second, the Peshitta, which is the closest thing we have to an Aramaic version, reads very much as the Greek does.
Note that I would not list this as an error. It’s a strong difference of opinion. I wouldn’t mind if the text read the way TPT reads. I’d be very comfortable with that. But I can’t support that linguistically.
Because of the intensity of criticism, however, I need to note here that I disagree with most Bible translations at some point. Practically anyone who reads the Bible in the original languages will disagree with any translation at some point or another. Disagreement is different than rejection.
(For those interested, my friends Elgin and Hanna Hushbeck have written a book in the Topical Line Drives series from Energion Publications, To Love and Cherish, which goes into this passage in depth, based on the Greek text.)
Psalm 110:1
Yahweh said to my Lord, the Messiah: “Sit with me as enthroned ruler while I subdue your every enemy. They will bow low before you as I make them a footstool for your feet.”
Psalm 110:1 (TPT)
There are a few interesting points here compared to the Hebrew, and they’re worth noting in understanding the nature of the functional approach to translation, along with some “transculturation.”
The use of “Yahweh” has not been traditional in English translations, but here it literally reflects the source text. The traditional approach has been to use LORD for “YHWH” and “Lord” for the Hebrew word “adonay” while using lord for the same word with reference to a human ruler. (Note: I use loose transliteration of the Hebrew to make it easier for readers who don’t know Hebrew. In this case, however, it’s worth noting that “adonay” is “my Lord” with a plural of majesty, while “adon” is just “lord” and “adoniy” is a singular “my lord.”)
Thus in traditional translations the first line of this verse comes to something like “The LORD said to my L/lord,” with the capitalization of the second “lord” depending on how the translators interpret the verse. Read Messianically, it would generally be capitalized. Read as a blessing on an earlier Israelite king, it would not. I can testify from teaching experience that the LORD/Lord/lord difference can cause some confusion.
Thus in the first line, TPT makes an interpretation quite clear. The translator is conveying a Messianic interpretation, and clarifying the difference in the terms for English readers. In case the capitalization is insufficient on “Lord,” he adds “the Messiah.”
One might complain that a reading that is non-Messianic would now not be possible, yet at the same time, the clarification of the fact that the two instances of “lord” (however capitalized) represent different words makes another aspect of the verse much clearer. Translators regularly make this kind of choice for readers. There’s no avoiding it. You can’t convey all the potential meanings.
So in the second line with have “Sit with me as an enthroned ruler.” This is a more equivocal kind of clarification, a case in which the translation is clearer than the source. Formally, the first part of the Hebrew reads “Sit at my right hand.” This would indicate a position of trust and authority. Some might regard “as enthroned ruler” as an overstatement. James and John as to be seated at Jesus’ right and left hand. This would have meant that they were the first and second rank below Jesus in His kingdom.
In either a messianic or a royal enthronement context, however, “enthroned” doesn’t miss the point.
The remainder of the verse is quite valuable in indicating the nature of this translation. Formally, I would translate the Hebrew text as:
Until I place your enemies as a footstool for your feet.
Psalm 110:1b, formally translated
And the TPT:
… while I subdue your every enemy. They will bow low before you as I make them a footstool for your feet.
Psalm 110:1b (TPT)
So what’s going on here with all the extra words?
The translator is trying to present you with imagery that will help you understand the meaning of making enemies a footstool. The imagery would likely have been well-understood by ancient Hebrew readers, but words like “subdue” and “bow low” help create a picture.
You can argue that this is “technically” not correct, though I would ask simply what it is that should be translated when there is poetry that contains rather vivid imagery. What does a translator convey, and how? Both The Message and The Passion Translation often choose to substitute imagery or expand on the original imagery in order to evoke a relevant picture for the readers.
If you find this disturbing, there are a multitude of much more formal translations with which you would be more comfortable.
Galatians
To get a broad feel for this translation I listed to Galatians via Audible. I did this while walking and all in one session. There were only two issues that I noticed.
The first is quite minor. I would definitely nuance Paul’s use of the term “law” in Galatians differently. This is definitely not an error, but rather a difference in presentation. I think it’s important to be clear that while the specific example of law that is the primary issue in the churches of Galatia is the Jewish law, Torah, Paul is making general points about the function of law. I found this eclipsed to some extent.
The second is one that I have noted about many paraphrases. Challenging, in-your-face statements are sometimes weakened. One such statement is Galatians 5:12:
12 I wish that the ones who are disturbing you would also castrate themselves[c]!
12 I only wish these teachers who want you to cut yourselves by being circumcised would cut themselves off from you and leave you alone![a]
Galatians 5:12 (TLB)
Slightly less in-your-face, isn’t it? Note here that The Message keeps the cutting-edge on this, so to speak!
Now try The Passion Translation:
I wish they would go even further and cut off their legalistic influence from your lives.
Galatians 5:12 (TPT)
It is important to note, however, that TPT has a footnote indicating the alternate translation. I’ve made comments on this elsewhere. A footnote is a good option when there are viable alternatives or when it’s impossible or just clumsy to get all the meaning packed into one translation.
Conclusions
I could go over many other passages, but not that much would be gained for purposes of a review.
My negatives regarding this Bible translation are that it is done by an individual, that it is very definitely fixed in the charismatic tradition stream, and that some of the hype tends to be distracting. While this doesn’t mean that the translation isn’t valuable, it does mean that it is not well-suited to discussions between traditions.
The hype, unfortunately, tends to center on God’s call to the translator to produce the translation. (I ignore here the standard complaints that amount to “the translator didn’t translate my favorite verses the way I prefer.”) I personally think that this translator, as well as many others, have been called by God. That call is not the guarantee of their translation work. Solid linguistic work makes a translation good.
Contrary to my expectations based on what I had heard and read, however, I do not have major problems with the translation itself. One should always take into account the biases of the translator(s). These biases are made clear. That’s all one should expect. There are no sneaky surprises.
If you are studying, I would recommend comparing more than one English version. For example, using The Passion Translation alongside a Bible with interfaith participation in the committee, such as the Revised English Bible, and perhaps a more evangelical formal translation, such as the ESV, would help you be sure you’re hearing God’s Word in the text.
A friend drew my attention to this article on the ESV today, and I’m deeply disappointed in what I found there. I’m going to comment on some key difficulties with that article. But the author also links to this article by John Piper, which doesn’t so much surprise me, as put in context some other things that I’ve seen in his writing.
Let’s look at Piper’s article first. A few days ago, in blogging on Piper’s book The Future of Justification, and specifically on his response to N. T. Wright’s understanding of 2 Corinthians 5:21, I commented on how much Piper’s book seemed to be driven by how certain interpretations would preach. There are a set of doctrines which Piper believes, and he seems to look first for an affirmation of this reformed doctrine that he teaches, and then he’s looking for texts that he can use to preach those messages effectively. It would be easy to overstate that case, because Piper can and does use exegetical arguments for his point of view, and undoubtedly defends certain doctrines because he believes they are Biblical, but there is simply a different flavor in what he writes than there is in N. T. Wright.
But here, when he turns to Bible translation, there are simply numerous points that sound naive to a student of Biblical languages. Since I’m pretty sure Piper is not naive, I am led to believe that he is being drawn to use these arguments due to his strong views on other doctrinal points. Let’s take a look. Piper says:
. . . My biggest concern has to do with preaching. When a paraphrase becomes the standard preaching, reading, memorizing Bible of the church, preaching is weakened—robust expository exultation in the pulpit is made more difficult. Preaching that gives clear explanations and arguments from the wording of specific Biblical texts tends to be undermined when a Bible paraphrases instead of preserving the original wording on good English. And when that kind of preaching is undermined, the whole level of Christian thinking in the church goes down, and a Bible-saturated worldview is weakened, and the ability of the people—and even the pastors themselves-to root their thoughts and affections in firm Biblical ground diminishes.
You will note that he makes explicit what I have been observing. Preaching is driving him on these issues. That’s not entirely bad. The man is clearly a very gifted preacher, and he should be concerned.
But look at the next sentence. “When a paraphrase becomes the standard, preaching is weakened.” The specific example of paraphrasing that he has in view is the NIV. This is not the loose paraphrasing of The Living Bible; we’re talking about the quite conservative translation principles of the NIV. So why is it that he believes preaching is weaked? “Preaching that gives clear explanations and arguments from the wording of specific Biblical texts tends to be undermined when a Bible paraphrases instead of preserving the original wording on [sic] good English.” Did I read that right? Paraphrasing replaces the original wording, and whatever other variety of translation, presumably that used by the ESV, preserves the original reading.
Well, I have news for you folks here. I can read Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. I study from those original languages regularly. Nowhere in them is there found a single word that matches the ESV or any other literal English translation. Why? Because the English translations are in English rather than in Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic. Now somebody is thinking that Piper knows that, so he must mean something else. If you think that, please comment and show me where Piper indicates that he knows that. In fact, in the very sentence I just quoted, he points to the problem of arguments from “the wording of specific Biblical texts.” The only way that you have the “wording of specific Biblical texts” is if you have it in the original languages.
The advocates of literal Bible translation, or formal equivalence which is a more descriptive phrase, play a game of pretend. They try to get English wording that looks as much like Greek (or Hebrew, or Aramaic) wording as it’s possible for English wording to manage, and then they pretend that this is somehow more equivalent to the source language. But that assumes several things, all of which are generally not true.
The meaning is primarily contained independently in the words. This is untrue. Without context, which includes the grammatical form of the words and the syntax in which they are used, one can be dangerously wrong about the meaning of a specific word. Very often the translation unit has to be the phrase or even larger in order to get the original intent.
English words arranged like Greek words will suggest a similar range of meanings to the reader. Again, this is false. In fact, they will almost always suggest a different range of meanings. Context in the target language (English in this case) saves the translator over and over, because an English word that might overlap only slightly with its English counterpart can be clarified through creative use of the context. One word might be translated by a phrase. In other cases a word might be translated by a punctuation mark.
The English reader is best equipped to disambiguate an ambiguous passage, thus the ambiguity should be preserved in the translation. Again, this is horribly naive. It is hard enough conveying a precise meaning for a Greek phrase or sentence in English. It is virtually impossible to convey the same range of possible meanings, with the same weighting in English.
Those are only a few examples.
Piper goes on with several reasons why literal translations should be preserved. He says: “A more literal translation respects the original author’s way of writing.” What? Again, the word “naive” comes to mind, but I have a hard time thinking it of Piper. It seems more logical that his commitment to certain doctrinal positions unduly influences him. But I can tell you that style is again terribly difficult to translate. One can aim for a similar level of formality, but actually reflecting the original style? It is actually much easier to respect the style of the original in paraphrasing. I have often thought that the only way to truly respect the style of the book of Hebrews in a translation, for example, would be to completely rewrite it into a more modern sermon style outline. That would, of course, require massive paraphrasing, and would create numerous other areas in which the translation was less reflective of the original, but it might get the picture of the high quality style of the original. What many critics of dynamic equivalent (or functional equivalence) translations fail to realize is that translation always involves compromise. You will convey some things to your readers, and others you will not.
His point #4 on the ESV, however, is bluntly a howler:
A more literal translation which preserves ambiguities that are really there in the original keeps open the possibility of new insight by future Bible readers.
The only place the ambiguities are fully preserved is in the text in the original language, and it is only preserved for those willing to put in the effort to attain an adequate reading level in the source languages to truly work through those possibilities. No translation, on the other hand, can cut off “the possibility of new insight by future Bible readers” unless those readers are naive enough to assume that a translation should be the source of those new insights.
I particularly like the examples used. One is Romans 1:5, “the obedience of faith” in which presumably the ESV is doing the better job of conveying the “ambiguity” to English readers. Now quickly, all you English readers who don’t know Greek, tell me the range of meanings that are possible for the Greek genitive. How will you know what that “of” means in Greek? Well, most of you will not. Many of you will get it from a fallible preacher like John Piper (or me, in a much smaller number of cases), instead of getting it from a fallible translation committee. The problem I have here is that the fallible translation committee is probably much less likely to be in error on the matter than is any one preacher. (I use the word “fallible” so frequently because of Piper’s reference to the fallibility of translators. I think we should be aware that teachers, preachers, and of course bloggers are also fallible, and thus if the end user of our theology gets the meaning of the text from us, he is working through more layers of fallibility than if he simply used a dynamic equivalence translation in the first place.)
Now to return to the first article I mentioned, I see there most of the arguments for literal translations rehashed. But in this case there are a couple more things that need to be flagged for serious concern.
He recommends this:
A good thing to do is to purchase an Interlinear and examine a dynamic equivalent with the Greek text (or Hebrew if possible). The ESV has a reverse interlinear that is quite helpful for this. This allows you to see not just how the ESV translators did on the translation but allows you to see what the literal translation is from the Greek text. There is also an NIV edition of this of which I own myself and I believe you will be surprised to see how much of the NIV goes off from the Greek text.
This is a very dangerous paragraph. First, an interlinear will not let you know how far someone has departed from the Greek text, but rather it will tell you how far your translation departs from the interlinear representation (itself a translation) of the Greek text. All you are doing in this case is comparing one translation to another unless you actually know the language. An interlinear is just a translation–only less. It is a very bad translation. But it goes a step further than the literal translation in deception. It makes people feel that they truly are looking at the text in the source language, when they are not. (I’ve discussed interlinears before here.)
I’m going to largely skip over the material on “politically correct” translations. Suffice it to say that none of the translators of the major Bible versions are trying to be politically correct. What they are trying to do, and in the case of the TNIV doing quite successfully, is translating the intent of the Bibles language on gender into similar meanings in English. The whole debate about gender accuracy throws the entire “literal Bible” error into sharp relief.
Like both of the others I’ve quote here, however, I do not want to tell you not to use one English version or another, if it works for you. But I think both authors fail in their effort to do so, because they strongly suggest that you favor a literal version. My suggestion would be that you instead choose a Bible that you can read easily, and then also have one or two other major versions to which to compare it. Most people today are not going to learn the original languages. Piper suggests that ambiguity in the text is cut off by dynamic equivalence translation (which he inaccurately calls “paraphrasing”). A better approach would be to look at more than one clear, natural translation where you can see each rendering in context. Many English readers would never imagine all the possibilities; that’s what translators are for.
