Bible Translation Issues
I thought a post would be a better way to answer the second question to Henry’s post Bible Versions.
For me personally in response to the first question on Henry’s post, I prefer the ESV for my preaching and personal study. But I also use the NASB for cross checking translation issues. I find that the ESV does a better job of translating the Greek into a more readable format than the NASB does.
My preference for translation philosophy is formal equivalent or word-for-word translations. These do the best job of what putting into the hand of the reader the words that God inspired the biblical writers to write. This does create some PC issues for our 21st century culture, I understand that.
There is an amount of interpretation that goes on when translating the original languages into English. An example is the English word “love” has three equivalents in Greek. There are two words for “heart” in Hebrew, one that includes the mind and one that is the deep guttural emotions that refers tot he kidneys. An example of grammatical ambiguities is in John 1:1, “and the Word was God.” Literally the Greek reads kai theon en ho logos or “and God was the Word.” The subject is “the Word” and the direct object is “God.” But in Greek the subject and direct object and indirect object can be moved around. So one must do some interpretation to fit the original language into English.
However, dynamic goes beyond this and begins to interpret that actual verse for the person. There is fitting the original grammar into English and deciding what is the best English rendering of a term in the original language in a given context, then there is what the dynamic equivalence does. They remove the ambiguity that the reader should remove by his or her personal study. An example from the NIV is Romans 1:5, “the obedience that comes from faith.” The Greek reads hupakoen pisteos. Pisteos is a genitive and literally reads “of faith.” The ESV and the NASB reads it “the obedience of faith.” Let the reader figure that out. Give the reader a translation that will encourage study, not one that does all of the work for them and they no longer need to ponder over texts to understand them. Don’t circumvent serious Bible study for ease. A second example is Hebrews 6:1 where the NIV reads “acts that lead to death.” The Greek here reads nekron ergon. A literal English rendering of this would be “dead works” as the ESV and NASB do. What are dead works, what does that mean? Let the reader study this and find out.
The issue brought up in why to use the NRSV is the gender issue. I believe Galatians 3:28 whole heartedly when it says that in Christ gender is no longer a distinction. But the ambiguity of adelphoi should remain and let the one who is studying the text find that out.
I believe this is why we have such a high biblical illiteracy rate in the church. The popular translations don’t encourage study of the Scripture. Really the popular translations are paraphrases (e.g. NLT, TNIV, Message, Phillips, Amplified). I even consider the NIV in the paraphrase group because of all of the lose interpretation in translation going on–I know that might cause a lot of flack from anyone reading this post.
Bad theology has developed because of paraphrases being used instead of good, word-for-word, translations. Here is an example of this. The NIV reads Romans 8:36 as “we face death all day long.” The Greek says thanatoumetha holen ten hemeran or “we are being put to death all the day.” From the NIV one can read it to be a health wealth gospel because the NIV says we face death but don’t die for they have enough faith to survive the persecution in v.35. But literally Paul says the church is being killed, murdered, put to death. It didn’t matter if that Christian had enough faith, they were still dying. Bad theology can come about when the translation doesn’t stay as close to the original as possible.
Dynamic equivalence aren’t evil translations, they are just not very good for personal study and use as a primary text. They can be used to compare different translations to see the full range if translation. But they should not be used as the primary memorizing and study Bible.
Here is a site that compare several translations of some verses.
Here is a site that shows a list of evangelical scholars and leaders who have rejected the TNIV because of its extremely lose handling of Gender issues as well as other translation errors. I only singled out in this link section the TNIV because it is the main source of translation controversy in the church today.
I used to read NRSV my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college before I switched to NASB. Here is an article that examines the NRSV and other paraphrases/dynamic equivalents and the problems that come from gender inclusive language that is fair to the NRSV when the changes made are acceptable.
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Comments
I understand it is not what you want but it is what you will get. I have observed, in my own experience, that the more work the translators have done, the more thought-for-thought translations, the lower the biblical literacy rate. Not only that, the shallower the understand people have of the Bible as well.
Why do I say to preserve the ambiguity of the text and not try to remove it? This might sound harsh, but, those who really want to understand God’s word will find out about adelphoi and that it can be understood to be gender inclusive (like the word man or mankind can be). But because adelphoi is a second declension, masculine, nominative, plural, let it stand as a second declension, masculine, nominative, plural word. There is no need to change it. I simply don’t see the need to change it. I don’t see the need to paraphrase if people can look at a lexicon (on-line for free by the way) or a concordance (again free and on-line) to see if the word is a masculine, feminine, or neuter. The only reason why, in my mind, is that they really don’t want to study God’s word, they want some one else to do the work for them.
If we go by your words, “Why not just translate it as the writer meant it,” then we would translate adelphoi as “men” and not “people”. Interpreters can have too much of an agenda, like the NIVI or the TNIV or the NIrV or even the Message, and lose the original meaning because they paraphrase a verse the way they want it to say. Word-for-word cuts down, not eliminates I know, on this tendency. To not loose the meaning, let the Holy Spirit do the work and let us not do it for it. If they have a message, let them preach it to a church, don’t mess with the Bible to do it.
I have a question, who decides what “each real word” is? Did God only inspire parts of the Bible or all of it? Wouldn’t we be preserving the original meaning better if we just take what Paul, for example, said and turn it into English while minimizing any tampering with it?
I pretty much would echo your last paragraph. Except I would add this to it. The primary study, memorizing, and reading Bible should be word-for-word; thought-for-thought should be used as secondary study helps and sources.
Here is the most important question to ask and to answer in this whole debate, or at least in my mind. Is it the translator’s job to interpret or decide the meaning of the text or to put into English the Greek and Hebrew languages?
That is not my want. What I want is understanding.
Why? I don’t see an arguement for why this should be the case. Should not the translators, whose skill set is to figure out the meanings that the writers were wanting to imply with the words, translate it straight-forward. Why should I have to guess or research the original language each time that phrase is used? Why not just translate it as the writer meant it. I don’t want the meaning lost in the shuffle. That is my issue.
I too don’t want a full-blown paraphrase like the Message or the Living Bible for personal study. But in sentence for sentence translations, or thought for thought translations, the translators are rendering each real word, the thought instead of rendering each piece of the word separately as in word for word translations. For a single word along cannot communicate meaning, only when used in a sentence, can the meaning be conveyed. So, I think there is tremendous value in both w-f-w and t-f-t translations. Each has their pros and cons. I think a person should really use multiple translations with multiple translation styles if only for the same reason their are translation teams.