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Posted on 08/06/2004 9:53:04 PM PDT by hiho hiho
A discussion starter!
There are probably around a hundred versions of the whole Bible or of parts thereof in print in English and available in big American Bible Stores in 2004.
One could say that this commercial situation is much the same situation as that which occurs when a class of say one hundred seminarians is asked to produce a translation of the Greek text of the Letter to Jude. No two would be alike (unless several present had memorized a given published translation and reproduced it verbatim) and thus one could pick and chose from amongst and within them, for some would be better than others.
Looking at the variety of translations in print, one can divide them generally speaking into two types. Then having the two types one can see degrees of difference within the types. The older type follows the essentially literal translation method, that is "word for word" and preserving as far as possible the original style -- examples are the major versions of the Bible up to the RSV of the 1960s, together with the recent English Standard Version.
Since the late 1960s, the overwhelming number of versions have been produced by translators who hold to the theory of dynamic equivalency and who attempt to give what may be described as a "thought for thought" and "concept for concept" rendering of the original. The clearest example of this across the board is seen by looking at Psalm 1:1, where in these versions one finds as the opening words, "Happy [Blessed] are they", or "Happy [Blessed] is the one".
Now, no-one, with any basic education, seriously challenges the fact that the original Hebrew Text (followed by the Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate) has a word that a Hebrew Dictionary informs us means always and only "man/husband". In other words it is a word that is not only in the masculine gender but refers to a male person.
However, the literal meaning is not followed in the new theory of translation because the mind of the translator goes through a series of evaluations which cause "the man" to disappear and a neutral word such as "one" or a third person plural "they" to appear. The translator is persuading himself (or following the trend) that the original was written in a male-dominated society and thus it was natural to speak of "the man"; but, today, we live in a society where women have the same dignity as men and thus the dynamic equivalent of "the man" must communicate this reality, if modern people are ever to understand what really the Psalmist was trying to say.
And, in like manner, other Psalms are so rendered and in the New Testament the Greek word that a Greek Dictionary tells us means "brothers/brethren" is translated "brothers and sisters" or "sisters and brothers".
However, these two examples are merely the tip of the iceberg for once this principle of dynamic equivalency is accepted, then how one evaluates the present cultural, religious and moral scene has a major impact upon how one reads, interprets and renders the original. Thus if one begins -- as many translators now do -- from the position that the Bible in its original languages presents a the people of God as living in and expressing sexist, male-dominated, patriarchal series of societies then the theory of dynamic equivalency allows one to make the Bible read in the present in a way which is completely different from a translation produced by the "word for word" and essentially literal method. This explains why many today claim the Bible in support of doctrines, ways of living, forms of worshipping, and descriptions of godliness which seem erroneous and horrible to those who treated the KJV, the RV, the ASV and the RSV as the Word of God in English and who used such prayer books as The Book of Common Prayer (1662).
And in 2004, Evangelicals especially have to face up to the implications of this availability of many versions of the one Bible. It may be said that they gave their massive support to versions (e.g., The Living Bible, Todays English Version, and The New International Version) which were based partly or wholly on the theory on dynamic equivalency and thus they helped to popularize this method and approach, not realizing then (1960s into the 1970) where this would all go and how horrific would be the results for doctrine and morality. In 2004 it has got out of their and everyone's control for the situation is to wholly out of hand. It is driven wholly by market forces in the secularized supermarket of American religions. No longer can anyone say "this is the translation of the Word of God." All he can say is, "This is one attempt to state for our culture and time what (some reckon to be) the Word of God said centuries ago."
It would seem that radical surgery is required -- To go back to essentially literal, word for word, translations produced by respected teams of scholars, and then to look for help to understand what is found on the printed page of the Bible. After all there is a very long tradition of interpreting the Bible in the Church and further there is no shortage of Bible dictionaries and commentaries on books of the Bible.
Perhaps sales of the KJV will pick up again! Perhaps sales of the recent ESV (Crossways in USA) will increase (but if so then a new edition should be made available where the principle of word for word rendering includes the second person singular pronoun so that "thou/thee/thy/thine" sees a return so that we know when the Lord is speaking to the individual and when to "you-all"!).
One final thought -- what if "the Man" in Psalm 1:1 is prophetically the Messiah, the Son of Man, the Incarnate Son of God, and that his appearance here is the key to the Christian praying of and interpreting of the whole Psalter -- to pray it with Him and in His Body, the Church?
Dynamic equivalency renderings tend to take Jesus Christ out of the very Scriptures he came to fulfill!
(for further reading I suggest Leland Ryken, The Word of God in English. Criteria for Excellence in Bible Translation, Crossway, 2002)
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.)
This pretty much says it all.
The New King James Bible (NKJV) is the translation that does the best job of balancing accurate literal translation with modern grammar and language.
Then come a series of translations that trade accuracy for simpler language: the NASB, the NIV, the New Living, the Good News. Certain liberal philosophical biases manifest themselves in these translations on occasion as well. For instance, the NLT refuses to say that Jesus was crucified by "the Jews" - substituting "the people" - due to complaints by liberal jewish groups. The NIV footnotes the story of Moses parting the Red Sea as having occurred at a marsh called the Sea of Reeds (a form of disbelief peculiar to skeptics and liberal scholars who don't believe that the miracle actually happened).
Finally, there are a series of blatantly mistranslated bibles which exist as a result of an effort to shore up a particular political or theological viewpoint...the Dhouay Rheems (an older Conservative Catholic translation), the New Jerusalem Bible (a newer Liberal Catholic translation), the NIrV (New International Readers Version - the NIV with gender neutral language), and the Good as New (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39114) translation.
If you stick to the KJV, NKJV, or even the NASB, you can't really go too far afield.
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Easily half of the text of the KJV was written in heroic measure -- the line with five stressed syllables used by Homer and many of the Roman writers, also used by contemporaries of the KJV compilers, Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. Touches of that also appear in Cervantes.
The influence of those classical sources on the compilers of the KJV caused them to render the Bible in more lyrical language than any version before, or since.
Congressman Billybob
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I like the NIV
i suggest you read and study through the NKJV.
the "geneva study bible" is very good as well as" the light of the reformation" study bible.
GODSPEED!
Maybe you just don't like Catholics?
ping
Anyone else remember "God News For Modern Man"? KIt was supposed to be a modern English translation from the original Aramaic.
I don't think it is still around -- some of the translations were too weird.
Let's face it -- we like our Thees and Thous.
Thee are probably right.
"Let's face it -- we like our Thees and Thous."
In my case it is less a like of Thee and Thou than a distrust of scholarship since 1960. The King James translators had less source material but they did not think that God must speak to every generation differently.
Recently I have been using e-sword (free with a small donation). It is incredible, you can switch from multiple translations or use a dictionary or commentary on the fly. Can't recommend it enough.
www.e-sword.net
>How is Douay-Rheims deficient? It's very similar to KJV,
>which you cite as a good translation (which, generally
>speaking, it is). Its chief weakness is one it shares with
>KJV, which is the archaic English it uses.
>Maybe you just don't like Catholics?
That's not it at all. In fact, other than an older grammatical style, it shares very little with the KJV. I included it with the list of "bibles with an agenda" for a reason - it inserts Catholic theology into the translation (for instance by substituting the sacrament of reconciliation for normal repentence before God).
The New Jerusalem, while avoiding the insertion of distinctly Catholic doctrine to the extent the D-R does includes a whole host of liberal doctrine.
2 Corinthians 5:18 (KJV): And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;2 Corinthians 5:18 (D-R): But all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Christ; and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.
*sigh* the Rev. Dr. Peter Toon (yeah, that *is* his real name) goes off again about how awful it is that we haven't maintained 'thee', 'thou' and so on in modern translations of the Bible Ping.
*sigh* Dr. Toon and I have gone around and around on this one over the years. The bottom line is that if he wasn't Anglican he'd belong to the 'KJV only' club. As it is, it took a number of us several years simply to get him to understand that his arguments failed to convince us. Don't know if it means all that much, but at least now he's willing to admit that we do need truly vernacular translations of Holy Scripture and the Book of Common Prayer...though of course then we get into the whole debate concerning what the vernacular might actually be....
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