Posted on 10/07/2010 8:20:07 AM PDT by marshmallow
Why are there so many English Bible translations? What politics and profit-motives are driving the Bible-publishing market? Here's an interesting piece from Christianity Today which discusses these issues in relation to a brand new translation making its way to bookstores soon, Common English Bible (CEB):
With the Common English Bible (CEB) officially entering a crowded translation market tomorrow, five mainline publishing houses producing the new version hope initial New Testament sales are a harbinger of the reception of the finished product.
After giving away 20,000 copies this summer, total distribution to sales channels is expected to surpass 100,000 this fall. Paul Franklyn, associate publisher for the CEB and the United Methodist Church's Abingdon House, calls the Bible's readability—forged through widespread use of translation team reading groups—a primary distinctive.
"We brought extensive field testing to bear on the process before it went to editors," Franklyn said. "That's starting to pay off."
The question is whether the public is ready for another translation when no one seems sure how many exist. The American Bible Society says there are 32 translations on the North American market, while Christian Book Distributors offers over 50.
BibleGateway.com offers 23 English versions. In his research for a book on translations, Phoenix Seminary professor Paul Wegner identified nearly 100 English versions by 1950. He estimates there are twice as many now, although only a handful controls a dominant share of the market.
"We've probably reached the saturation point," Wegner said. "It may be doing more damage than good. It's gotten to the point that people are making money." In other words, profit may be prompting more translations than readability concerns demand.
Read the rest here: Good News Glut.
I suggest both the NASB & ESV are as much or more concerned with accuracy than the RSV. The KJV was specifically translated to support a hierarchical church structure.
“The Catholic bible is the only non-corrupted biblical text.”
No.
True -- but wouldn't this make it harder for someone conversant with Biblical Hebrew to read modern Hebrew, rather than the other way aroud?
(2) a pretty much complete abandonment of the Biblical Hebrew tense system and replacement with a modified tense system related to those of European languages and
True, and it takes some getting used to. OTOH, the Hebrew verb is really simple in terms of number of forms. Biblical Hebrew has a perfect tense, roughly corresponding to past, and an imperfect, roughly corresponding to future (except when they mean the opposite!). What serves as the present tense in modern Hebrew is originally a sort of participial form, which still also serves as a participle and sometimes a substantive. Biblical Hebrew is far more likely to attach an enclitic for the direct object to the verb, but it's not unknown in modern Hebrew, just sort of "highbrow" on the whole, as is the use of attached possessives.
(3) a replacement of Biblical Hebrew's paratactic sentence structure with far more relative clauses and a completely different word order, basically the same sentence structure as English.
Sort of -- much less pronounced a difference in modern scholarly or literary writing (not to mention poetry) than in general conversational usage. And I learned to avoid a lot of errors in sentence structure (and sequence of tenses) by hearing Israelis' mistakes in English, assuming (turns out correctly) that they were mentally translating from Hebrew.
I don't think it adds up to a "different" language, though there's room to differ. As in "When is a dialect a language?"
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.