The Word of God

Brno - Readability or elegance? Words or thoughts? Translation or interpretation? God's Word or man's? Literalness or contemporaneity? It really is a hard choice to make.

Are you ever overwhelmed and confused by the proliferation of translations and versions of the Bible available? I am and I have an undergraduate degree in biblical studies, an M.Div. (the standard professional degree for pastors), an advanced research degree in New Testament (Th.M.). Plus I have done post-graduate work at a few of North America's finest evangelical seminaries. Now I'm half way through a professional doctoral program (D.Min.) at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. By most standards I would say that I'm fairly well trained for what I do.

These phenomena (the proliferation of Bible translations and versions) picked up speed about twenty years ago. Lately the pace of change in these areas has been fast and furious. I've been a Christian more than thirty-five years. Even I passed up the "pure" King James Version by receiving a New Scofield Reference Bible from my mother. This was my very first Bible. The only other study Bible available I was aware of at that time was The Thompson Chain Reference Bible. I was unaware of other Bible translations such as the Revised Standard Version. I do remember the church tradition that introduced me to Christ decried the Living Bible, a paraphrase. The cool kids at Young Life had the cool looking and relevant sounding Philips translation of the New Testament. Still, it was pretty much a King James (KJV) world out there.

Then I learned of the New American Standard Bible (NASB). I still use a single column reference edition for inductive Bible study. Reading my Bible assignments in the NASV was a little easier but the constructions were wooden and the phraseology wasn't memorable. Though the KJV was antiquated it did possess a literary beauty that made it vivid and memorable. For me some verses actually memorized themselves! Eventually the archaic language of the KJV drew me to the New International Version (NIV). This version was much more readable but very hard to memorize. Trying to memorize from the NIV is like trying to memorize an article out of the newspaper. Though readable it isn't very memorable.

I remember the first time I really got "put down" in an argument over Bible translations. At the time I was armed with all the vim and vinegar of a young and not so humble Bible college student. I knew so much but I didn't know I knew so little. I was brash and confidently declared the NASB was the best translation. I pooh-poohed the dynamic equivalent (thought for thought) translations as unfaithful to the Word of God. Unbeknown to me another person in the conversation was a Ph.D. in linguistics from Yale. Yes, the Yale and a Bible translator. Ron, as I knew him, let me down easily "Wouldn't that depend on the goal of the translation project? If they met their goal, then shouldn't it be considered a successful project?" The logic seemed unassailable.

It wasn't long before I fully adopted the NIV, a translation that basically translates the thoughts and meanings of the text rather than the actual words. It doesn't try to follow the word order of the Hebrew and Greek texts, the original languages, respectively, of the Old and New Testaments. I may have been the only student at Capital Bible Seminary to use the NIV. I felt no shame; contrariwise, I felt a little proud that my humbling just a few years earlier had enlightened me.

A helpful book in sorting out the issues of translation philosophy is The Word of God in English by Leland Ryken, Professor of English at Wheaton College.

A translation that is different from all the others in the last fifty years is the English Standard Version (ESV). It is an essentially literal translation that aims for literary excellence, readability, faithfulness to the actual words of the original and, as much as possible the word order.

In this day of gender neutral Bible translations and translations that are extremely interpretive rather than mere translations, it is time to put on our thinking caps and put aside the misconception that all translations are equal or that one is as good as another. There are significant differences and it is worth your while to investigate.

Comments

[alison]

I like the ESV as well. Literal but with the same comfort level for those of us who grew up with King James. Plus, mine has a pretty brown leather cover with a cross! I also have Chesterton's Orthodoxy by the side of my bed. Thanks for the consistent updates. I'm so happy to be a part of what God is doing through you and with you.
Love, ALISON