Lost in Translations
January 29, 2008 7:32 pm Blogs
In 2003 a movie came out starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson called “Lost in Translation.” Now I don’t know if Bill or Scarlett read the Bible or not. The movie was about the sense of alienation, loneliness, and confusion we experience sometimes. Perhaps you have felt this way when it comes to Bible translations and wondered why there are so many different Bibles?
First off, there are translations because the Bible was originally written in Greek and Hebrew and thus must be translated into English. Second, not all words in Greek and Hebrew have a directly corresponding equivalent English word. That is where the rub is and where you translate one way or another based on how you view translations should be done. And because of that, there are over a hundred Bible translations. You can check out most of them here: www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/scriptures
The most popular and famous translations are The King James Version (KJV), The New King James Version (NKJV), The New International Version (NIV), The New American Standard Bible (NASB), The New Living Translation (NLT), The Message (TM), and the English Standard Version (ESV). There are four reasons why I personally use and why the church I pastor uses the ESV.
1. Manuscripts
The ESV considers all the manuscripts available and gives more weight to the earlier ones. There are over 25,000 manuscripts of the Bible. We do not have the original documents, called autographs, what we have are meticulously made copies. Out of those copies the ESV most often translates from the earlier manuscripts because they are more likely to represent the original autographs. We can tell what ones are earlier by what kind of paper they were written on and whether they were written in uncials or minuscules, which are kind of like letters and capital letters.
There is a fair amount of variation between the manuscripts of the Bible, just like there are variations in books today based on what edition there. With the Bible it is the same, though most the variations are misspellings or number differences, etc. only about 1.5% of the variations actually have any doctrinal impact (saying something about God, Jesus or salvation). But the point is we should try and be as accurate as possible by translating from the manuscripts that are closest to the original documents that the apostles and prophets wrote. And the ESV does this! The KJV and the NKJV do not, they only consider manuscripts discovered prior to 1516, collectively called the “Textus Receptus” and give more weight (authority/authenticity) to the number of manuscripts instead of how early they date.
If you are weird and you want to learn what “sinaiticus” and “bezae” mean and you find out that what I am saying is true about manuscripts, the best book on the planet addressing it is “The Text of the New Testament” by Bruce M. Metzger.
2. Literalness
The goal of the ESV is to provide the best corresponding English word in it’s translation of each Greek or Hebrew word, it takes a literal or verbatim approach. Other approaches are much different. The New Living Bible and The Message take an approach where they attempt to translate the Greek or Hebrew ideas rather than the words themselves. The NIV attempts to try and do a little of both, which is called a “dynamic equivalence” translation.
The problem is that none of these approaches are really translations, they are interpretations. If your goal is to translate “ideas” then you are really making a lot of interpretive decisions rather than translating the word for word as much as possible and letting the reader decipher the meaning. The Message and the Living Bilbe are really more like commentaries and the NIV is the worst of all because it claims to be a “translation” but translates according to a particular type of theology and sometimes even leaves whole Greek phrases out, which make a big difference in how you interpret the passage.
I had used a NIV for several years and had become very attached to it. All my markings and time spent with it made it hard to give up, but when I discovered it made so many interpretive decisions for me and sometimes chose not even deal with whole Greek phrases, in 2001 I realized I could no longer use it as my Bible and that is when I switched to the ESV. If any of you are using an NIV I plead with you to get another Bible to read. If you want to use the NIV a commentary that is fine, but it is not a reliable “translation.”
3. Readability
Those who are critical of “literal” approaches to translation claim that if you just translate word for word then the Bible ends up being very choppy and difficult to read. To a certain extent they are correct. The NASB is probably the most literal translation that exists but sometimes it is hard to make sense of things because it is not very smooth in it’s readability. Sometimes it follows the Greek word order so close that it the English sentences turn out to being grammatically incorrect and thus hard to read.
The ESV does a remarkable job at keeping the flow and smoothness of reading while still translating word for word into our current English language. It is translated by a team of over 100 scholars, many of whom I greatly respect. For a full list, check them out here: www.esv.org/translation/team The amazing thing about the ESV is that it is sufficient both for substantial theological study and for personal devotional reading. It doesn’t have “thee’s” and “thou’s” like the KJV and it is not chunky and hard to follow like the NASB.
Conclusion
If you find yourself lost in translations, my recommendation is the ESV. I think it is the best English Bible that is out there and I wish everyone would use it so we didn’t all have different translations when we study together on Sunday. But if you don’t have enough money to buy one for yourself yet, there are always ESV Bibles for you to use at the back table. If you want to read a longer, even more in-depth article explaining translations and why you should use the ESV, go here: www.evangelicalbible.com/why.htm
If this journal entry has sparked your interest in how different people view the Bible in terms of it being a book and whether or not it is true or inspired by God, here is an article I wrote about that which I encourage you to read: www.theresolved.com/downloads/inspiration.pdf
- Pastor Duane
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