On Translating the Bible

I’m currently writing a book on the book of John. I hope to finish sometime this year (2019). In the process I’ve made a translation of John from its original language, Greek.

I am amazed how controversial this process is. First of all, for many years the Bible for English was the King James Version, also known as the Authorized Version. Authorized by whom? King James. But the fact that it’s “Authorized” appears to have created confusion in people’s mind. I guess it’s kind of like the story told about an English Lord in the 1800s who was approached by some “nonconformists”—that is, members of churches other than the Church of England. They wanted him to support their church. He replied something to the effect, “I’m Establishmentarian. If you get your church established, I’ll support it. Otherwise don’t bother me.”

In the same way, a Bible translation that is “authorized” by the King of England is treated by some as if it were the only valid translation. While I believe the King James Version is an excellent translation for those who can read it, I also believe that it has no special spiritual position.

One can almost even say that it is too literary, giving a false view especially of some of the New Testament writings. These writings were written in “second language” Greek, and stylistically aren’t at the level of classical writings (not that I can read the classical writings in Greek!). By this I mean they are written in a simpler, less literary style. Content wise they are superb; stylistically they are adequate but seldom reach the “heights”. Mark, for example, has a naive style that is clearly the product of someone who thinks in Hebrew. At the same time he was inspired by God to write a masterpiece of narrative simplicity.

Many people don’t realize that the Bible has always been translated. The Old Testament was translated into Greek before the time of Christ, and this Greek version, called the “Septuagint” because it was supposedly translated by 70 scholars, is quoted many times in the New Testament. Some have gone so far as to say that the Septuagint was the Bible of the early Church. Even when the Hebrew scriptures seem to be used, they are translated into Greek in the New Testament. Jesus himself spoke in Aramaic; probably every word of Jesus was translated when it was incorporated into the Bible.

The Old Testament was also translated into Aramaic, a language closely related to but different from Hebrew, and Syriac, a language spoken in northern Syria. Translations also appeared in Arabic and Latin.

Soon after the New Testament books were written, they were translated into the following languages: Latin, several dialects of Coptic (spoken in Egypt), Syriac, Aramaic, and Arabic. (The old Latin translations are in the common dialect of Latin that some call “street Latin”, nothing like the later translation by Jerome into a more refined Latin). Later in the mid-first-millennium the New Testament was translated into Armenian. It may have been translated into other languages but this is all my 5-minute cursory survey revealed.

The point is that nobody thought that the Bible should NOT be translated. You want to bring Christianity to people, you bring them the Bible in their own language. I see this as a kind of fulfillment of Acts 2:4-10:

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.

And they were amazed and astonished, saying, Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.

Thematically, this is a reversal of the confounding of languages that happened at the Tower of Babylon.

One thing I find annoying is the misinformation that is put into the popular imagination by charlatans regarding the provenance of the Bible. A number of falsehoods are propagated:

• The Bible was written around the time of Constantine by the “orthodox” wing of the church, and many valid books about Jesus were suppressed.
• The Bible has been translated thousands of times and bears little resemblance to its original forms.
• The manuscripts of the New Testament have hundreds of thousands of variations.

First, the inspired books of the Bible were recognized very early, probably by 200 AD. Even before then, there were identified collections of the Gospels, the letters of Paul, and others. The Church councils simply identified what was already accepted by the believers.

On the other hand, the need was felt to officially identify the books of the Bible because there were so many fakes. Perhaps the most notorious of those, though by no means the only one, was the so-called Gospel of Thomas. This book was a “Gnostic” text that turned Jesus into a mystical guru. The only reason it is so popular is that it differs from the Bible. If people read it they would be horrified. An example:

Simon Peter said to them: Let Mariham go out from among us, for women are not worthy of the life. Jesus said: Look, I will lead her that I may make her male, in order that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Second, the Bible has been translated thousands of times, but it is seldom translated from translations. Throughout the history of Bible translations, the Greek and Hebrew texts have been the touchstones of authenticity and all modern translations start from the original languages with texts that are as accurate as possible.

The manuscripts of the New Testament have hundreds of thousands of variations because there are thousands of manuscripts. The uniformity of text in the manuscripts approaches 80%. That is, 80% of the text has no variation or only minor spelling errors that are easily recognized and corrected.

The rest of the variations are susceptible to scientific analysis and most scholars are confident that the texts being used by translators are close to the originals. There is variation of opinion, but in general the radical criticisms of the reliability of the Bible have been exploded.

Translations into English are ancient—reports of translations done into old English dialects appear in the 700s (8th Century AD). Here is an example of part of the Lord’s Prayer from about 990 AD:

Fæder üre þu þe eart on heofonum; Si þin nama gehalgod to-becume þin rïce gewurþe ðin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofonum

Easy, right? Hmn, perhaps you’d prefer a more modern translation, such as the KING JAMES VERSION!!!!!

However, during the ascendancy of the Roman Church, only the Latin version translated by Jerome, called the Vulgate, was allowed. This meant that the words of the Bible could not be understood by the common man. The clergy, bishops and priests and so on, arrogated to themselves the power to interpret the Bible for the whole church. But after the Reformation, translations again were made into the common language in many places. Especially notable was Luther’s translation of the Bible into common German.

With the invention of printing and the proliferation of translations it became possible for any educated person to have access to the Bible in a language he would know.

Translating the Bible into English was a dangerous occupation until well after the Reformation. John Wycliffe, a reformer, did a translation from the Vulgate into “Middle English.” For this, along with many other offenses, he was declared a heretic by the Roman church. He believed that the Bible, not the church, was the center of authority for Christians. The popularity of his Bible led to a law imposing the death penalty for possession of an unlicensed Bible.

William Tyndale, who tried to produce an English version translated directly from Hebrew and Greek, was martyred before his work was completely done. A co-worker, Miles Coverdale, finished his work, producing the first complete translation of the Bible into something like modern English. Several more translations were done during this time; sometimes the publishers were forced to flee the country due to persecution. The Geneva Bible was the product of some who fled to … Geneva.

The Geneva Bible became the most popular Bible. Mass-produced pocket versions were given to soldiers. However, it was a “study Bible” and the notes were of a Puritan nature. The government of England, on the other hand, was of the Anglican persuasion. As a result, several Bibles were commissioned by the monarchy, including the Bishop’s Bible and, finally, the masterwork of the King James Bible.

The King James Bible more or less put a stop to all English Bible translation until the 20th century (there were other translations, but almost nobody used them). This was not done by force, but by sheer excellence. Why bother to make a new translation, when you have the King James? And after a while any new translation was considered heretical because it changed the time-honored phrases of the KJV.

The cracks in the edifice began when people started challenging, not the KJV, but the manuscripts from which it was derived. Scholars found different manuscripts that were older than any they had previously used, and those scholars started trying to make new translations that reflected these older manuscripts. The Revised Version (not the same as the Revised Standard Version) was done in the late 1800s. It was a flop, as was the American Standard version that followed it.

In the mid-20th century, scholars began to notice that people were becoming post-literate. This is due to technology, in particular television. (For an excellent discussion of this, see Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death.) As a result, the King James version was becoming inaccessible to those whose minds were shaped by new media technologies.

Eventually people such as J. B. Phillips, a man who worked with youth in the English church, found that the people he was trying to help simply could not be reached by the KJV. So he made his own translation, the Phillips translation. It was very successful and seemed to open flood gates.

It was followed by the New English Bible, which sought to replace the KJV. Unfortunately it was more directed at scholars, in particular scholars who did not believe in the infallibility and full inspiration of the Bible. They made many changes and even “conjectural emendations” (that is, educated guesses about what the text said) when they thought it was unclear.

They also went too far in the other direction from the KJV, adopting an almost slangy tone at times. Examples include the following:

• Old: “you wicked and slothful servant”
• NEB: “you lazy rascal”
• Old: “everyone deserted me”
• NEB: “they all left me in the lurch”
• Old: “again I declare”
• NEB: “you can take it from me”
• Old: “born the burden and the heat of the day”
• NEB: “Sweated all day in the hot sun
• Old: “Do not cast your pearls before swine”
• NEB: “Do not feed your pearls to pigs”

The New English Bible received mixed reviews, some being very happy with it and some consigning it to outer darkness. (I personally read it sometimes because I find that its word choices can occasionally break a log-jam in my thinking. I call it a “guilty pleasure”, like eating Gelato ice cream. But Gelato tastes better.)

In that same time frame we wound up with the Revised Standard Bible (1951, revised again 1971), the New American Standard (1971, 1995), the New International Version (1978, 1984, 2011), the New King James Version (1982), the New Revised Standard Version (1989), and the English Standard Version (2001, 2011).

So which is the best? Well, in many ways the King James is still the best. There are several reasons for this.

• The KJV is more literal than most translations, to the point of translating singular and plural (thee===singular; you===plural).
• Many of the newer translations are based on Greek texts that are, in my opinion, faulty (see below).
• Most of the newer versions have agenda-based mis-translations at times.
• Some of the newer versions, in particular the NRSV, have been made to conform to canons of political correctness. I call these “castrated” bibles, and I call the people who advocate these kinds of things the “castration party” (see Philippians 3:2).
• Scholars these days seem to have “tin ears” when it comes to literature. It’s probably due to the fact that we are no longer taught Latin in school; Latin patterns lend an elegance to English. The King James Version is elegant.

If the King James Version is too hard for you, and I admit that I found it hard when I first started reading it, then you need to consider other translations. (You need to read something that you will read, not something that will make reading the Bible an intimidating task.)

There is a big problem (IMHO) for translations of the New Testament. In the 1800s, the most commonly used text of the New Testament, called the “Textus Receptus” or “received text”. was changed by scholars. The Textus Receptus (TR for short) was based on the majority of Greek texts available at the time.

However, these were not the oldest Greek texts. There are two almost complete texts of the Bible that originated in Egypt. One, kept in the Vatican, is estimated to be from the early 4th century (300-350 years after the birth of Christ). It is called the “Codex Vaticanus”—”codex” meaning the modern book format as opposed to a scroll. Another was found in a monastery in the Sinai Peninsula (and thus called the “Codex Sinaiticus”) and is dated to the mid 4th century (330-360 AD).

These two manuscripts differ from the TR in many places. They are also heavily corrected and differ from each other in thousands of places. But scholars of a more liberal bent adopted them as authorities because they were older.

Many scholars have argued that the reason they lasted so long, apart from the dry Egyptian climate where they originated, was that they were such bad manuscripts. A frequently used manuscript would fall apart after a couple hundred years. These were put on back shelves and never used and so they lasted a long time. I think this is a likely explanation, though I will also say that not everyone agrees with this.

At any rate, these manuscripts became the basis for the modern Greek texts that are used in almost all the modern translations. They are the reason for the many differences, in particular many omissions, that modern Bibles have when compared to the King James Version.

I am of the opinion that the Bible was best preserved in what is called the Byzantine text. This is a “family” of Greek texts that agree closely (some are actually identical in several books of the New Testament). They are not as old as the Egyptian manuscripts because they were probably copied from older manuscripts that were destroyed after they wore out. Many of the readings in this text family are as old as any in the Egyptian manuscripts. The Byzantine family of texts was the text family that the churches used throughout most of their history.

The TR is part of the Byzantine family of Greek texts. It is considered a somewhat inferior version of the Byzantine family because newer information has come to light since the TR was made.

The King James Version is based on the TR. Since we are talking about a modern version, there is only one modern version I know of that is based on the Byzantine text: the New King James Version.

The NKJV is a modernized version of the KJV. It is a completely new translation that uses the TR for the New Testament, and updated Hebrew texts for the Old. The intent of the translators was to retain the expression of the King James while updating it to modern English syntax and vocabulary.

For example, there is no longer the distinction between “thee” and “you” in the NKJV. This means you have to figure out whether “you” means “you” singular or “you” plural. This is unfortunate, but perhaps inevitable.

It is a literal translation as opposed to a paraphrase. It is also more literal than the NIV, which tries to translate idea for idea rather than word for word. It is fairly readable.

Note that there are many changes between this Bible and the KJV. Some people find these objectionable. Some, however, are simply corrections of the KJV and are valid.

If you are concerned for a readable version that is close to the KJV, this one is a good one to have. If you are worried about the variations when you study, you can have a NKJV and a KJV side by side.

I myself try to read the New Testament in Greek as much as possible. I tend to read the OT using the KJV, NKJV or ESV, whichever is more handy. If I really want to check something out I look it up in the Hebrew text.

The only directly inspired Bible is the Bible written in the original languages. But as I said at the beginning, the Bible has always been translated. It is clear that God approved of that process. God’s word is not couched in some magical language; it is universal and can, and should, be expressed in every language.

So find a translation that works for you. Don’t sweat the translation issues unless you are doing close study at the phrase and word level. Then I would advise that you learn how to use Bible Study software. There are a number of free versions out there that can open up even the Hebrew and Greek texts (one I use almost constantly is called BibleTime; see bibletime.info).

Finally, the whole point of the Bible is to lead you to Christ. In John 5:39-40 Jesus said to the Pharisees,

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

Don’t make the same mistake that they did.