Translations

As of 2020, the Bible has been translated into 704 languages.  The New Testament alone has been translated into 1551 languages.  Bible stories and portions add another 1100 languages.  Translations are extremely important.  Most of us can’t read Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek, so we need to rely on accurate translations.

Accurate translations are more difficult than you might think.  We have language problems.  Maybe the word we need to translate from the Greek manuscript only appears once in the Bible.  How do we know what it means?  Well, the context helps, and other Greek documents of the time which contain that word also help as we look there for context.  Sometimes it’s just a guess. 

The word “unicorn” appears nine times in the KJV because the translators didn’t understand the Hebrew word rem.  Today, we know the word means wild ox.  The limited number of manuscripts of the time of the translation of the KJV and limited number of other Hebrew works made it difficult for the translators to come up with the correct translation of the word.

A major issue in the New Testament manuscripts was the fact early Koine Greek was written in all capital letters with no spaces between words and no hyphens.  So, if a line of text ended in the middle of a word, the second half would appear on the next line.  All caps with no spaces would look like this:  “HAVEYOUEVERSEENABUNDANCEONTHETABLE.”  Now is this asking of you’ve seen a bun dancing on a table or abundance on the table?  Translators had their issues for sure.

In English, we have words that can mean different things, sometimes opposite things.  For instance, imagine a scene where a ship is sinking in the harbor and lives are at stake.  A bystander asks the owner of a boat if he can help them.  The boat owner says “My boat is fast.”  Does that mean the boat is quick and can help, or does it mean  his boat is tied fast to the dock and he can do nothing?  Translators have difficulties here too.

Then there are the copyist errors.  Early copies of the New Testament documents were personal.  One person would lend their copy to another.  The second person might write notes in the margins or add something they wanted to remember into their copy.  It was theirs, after all.  They can do as they like.  A problem arose once the copy was offered to a third party.  That person might copy the notes into the text.  As a result, words or full passages might be added into a manuscript.

Some scriptoriums popped up later on. Here a single man would read a Greek manuscript aloud as others copied down the words. This led to more manuscripts produced over a short period of time but also to misspellings, missing words, words misunderstood: “red” instead of “read,” for instance. Because of these issues, there are a number of verses not included in some modern translations. They are not found in our earliest manuscripts.  The ESV, for instance, has 19 ½ verses not included that do appear in some other translations.

Translations come with different philosophies.  For instance the NASB, KJV, NKJV, and ESV are “Formal Equivalence” translations.  That means they are as close as possible to the wording of the original text.  We sometimes call these word-for-word translations.

There are also the “Dynamic Equivalence” translations.  These are more a thought-for-thought philosophy.  The NLT is one of these.  The benefit here is to make the text much easier to read by adding some minor interpretation into the final text.

Lastly are paraphrases.  These are not actual translations but a presentation of what the writer thinks the text says without actually translating from the Greek or Hebrew.  Two of these I’d like to mention are the Living Bible which was written by Kenneth N. Taylor to make the Bible easier to understand for his children.  This became a very popular book as it made the Bible somewhat easier to understand.

The other paraphrase I’d like to mention is The New Testament in Modern English by J. B. Philips.  Philips was a genuine Greek scholar and wrote this to make the Bible more accessible to the typical reader.  It is as close to a translation as I’ve seen without actually being one.

Why is this important?

We need to know as much about the Bible we hold in our hands as we can to appreciate its accuracy.  There are 900 translations just in English.  Most of these are frauds like the New World Translations, or unscholarly “translations” like the Twentieth Century Bible that was written by homemakers, businessmen, and local pastors.

We need to study using the finest translation we can find.  The KJV, NKJV, NASB, and ESV are excellent translations.  If you’re reading the Bible just for the story but not for deep study, the New Living Translation is good or the Phillips’ paraphrase.

Stay away from translations that are not highly rated by scholars.  If you’re going to choose a Bible other than those I’ve listed, do your research.  The ones I’ve mentioned have been peer reviewed and rated highly for their accuracy and presentation.

God’s Word is a treasure, the greatest written treasure we as Christians can hold in our hands.  Only Christ stands above it.