Better Bibles Blog

Moving day: come visit our new blog home

2008-10-29T10:14:00.000-07:00

We've been working hard behind the scenes to get our new home ready for you. Today we move from this home, which has many warm, good memories, to our new home, where we will build more good memories. We invite you to our new home at this address:

http://betterbibles.com

Please change your bookmarks and blogrolls for the Better Bibles Blog. Feel free to ask for help if you have any difficulty commenting on the new blog. You can email me privately: wayne dot leman at gmail dot com if you are unable to post a comment on the new blog.

We intend to continue bringing you good quality posts on Bible translation issues. In fact, we hope to do an even better job. If any of you know of any Bible scholar who is trained in Bible translation principles and who might enjoy joining our blogging team, please email me about that privately, as well.

We could not have made this move without the wonderful, time-consuming labor of ElShaddai Edwards (of He is Sufficient blog) and David Ker of Lingamish.

At this time of transition some of our blogging staff have evaluated their priorities and decided not to continue blogging at BBB. So we want to thank each of them for their contributions to BBB over the years. They are Suzanne McCarthy, David Lang, and David Ker.

Please do join our housewarming party at our new address. We welcome you there and hope you feel just as at home there as you have here on the Blogspot system. We also hope you will notice improvements to the blog which come from the features of the Wordpress system we are using on the new blog.

The door is open at our new home, and we'll leave the lights on for you!

2 puppies: Goodness and Mercy

2008-10-27T16:20:00.000-07:00

Whenever we visit my father-in-law in his nursing home, we end our visit by saying Psalm 23 and the Lord's Prayer together. We all love the Shepherd psalm.

My wife tells me that the Hebrew word for "follow" in the last verse is quite vivid, meaning something like 'pursue.' She says it's the kind of action like when a puppy follows you everywhere you go. I'm assuming my wife has been telling the truth because she is a careful, wise person. But even if something got mixed up where she heard this from, I like the thought anyway, that goodness, and mercy follow me around so closely they are like little puppies. (I like puppies, also.)

Do any of you know if the Hebrew for "follow" has the sense of 'pursue'?

If so, how might we revise the last verse of Psalm 23 to reflect that connotation?

Should translations run with puns?

2008-10-25T07:11:00.000-07:00

Over at He is sufficient, ElShaddai observed the pun between cunning and naked in Genesis 3.

He wrote (Cunning punning in Genesis 3):

With this in mind, we might think about how a “Literary Equivalent” English translation might convey a sense of this linguistic relationship in the original Hebrew:
The serpent was the smoothest operator of all the creatures the Lord God had made. He asked the woman, ‘Is it true that God has forbidden you to eat from any tree in the garden?’ (3:1)

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that their naked skin was smooth; so they stitched fig-leaves together and made themselves loincloths. (3:7)

I commented, however, his observation made me wonder whether paying better attention to puns would improve translations. Here's what I said in the comment; but, first my question is:

To what extent should the observance of puns influence translation?

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Your mentioning the pun made me think of an exegesis of this text I’d never considered before. Though the exegesis doesn’t change the main point, it arrives at it in a different way.
My thought stems from the fact that puns usually have an underlying semantic tie. That’s the beauty of the pun in that you can say something that really isn’t in the words of the text, and yet it makes the meaning of the text more precise. With many puns it’s this non-textual tie–determined and caused by the pun–that bursts into the mind and brings about laughter [though the pun here in Gen. 3 is far from funny].

I often wondered what the issue was with naked (not that I walk around the house nude or anything like that). However, if the core, but explicit, concept is smoothness, then that brings another thought to mind.

Let me take Gen 3:7, paraphrase it and elucidate it through expansion so as to quickly get to my point.
“Then they suddenly became aware of something they hadn’t seen before: the smoothness of their bodies showed they were exposed and unprotected.”

The point wasn’t the nakedness. The point was their exposure evidenced by the smoothness. So, to remedy the problem, they put on some kind of protection against the elements.

Now, does that help explain 3:10? Here, too, I’ve often wondered what the big deal of nakedness was. In fact, they had already covered themselves so they weren’t technically naked. I can come up with explanations; however, all of them feel like I’m reaching outside the text in order to explain the text. I’m uncomfortable with doing that. However, if I consider that Adam and Eve had now experienced sin and their whole being was changed (metaphorically and spiritually, they had died), then being exposed to a Holy God walking through the Paradise would have been a very fearful event. They would have felt totally unprotected. That’s not injecting anything into the text.

God then works to get to the bottom of this issue. That is, "Who on earth put my two wonderful creatures, the height of my creation, into a place where they are fearful of me and think that I would not protect them." The immediately questions from Him were, “Whose responsible?” and “Have you sinned?”

The pun between 3:1 and 3:7 sets the mind into the right frame to be able to more easily grasp this flow of thought. And, more importantly, the danger of being a sinner in the presence of God. That’s excellent and very basic theology, IMO. Ideal for this location of the development of the text.

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Upcoming ESV and NLT Study Bibles Review

2008-10-24T11:00:00.001-07:00

John Hobbins has promised a full review of these two study Bibles. He gives a teaser of what we’ll be in for here: Upcoming Reviews on the ESV and NLT Study Bibles.

I have found examples of running commentary that are top-notch, such as that of David Reimer on Ezekiel (ESVSB) and that of Scot McKnight on Matthew (NLTSB). I have read essays that had me singing for their precision, clarity, and vigor, such as that by Peter Gentry on the Septuagint (ESVSB) and I don’t know who’s Introduction to the Time After the Apostles (NLTSB).

I admit that personally I’m too intimidated to do a review of any study Bible. These books are so massive and complex that any review will be superficial. Plus, a study Bible tends to show its virtues over time. One of the things I always appreciated about the NIV Study Bible is that when a question came to my mind about the text, there was consistently a note addressing that question.

About the best you can hope to do in reviewing a study Bible is giving anecdotal or hit-and-miss stories about what you liked or didn’t like. Unless, that is, you intend to take the job seriously and invest a lot of time and energy together with an open mind.

Check out John’s teaser: Upcoming Reviews on the ESV and NLT Study Bibles.

Faith does not come by hearing (Rom. 10:17)

2008-10-24T10:42:00.000-07:00

A number of English Bible versions translate Rom. 10:17 inappropriately, as, for instance:

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (KJV)
So then faith does come from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (NASB)
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (ESV)
So then faith does come from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (REB)

There are several problems with these translation wordings. Taken literally, they claim that when someone hears they come to have faith. Presumably, those who are deaf do not come to have faith. But we know many deaf people do have faith, so something must be wrong with the translation. And here is what it is: in the context of Rom. 10:17, the first Greek noun (akoke) behind the English gerund "hearing" was semantically, but not syntactically, transitive. That is, there was an object of hearing. That is what is meant by a semantic object. But that object could be ellipsized (not physically present) in this context in Greek. The object is implicitly understood. That object is "the word of Christ" (or, "word of God" in some Greek manuscripts). English syntax, however, unlike Greek, does not allow the "hear" to be left implicit in this context. English requires that the object of hearing be stated if there is one. (For those who might wonder if a noun can be transitive or intransitive, the answer is yes; nouns referring to actions can be semantically transitive or intransitive. I realize that this is not the way English is normally taught in school, but it is a sound principle of modern linguistics which can inform how English is taught in school.)

The moral of the story, here, then, is that we must pay just as much attention to the language we are translating into as we do the language we are translating from. If we do not, we create translation problems, including, sometimes, as in Rom. 10:17, inaccuracy. In the original Greek, there was a semantic object of hearing, the word of Christ. Greek speakers could understand that that object was there because it is clearly stated in the context, although it does not explicitly appear as the syntactic object of the verb. But English, which requires that semantic object to be explicitly present, gives us a wrong meaning if that object is omitted, namely, that faith can come about from hearing.

There are English versions which accurately translate the meaning of the Greek while following the rules of English for the syntactic frame of "hear," for instance:

So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ. (RSV)
So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ. (NRSV)
Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. (NIV)
Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ. (TNIV)
So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the message about Christ. (HCSB)
Consequently faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the preached word of Christ. (NET)
So then, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message comes through preaching Christ. (TEV)
So faith comes from hearing the Good News, and people hear the Good News when someone tells them about Christ. (NCV)
So faith comes from hearing the message, and the message that is heard is what Christ spoke. (GW)

I suspect that the Greek of this verse was a particular rhetorical form (something like a chiasm) which Greek scholars have probably given a technical label, but I don't know what that label is. The form is something like: If A then B, and if B then C. With this form, I suggest, there are not two different (independent) statements being made in Greek, but, rather one single message using the particular rhetorical form.

The NLT translates the meaning of the Greek by having the second clause clarify the first one:

So faith comes from hearing, that is, hearing the Good News about Christ.

The CEV makes the Greek meaning clear in English while reducing the two clauses to the most natural English, a single compressed sentence with one independent clause followed by a dependent clause:

No one can have faith without hearing the message about Christ.

There are also translation problems with the second clause of this verse, as in "hearing by the Word of God." But those can wait to be discussed in another post.

Faith does not come by hearing (Rom. 10:17) -- P.S.

2008-10-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

I have withdrawn my post on this topic, due to some errors I made. Hopefully I can rescue the essential point of the original, revise it, and re-post it. The basic notion was correct that in English there needs to be an explicit object after the gerund "hearing". A gerund is a verbal noun which can function as a noun, yet can take objects as does a verb.

paragraph translation

2008-10-18T10:19:00.000-07:00

As my wife and I were nearing the end of the Cheyenne Bible translation project, we benefitted greatly from the insights of a translation consultant. One of her primary means of checking the Cheyenne translation was for a Cheyenne person to hear an entire paragraph of the translation and then summarize it (BBB blogger Mike Sangrey calls this a precis, I believe). This checking procedure was very helpful and showed us whether or not the Cheyenne translation had the same cohesion (compositional "glue") and coherence (making sense) as the source text. If a Cheyenne person could not summarize a paragraph, we could suspect something wrong with the translation. It didn't hang together properly. Perhaps we didn't use proper word combinations (collocations). Perhaps we hadn't structured the Cheyenne to be true Cheyenne, instead of being too close to the structure of the source text.

I suggest that this kind of procedure can be used for checking any Bible translation, including those in English. It is also a valuable Bible study method.

I am rushing as I post this, since my wife and I are about to leave for the airport, so I can't write more on this topic right now. But I would invite others of you to comment on making summaries of a paragraph (or other natural discourse unit, such as an episode or pericope) as a means of checking a translation, as well as a Bible study method.

Perhaps someone could even comment suggesting a translated Bible paragraph which could be checked to see if it has cohesion and coherence like the source text does.

In hiding…

2008-10-17T09:44:00.001-07:00

The new Better Bibles Blog is currently in hiding while we make some changes.

We’ll let you know when you can have a peek.

An outsider's view of a Bible controversy

2008-10-14T12:37:00.001-07:00

It is somewhat unusual to find a view on a controversy related to Bible translations expressed by someone writes "I'm not a Christian", which goes beyond praise for the supposed literary excellence of the King James Version. Indeed that is just where Tim Footman starts his article in The Guardian, one of the UK's main left-leaning newspapers. What is interesting is the direction he takes it in.

The background for this is the work in progress on translating the Bible into Jamaican Patois, a language in which there is so far no Scripture although it is the mother tongue of five million people. Eddie Arthur reported several months ago on the controversy in Jamaica about this project, linked to a Christianity Today article, and then wrote a follow-up post. But it has taken until today for the Church Times (yes, and the contributors to this blog) to take any notice of this controversy. The new post at the Church Times blog is prompted by an article in the right-leaning Telegraph (actually not their first article about this) which quotes "Former Conservative Minister Ann Widdecombe, who left the Church of England to become a Roman Catholic" (she left because she could not accept ordination of women), who

said: "It's one thing to turn the Bible into modern vernacular, but to turn it into patois is utterly ridiculous. When you dumb down you take away any meaning it might have."
She said that she supported attempts to widen the readership of the Bible, but believes that this goes too far.

Well, Ms Widdecombe, do you actually realise that this is not "dumbing down" but translation into a foreign language, even if it is one which has some superficial resemblances to English?

It is to these comments, and similar ones from Prudence Dailey of the Prayer Book Society, that Tim Footman responds. After accepting, as a non-Christian, that his preference for the King James Version is purely aesthetic, he writes perceptively:

If I believed that people's only hope of avoiding hellfire was by accepting Jesus Christ as their saviour, then I'd want his message packaged in the most accessible shape or form. If sinners respond best to theological versions of chick lit and James Blunt, that's what the church should offer, ideally without jettisoning the old stuff entirely. It's bums on pews and souls in the right place that matter, not the Booker prize.

Yes, Tim, you are right. And since I do believe your premise (although I wouldn't primarily express my belief in terms of hellfire), I accept your conclusions, not so much about "bums on pews" but certainly about "souls in the right place". But, he continues,

Funnily enough, some people who profess to be Christians don't appear to think this way.

- and proceeds to quote Widdecombe and Dailey. Then he makes the following sensible comments (although I don't expect my American readers to understand the "MCC tie" reference!):

These are exactly the arguments that traditionalists used against the reforms of Vatican II, which led to the Catholic mass being said in a language that most of the congregation could actually understand; the same arguments, in fact, against translating the Bible itself into languages other than Latin in the first place.
The most significant aspects of their religion would appear to be the social and political, rather than the spiritual. They speak of a Christianity not of love and forgiveness and justice, but of order and tradition and control, a society frozen at some point in about 1860. Everyone knows his or her status: the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate; women content to polish the pews and make the tea; gay people utterly invisible. If Jamaicans wish to hear the word of God, it must be enunciated in cut-glass tones; Tunbridge Wells, not Trenchtown. God, after all, sports an MCC tie.
This whole attitude strikes me as being a tad un-Christian. But what do I know? I'm just a poor bloody heathen. And the more I hear from Widdecombe and Dailey and their ilk, the more likely I am to stay that way.

I wonder if Widdecombe and Dailey, and others who express similar views like Dr Leland Ryken, realise what kind of witness they are being to outsiders like Tim Footman. And if they did, would they care, or do they consider preservation of 17th century English literary style more important than saving the lost?

Your favorite post at BBB

2008-10-13T08:21:00.001-07:00

We are still getting lots of great input from our readers on how to improve this well-loved blog. You can see a long string of suggestions (and leave your own) here: Tell us what you think!

The results so far on the survey What is the primary reason you read Better Bibles Blog? are split evenly between “Comparisons of Bible versions” and “Discussions of translation puzzles.”

JK Gayle suggested asking people about their favorite post which seems like a great idea.

In the comments on this post, tell us about your favorite post at BBB, or series of posts and why.

Bonus points if you can find your first comment ever on this blog. (The earliest comment I’ve found for me is here in November 2005).

Have a great week!

Still tinkering…

2008-10-09T13:31:00.001-07:00

The process of getting the new BBB is still underway. There is a lot of behind the scenes work going on as well as discussion about how to make this blog even better. If you have not had a chance to see the blog you can do so here: http://betterbibles.com. I also encourage you to leave suggestions (Tell us what you think!) and take a brief poll (Why do you read BBB?)

Eye-popping Bible

2008-10-08T08:25:00.001-07:00

What do you think about having Angelina Jolie on the cover of a Bible?

“First published in Sweden last year, "Bible Illuminated: The Book" is the glossy fashion magazine-style publication that features Jolie. It looks like it might be more at home on a coffee table or the nightstand of the latest hipster hotel than a church.

The creation of former advertising executives, it pairs intense photo essays — including images such as a child with a gun or beatings in the Belgian Congo under King Leopold's II's regime — with the scripture of the New Testament. It is aimed at people who might not otherwise ever read the Bible.”

Read the article: New Bibles alter form _ not word _ to draw readers

HT: Chri$tian Capitali$m Strikes Again: Publisher Uses Angelina Jolie Photo to Market Bible

Other resources:

Who’s endorsing the ESV?

2008-10-07T22:41:00.001-07:00

internetmonk is being mischievous.

See here: ESV Study Bible Product Placement Photos Needed

And here: Exhibits for the Lawsuit

But of course there is a serious point here. We rely on celebrity endorsements for our Bible purchases. Whether that is the pastor or a conference speaker or a denominational leader, we depend on others to decide which Bible is best.

So, is this joke funny?

PopeBible and the Bible Bus and the KJV quadricentennial

2008-10-06T17:11:00.001-07:00

Tim has mentioned the plans to read the entire Bible by the Catholics in one week.

In addition I just heard about a plan by Zondervan to hand-write the entire NIV in celebration of the 30 year anniversary USA Today: Publisher puts 'NIV' Bible in Americans' handwriting.

I’m looking forward to KJV readings in 2011. I certainly plan to read through the classic from cover to cover in celebration of 400 years of a fascinating translation.

Holy Spirit: it or he?

2008-10-05T22:18:00.001-07:00

What is the best translation of τὸ πνεῦμα?

Better Bibles at Berkeley

2008-10-04T08:14:00.001-07:00

I had a wonderful time at the UC Berkeley campus. In addition to meeting with several students from the School of Information who are doing research related to my interests I also got to meet a fellow Bible blogger who prefers to remain anonymous. I met another blogger as well, Richard Rhodes. It was terrific to chat linguistics, Bible translation and meet someone who I have admired for quite some time.

Rich and I talked about some ideas for Better Bibles Blog. Where is it headed? How can it be improved? Some ideas included cleaning up the cluttered sidebar, inviting new contributors, or possibly changing to a new platform. It was exciting for me to see that Rich is still quite enthusiastic about BBB and is open to innovation. If he doesn’t post more often you have to understand that he is a busy professor with administrative responsibilities in addition to an amazing array of civic and church responsibilities.

Thanks, to Rich and all the others that I was able to meet at Berkeley!

Photo: Rich Rhodes and David Ker model Berkeleyan hosery.

On The Message

2008-10-03T11:30:00.000-07:00

As Wayne pointed out yesterday, El Shaddai Edwards has blogged about the significance of The Message here. I will not quibble about its impact at all. There is a parallel NIV/Message version sitting on my night table. It makes great reading.

And as anyone who has read this blog regularly knows, I’m a great cheerleader for translations that speak contemporary English. Peterson’s English is great. He has the writer’s ear. But still I have some big problems with the Message.

First, The Message is monotonic.

When you read Peterson there is a single colloquial — even slangy — voice. It’s very engaging, true. But read the Greek and the NT has many voices writing in multiple genres. Paul is erudite, like a rabbi. He’s writing letters that go from colloquial to literary. The writer of Hebrews is eloquent. He writes beautiful Greek in an essay on theology. John has flashes of poetry, but it’s in the spare voice of a second language speaker. Mark and Matthew also have the undertone that Greek is not their native language. Luke, an educated Greek, is self-consciously writing history.

Secondly, half the NT is written by second language speakers and second language speakers don’t do slang.

Both of these objections come down to the fact that The Message just doesn’t fall on the English ear the way the original fell on the Greek ear, and to me that’s as much of a problem as the sacred-sounding archaisms of the KJV.

Getting that right is actually point of accuracy.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean accuracy in terms of literalism. I mean that Peterson misses things that a Greek speaker would hear (or not hear) in the text — things that can readily be captured in modern English.

Let’s take an old chestnut of mistranslation, John 3:16-18.

Here’s The Message:

This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person's failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.

and here’s the Greek:

3:16 οὕτως γὰρ ἠγάπησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν κόσμον ὥστε τὸν υἱὸν τὸν μονογενῆ ἔδωκεν ἵνα πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων εἰς αὐτὸν μὴ ἀπόληται ἀλλ' ἔχῃ ζωὴν αἰώνιον 17 οὐ γὰρ ἀπέστειλεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν υἱὸν εἰς τὸν κόσμον ἵνα κρίνῃ τὸν κόσμον ἀλλ' ἵνα σωθῇ ὁ κόσμος δι' αὐτοῦ 18 ὁ πιστεύων εἰς αὐτὸν οὐ κρίνεται ὁ δὲ μὴ πιστεύων ἤδη κέκριται ὅτι μὴ πεπίστευκεν εἰς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ μονογενοῦς υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ

But ... the Greek doesn’t say

This is how much God loved the world: ...

it says literally

This is the way God loved the world: ...

or with the information implied in Greek but required for normal English

This is how God showed that he loved the world: ...

Looking further down in the passage, the Greek doesn’t have anything that suggests the slanginess of “go to all the trouble” or “point an accusing finger”. In fact, just from the point of view of referential accuracy, both these phrases are too weak.

“Go to all the trouble” is rather namby pamby when you think that the reference is to sending one’s child to be executed in the most excruciating way.

“Point an accusing finger” is what disapproving grandmothers do. Somehow it doesn’t measure up to the judgment that awaits everyone outside of the saving work of Jesus.

I don’t have a problem at all with translations that are more explicit in English, than the Greek appears at first blush to be. In comparison to the contemporary standards of English communication, Greek is painful terse. This is especially true of John and Mark. There’s no spiritual or theological value to following the terseness. It can even be misleading.

It is well known in anthropological circles that the norms of explicitness can vary widely from culture to culture. Roman era Levantine cultures, like most of their descendant cultures, are HIGH CONTEXT. That means that they put the barest necessities into words and expect the hearer to fill in the blanks.

In contrast northern European cultures, especially Germanic cultures, are LOW CONTEXT. They want everything to be spelled out in language.

For example, I have a friend who owns an apartment in Berlin in a building that was built around the turn of the last century. The elevator is the meticulously maintained original. You know, with wooden doors that open in and out, locked with an old fashioned skeleton key and a cabin entirely of wood.
By the buttons that control the thing is a little sign that spells out what is legal and illegal in the elevator. It includes sentences about it being illegal for humans to ride in freight elevators. For months, I was completely puzzled by this sign. The elevator in which it is posted is not a freight elevator. But did it mean that if I used this elevator to move, say, furniture, that I wasn’t allowed to ride in it as well. When I finally asked about it, my friend laughed. It was obvious to her German way of thinking that if you are going to say anything about the laws governing this elevator, you have to give the whole elevator law. The fact that I had expections about being told only what is relevant, caused me to misinterpret what was said.

So it’s not a problem to me if there are more words in the English low context translation than in the Greek high context original. That doesn’t make it a paraphrase. But it is a problem if those extra words aren’t warranted by the reference and context of the passage.

And that’s where The Message fails.

The most significant version of the Bible today

2008-10-02T08:41:00.000-07:00

You may be surprised at the answer ElShaddai Edwards gives in his post. It is one of the English versions of the Bible available for sale today.

NLT Study Bible, ESV Study Bible, and “The Last Days” (Isaiah 2:2)

2008-10-01T15:10:00.001-07:00

NLT Study Bible, ESV Study Bible, and “The Last Days” (Isaiah 2:2)

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NLT Study Bible, ESV Study Bible, and “Hanged On The Gallows” (Esther 2:23)

2008-09-29T14:08:00.001-07:00

NLT Study Bible, ESV Study Bible, and “Hanged On The Gallows” (Esther 2:23)

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how to pray in contemporary English

2008-09-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

Every Sunday in our church we recite the Lord's Prayer using words which no one in the church speaks or writes except during that prayer:

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

I often wish we would use contemporary and widely known words and syntax for the prayer. For a number of months I've thought I would like to try to render the prayer in contemporary English. I hope that my version might be close enough to how you speak and write English, so that the prayer might be meaningful to you, as well. The recent blog posts on the Lord's Prayer were serendipitous (not a very widely known contemporary word!). I have finished my assigned work for this week, so I have some time to pray with you on this blog.

Once when Jesus was speaking to his followers, he gave them this prayer that they could use as an example of a good way to pray:

Our heavenly father (1),
help us honor you (2).
Come be our king, (3)
so that everyone will do what you want here on earth
~~will obey you~~
just as ~~you are obeyed~~ they do in heaven.
Provide for us the food we need today. (4)
Please forgive what we have done wrong (5)
as we have forgiven those who have wronged us.
Help us not give in when we are tempted. (6)
and even protect us from the Evil One who tempts us.
----
You can do it (7) because you are the king, (8, 9)
and you are always powerful
and ~~totally amazing~~ awesome. (10)

Well, I don't expect any churches to adopt my suggestions as a substitute for the version of the Lord's Prayer they currently pray. But I do think there is value in our trying to re-express words and syntax which are outdated. Of course, some of you may feel that there is nothing outdated at all about the version of the prayer used in our church. We can agree to disagree on that. In any case, I hope that you and I can pray in even more meaningful ways. We need it. Our families need it. Our countries need it. It pleases God.

----
(1) This construction is more natural to me than "Our father in heaven" which means the same thing.

(2) This clause does not focus on God's name, as it seems in many translations. Rather, the original reference to God's name is a synecdoche, a figure of speech in which a part represents the whole. Honoring someone's name was an important and common Semitic expression for honoring that person who had that name. The English language not use this synecdoche, so it is misleading, a form of inaccuracy, to include "name" in this clause, unless we include enough other information so that it is clear that name refers to all of the person. But that extra information would be so weighty here that it would throw off the focus. I admit to feeling conflicted on this clause because of the strong church tradition of retaining literal "name" in the prayer. So I'm open to other ideas on this part of my translation, as well as all the other parts. Using "help" instead of "may" is my tilt toward what feels like greater naturalness in English. I would not normally say "May you be honored" or "May we honor you." I think that this clause is really part of the requests of the prayer. A wish (English "may") is a kind of mitigated request.

(3) The request for God's kingdom to come is actually a request for God to be our king. I'm retaining the word "king" to try to maintain the Lord's Prayer within the context of a kingly reign which was a wellknown concept in Bible times. I considered using the word "boss" or some other word more widely known to those of us who do not live under a monarch, but I think that these better known words might not really capture as many of the semantic components as does the word "king."

(4) "Bread" was considered a main food staple in Bible times. The original word is another example of synecdoche where bread represents the entire meal. If we retain the word "bread", the request is more narrowly focused than was the original text, and our prayer would, therefore, not be as accurate as it should be for good quality translation.

I don't know which is more natural, "provide for us" or "give us". I more commonly use the word "give" but I'm not sure it is quite adequate in the concept of asking God to take care of our nutritional needs.

(5) or, "Please forgive our sins". Matthew uses a word which could literally be translated as "debts" but can refer to sins, and I believe does, when Jesus taught his followers to pray. I suspect that many people today who say the words "debts" and "debtors" during the Lord's Prayer have a mental image of a financial loan at some level of their thinking. That causes "cognitive dissonance" since many probably also suspect financial loans are not what those words are really about. I don't think we should have cognitive dissonance in our Bible translations, unless that dissonance was intended by the original author.

(6) I've often been troubled by the literal wording asking God not to lead us into temptation, because I don't believe that God would ever lead anyone into temptation. It says in the book of James that God does not tempt people, so I don't think he would lead people toward temptation, either.

(7) This is my attempt to capture the meaning of the Greek hoti connecting the clauses here.

(8) As noted in a recent post on this blog, this part of the prayer is not found in all ancient Greek manuscripts. It has, however, been part of the prayer that Christ's Church has prayed for many centuries. There is nothing wrong with praying it.

(9) It is not standard English to tell someone "thine is the ..." or, using a contemporary pronoun, "yours is the ...". I don't think I would ever tell our son, "Yours is this car." I might say, "This car is yours," if I had enough money and were that generous. But I don't think we would use even that standard syntax for speaking of something abstract such as a kingship or power belonging to someone.

(10) This is my attempt to capture the concept that God is "glorious". I'm not happy with "totally awesome." It sounds too colloquial to me. But "glorious" is not widely used, except, I think, in a similarly colloquial way as in, "Wow, that concert was glorious!" I welcome suggestions for a more appropriate contemporary equivalent here.

ESV Study Bible interview

2008-09-24T22:27:00.000-07:00

Trevin Wax interviews Justin Taylor about how the ESV Study Bible was produced.

HT: James Grant

In the beginning was the Dao

2008-09-24T20:29:00.001-07:00

I found a comment at ThinkChristian quite interesting relating to the recent difficulties of using the New Chinese Version of the Bible:

The gospel has grown in cities, not villages and as these families try to reach their villages (mostly Daoist) its awkward to read John 1:1 where it literally reads, "In the beginning was the Dao, and the Dao was with God and the Dao was God." Talk about culturally confusing!

Ranger also mentions the problem of lack of availability as being a factor in the slow acceptance of the new version. In Malawi a similar story is happening with regard to the Buku Loyera which was meant to replace the archaic Buku Lopatulika.

Read: Switching Chinese Bible Translations and check out Ranger’s comments.

What does the Lord's Prayer mean?

2008-09-23T11:21:00.000-07:00

As David has just pointed out, there is a post about an error in the Lord’s Prayer at New Epistles. I commented on that “error” there, but I think that the issue warrants a posting here.

The problem arises out of our understanding of

Οὕτως οὖν προσεύχεσθε ὑμεῖς (Matt. 6:9a)

“After this manner therefore pray ye:” (KJV)
“Therefore, you should pray like this:” (HSCB)
“This, then, is how you should pray:” (NIV)
“Pray like this:” (NLT)

The usual interpretation is a fairly literal one, as though Jesus had said:

“Pray these words:”

The Greek doesn’t say that. The meaning is more accurately:

“Make your prayers go like this:”

In other words, the Lord's Prayer is really a template of how to pray.

Repeat the words and it becomes meaningless ritual. Pray according to the template and you can be sincere and real.

Praying using Jesus’ words as a template gives us the following way to form our prayers:

1) Acknowledge who God is.
2) Pray for His work on earth.
3) Ask for what you need.
4) Ask for forgiveness.
5) Ask for a way to deal with temptation and opposition.

The order is crucial, and it’s the part we get wrong all the time.

How often do we open our prayers with requests to deal with our immediate situation, with pleas for forgiveness to deal with our feelings of sinfulness, with requests to rain down fire and brimstone on our enemies. (OK, that’s a little over the top, but you get the idea.)

When we do so, we easily lose track of just who God is.

If we started every prayer putting God’s majesty and His agenda first, we might just get a better perspective on life.

As for the “error”, the fact that we throw in a doxology, which has early roots, is moot if the Lord’s Prayer is a template. To wring our hands over whether it is an error or not is to succumb to the same kind of literalist thinking that leads us to ritualistically repeat Jesus’ words. The very kind of thinking which prevents us from learning how to form all our prayers the way Jesus commanded us.

The Lord's Prayer is in perpetual error

2008-09-23T07:35:00.000-07:00

Read Kevin Sam's post and see if you agree: The Lord's Prayer is in perpetual error

new poll

2008-09-22T22:03:00.000-07:00

I put a new poll in the margin of this blog today. Have fun with it.

Mecha Manga Bible

2008-09-22T15:42:00.001-07:00

Yep, another Manga Bible.

Holy Heroes has the review: Mecha Manga Bible Heroes #1: David vs. Goliath

This Bible is a riot

2008-09-22T14:16:00.001-07:00

“Tribals in Jharkhand are up in arms against a recent Kuduk translation of the Bible, which exhorts people to destroy trees and places where they worship. The Bible Society of India has apologised for the translation and has promised to withdraw copies from the market.The Kendriya Sarna Samittee (KSS), an organisation of tribals, has announced it will burn the copies translated into Kuduk - one of the local tribal languages - if they are not withdrawn.”

Source: Thaindian News HT: Jim West

Comments?

Is somebody shutting the gate at Bible Gateway?

2008-09-21T15:41:00.001-07:00

Rich Tatum seems to think so. He has a scoop on a possible shutdown for the most famous Bible portal on the web. Apparently the word leaked out via the Muskegon Chronicle. The what? That’s right, Muskegon. According to the ever helpful Wikipedia, Muskegon is a town and county in Michigan.

Before you panic, I would say it’s extremely unlikely that biblegateway.com will disappear. But if it changes hands who will have the say on how Bibles are shared? And what will be the impact of possible ad-revenue or subscription-based services?

If anyone is interested in financing a bid for Bible Gateway, please contact me. I’m willing to partner with wealthy donors to secure this valuable resource for the foreseeable future.

Bible translation and importing N.T. meanings to O.T. passages

2008-09-20T14:53:00.001-07:00

We have had a few blog posts in the past which discuss the issue of whether we should only translate the original human author's meaning intended for a Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) passage, or whether we should allow New Testament exegesis (typically messianic) of that quote to determine how we translate the O.T. passage. The issue has particular relevance for whether or not we capitalize names of individuals in the O.T. who are considered references to the Messiah (Christ) in the N.T. For instance, should the word "son" in Psalm 2:12 be capitalized, since it is quoted in the N.T. as a reference to Christ the Messiah, or not capitalized since the original author likely was referring to a non-messianic figure. The difference here can be seen in the contrast between the NIV, which tends to "christologize" the O.T.:

Kiss the Son, lest he be angry
and you be destroyed in your way

and the NIV's revision, the TNIV:

Kiss his son, or he will be angry

Now, for some fun. You can take a short quiz to determine which of the main positions you take with regard to importing N.T. meanings to O.T. passages. This quiz has been showing up on several blogs. I'll link to the original on the Koinonia blog:

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Feel free to share your quiz results here or on the Koinonia blog. I will share mine.

NLT Blog: Sentence Structure in the NLT

2008-09-18T15:08:00.000-07:00

NLT Blog: Sentence Structure in the NLT

NLT Study Bible vs. ESV Study Bible- Introducing the Prophets

2008-09-18T14:12:00.003-07:00

NLT Study Bible vs. ESV Study Bible- Introducing the Prophets

Posted using ShareThis

NLT Study Bible and Mark 11:13-14

2008-09-18T14:12:00.001-07:00

NLT Study Bible and Mark 11:13-14

Posted using ShareThis

Which NLT are you reading?

2008-09-17T18:13:00.001-07:00

Rick has the scoop: Tyndale Releases List of Changes to "NLT 2007"

NLT Study Bible, ESV Study Bible, NIV Study Bible, and “Heavenly Places” (Ephesians 1:3)

2008-09-17T08:58:00.001-07:00

Brent at The Christian Monthly Standard has been blogging about English Bible versions. One of his posts today is NLT Study Bible, ESV Study Bible, NIV Study Bible, and “Heavenly Places” (Ephesians 1:3)

Posted using ShareThis

Missionary Struggles to Translate "Thee" and "Thou"

2008-09-15T15:43:00.000-07:00

The latest from Tominthebox News Network: Missionary Struggles to Translate "Thee" and "Thou". Enjoy! ;-)

when "in" is out

2008-09-14T19:34:00.000-07:00

Every language is different from every other language. One of the principles of translation from one language to another is that the linguistic patterns (lexical, syntactic, pragmatic, etc.) used in the translation should be those of the target language, rather than the source language. If linguistic patterns of the source language are used, there is a very good chance that those who use the translation will not be able to understand it.

Formal equivalence can only accurately communicate the original message in translation if the language form used in the biblical language already exists in the target language. (The claim of the last sentence can be nuanced if we engineer new forms in the the target language which match forms in the biblical language texts and teach the meanings of the new forms to its speakers. But, to my mind, anyway, this defeats the purpose of translation, which is, again, to allow speakers of one language to understand a message first produced in another language.)

These facts are true whether the source language is Spanish, Navajo, Japanese, or one of the biblical languages. Translating the Bible does not give us the privilege of importing biblical language patterns to English if our aim is to accurately communicate the biblical language message to those who use the target language translation.

The longer I have been working as a Bible translator and Bible translation consultant, the more I have come to realize that many of the English Bible phrases I was raised on are not part of the English language. Many such problem phrases are prepositional phrases which begin with the preposition "in". I have written about this issue a number of times in the past, but I want to do so again, because this week I found that one English version does a good job of avoiding the non-English "in" phrases.

I grew up reading Romans 8:1 like this:

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

Notice the phrase "in Christ Jesus". Notice also that the verb which "controls" it is "are," a form of the verb "be".

If we listen to English speakers, or study what they have written (or if we simply want to remember what our English teachers taught us), we can discover that English speakers have a linguistic rule that allows for "in" to be used with an object that states a location, for example:

John is in Madison.
Mary lives in Dallas.
The bees are making honey in their hive.
We ate supper in the dining room.
The surgeon's hands are in Ralph right now.

There are a few other grammatical uses of "in" where the object is not a location, as in:

John and Mary are in love.
Elmer is in trouble.

As far as I have been able to determine, observing "in" usage for many years, the only time English speakers use the preposition "in" with the name of a person is when that person is a location, as in my somewhat odd sentence #5, above. Fluent English speakers do not speak or write sentences with the "in" phrase found quoted in Romans 8:1 at the beginning of this post. That usage of "in" has been imported to English from the Greek source text, which has the Greek preposition en followed by the name Christ Jesus. Greek en does properly translate to English "in" in locative phrases. But the Greek of Romans 8:1 does not have a locative phrase. Christ Jesus is not a location where a person can be "in". Here we see that Greek and English differ in how what they allow as the object of a preposition, Greek en or English "in". Prepositional phrases in Greek and English with these prepositions are sometimes formal equivalents and sometimes they are not. In other words, the proper translation equivalent in English to a Greek phrase beginning with en sometimes is an English phrase beginning with "in" and sometimes it is not.

This week I noticed that the NLT translates Romans 8:1 as

So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.

Now, for the moment setting aside the question of translation accuracy, is this sentence grammatical English? It seems so to me. The phrase "belong to Christ Jesus" is intended to translate the meaning of the Greek phrase beginning with en.

Now, does "those who belong to Christ Jesus" mean the same as the intended meaning of the non-English prepositional phrase "those who are in Christ Jesus"? My understanding, from reading theological explanations of the intended meaning of phrases like "BE in the Lord", "BE in Christ," "BE in Christ Jesus," and "BE in God," is that "those who belong to Christ Jesus" is a good translation equivalent to the original Greek phrases. Clearly (at least to me!), if we say that someone belongs to Christ Jesus, that communicates meaning to more English speakers than does saying that someone is "in Christ Jesus."

The NLT includes a footnote in a parallel passage, 1 Cor. 1:4, to help those who might question the accuracy of a translation which does not use "in" to translate the Greek phrase en + Christ Jesus:

now that you belong to Christ Jesus (literally in Christ Jesus): Paul frequently uses the phrase in Christ Jesus to refer to the saving relationship believers have with Christ (e.g., Rom 3:24; Gal 2:4; Eph 3:6).

Are there other English Bible versions which avoid using the non-English phrasing "in Christ Jesus"? Yes, there are a few but not many. Most English versions import the form of the Greek prepositional phrase to English and supplement it with teaching to explain its meaning. But teaching does not transform the phrase into a genuine English, unless so many speakers of the language are taught the meaning of the phrase and so many speakers decide that they will add "in" plus Christ or God to their list of grammatical prepositional phrases. When that happens, language change will have occurred and teaching will not be required to understand the "in" phrase of Rom. 8:1.

Here are some other versions which attempt to use genuine English forms as translation equivalents of the Greek prepositional phrase for Rom. 8:1:

There is no condemnation now for those who live in union with Christ Jesus. (TEV)

If you belong to Christ Jesus, you won't be punished. (CEV)

So those who are believers in Christ Jesus can no longer be condemned. (God's Word)

It follows that there is now no condemnation for those who are united with Christ Jesus. (REB)

There is much more that could be added in a larger study of translation equivalence to the Greek phrase en + name for God or Christ, but this should be enough to introduce us to the issue and some genuine English solutions.

Young Guns on Bible Translation

2008-09-10T21:25:00.001-07:00

While this neck of the blogosphere has started to resemble tap-dancing night at the senior center, there are numerous bloggers out there who are cranking up the amps and staying up late blogging about Better Bibles. There are so many posts that I can’t keep track, but I should mention:

ElShaddai Edwards: He’s got a new web address: http://heissufficient.com (it used to be .net) and is putting out a lot of fine posts like this one: What makes a Bible translation authoritative? which is an interaction with Kevin Sam (What are the most authoritative translations?)

TC Robinson: is a blogging maniac these days. He makes me look like a haiku poet. Here’s a good BT post: My First Blind Comparison: What Striking Similarities, I say!

Carolyn James is a new discovery thanks to the massive compendium of shared posts at christianreaders.info. Her post The Dictionary According to Jesus is full of gems. Key terms according to Jesus. Who would’ve thought?

Rick Mansfield: He probably shouldn’t be listed since a. He’s older than the hills and b. He’s been blogging for a coon’s age. But after a long hiatus he’s been blogging again like crazy. Here’s the hot one: Understanding Matthew 5:28 [updated]

Finally, we can all be glad that Mike Aubrey has taken up the baton again. Here’s a rumination on BT: A Few Thoughts on the Translation Debate. Now if we can just get Nathan Stitt to start blogging again…

Who are some other hot shots and rising stars out there that are blogging about Bible translation?

Which Bible Version is Superior? 2. Weaknesses of translation styles

2008-09-09T11:14:00.000-07:00

I have just discovered the Cross-Cultural Impact in the 21st Century blog. There are several meaty articles discussing how to translate the Bible. One that discusses the pros and cons of different translations styles in English is Which Bible Version is Superior? 2. Weaknesses of translation styles.

I've been extremely busy lately, struggling with some of the quirks of Microsoft Word to get a publication to the printer. I'm sorry I haven't been able to post to BBB recently. But I still have a topic in mind to post on when I can find the time. Now I'm checking the translation of Colossians in a tribal language. This morning, as I checked, I came to the translation of Col. 2:19 and had a question about it, so I blogged about it in a short post to the Complementarian blog on the focus of Col. 2:19. Feel free to comment on that post there or here.

The Duct Tape Bible

2008-09-08T21:25:00.001-07:00

Bryon writes a very entertaining article about a strange edition of the New Century Bible: The Duct Tape Bible - New Century Version

I remember in the mid-90’s hearing a lot of radio spots featuring the New Century Version. I always had a positive reaction to the readings. However, I’m not sure what happened to the NCV. Maybe it came unstuck.

HT: Found on Bible Behemoth.

A blind comparison

2008-09-08T11:38:00.001-07:00

TC Robinson picks up on a suggestion of mine and makes a blind comparison between two translations of Hebrews 1:1-4.

See if you can guess which versions they are. And also, once you’ve figured out which versions they are does it change your opinions of the translations?

Read: My First Blind Comparison: What Striking Similarities, I say!

NLT Study Bible - Review 1

2008-09-08T10:54:00.000-07:00

Exegete Reflections: NLT Study Bible - Review 1

Sometimes experiments fizzle and sometimes they explode

2008-09-08T10:50:00.001-07:00

Currently, I think the Bible Behemoth is somewhere in the middle. If you recall, I mentioned in The Next Big Thing that I was soliciting input on ways of collaborating on highlighting the best posts out there about the Bible. I tried to put the various ideas together into something called The Bible Behemoth. It is essentially a Google Reader page that shares other people’s shared feeds. Currently there are six contributors and I imagine that number will continue to grow. It is very interesting to see the posts some of my blog buddies are sharing. I’ve already discovered some new blogs that I want to follow.

To see the Bible Behemoth, visit:

The Google Reader Page: Bible Behemoth
There is also a blog to track questions and how-tos: The Bible Behemoth Blog.

I’m looking forward to more people signing up with an interest in Bible translation. You can see information on how to get involved here: How to use Shared items in Google Reader

It was only a matter of time…

2008-09-05T16:17:00.001-07:00

Man in market for Single, Lonely and Depressed Study Bible

The next big thing

2008-09-04T20:57:00.001-07:00

On my Lingamish blog I’ve tried to get people talking about what might be the “next big thing” for Bible blogs. The sheer number of people blogging about Bible related topics continues to snowball. Keeping track of that is far beyond what any one person can manage. So the question in my post is how can we keep track of all that wealth of information?

As readers of Better Bibles Blog, you are passionate about the Bible and I’d welcome your input.

Read it: The Next Big Thing in Bible Blogs

New Living Translation's continued success

2008-09-04T16:11:00.000-07:00

just after sunrise: New Living Translation's continued success

Using Google to evaluate Bible translations

2008-09-04T08:50:00.001-07:00

“Scripture Zealot. You might want to do a Google search on the word “haughty” and then click on news at the top. You will be surprised how often the word “haughty” is used in the news. Randy”

From a comment on this post: Don’t forget the ISV

Randy is recommending a really interesting way to check the usage of words in modern English.

Search for a word on Google.
Click on the News tab at the top.
Browse the results for examples of how this word is being used by modern writers.

The results are indeed enlightening. From scanning the results I got these impressions:

Haughty is stylized rather than standard vocabulary.
There seemed to be more British usages than American.

Click on this link to see the News results for “haughty.”

You might ask whether this is a good word to have in a Bible translation. My answer would be: It depends! If it were being used in a poetic passage or one featuring highly stylized language it might be appropriate. If it were used in a straight descriptive sentence like 1 Timothy 6:17 it probably wouldn’t be appropriate.

One final concern about the word “haughty.” I believe that in British English “haughty” is pronounced the same as “hotty” which is a word to describe someone who is sexually appealing. So reading this out loud might be confusing.

A post about Matthew 5:28

2008-09-03T14:42:00.000-07:00

Update: This post has been renamed

Rick Mansfield: Understanding Matthew 5:28

I disagree with Rick's conclusions in his post but there are many interesting translation principles that come up. How do we define words? How do we apply hyperbolic pronouncements?

Rick spends a lot of time trying to figure out what kind of πρὸς we have here. That's an unfruitful quest in my opinion. Especially when we are trying to move from grammatical analysis to a major ethical application like he does here. And also, I think it's unfortunate to dismiss several major translations as "wrong" when they are doing no more than disagree with our own interpretation.

Well, check out Rick's post and decide for yourself who is right on this issue.

1 Cor. 1:21 in the NLT

2008-09-01T11:37:00.000-07:00

One of the blogs that I enjoy the most is New Leaven by TC. He creates a welcoming atmosphere and there is always lots of chat.

I want to respond to a recent post of his on the NLT. He claims that the NLT has " dropped the ball," on this verse,

our foolish preaching

I cannot agree with this, and I explain my reasons in a comment. Here is his post and my response,

διὰ τῆς μωρίας τοῦ κηρύγματος
dia tes morias tou kerygmatos

1. It is well recognized that a genitive construction can be translated by an adjectival phrase in English. This is a normal equivalent. It is called the adjectival genitive.

2. In many languages the possessive is not used where it would be in English. For example, in French one would never say [the equivalent of] “brush your teeth” but ” brush the teeth.” So adding a possessive pronoun is also usual when translating into English.

I find the NLT to be accurate in its translation and well within the boundaries of the “literal.” I hope this helps. It is important to be fluent in many languages to understand and run with the variants presented in translation.

There may be other contextual or hermeneutic reasons for not choosing the translation which the NLT has prefered, but the NLT does use one possible translation of the Greek, which I claim is a literal, if not formal, equivalent.

The King James Bible is the answer to everything ...

2008-08-29T22:51:00.000-07:00

In breaking news, in this post Charles Wesley’s encrypted journal cracked after 250 years the shorthand of Charles Wesley was decoded by reference to the scripture verses which he had included in his journal. The full story is here.

Wesley's shorthand, which omits vowels and abbreviates consonants, is a highly personalised adaptation of that invented by John Byrom, the 18th century poet, diarist and stenographer. Byrom, whose method was taught at Oxford University, published his New Universal Shorthand in 1740. Wesley's is severely abbreviated, sometimes using a string of consonants without breaks. Whole sentences are elided and the spellings are often phonetic. The language generally is that of an 18th century gentleman and preacher. ...

The breakthrough came when he discovered that Wesley had rendered part of the scriptures in shorthand and was able to compare the abbreviations against the King James Bible. “I was determined to unlock it. Charles was a great man, with insights that remain important for us today,” he said.

From the beginning

2008-08-29T17:45:00.000-07:00

I am working on something that has turned out to be trickier that I had thought. What is the approximate meaning of Proverbs 8:22-23 on Wisdom. This is not unrelated to my recent post on Gen. 1:1.

The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way,
before his works of old.
I was set up from everlasting,
from the beginning, or ever the earth was. KJV, JPS
The LORD brought me forth as the first of his works,
before his deeds of old;
I was appointed from eternity,
from the beginning, before the world began. NIV
The LORD brought me forth as the first of his works,
before his deeds of old;
I was formed long ages ago,
at the very beginning, when the world came to be. TNIV
"The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of old.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth. ESV
The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth. RSV, NRSV

יְהוָה--קָנָנִי רֵאשִׁית דַּרְכּוֹ:

קֶדֶם מִפְעָלָיו מֵאָז

מֵעוֹלָם נִסַּכְתִּי מֵרֹאשׁ

מִקַּדְמֵי-אָרֶץ.

I have spent considerable time meditating on this text, on the way the English translations do or do not reflect the structure of the Hebrew. Fortunately I can offer the excellent translation of Azzan Yadin in Scripture as Logos page 163,

YHWH created me at the beginning of his course,
As the first of His works of old.
In the distant past was I fashioned,
At the beginning, at the origin of earth....

He comments on the passage from Proverbs 8:22-36,

Wisdom is a divine being that functions as an intermediary that comes to instruct humanity. ... Verses 25-31 [23-29] describe Wisdom's role as the primordial consort of Yahweh and witness to creation.

Yadin later takes up the Christos didaskalos tradition, Christ as teacher. What I particularly like about Yadin's translation is the way he makes the repetition of "beginning" clear in the English and he keeps the literal sense of derek - "way" or "course." However, there are intense theological differences in the different versions, especially if a Christological intepretation is in view. Any thoughts?

Scrambled Bibles: More Chronological Study Bible Buzz

2008-08-28T18:49:00.000-07:00

A rather vague article at The Christian Post mentions several bloggers getting upset about the Thomas Nelson's new repackaging of the Bible as well as mentioning Wayne Hastings' work in damage control. Here's the article: Clarity of New Chronological Bible at Question. Katherine T. Phan, the writer or the article fails to link to any of the posts in question so I'll throw out a few links:

Jim West: The Chronological Study Bible: More Nonsense Parading as Scholarship
David Ker at Better Bibles: The Bible Marketing Generation Gap and Lingamish: A novel method of reading the Bible
Wayne Hastings at Thomas Nelson: Chronological Study Bible Debate Response

There's also a mysterious "Drew" mentioned in the Christian Post article but I'm unsure which of our blogger buddies named Drew that might be.

Come on, Katherine! Give us some links in your articles. What is this, the era of movable type?

Another Bible version worth critiquing in this regard is The TNIV The Books of The Bible. The ordering and grouping of the canon is in my opinion a statement about authorship and textual criticism. While I applaud the publication of editions aimed at getting readers to actually read the Bible, scrambled Bibles have a long way to go to prove their worth.

HT: Michael Kruse Clarity of New Chronological Bible at Question

oh boy!

2008-08-28T16:56:00.000-07:00

I have not noticed any commentary on this post but likely I have just been out of it. Mark Roberts examines the recent changes in the Presbyterian Exegesis exam. He has written three posts on the changes to the Presbyerian Exegesis exam. It starts here.

We Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Blog to Bring You a Special Report: Presbyterian Exegesis Exam Changed

When I took the exegesis exam in the 1980s, it was a four-hour “open book” exam. Candidates were allowed to use any tools or helps they could bring, including dictionaries, grammars, concordances, commentaries, etc. At some point during the last twenty years, the exam was changed to a “take home” exam, in which candidates were given several days to finish it. I actually thought this was a positive change, since it did not place a premium on academic speed. Moreover, it provided candidates with a situation that was similar to that which they’d face as pastors, with a few days to work on a sermon.

Now, the exam itself and the way it will be graded have been changed in a couple of crucial ways. Here’s what I have learned from the PC(USA) website:

1. The demonstration of a working knowledge of Greek and/or Hebrew will no longer be a requirement in order to complete the examination successfully. When exams are graded, the readers will comment on the language facility which is demonstrated in the paper. Such comments will be offered as guidance for Committees on Preparation for Ministry in determining readiness for ministry.

2. The wording of the instructions for the Biblical Exegesis examination have been amended. Inquirers/candidates will be asked to offer “a faithful interpretation” of the assigned text, rather than “the principal meaning” of the text.

Read the series of posts here.

Matching Socks

2008-08-27T22:32:00.000-07:00

I had a dream a few nights ago in which a young woman of my close acquaintance tilted her head to one side and looked at me quizzically and asked why I had to match all the socks. It came to me in my dream that I do not need to match socks. When I woke up I decided that I would continue to match socks just the way I always do, with partial success.

However, when it comes to codepoints and search strings you really have to match socks, or find away around it.

Here is the word stenochoreo (2 Cor. 8:4a) in three different sets of codepoints.

1. στενοχωρέω combining accents

2. στενοχωρέω precombined accents polytonic

3. στενοχωρέω precombined accents monotonic

The first is from e-sword and I took it from Scripture Zealots blogpost, the second is from zhubert, and the third is from the LSJ lexicon in the new Perseus Project at PhiloLogic.

I always say used to say that they just "look different." But now I am over fifty and they all look the same. However, they all have different codepoints for the epsilon + accent. They will not work across platforms. They are mismatched socks but they do a good impersonation of being a match. I wish my socks were half this clever.

Now here is where I always say to my kids: do you want the long story or the short story? They always pick the short story. So, that's what I'll do for now. But if you like I can post the long story another day.

Here is my advice for searching. Always use the simplest choice possible. Do not mess with the accents if you can help it.

1. To access the LSJ lexicon at the original Perseus Project>classics>other tools & lexica>dictionary entry lookup. Choose Greek from the menu and follow the specific instructions from the keyboard display. For στενοχωρεω, you will type "stenocho^reo^". The accents are used to create the long vowels. You do not have to indicate Greek accents. Now type stenocho^reo^ into the dialog box on this page and submit query. This should be the result. Its slow. I always try it a few times, back and forth. Match a few more socks, etc.

You can reconfigure these pages to look like Greek rather than Latin but I do not spend the time to do that.

2. To access the LSJ lexicon at Philologic>Reference Works>Search Liddell and Scott's Greek English Lexicon Now here is the trick. DO NOT mess with the accents.

(From what I can see this lexicon uses a mix of accents - tonos - and not oxia, along with varia and circumflex. If anyone would care to explain to me what kind of system that is and if there is a keyboard which accommodates such a thing, I would be interested. I really don't understand it.)

Go to the Greek inputter, or use your favourite Greek keyboard - I use the bundled with MS version, and type in the word stenochoreo with the Greek inputter. As I said, NO accents. στενοχωρεω. You can just type this in the box by choosing the English letter that looks most like the Greek letter. For στενοχωρεω I typed stenoxwrew.

Now put στενοχωρεω into the LSJ at Philologic and choose the "No accents or breathings" option. The page should look like this. Choose στενοχωρεω from the list and the results are here.

You will notice that the LSJ entry at the original Perseus Project has hyperlinks and the one at Philologic does not. I typically still use the original Perseus Project, in case I want to use the hyperlinks.

3. For searching Zhubert, you need full polytonic Greek. Now you have to mess with the accents. Go to the Greek inputter and type in the word using all the accents. You will need to click on the "Greek letters" tab and carefully select the letters with the correct accents. στενοχωρέω

Now cut and paste, or try to reproduce this, and paste it into the wordfinder on Zhubert. Click "find". You should see a page with 6 results. None of them are for 2 Cor. 4:8. At this point technology breaks down. Zhubert has parsed the verb in 2 Cor. 4:8 as a middle voice verb but this is not a headword in the LSJ. It will not compute.

There are simply times when there is no way around not having a strong foundation in Greek grammar. I do not think that software searches can ever make up for studying a sizable amount of Greek. This should enable you to find most words in the LSJ, but not all.

Anyway, now you know why my kids always choose the short story. Its still long. Please ask me to explain whatever is not already clear as mud.

The Voice

2008-08-25T15:19:00.000-07:00

Wayne mentioned The Voice New Testament in a comment on Dave's post and I was interested in having a look at it. Here is a sample for those who don't want to download the Gospel of John.

celestial

Immersed in the practice of creating

blazing through murky bottoms.

was the first to clearly articulate the source of this unquenchable Light

John who ritually cleansed

the elusive mystery of the Divine

Because John spoke with power, many believed in the Light. Others wondered whether he might be the Light, 8

and in doing so, he invited the entire creation to hear the Voice.

He does not call out from a distant place but draws near.

and speaks clearly

Though the Voice utters only truth,

who have heard the Voice before

hear and

Because we are born of this world, we can only be reborn to God by accepting His call.

that had been an enigma in the heavens chose to

evidenced in

the wanderer

long

gifts o

He is the Voice of God

which make life worth living

straight

I am somewhat baffled by the large amount of added text in italics. Some of it seems to be very legitimate implied information and other parts are more obscure.

I am, however, quite delighted with the term "voice" used instead of "word." Here are a couple of extracts of the Book of Formation, a Hebrew text from the first few centuries AD.

Although this text mentions the "sefirot," it is a pre-kabbalah text, and not kabbalistic.

Peter asks,

What do you all thing of "the Voice" instead of "the Word"? I think this opens a very interesting conversation on the primacy of the spoken over the printed word, for one thing, and perhaps many other contrasts.

An example of the dialogue in this version is also provided by Peter,

Religious Leaders:

John the Immerser:

if that is what you are asking.

Religious Leaders:

Your words sound familiar, like a prophet’s.

John the Immerser:

Religious Leaders:

Moses told us would come?

John the Immerser:

They continued to press John, unsatisfied with the lack of information.

Religious Leaders:

especially the Pharisees,

Additional Translation Resources

2008-08-25T12:59:00.000-07:00

I have been asked for some additional Greek resources. I wrote about some of them here, but I did not include any interlinear help. Here is an Online Greek Interlinear Bible. It is very attractive.

There are some problems with using an interlinear, as Mike pointed out.

Here is an interlinear for the Septuagint, and the translinear for the Hebrew Bible. Here are some additional links to lists of Bible translations.

Online Bible translations
English Bible Translations
Look Higher
Strong's Concordance

I highly recommend Rotherham's Emphasized Bible. And as you know I am continuing to pursue my interest in Pagnini and Erasmus (not on the internet) as the pivot texts of the Reformation and the foundation of the vernacular Bibles of Europe.

I think we need to hold interpretation lightly, as I am astounded at the different interpretations being produced on some topics. I would not normally use an interlinear myself, but I have changed my view slightly and now think that they do make a contribution for some people in ascertaining how much interpretation has been added to even the most literal translations.

Let me add that the Perseus Project has the Liddell Scott Jones lexicon so everyone has public access to the best.

Perseus Project
Perseus Project under Philologic

Anagrams of Bible Translations

2008-08-25T12:54:00.000-07:00

Last week on my blog I wrote a post about anagrams for various Bible translations. I thought I'd try again here and give BBB readers a chance to use the Internet anagram server to create an anagram of a Bible version and post the result in the comments here. Feel free to rearrange results provided by the server.

My favorite is "A Valentine's Worst Lining."

Defining the words

2008-08-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

This is a follow up to Suzanne's post The Apostle Titus. It started as a comment, but this post goes in an entirely different direction.

She quoted Bill, who asked,

How come no major translations are willing to call Titus & Epaphroditus "Apostles"?

I think this underscores an important need Bible users have regarding their interaction with a translation:

They need clear, accurate definitions of the original words.

We have no tool for this today. Yes, I know we have lexicons; however, they provide glosses. Even the new BDAG, though it attempts to provide something like a definition, does not supply what is needed. (Anyway, BDAG is more an original language, research tool than a Bible study, exegetic tool, but, I digress).

Here's where I'm coming from. The word ἀπόστολος (APOSTOLOS) means:

"A person commissioned by an authority to carry out a given task, who is delegated not only the commissioner's responsibility, but also his or her authority, to complete that task."

That, IMO, is the definition. Which can be verified through the use of tools such as BDAG.

So, in the case of the twelve Apostles, we have men who were commissioned by Christ, delegated with his requisite authority, to birth the church. There are typological reasons for 'twelve' that I won't get into that complicate a direct answer to the original question. But, the important piece of information regarding the word ἀπόστολος has to do with the elements of the definition:

one who commissions,
the commissioning with the given task,
and the delegation of authority.

These elements make up the definition. For the twelve this meaning is close to what we refer to when we use the complex term "Commissioned Officer," though a simple term would be best. Perhaps 'Apostle' is as good as it gets.

Titus & Epaphroditus are a little different than these twelve. They weren't commissioned by Christ (at least not directly). They were commissioned by the Church. Note what 2 Cor. says: ἀπόστολοι ἐκκλησιῶν (APOSTOLOI EKKLHSIWN, "apostles of churches"). In other words, it was "churches" that commissioned these men. These churches would have delegated their authority and responsibility to further the growth of the Church. This understanding flows quite naturally from the definition of the word. And, FWIW, we call these people "missionaries" today.

The definition helps us wrap our minds around what the translation is doing. And, more importantly, gives us insight into the why behind the translation decisions.

In other words, if we had clear, natural, and accurate definitions, ones that expressed the various elements inherent to the word, then Bible students could interact more knowledgeably with a given translation.

Some of the benefits would be:

Bible students would interact with more depth into the meaning, and they would be less inclined to sit on the surface of the form.
They would see how the translation attempts to reflect the original meaning. The translation may not achieve as high quality as the student expects; however, the student would at least be helped by the definitions to see what the translation is attempting to do.
They would see more clearly how words interact within a given text: sharpening and molding each other's meanings as they form coherency within a text.
The students would less inclined to walk down the pathway of "matching up glosses." That is, they wouldn't "hunt for the right gloss in the lexicon."
And they would more easily realize that concordance doesn't provide exegetic insight; it simply conflates--and confuses--the English lexis with the Greek one (or Hebrew).
However, the negatives of a literal translation would be mitigated by having word definitions easily at hand. So, literal translations may actually increase in value as they provide better transparency into the original. One benefit here is that cross-textual coherency (eg allusions) would not be lost as they are with less literal translations.
Overall, people would start to get a much better feel for what it means to translate a text.

If the student would start with the definition of the words, then they would more easily walk the pathway of meaning transference--which is what translation is all about. They would be less tempted to venture down the cul-de-sac of matching up forms. I think that would be a win for everyone.

The non-dancers' Bible

2008-08-23T08:28:00.000-07:00

Peter has an interesting post this morning. He classifies it as humour but to me the omission of a simple word or line has implications for the proof-texting Baptist of his story.

The Apostle Titus

2008-08-22T23:37:00.000-07:00

Bill asked,

How come no major translations are willing to call Titus & Epaphroditus "Apostles"? (2Cor.8:23 & Php.2:25)This is an excellent question. To tell the truth I had never thought of this before.

apostoloi

The KJV, ESV, NRSV, (T)NIV and NLT do not have "apostles" in this verse. The ESV, NRSV, and NLT do have a footnote, while the KJV and T(NIV) do not. In historic versions, Coverdale and Douay-Rheims have "apostles" and Tyndale, Geneva Bible and ~~all~~ most subsequent translations in English do not have "apostles." Luther's translation does not have "apostles."

I cannot imagine why "apostles" is retained in Romans 16:7 and not in 1 Cor. 8:23 and Phil. 2:25.

Bill now wants to know,

In short: is there a clergy-bias in our NT translation? And more importantly, when will it end?IMO there is bias regarding the use of words like "those who rule" "bishop" "church" and so on, so yes there could well be bias here.

PS The Rotherham translation does have "apostle" for Titus and Epaphroditus. If you don't read Greek, get a copy of this Bible. It is truly outstanding in its fidelity to Greek.

The Bible Marketing Generation Gap

2008-08-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

Wayne Hastings at Thomas Nelson stopped by my blog today and mentioned a post of his: Chronological Study Bible Debate Response. At this point there's really not much of a debate about this Study Bible but maybe there should be. He cites some interesting statistics as justification for the development of this new study Bible:

The Bible Literacy Report I finds that 98% of English teachers say that Bible literacy gives a distinct academic advantage and 90% say it is critical to a good education. They also said that an alarming loss of Bible knowledge among teens is eroding students’ ability to understand British and American literature impairing their study of art, music, history, and culture.
The Bible Literacy Report II reveals that English professors surveyed at leading universities – including Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford – unanimously agree that, regardless of one’s faith, an educated person needs to know the Bible.
Recent Time Magazine and Religion & Ethics Newsweekly reports indicate that most Americans can only name one of the four Gospels and cannot name the first book of the Bible; and 60% cannot name five of the Ten Commandments.

Will such a Bible address these problems? I suspect not. Growing Biblical illiteracy is a phenomenon with multiple causes. Especially with regard to targeting the problem among teens I suspect that a Manga Bible or a LOLCatsBible will do far more to impart basic Bible knowledge than a sort-of scholarly Study Bible.

While Biblical literacy may be spiraling, Internet literacy continues to surge. Perhaps the next big product needed is not a Bible but a blog. Or a series of YouTube videos based on Biblical stories (sex, violence, magic, miracles! What more do you need?!?) Or possibly social-media will provide new ways for this generation to engage with timeless truths.

Malcolm Gladwell discusses the success of MTV in his book Blink. One of the keys is that they don't rely on middle aged men in suits to develop programming for their target market of 18-25 year olds. Hmmm, that's a thought. Maybe folks like Wayne at Thomas Nelson aren't able to answer the question of what the next generation needs. Maybe it is the next generation that will apply God's Word to today's reality in ways that us old folks would never imagine.

Where did verses come from

2008-08-20T22:03:00.000-07:00

Iyov has been posting on the Geneva Bible. This is the first English Bible to divide the text into the present versification. However, Iyov then writes,

But even if the verse division was more of a hindrance than a help, a main achievement of the Geneva was translating from the original, for the first time in English, the major poetic books of the Bible. In those books, the verse division gained more than it lost. Not only did it lend greater clarity to poetic parallelism, but it gave impetus to the English biblical tradition of resonant obscurity.

I aknowledge that Iyov is expressing the majority opinion. However, my contention is that every Bible is a translation from the text that the translators are most familiar with in their own minds. In this case, it is still the Latin text that the translators of the Geneva Bible were most familiar with and depended on. The image shows the Robert Etienne 1551 text which was widely used by translators. (Click on the image to enlarge.) The Greek is flanked by the Vulgate and Erasmus Latin translation.

This is the book to which we are indebted for our custom of quoting the Bible by chapter and verse. It is the first division of the Bible into verses.

The reason for the development is probably an accident of the format. This book has three separate texts of the Bible: the Greek is set in the middle of each page, next to Erasmus’s Latin and the Vulgate Latin. It appears that the need to provide a basis for cross-references and comparison gave birth to the idea.

Printing three columns in such small format may very well have influenced the development of verse divisions. The tiny format of this book, which is in sextodecimo, may have suggested the idea of setting off each sentence as an indented paragraph. Indenting each sentence in small format—a style we see in some newspaper articles—is aesthetically compatible with narrow columns since it breaks up the rectangularity of the textblocks. This system of indentation may have suggested, as well, the enumeration. The numbers are much less forbidding at the beginning of indentations than they would be if they were set in relatively rapid succession throughout solid textblocks.

...

One earlier book that may have inspired the insertion of verse markings was the Psalterium Quincuplex, printed by Robert Estienne in 1509. The Psalms had traditional verse divisions, but in this version Estienne numbered them, no doubt in order to make cross-references between the five versions of the text easier. Santi Pagnini’s Bible translation of 1528 also had numerical markers throughout the text, but his divisions did not catch on. He divided the first chapter of Matthew, for example, into forty-nine units.

This is one of the first books that Estienne printed in Geneva after fleeing Paris in fear of censure from the Sorbonne. Geneva had become an intellectual haven for biblical philology under the inspiration of John Calvin. Estienne did become a Calvinist. In a controversial, eleventh-hour codicil to his will, he even bequeathed a tidy sum to support the efforts of the Geneva Academy, an important institution in the history of the Reformed Church.

I would like to study this matter further, so my remarks on this matter are somewhat speculative, as is often noted by my cobloggers.

PS: I am still checking for more detail on versification in the OT. More here where Etienne is cited as " Stephanus."

Update: The 1551 edition in the image was the NT only. Stephanus published the Latin Vulgate with versification in 1555 adding numbers to the "sof pasuk" divisions of the Masoretic tradition. The Geneva Bible was the first English Bible to reflect these divisions. See Iyov's series on the Geneva Bible.

Build Your Own Bible

2008-08-20T12:24:00.001-07:00

HT: ElShaddai Edwards
Image courtesy: BRYON’S WEBLOG

Well just yesterday I was blogging at Lingamish on the link between Rock music and the Psalms and now Bryon mentions some editions of the NLT with bright metal covers: The NLT Metal Bible Series. What is the world coming to? Back in June I mentioned the LOLCatBible. While the proliferation of Bibles in English may sometimes seem bizarre, I have noticed the tendency for niche Bibles even in Africa where people don't have any Bible in their language. It is quite common for a Catholic translation to be rejected by Protestants and vice versa. Sound familiar?

In this age of print on demand I can imagine people being able to order their own Bible with customized cover, version and even contents. Lulu.com meets BibleGateway.com. Why not?!?

Luther meets Ryken

2008-08-19T22:29:00.000-07:00

The conversation has been hot and heavy on TC's blog, New Leaven. A good comparison of the ESV and NRSV today. But on an earlier post Luther meets Ryken, we got into an interesting discussion.

TC claimed,

Here’s the grind: while the English professor is highly critical of the dynamic equivalence approach to Bible translation, the 16th century German reformer gladly embraced the dynamic equivalence approach to Bible translation of his time.

Iyov wrote,

No, this is not really right. You are mistranslating Luther, or misexpressing him. He did not produce a dynamic translation and took care to produce an accurate translation according to the standards of his day.

Do you have the original German quote?

And I took the bait. I am such a sucker for this stuff. I wrote,

I think Tyndale and Luther had the same goals and undertook a very similar type of translation. However, Luther did sneak in a few of his own dynamic translations here and there. For example,

1. He added allein “only” to Romans 3:28,

Rom. 3:28

Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. KJV

So halten wir nun dafür, daß der Mensch gerecht werde ohne des Gesetzes Werke, allein durch den Glauben. Luther

2. He prefered to say that a woman was schwanger “pregnant” rather than “with child” or “conceive seed.”

Hebrews 11:11

Durch den Glauben empfing auch Sara Kraft, daß sie schwanger (pregnant) ward und gebar über die Zeit ihres Alters; denn sie achtete ihn treu, der es verheißen hatte. Luther

Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised. KJV

3. And I like what he did here,

Hebrews 13:17

Gehorcht euren Lehrern (teachers) und folgt (follow) ihnen;

Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit to them KJV

4. But not so much here,

Romans 16:7

Grüßet den Andronikus und den Junias, (first to translate Junia as a male) meine Gefreundeten und meine Mitgefangenen, welche sind berühmte Apostel (are well known apostles) und vor mir gewesen in Christo. Luther

Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me. KJV

Otherwise, though, it is very similar to Tyndale although there are specific differences in details. For example, “saved” and “blessed” are both translated with selig and German lacks latinizations like “justification” so that would always be gerechtigkeit - righteousness.

Luther’s Bible sounds less formal than the KJV but it is still for the most part literal. That my sense in any case.

So here is the question, if Luther's translation is relatively literal why did he write,

"Whoever would speak German must not see Hebrew idioms; but if he understand the Hebrew writer, he must see to it that he grasps his meaning and must think: Now let me see. How does a German speak in this case?"

How should we characterize Luther's translation?

Hot topics in Bible translation

2008-08-18T15:51:00.001-07:00

Since my fellow BBBers have been silent for several days I thought I would jump in not with a post but a question:

For you as a reader of this blog, what do you consider to be a hot topic in Bible translation?

Tell us in the comments and maybe we can start up a good debate.

In the beginning ...

2008-08-14T20:30:00.000-07:00

On the NLT blog today, Tremper Longman writes about the reasons for knowing the identity of the translators of any Bible version. He writes,

The main value of knowing who translated the Bible you are reading is to let you know the theological perspective of the work. (Yes, it is also to tell you that the people who did it are highly trained specialists in the language and literature of the Old and New Testaments). But what difference does the theological perspective of the translator make?

A big difference. After all, as I like to say, a translation is a commentary without a note. Well, not quite, but what I mean is that to translate requires interpretation and interpretation means that exegetical decisions have to be made. Much of the Bible is crystal clear and easily rendered into a modern language like English, but not all of it.

Let me give an example from the very first verses of Genesis (1:1-2) and let’s do so by comparing the NLT and the NRSV.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. (NLT)

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep…” (NRSV)

Notice the difference? In the NRSV at the time (when) God created the heavens and earth, the earth was formless and void. In other words, it was already there and ready for God to use. The NLT hints at a creation from nothing. There was nothing and then God created a formless earth which he then shaped into the habitable planet described in the rest of Genesis 1.
------

I am tempted to contribute my usual schtick. Here are an additional five translations of the first two lines of Gen. 1,

Artscroll Series

JPS

Fox

Alter

Julia Smith

As an addendum I would like to add that the rabbi that I studied with this summer explained that the Jewish translations are roughly distributed thus. Artscroll is Orthodox, JPS is Conservative, and Fox is Reform. If you disagree, take it up with her!

Thanks to Kurk Gayle for directing me to Julia Smith's translation.

My boss is a Jewish carpenter

2008-08-14T09:59:00.001-07:00

Think about the word carpenter. What does a carpenter do for a living?

What type of carpenter was Jesus?

A house-builder
A furniture maker
A chariot maker
A brick mason

The word for carpenter in the gospels is τέκτων tekton. Our English work architect, meaning “chief builder” is related to this word.

The word occurs twice in the New Testament:

Matthew 13:55 “Isn't this the carpenter's son? Isn't his mother's name Mary? Aren't his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas?”

Mark 6:3 “Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son? Isn't this the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?" They were not pleased with him at all.”

In these verse the people don’t seem to be complimenting Jesus. My assumption is that they considered Jesus to be an uneducated manual worker and unqualified for a teaching ministry.

Jesus was a blue-collar worker. “What does this construction worker think he’s doing?” That captures some of the condescension.

“Carpenter” is a slightly inaccurate translation. Do you agree?

I grew up in Oregon where entire houses are made of wood. They have studs for framing, plywood for underfloor, cabinets, siding and roofing all made of wood. So I grew up imagining Jesus wearing a toolbelt. Maybe with a couple of nails hanging from his lips. But houses were certainly not built that way in ancient times. Wood was scarce. Houses were made out of… what? I assume that the average house in Palestine was far closer in construction to an African hut than an American ranch-style house.

If you’ve only got a fuzzy notion of how houses were built in the time of Christ, you’re in good company. Luke might have been a good doctor but his knowledge of house construction in Galilee was rather weak. In the story of the paralytic let down through the roof, Mark precisely writes, “digging through it.” (2:4) Luke, no doubt imagining the houses of Rome with their tiled roofs writes, “through the tiles.” (5:19)

Can anyone share some online resources that talk about houses and carpenters in the time of Christ?

What kind of τέκτων do you think Jesus was?

See a couple of modern depictions of Jesus as a carpenter: embroidered, wood carving, bumper sticker

Update: Ben Witherington has a Jewish Carpenter poem with the “embroidered” image linked above: A CARPENTER'S CONFESSION.

comparing ESV and NLT study Bibles

2008-08-12T12:03:00.000-07:00

ElShaddai Edwards has been comparing the ESV and NLT study Bibles. His latest post compares the two for the first part of Ezekial.

There are now blogs specifically for the NLT Study Bible and the ESV Study Bible. And before those blogs came blogs for the ESV and NLT themselves, which many of you are already aware of.

It would be helpful if there would also be official blogs promoting the TNIV and the TNIV Study Bible. A number of us have been concerned for some time about inadequate official promotion / marketing for the TNIV.

Robert Alter

2008-08-11T15:29:00.000-07:00

What does literature have to do with the Bible? HT יהוה מלך

NLT Study Bible video

2008-08-11T12:26:00.001-07:00

Check it out and tell me what you think.

ESV Study Bible video

2008-08-09T08:32:00.001-07:00

HT: Michael Spencer

Please remember our “Posting Guidelines” (see sidebar)

Do not shoot talk nothing at people that they made bad skin so they must receive heavy.

2008-08-07T08:10:00.001-07:00

The title of this post is a back-translation from the the Goiniri Onnele language of Papua New Guinea. The phrase in question is from Luke 6:37, “Do not condemn.” Zephyr at ΑΓΑΠΗΣΕΙΣ is beginning a series of posts discussing his experience checking translations done in Papua New Guinea. What’s so fascinating about his articles is how Papua New Guinean languages are so different from Greek and require different strategies for communicating information. For example, Onnele verbs lack a true passive, require an object, and more which makes it impossible to say something like “lest you be condemned.” Instead you have to say something like, “lest others say that you should be accused for doing wrong.” While Onnele lacks a passive, I assume that the grammar has a way of backgrounding a subject in order to highlight an object which is one of the functions of passivization.

The term for sin is “bad skin.” Reading Zephyr’s posts reminds me why I got into Bible translation in the first place. Being forced to express Biblical ideas in another language forces you to see these ideas in new ways that are less tied to your native language. And in the process, Biblical concepts begin to impact culture in ways that were never possible when they only had access to the Scriptures in a trade language.

Zephyr has promised a long series if there is interest. Here are the first two posts:

Alter’s Psalter Falters

2008-08-06T10:09:00.001-07:00

Well, not really. But I couldn’t resist the alliteration. ;-)

I found a copy of Robert Alter’s The Book of Psalms at our local library and I have been thumbing through it in a lazy vacation sort of way. The introduction contains mind-bending prose like this:

“Poetically effective sequencing may be combined with the semantic dynamics to which lines of parallelistic verse lend themselves.” (p. xxvi)

Whoa! Scary thing is I almost understand what he’s talking about! Alter has to condescend to his readers somewhat because if he was only writing to his peers he wouldn’t need to publish a book he could just print five copies and hand them out.

My first stab at the book was just opening it to Psalm 1 and giving it a read. That was a mistake. My little translator critic alarm was dinging wildly from the first verse. But wait. Isn’t this guy hugely smarter than I am? Doesn’t he have Hebrew in the bag and more literary honors than I could stuff in my sock drawer? So he probably has good reasons for making a translation that sounds this strange. Thus my next step was to back up and start reading the introduction. I tried to swallow the intro right after lunch which ended up with me passed out on the bed and the book pushed under the pillow. This morning I tried again while still high on coffee and I was in just the right frame of mind to really enjoy the introduction and not get too hung up by prose like that shown above.

To summarize: Alter hopes to reflect in his translation something of the terseness and prosody of the original. In addition, he’s trying to give it a slightly archaic flavor while shunning traditional semantic mind-ruts like “sin,” “salvation,” and “soul.”

I’m looking forward to reading the translation and notes on Alter’s terms. But I think I’ll go hang out on the beach for a while first. If you’ve read Alter’s Psalms maybe you could give me some pointers on how I could make the most of reading this translation.

PodBible on Facebook

2008-08-05T13:47:00.000-07:00

Tim Bulkeley has just put the PodBible on Facebook, in addition to its usual spot on the Internet. If you don't have a Facebook account yet, they are free. And there are some Bible programs, as well as some fun games. (I've become quite a fan of several of them, Scramble, Guess the Word, Prolific, Scrabble, etc.).

The PodBible is audio recordings which were made of volunteers reading the CEV around the clock in New Zealand a couple of years ago. I have appreciated these recordings and hope that many others do also. I have blogged about the PodBible in the past but am always glad to mention it again.

There is something special about exposing ourselves to the Bible in new media. Most of us are accustomed to reading it. It's good to hear it. And with video productions of much of the Bible, it's good to hear and see it.

English Bible Version Generator

2008-07-30T03:54:00.001-07:00

Now this is a tool that we’ve been needing for a long time. Eddie Arthur, a Bible translator based in the UK has come up with this amazing tool for producing names for Bible translations: The English Bible Version Generator. Just think how handy that is! We’ve got the AV and the ASV and the RSV and the NRSV and the ISV and the ESV. I kid you not! So the field is getting rather crowded. But thanks to Eddie’s tool you have 320 possible names for your very own personal Bible translation!

I think I’m going to call my version the “Inspired Dynamic Study Testament” or IDST. Now that I have a name all I have to do is translate the Bible. But I just need to make this clear from the start: the IDST will have no Apocrypha. And I’m going to translate the entire Bible into Haiku poetry using The Message as my source text…

Try out The English Bible Version Generator at Kouya.net.

More NLT buzz

2008-07-26T15:45:00.001-07:00

No, that’s not a variation on a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich!

Here are a couple of places where people are talking about the NLT:

Nick Norelli has a hot “photo review” just out: NLT Study Bible: A Pictoral Review also see his original post NLT Study Bible: Initial Reaction.
Eddie Arthur has two posts out as well: The New Living Translation and Simple Language.
I have a picture and a few comparisons between the NLT Study Bible and CEV Learning Bible at Lingamish: Bible Cage Match Redux
Byron (a new blogger to me) has two posts: NLT Study Bible: Preliminary observations and New Living Translation (NLT) Manga Bible
ElShaddai Edwards: NLT Study Bible: focusing on historical context (long comment thread)
TC Robinson: The Second Coming of the NLT has taken the Bible World by Storm!

Tyndale seems to be doing a lot of things right in the marketing of this Bible version. They’ve avoided firestorms while also coming out with a lot of attractive editions of their Bible. The CEV by the American Bible Society and the TNIV by Zondervan seem to be struggling to gain momentum by comparison.

Any other buzz out there about the NLT?

BTW I heard that all the review copies of the NLT Study Bible have been sent out.

[Updated]

In the news: World's oldest Bible goes online

2008-07-24T07:59:00.000-07:00

Parts of Codex Sinaiticus will go online starting today. CNN reports:

The British Library plans to begin publishing the Codex Sinaiticus, a 4th century text handwritten in Greek, on its Web site. The Gospel of Mark and the Book of Psalms go online Thursday. The full manuscript is to be online in a year.

Don't try to preserve verbal links in translation!

2008-07-23T11:06:00.000-07:00

A poster on a private mailing list about Bible translation put forward an argument which was essentially that Bibles should be translated literally and concordantly in order to preserve the verbal links and word plays between different books, even between the Testaments. This is what I wrote in reply:

This reminds me of a talk I heard from an Islamic scholar arguing that the Qur'an is untranslatable, because of all the complex verbal links which cannot be preserved in translation. The complex links in Bible translation cannot all be preserved, and so if that is your standard we have to conclude that the Bible is untranslatable.

But as a counter-argument to that we see that the apostles used a Bible translation which didn't preserve the Hebrew verbal links, and Jesus' words are preserved for us in translation, with many verbal links doubtless lost and others speculatively reconstructed. So I think what this is teaching us is that these verbal links are of secondary importance.

Indeed I might provocatively suggest that they have been deliberately obscured in the process of God inspiring the New Testament to stop Christians getting involved in "disputing about words ... stupid, senseless controversies" (2 Timothy 2:14,23).

Rise of the New Living Translation

2008-07-23T08:01:00.000-07:00

Don't miss Rick Mansfield's latest post, Rise of the New Living Translation.

Overly interpretive translations

2008-07-21T09:04:00.001-07:00

Iyov has a post comparing different versions of Ecclesiastes 11:1. Here’s the KJV:

Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days. Give a portion to seven, and also to eight; for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth.

Looking at the different versions on Iyov’s post you can tell a lot about the philosophies of the different translation committees. Iyov is critical of interpretive translations that “close out alternative meanings.” When I first started consulting for a Bible translation I believed that you should find “the meaning” and translate it as clearly as possible. Now after almost ten years of battling to find the meaning I have relaxed quite a bit and now hope to eliminate misunderstanding without restricting a range of interpretations. That’s a linguistic tug-of-war that almost always ends with polysemy on the losing end of the rope.

Upon arrival in the US I found a copy of the CEV Learning Bible waiting for me. I almost said “weighing for me” because this volume is huge. Despite the hefty size and price tag (more than $30), I am really excited about this edition. It weds the clear CEV text to margins full of helpful notes. But my favorite part is all the pictures. The edition features artwork from all over the world and through the centuries. I’m definitely going to start using this for our family devotions.

Below are details from the page featuring Ecclesiastes 11:1.

Here is the note in the margin:

There’s a lot to like about this format. The text gives a clear “interpretation” of the original. Then the margin note muddies things up a bit showing how this phrase has been interpreted over the ages.

Head on over to read Iyov’s excellent article: Overly interpretive translations

1 John 3:1 (T)NIV

2008-07-19T04:52:00.000-07:00

I love 1 John 3:1 in NIV and TNIV, especially the first part:

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! (NIV)

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! (TNIV)

There is something wonderful about the thought that the Father has lavished his love on us, and I mean in the idea, not just in the alliteration. But is this translation justified? The word translated "has lavished" is dedoken, which is just the normal Greek word for "has given". There is nothing in the text to suggest the extra generosity implied by the word "lavish".

Also potapos doesn't really mean "how great" or "what great". In classical Greek it meant "from what country", and I'm sure that preachers could craft a nice creative sermon from that thought. But in Koine Greek it seems to have meant more like "what kind of", although Barclay Newman suggests the gloss "what wonderful" for this verse and for Mark 13:1.

So in this case the more prosaic ESV rendering is actually better justified by the text:

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; ... (ESV)

To me, this illustrates the danger of allowing literary flourishes like "love ... lavished" to have precedence over accurate rendering of the meaning.

Denominations and Bible versions

2008-07-17T11:56:00.000-07:00

I think that most English Bible translators hope that their translation of the Bible will serve the needs of more than one church denomination. It is interesting, however, to note the denominational background (or funding) for some English Bible versions. In this post I'll note denominational connections. But before doing so, I want to emphasize that many, if not most, of those who have translated and published these versions do not wish for them to be thought of as denominational versions. In my own years of study of English Bible versions I have found very little evidence of denominational bias in translations. (There is greater ideological or theological bias, but that bias is not limited to beliefs of single denominations, except in the case of the NWT.) So, please do not take away from this post that the versions mentioned here are denominational versions. They are not denominational versions, except for the NWT and the Catholic versions (which are also used by some Protestants, as "Protestant" versions are used by some Catholics). These versions just originated with a denomination or had funding from a denomination or an organization association with a denomination.

Here are denominational connections for some English Bible versions:

KJV - Church of ~~English~~ England (Anglican)
NAB - Catholic
JB/NJB - Catholic
NIV - Christian Reformed impetus, but began with an inter-denominational translation committee
NWT - Jehovah's Witnesses
God's Word - Lutheran (Missouri Synod)
HCSB - Southern Baptist (see Kevin Sam's recent blog post; I disagree with Sam if he is saying that there is Baptist influence in the HCSB text itself)
NCV - Churches of Christ
Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures - Jewish
"Our New Bible" (version name not chosen yet) - United Methodist (but ecumenical)

Please feel free to correct me if I have erred anywhere. And please comment on other denominational connections with specific Bible versions, if you are aware of any.

Hebrews 2:7

2008-07-11T23:40:00.000-07:00

Nathan has asked John and myself to post about Psalm 8:5 in Hebrews 2:7. This is a fascinating issue. I will only look at a few points relevant to the Greek version of this verse. First, the author of Hebrews quotes exactly from the copy of the LXX as we know it today.

But the Hebrew is

vattechassereihu me'at, mei'elohim

Elohim

The King James creates an agreement between the passage in the Psalms and in Hebrews.

It is worth noting that the Vulgate has "angels" while Jerome's Iuxta Hebraicum has "God" and the Pagnini translation has "angels" again (Excuse my English). Of the Reformation versions, we see,

"God" Luther, Geneva, ERV, RSV, NRSV
"angels" Coverdale, Bishop's, KJV
"heavenly beings" ESV, (T)NIV

As an aside, this might point to Luther and Geneva favouring the Iuxta Heb. or the Hebrew itself, and Coverdale depending more on Pagnini. However, the translation that Nathan points to uses "the powers that be" for elohim. Perhaps that is the meaning suggested by the use of "angels" in Greek. There is a suggestion that the meaning of elohim is related to that of ἐξουσία in Rom. 13:1

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities ἐξουσίαιςIt seems that in Rom. 8:38, ἄγγελοι (angels) are related to ἀρχαὶ (principalities) and δυνάμεις (powers).

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Rom. 8:38.It is also worth noting that the LXX translates elohim as "angels" on other occasions as well, notably Deut. 32:43 and Psalm 97:7. This is then quoted in Hebrews 1:6,

Let all God’s angels worship him. So, when we see "angels" in this verse, it is a translation of elohim. Is the author of Hebrews saying that the elohim worship Christ? I hope this provides some background to Nathan's post and provokes a little thought about elohim and "angels." I have not commented on the other aspect of this post, that the verb should read, "he requires little."

Nathan has written a post presenting the possible translation,

God’s Long Nostrils

2008-07-11T12:37:00.001-07:00

You gotta see it to believe it: God’s Long Nostrils at Scotteriology.

Romans 3:12

2008-07-11T00:36:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting verse where I think the ESV did the right thing and kept the KJV tradition. It also brings up the question of how Paul cited the LXX. In Romans 3:4, Paul cites Ps. 51:4,

Of course, Ps. 51:4 in the ESV is translated from the Hebrew.

לְמַעַן תִּצְדַּק בְּדָבְרֶךָ
תִּזְכֶּה בְשָׁפְטֶךָ

However, you can see that in P 51:4, the phrase "in your judgment" is active and in the LXX and Rom. 3:4 the phrase is passive, "when you are judged." This caused Luther quite a bit of consternation. Apparently Calvin was ahead of Luther in realizing that the Hebrew of Ps. 51:4 said "in your judgment."

Many other translations have decided to simply tidy up the discrepancy between Ps. 51:4 and Rom. 3:4. Here are a few.

Here are some of my questions. Is the Hebrew vague or ambiguous? Did Paul know what the Hebrew was for this psalm? What do we do when two different interpretations for one original verse appear in the scriptures?

For Augustine this lead to his belief that the LXX was inspired as a translation. So for him the original Hebrew was inspired and the LXX was inspired. He actually thought that the LXX must have been a better translation of the Hebrew than Jerome's Latin Vulgate, because the LXX was translated by a "comittee" and Jerome was only one person.

I like the fact that the ESV retains the original sense of what Paul wrote, even though the sense is very odd indeed. Is God judged?

Putting paid to the complementarian position on 1 Corinthians 14:33-34

2008-07-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

The title of a post at the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog, International SBL Meetings in Auckland, New Zealand, gave me little clue to the great significance of its content, the second paragraph. I would of course like to see the paper of which this is a summary. But it seems to have overthrown one of the main bases within the New Testament text for the complementarian position, and demonstrated why many translations of the passage in question, 1 Corinthians 14:33-34, are in error.

The standard Greek texts, Nestle-Aland 27th edition and UBS 4th edition, put a paragraph break in the middle of verse 33 and no punctuation at all to separate it from verse 34. That is, they associate the phrase translated "as in all the churches of the saints" with the following main clause rather than the preceding one. As such they depart from the tradition established by KJV and before that by whoever divided the text into verses, and strengthened by the English Revised Version (1881) which indicates a paragraph break at the start of verse 34. But by the time of the RSV (1946/1971) the interpretation had changed, and this translation has the same breaks as the Greek texts, as do NIV (1978/1984) and NRSV (1989). But TNIV (2001/2005), has reverted almost to the ERV punctuation, with a new paragraph at the start of verse 34; as such it reflects the preference of Gordon Fee, one of its translation team, as expressed in his 1987 commentary on 1 Corinthians. Indeed Fee writes (p.697 footnote 49):

The idea that v. 33b goes with v. 34 seems to be a modern phenomenon altogether.

What was the reason for the change between ERV and RSV? Was there some technicality in the Greek text, not recognised by earlier scholars or only found in more recent manuscripts, which suggested the paragraph division in the scholarly texts? Or might it just be that editors preferred a reading which strengthened Paul's supposed instruction in verse 34 that women should be silent? After all, in Romans 16:7 the same Greek text editors, with no manuscript evidence at all, supplied the accents for the unattested male name Junias rather than for the well known female name Junia, for which the only possible explanation is a theological preference. If they preferred a "complementarian" reading in Romans, it seems quite plausible that they made a similar decision in 1 Corinthians.

And that suspicion seems to me to be confirmed by the paper presented at SBL in New Zealand. For the paper concludes that

the overwhelming consensus among the manuscripts [is] that the major punctuation or segmentation break should be at the end of v. 33, not in the middle of the verse. This would result in "as in all the churches of the saints" being applied to the principle of God being one of order, not disorder, and would negate applying this WS [i.e. "as" in Greek] clause to verses 34-35.

Of course this conclusion does not in itself invalidate the statement that (literally) "the women should be silent in the churches". But it does reduce the emphasis on it and the grounds for taking this as a rule for all time rather than a situational and temporary one. It also opens the way for two alternative interpretations of verses 34-35, one that these are words of the Corinthians which Paul rejects in verse 36; and the other, preferred by Fee with some slight manuscript support, that these verses are not an original part of the letter but a marginal gloss incorporated by mistake into the text. Both of these alternatives work only if the "as" phrase (not a clause!) at the end of verse 33 is taken with what comes before it.

Once again TNIV has made the right decision here, anticipating the results presented in the SBL paper and returning to the paragraph division of ERV, which was abandoned for no good reason.

The Bible doesn't say

2008-07-09T17:14:00.000-07:00

In a maelstrom of otherwise incomprehensible verbiage, a note of sanity emerges. Here is my number one pick of the day. Doug writes, The Bible doesn't say. Words to heal the wounded soul.
In memory of a long forgotten meme, I would like to mention some spoof posts - only these are not spoofs. Let's laugh, cry and share some fellow feeling.

Gone with the wind pulls a post. Absolutely unheard of but in a good cause.

Bard and Bible recommends an illustrated abridged paraphrase edition of Shakespeare for my reading pleasure (in the comment section.)

Dave posts a picture of him and his Mom. Condolences, Dave, and what a great picture.

TC and Rick both make a statement of affirmation for the TNIV

Some serious study says "I think. I've confused myself." Wow, do I ever know what that feels like. Great conclusion, 'cause I so identify. Anyway, I love this blog.

And in a new development, the term "ESV-onlyism" is gaining currency. Several bloggers have also weighed in on the term "essentially literal" so we should do a tour on this. And then my next post is going to be on a verse that the ESV does right.

It all started at Tim Challies . Several bloggers responded. El Shaddai, TC, and CD-host. In the process of reading these posts I thought I would track down the phrase "ESV-onlyism." This is a neutral study, BTW.

I don't think this is really about the ESV, but about our attitudes to Bible translation, in general, and "onlyism" in particular. For example, I got quite a shock out of this verse the other day,

So are the words "obey" "rulers" and "authority" in the Greek? Weeeeel, not really. Rotherham is pretty accurate. Don't be an "onlyist," whatever you do. That is more important than which translation you choose.

NLT Blog: Words in the New Living Translation

2008-07-07T19:48:00.000-07:00

Several times I have wished that there would be a blog to promote the NLT (New Living Translation). Tonight I found out that there is one. In one of its first posts, Keith Williams responds to a post by Tim Challies. Tim prefers the ESV. In his post he criticizes translations like the NLT which are not "essentially literal." I left a comment on Tim's post.

Elsewhere

2008-07-03T23:01:00.001-07:00

I am sorry to be absent from here. I note with delight all the memes and mirth. I have been elsewhere protesting against certain teachings which wrongfully derive from the doctrine of the subordination of women. (which is in itself wrong, but I don't expect to convince anyone of that who is not already convinced.) If you wish please add your comments to the thread. 1159 comments and still climbing.

Easy as 1-2-3

2008-07-03T08:30:00.001-07:00

By posting this I'm not just trying to lure you from the respectable Better Bibles Blog to my weird Lingamish blog. But I do want to bring to your attention a post with a rather interesting comment thread: Beg to differ. In this post I listed 9 axioms of Bible translation and begged my readers to differ. Differ they did. In fact, Iyov wasn't sure he could agree with any of them. You might check out the list and see if you agree with what I've written, but I wanted to make sure BBB readers had a chance to think about this quote (thanks again to Iyov):

As will be seen in Chapter 7, in which basic problems of style are considered for languages with a long literary tradition and a well-established traditional text of the Bible, it is usually necessary to have three types of Scriptures: (1) a translation which will reflect the traditional usage and be used in the churches, largely for liturgical purposes (this may be called an “ecclesiastical translation”), (2) a translation in the present-day literary language, so as to communicate to the well-educated constituency, and (3) a translation in the “common” or “popular” language, which is known to and used by the common people, and which is at the same time acceptable as a standard for published materials.

Source: Eugene Nida and Charles Taber’s The Theory and Practice of Translation (p. 31)

What do you think? Is this a helpful way of looking at Better Bibles? In your circumstances, what would be 1, 2, and 3? I've got some good candidates for #1 and #3 but I still haven't found what I'm looking for in a #2. How about you?

Scholarly Legends

2008-06-30T12:59:00.000-07:00

Well, I guess I’ve been tagged by David. Even though I’m supposed to be packing for the first of my summer travels which start tomorrow, I’ll hold forth on something that has been bothering me for the last week.

In 1991 the most eloquent curmudgeon in the field of linguistics, Geoffry Pullum, a professor at — of all places — UC Santa Cruz, that most laid back of all the campuses of the University of California, published a volume of wickedly pointed, but very entertaining, essays about the state and practice of the the field of linguistics, entitled The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax. The essay that gave the book its title can be read online in a rough OCR’ed version here.

Cutting to the chase, the punchline is this: the CW about Eskimos having hundreds of word for snow is hooey. Baloney. The scholarly equivalent of an urban legend.

Pullum draws on the work of a linguistic anthropologist and Mayanist (!) by the name of Laura Martin, a professor at Cleveland State and one time chair of the Department of Anthropology. She traced the growth of this tidbit of CW from Franz Boas’ introduction to the original Handbook of North American Indians, where he cited 4 words, to the full blown legend it is now. In the early 80s she read a paper on the topic at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (I was in the audience) and circulated a long essay meticulously documenting the whole history, but the American Anthropologist would only publish a much reduced version as a research report (vol. 88.2:418-23 [1986]).

But Pullum’s point isn’t really about Eskimo — interesting though that may be. As he himself says:

“[This essay] isn't about Eskimo lexicography at all, though I'm sure it will be taken to be. What it's actually about is intellectual sloth. .... The tragedy is not that so many people got the facts wrong; it is that in the mentally lazy and anti-intellectual world we live in today, hardly anyone cares enough to think about trying to determine what the facts are.” (pg. 171)

Well. I’m here today to grouse about a similar urban legend in Biblical Studies with ugly implications for Bible translation. Dr. Jim West brought it up again last week in a piece called “Why Modern Translations of the Bible Bungle it” and I rankled. The whole piece is based on just a scholarly legend not unlike the Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax.

The arugment of the piece is this:

The times of the Bible were very different from ours.
The Bible needs to express these differences.
Therefore the language of the Bible in translation should sound different.

I’m tempted to stop here and let the reader work out all the fallacies in that reasoning which should be perfectly obvious when it is laid out as a syllogism. But the fact that huge segments of the church have bought this bogus line for so long suggests I had better be more explicit.

The times of the Bible were very different from ours. This is no doubt true. We have more stuff -- a lot more stuff. I don’t mean that we’re more materialist, I mean that science and technology have given us lots of manufactured goods that either didn’t exist or were only available to the wealthiest people of those days. We have indoor plumbing; they were lucky to have outhouses. We have cars and planes. The had horses and camels, and they walked a lot. We have machines, washing machines, dishwashers, and printing presses; they had slaves and scribes.

But, I ask, just how relevant is that to the message of the Bible?

Hardly at all.

Why does the Bible speak to us today? It speaks to us because it’s about human nature. It’s about loyalty and honor, love and respect, and trusting God. These things (and their opposites) haven’t changed a whit since Adam. (If they have, then, as Paul said, we of all men are to be most pitied.)

The Bible needs to express the difference of our worlds. Here I take issue with the premise right up front. The stuff of the Bible that is of interest are those things about human nature. The differences in the worlds and worldviews is irrelevant, beyond the fact that knowing something about them helps us to better understand the motivations and reactions of the people.

So you can see why I reject the conclusion.

Do I think we should go around changing pigs into sheep? or wine into pulque?

Not at all.

But there is an ocean of difference between substitutions of that magnitude and using language that drops a veil between the heart of the reader and the Word of God (Mt. 25:12):

But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, know you not. (KJV)
But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ (ESV)

Instead of

But he replied, ‘I assure you: I do not know you!’ (HSCB)

(Notice the Message is way off base here, but in a different way:

He answered, ‘Do I know you? I don’t think I know you.’)

Now I don’t think it’s an accident that so many students of the Bible fall prey to the mistake of believing in the essential foreignness of the Scriptures. It has an easy explanation.

Anyone who is seriously interested in studying the Bible will study Greek and Hebrew in order to dig deeper. And, as anyone who has learned a second language as an adult can tell you, it takes a very long time before that language stops sounding foreign, even if you are moderately fluent in it. Often you’re a half beat behind as the native speakers rattle on. And they are constantly saying things in ways you’d never have thought of in a million years.

And for languages that you don’t have to actually use in live interaction, the matter is worse. It is the rarest of people for whom written languages become truly alive.

The distance that so very many Bible scholars feel when approach the Scripture in the original languages is not essential to the Scripture. It arises unnoticed as the product of language learning. They feel distance when reading in Greek and Hebrew and think that the distance is in the text. They read passages they don’t fully understand and think that therefore the author was expressing a mystery.

Not at all. The NT is natural in Greek as the Egyptian papyri show. It should be natural in English.

That foreignness stuff, that’s a scholarly legend.

Rich Rhodes seen fishing with Elvis

2008-06-29T12:46:00.001-07:00

Can you explain the disappearance?

Summer Fun: Word Play in Paul

2008-06-29T00:28:00.000-07:00

I had been thinking about a good topic for summer fun. We had Psalm 68 last year, which was wonderful, but I thought we should do something Greek this year.

It must be ESP, because just this afternoon, I was thinking of all the good buddies who blog about Greek, and then I decided to choose "Word play in Paul. " And lucky for me, Iyov has given the topic a great introduction, so I don't have to do that. (As they say, great minds think alike.) So, I hereby second the opening of the summer blog play on Paul! We can do a round up at the end of the month or the end of the summer.

The object will be to write something about the language that Paul uses. Is it influenced by Hebrew, by his rabbinical training, by Greek rhetoric, or what? I have not the remotest clue, so I await your contributions eagerly. Post a sample translation or a passage or discussion of some aspect of Paul's use of language. Examples and comparisons can come from anywhere in the Bible. How does he use the Hebrew Bible, for example. Link to something you have already written, contribute whatever you like. A picture of the hippo dressed up as Paul would also count as an entry.

Here is my meager opening sample, from Romans 15:30-16:2,

διακονία

εὐπρόσδεκτος

ἁγίοις

συνίστημι

διάκονον

προσδέξησθε

ἁγίων

παραστῆτε

προστάτις

ministry

acceptable

saints

stand

with

minister

saints

stand beside

stood before

a) I use "brothers" here in the sense of peers or equals, in the sense that women really are "brothers." It is also easier in a concordant translation like this.

b) Paul repeats the root words for "minister," "accept" and "saints" first for himself and then for Phoebe. Is this chance or deliberate?

c) Paul uses three three related words that create a word play that many translations have tried to imitate in part. συνίστημι - stand together, παρίστημι - stand beside, and προΐστημι - stand before. This is why you see the repeated use of "help" in some translations. Here is the RSV and other translations.

help

helper

Of course, this is based on etymological fallacies, and some meaning may not be communicated properly, but maybe some meaning elements are clearer.

I hope to hear from some of you who are really blogging up the Greek. TC (whom I have lost momentarily, Mike, Rick, everybody. It doesn't have to contain a translation, just some insight, no matter how tangential, into Paul's use of language.

As always I owe a debt to Rotherham's Emphasized Bible.

Wordles for Bible books

2008-06-25T22:17:00.001-07:00

Andy at Think Christian mentioned what for me is a very useful application of the web tool Wordle. Yipeng Huang has created Wordles for each of the New Testament books. Here are just two:

Can you guess which books they represent? (Hint: ~~Hold the mouse over the image for the answer.)~~ Sorry that doesn't work on Blogger. Look at the link instead if you need help.

I believe that Yipeng used the NIV for this exercise. It would be interesting to compare translations of a small rather dense book like Jude and see how the Wordles are different. This works in English because it is an agglutinative language evolving toward being an isolating language. Portuguese and Koine would not work as well because of their richer morphology. This would be a great tool for a Sunday School teacher (or even Bible college professor) who wants to show major themes of a book based on word frequency.

birds and wirds

2008-06-23T20:44:00.001-07:00

First, let me offer a word of thanks to commenters on my previous two posts. It is always a thrill to interact with such a wild and woolly bunch.

The logic problem that always leaves me scratching my head is this: God wrote The Book. He intended for it to be translated. But he left us without the tools to do it properly. We lack the original authors to consult on their intentions. In most cases we have far too little data to make a comparative analysis of lexemes and phrases. We're often not sure of the original author or readers and the cultural milieu that they lived in. Too often, we just don't know. Our translations can become a projected solipsism. Grab it and create the meaning of your choice.

In Spanish or Portuguese if I ask you what you mean, I ask what did you "want to say?" ¿Que queria decir? or Que queria dizer? Jorge Luis Borges once remarked on a translation of one of his works, "It translated what I meant but not what I wanted to say." That "want to say" element of meaning is the part that leaves translators like myself feeling nervous. We can often tell you what God's Word means, but not what he wanted to say. But being God I suspect he could have set things up differently had he wished. Ambiguity and error don't take him by surprise. The one who created bird takes joy in the more than 10,000 species. He might find equal pleasure in the 6,912 wirds.

*6,912 is the number of living languages listed at http://www.ethnologue.com.

If anyone could track down the actual Borges quote I'd be grateful.

'Tis the gift to be simple

2008-06-22T22:10:00.001-07:00

Note to self: never hit "post" before the second cup of coffee in the morning. I mixed a few thens and thans.

There is a misconception about Bible translations that the ones with the biggest words and the most complicated sentences must be the most accurate. And a corollary error is that simple translations are dumb. On the contrary, 'tis the gift to be simple. Speaking clearly and well is a gift. And in translation it is evidence of a translator who has so internalized the original message that they can express it in natural language. But it's more than that. While translations that try to imitate the sentence length of Paul or the wordplay of Isaiah are valuable, they are prone to failure. That's because the nuts and bolts of languages are so different from one to the next that when we try to dolly up English to look like Hebrew we inevitable end up with something badly dressed.

So, 'tis the gift to be simple when making a Bible translation. Because it gives the reader a chance to absorb the meaning with a minimum of barriers. This happened with us last week in translating the story of the man born blind in John 9 into Nyungwe. We laughed at this audacious man who stood up to the powerful and said, "Do you want to become his disciples, too?" And we had more vocabulary for shepherding in Nyungwe than John did in Greek so our translation of John 10 was what some might call "free" in parts.

A good translation depends on what you're after. If you wish to translate the Psalms as if they were Elizabethan sonnets or head-banger anthems then good for you. If you hope to capture some of the raw language of the Psalms in raw English then terrific. If you hope to produce a translation that gives English readers a feeling for the rhythms and cadences of the original Hebrew then please do so. This is part of the problem in our translation debates. Sometimes we take shots at translations without defining what kind of translation we're after. ESV and TNIV are equally excellent translations with regard to their goals of targeting (much different) ideological and liturgical niches.

I am a great lover of the poetry of Pablo Neruda. I fell in love with his language and thought through translation. However had someone decided to make him sound like William Shakespeare or Walt Whitman I might not have been captivated by Neruda's lines of love. So a simple translation of Neruda is best. And then, if you wish to go further. It's time to learn Spanish. So too with the Biblical languages. A simple translation is best. Otherwise we very often end up exegeting a difficult-to-understand translation rather than the original text behind it.

Fall in love with the message of the Bible. And then dive into the original languages and fall in love all over again.

This post title quotes the first line of a beautiful American Shaker song, Simple Gifts. Here are the lyrics:

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain'd,

To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come round right.
(Source: Wikipedia)

Have a blessed week.

Crashing

2008-06-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

I have been away for a bit on other blogs. First, I have tried to engage with a couple of complementarian blogs in a non-combattive way. Second, I have been reading some blogs of girlfriends so I could find some words to express how I feel.

Here is an example of what I found,

How Women Help Men Find God

I can't express how I feel myself - way over the top of what you read here - except to say that it is a pain that crashes in my head. The pain of knowing that the Bible was used to enslave me for being a woman. Since clearly this affects how I interact, I have resorted to borrowing the words of other women to help me express it here.

So, this is just to say that if you see me saying untoward things sometimes, it comes out of this kind of pain. I'm sorry. I know that when other people say things it comes out of their pain.

Fortunately this is mostly about Bible translation, and not about the rest of my life. My kids are great, my dog is healthy, my grass is cut, and I love my job. So, no, I am not having a nervous breakdown. But Bible translations being used to enslave women causes me pain, a great deal of pain.

Now, I will try to listen harder to other people and their issues.

Beware of Bible experts

2008-06-20T23:07:00.001-07:00

They believe that you don't understand the Bible unless you read it in the original languages. They think you should learn words like "haft" and "buckler." They advocate the use of wooden translations as being preferable to those written in contemporary language.

I want to believe that they are poking fun at themselves. But sadly, they are very, very serious.

Why is that?

It's because in the process of mastering ancient languages they have lost their own. Mastering Greek or Hebrew or Ugaritic is no mean feat. To get to the point where you can fluently read all those squiggles requires years of effort.

We should respect these people and listen to them when they tell us about the scansion of the Psalms. Or the laments of Jeremiah.

But when they start telling us how to speak English they just need to be listened to patiently and then ignored. And when they start telling us that our Bible translations should sound wooden, well, just roll your eyes and smirk a little.

Because they have forgotten the mother that gave them birth. In suckling at the teat of ancient languages, their taste for good home-cooking has soured.

Let me ask you a simple question. Where did 5th graders learn to speak English? From their parents. They speak the way they do because that is the way their parents speak. So a translation that "speaks" like a middle-schooler is speaking English the way it is spoken today. Not like Sir Philip Sidney. Or King Lear. Or even Barbara Walters. But like real people speaking real language in a real world.

The experts want us all to learn a bridge language called "Biblish." It's spoken by the NASB and the NRSV and KJV. And most of the people in attendance at the Society of Biblical Literature in Boston speak Biblish, too.

Or do they? I read their blogs and they very often sound like they're speaking the English of 5th graders. Jim West called his camera "sweet." John Hobbins called someone a "wannabe." So I know they have it in them. While they're telling you that all the secrets of God's Word are hidden in the original languages, they spend their evenings watching American Idol and House.

Thankfully, there are exceptions. Martin Luther was one. He listened to mothers and children to test his German translation of the Bible. Barclay Newman hung out with children and people unfamiliar with the Bible to produce the CEV translation. Desiderius Erasmus said, "Would that the farmer might sing snatches of scripture at his plough, that the weaver might hum phrases of scripture to the tune of his shuttle." (See this post for more quotes)

My favorite quote in that post is in the comments:

On another note, since I haven’t said it for a long time, I will repeat it now. Good News for Modern Man, the mother of all DE translations, was the only translation I read the New Testament in, cover-to-cover, as a teenager. That’s because it is clear and easy to understand.
Once I began learning Hebrew and Greek, the limitations of TEV became clear to me, but then, the limitations of NASB, which many of my friends at the time preferred, became even more palpable.

That's John Hobbins of the aptly named Ancient Hebrew Poetry blog. Listen to him, my friends. Because on this point I completely agree. The best translation for the majority of people, whether children or adults is a clear translation written in idiomatic English. The next step should be diving into the turbulent and murky original languages, not trying to cross the very rickety bridge language called Biblish.

See Beware of men in high lace collars and Martin Luther on Bible Translation for more Bible translation quotes.

For some quite contrary points of view read:

Bible Translation Selection Criteria

2008-06-19T03:56:00.000-07:00

Trevor Jenkins wrote the following as a post to the Bible Translation list. Trevor has a long term interest in Bible translation, especially for the Deaf with whom he works. With his agreement I am posting this here to reach a wider audience - Peter Kirk.

We have 10 to 12 Deaf* people attending our current Alpha course. The group has a wide range of educational attainment; two guests have post-graduate education, two or three have completed the English equivalent of American high school. The others possess only basic education. All of the group acknowledge them to be Christians.

One Alpha session focuses on the Bible. For this session we brought along a variety of different English translations so guests could check which English one(s) they preferred: Easy-Reading, which with a different cover is marketed as "The Holy Bible for Deaf People", CEV, GNB/TEV, God's Word, TM, the Graphic Bible, and NLT. All deliberately chosen because their targeted reading level is nearly equivalent to that of the average (hearing) adult. All literalistic translations were excluded because of their implicit targetting of above average hearing adults. Of course the group's preferred version is in BSL but the project to produce that translation has only recently begun.

The existing Bible choices for the group are interesting. The two with post-grad education use either the GNB or NCV (in the Youth Bible format). The GNB because of the language and the Youth Bible because of the supplementary information included on the page. One of the "high schoolers" also uses the GNB. The one hearing guest commented that despite a professional background as a general practioner their NIV was sometimes difficult to read. None of the others owns a printed English Bible. They can't access the language of their churches pew Bible (the NIV as it happens). They weren't aware of other translations being available.

Everyone in the group liked The Graphic Bible for its visual presentation but for some the text was too small (and more recent reprints have made it smaller still). The format matches the story-telling aspect of BSL. Although we didn't have a copy on the night some of the group have evaluated the newly published Manga Bible. But sadly that isn't as comprehensive in its narrative retelling of the biblical record and the text is even smaller. Plus The Manga Bible editions tack on a highly literal English translation that many of this group see as nothing better than gibberish. :-|

The most interesting part of the experiment was that the two GNB/TEV users both preferred GW. They really like the conventional one column format of the pages. Also the consistent and clear typography. The English was good too they said; each compared their favourite passages in both translations. They were split over the NLT and CEV. Neither liked the bi-columnar presentation that these versions are printed in. Although the CEV's original British edition use of single columns for poetic books was greatly appreciated. (They didn't notice the tri-columnar format of much of the Torah.) The two liked GW so much that they asked where they could purchased copies for themselves. I'll be seeking out copies for them during a visit to New York in a couple of weeks time.

Presentation seems to be forgotten in Bible publishing. Cramming the text onto the page with multiple footnotes, cross-references and alternate readings appears to be more important than the simple act of reading the text. But it isn't only the D/deaf who have problems with the layout of pages in Bibles. As someone with dyslexia I too find columnar text difficult to access; hence my own preference for GW. My daughter who has M.E. needs to go lie down for several hours if she even glances at a page of the NIV Study Bible; I am NOT exaggerating she truthfully does have to do so. Layout is the first impression. Get it wrong and no matter how "accurate" your translation it will not be read.

* Big-D deaf being those in the sociolinguistic group of sign language speakers rather than little-d deaf who follow a medical-only interpretation of the situation.

Condolences

2008-06-17T22:10:00.001-07:00

Wayne has emailed to say that Elena's mother died peacefully this morning in Eugene, Oregon. We wish to express our sympathy and acknowledge the loss of a devoted Christian, a wife, mother, missionary, teacher and musician.

In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began. -- Titus 1:2

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