Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site topaz.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!packard!topaz!hedrick From: hedrick@topaz.ARPA (Chuck Hedrick) Newsgroups: net.religion.christian Subject: Re: Bible Translations Message-ID: <1084@topaz.ARPA> Date: Sun, 31-Mar-85 23:30:53 EST Article-I.D.: topaz.1084 Posted: Sun Mar 31 23:30:53 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 2-Apr-85 00:39:02 EST References: <8368@watarts.UUCP> <1015@cbosgd.UUCP> Reply-To: hedrick@topaz.UUCP (Chuck hedrick) Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 197 I recommend a combination of the Revised Standard Version and Today's English Version (Good News Bible). However before choosing a translation, you have to decide what translation principle you want it to follow. Most of the newer translations use a criterion called "dynamic equivalence". That is, they want their translation to have the same effect on the reader that the originals did on the original reader. This contrasts with a more literal translation, where the goal is to translate words and grammar accurately. The problem with the literal method is that language understanding is based on more than vocabulary and grammar. When you read a text, you are trying to duplicate the thought process of the author, using the text as a clue. In order for this to work, you have to share the same general knowledge about the world, and the same assumptions about what sorts of things are reasonable or unreasonable. The ability to detect satire depends upon having the same idea of what is reasonable. (Consider the famous example of Swift's "Modest Proposal".) Even the ability to figure out what pronouns refer to depends upon your ability to follow what the author is saying. So in order to understand the original languages, or a literal translation, you need to know a lot about history. You have to be able to put yourself in the place of a reader who is in the same culture as the original author. Not all of us have a good enough knowledge of Biblical times to do that. Indeed even scholars are not always able to understand what a text means without significant research. So the purpose of a dynamic equivalence translation is to provide a translation that ordinary people will understand correctly. To get an idea of what this means, I am going to include a couple of examples from RSV and TEV in parallel. RSV is the most literal translation that any of you are likely to use. TEV is probably the most extreme example of dynamic equivalence. Job 9:19, 14-17 Revised Standard Today's English If it is a contest of strength, Should I try force? behold him! Try force on God? If it is a matter of justice, Should I take him to court? who can summon him? Who would make him go? If I sin, thou dost mark me, You were watching me to see if I would sin, and dost not acquit men of so that you could refuse thy iniquity. to forgive me. If I am wicked, woe to me! As soon as I sin, I'm in trouble with you. If I am righteous, I cannot but when I do right, I get no lift up my head, credit. for I am filled with disgrace I am miserable and covered with and look upon my affliction. shame. And if I lift myself up, thou If I have any success at all, dost hunt me like a lion, you hunt me down like a lion; and again work wonders to hurt me you even work miracles. against me; thou dost renew thy witnesses You always have some witness against me, against me; and increase thy vexation your anger toward me grows toward me; and grows; thou dost bring fresh hosts you always plan some new attack. against me. I believe that the implications of the text are much clearer in the TEV translation. It doesn't actually add anything, but in the more literal translation, the meaning is clouded behind somewhat archaic language and idioms that are different than ours. Of course there are still good reasons to want a literal translation. If we got into a discussion about the details of this passage, it would be important to know exactly what was there. But for normal reading, I prefer TEV. TEV is particularly good with books where indirect language is used, such as Job and Ecclesiastes. It used to be that there was a disagreement between conservatives and liberals about the use of dynamic equivalence. Indeed when it first came out, the Revised Standard version was rejected by conservatives as not sufficiently faithful to the original texts! However with the NIV and Living Bible, it is clear that there is no longer any significant different between conservatives and liberals about this issue. RSV still maintains its bad reputation among some conservatives. But I think there is no longer any reason why it should. Using the Living Bible and rejecting RSV is truly "straining at gnats and swallowing camels". The place to start when looking at translations is probably where they fit in this spectrum between literal translations and translations based on dynamic equivalence. I would place things in roughly this order, starting from the literal end: New American Standard Revised Standard, King James New International, New American Bible Jerusalem Bible, New English Bible Today's English, Living Bible I would recommend that anyone who is serious about the Bible should have at least two translations, one from first three lines and another from the last two. The next thing to look at is the quality of the scholarship. This is harder for me to judge, since I am not an expert in Greek and Hebrew. However I have read a number of reviews, and have looked fairly carefully at most of these translations. Here are the translations about which I have heard significant complaints: King James - the scholarship is simply several hundred years out of date. There are many errors, and many English words that no longer mean the same thing. I can't see why anyone would use this any more. New American - each book is different. Some are more literal than others. Different books translate the same phrases differently. Most of the individual translations are good. However it is disorienting to use a Bible where different translation techniques are used in different place. Jerusalem Bible - One critic complained that it is too quick to change the original text, using the Septuagint (an early Greek translation) or conjectural emendations. These are techniques that all translations use. It is just an issue of how judiciously they are used. JB does rearrange the text of OT books now and then, a practice that I consider unacceptable. E.g. Is. 38:21-22 is moved to after vs. 6 New English - tends to adopt daring conjectures. They claim to have special insight about the meaning of obscure words in the OT, an insight that other OT scholars often do not agree with. Also, the level of translation tends to be spotty. I.e. it varies from literary to colloquial with no obvious reason, and also from literal to paraphrase. I prefer to know whether I am reading RSV or TEV, and not have the two translation principles alternating. NEB also sometimes rearranges the text of the OT. E.g. Is. 5:24-25 is put after 10:4. Living Bible - I'm not very familiar with this one, but it has a very bad reputation, even among conservative scholars. The problem with dynamic equivalence is that the translator must use his knowledge of the way the original audience would have understood the text. If the translator is not a very good historian, this will mean inserting his own bad ideas. Apparently many people believe this is what happened in the Living Bible. The translations I would recommend are Revised Standard, New International, Jerusalem, and Today's English. I feel fairly strongly that everyone should have a copy of the Revised Standard. I consider the New American Standard to be too literal for normal mortals to use. New International turns out to do at least some "dynamic equivalence", so if you really want to know what the original text says, you might prefer not to use it. I'm not adamant about this. NIV doesn't go all that far. But the two passages I checked out in the NT when doing research for this article did show this difference. E.g. in Romans 8:1-4, NIV used "sinful nature" for "flesh". There's nothing wrong with this. Most translations now use something other than "flesh": NIV: sinful nature; JB: unspiritual nature; TEV: human nature. But it is a move in the direction of dynamic equivalence. My own personal opinion is that your second Bible should be Today's English. I believe it is the most consistent and has the most reliable scholarship of the dynamic equivalence translations. However some of you may regard that it has gone too far. If so, NIV or Jerusalem would be good compromises. Although conservatives might have problems with some of the textual criticism behind Jerusalem, it has many good qualities to recommend it. It gives you the best feeling for the differences in style in the original documents. In many ways it makes the results of modern Biblical criticism visible. So if you are not a fundamentalist, it is a very attractive translation. For conservatives, NIV would probably be the best "compromise" translation. However for my taste it is somewhat too literal for this purpose. (A popular combination among fundamentalists is New American Standard for the literal translation and NIV for the translation that they actually read. I could never handle this combination, but if you hate the name of RSV, it is something to think about.) If your ideas of Biblical scholarship are compatible with mine (i.e. you are not a fundamentalist), you should consider getting the Oxford Annotated Bible. It has various notes that you may find quite helpful in understanding the Bible. This is the standard edition used in University courses on the Bible. There are conservative study Bibles for those of you who are more conservative than I am. However I don't know enough about them to have a recommendation. It used to be that Catholics, conservatives Protestants, and liberal Protestants had separate translations. Fortunately, this is much less true these days. However there are still some differences. Here are the ones that I know of: conservatives have a tradition (irrational, in my view, and probably no longer in effect) of opposition to the Revised Standard Version. They are also likely to find the New English, and possibly Jerusalem offensive because of the critical principles used. liberal Protestants are likely to find the New American Standard unusable and the Living Bible offensive. Catholics should know that the New American and Jerusalem are Catholic translations, and that the Revised Standard and TEV (Good News Bible) are available in editions with imprimaturs. (I think the Oxford Annotated Bible, with Apocrypha has an imprimatur. I know that the standard TEV with Apocrypha does.) I have not mentioned that Jewish Publishing Society's translation of the OT, because (1) it is not the whole Bible (from our perspective and (2) I don't know it well. It has a very good reputation among scholars. It would be somewhere between RSV and TEV in my chart. It might well prove to be the best of the "compromises" between literalness and dynamic equivalence. Note by the way that JPS has an older translation, which as far as I can see has nothing to recommend it. Look at the copyright dates. The Torah is in the 60's, I think, and the Prophets and Writings are fairly recent. Ironically, conservative Christians may like it, because it tries to translate the Masoretic text, with a minimum of changes.