Memorize the Bible

The vast majority of us cannot read the Bible in the original languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek) and so we must read it in translation. Therefore, the purpose of any Bible translation is to take the original languages that we don’t know and – wait for it – “translate” these texts into a language that we do know.

Any translation is going to have limitations, and translators are well aware of this. Hopefully, readers are aware of this as well, at least in part. All kinds of details can be – wait for it – “lost in translation”.

Poetic beauty, puns, and any number of other items can be lost or at least captured only imperfectly at best.

Sometimes the original text uses an idiom that we don’t use, and translators are faced with a choice about whether to translate the original words accurately in which case the reader might not understand the idiom, or to translate the sense of the idiomatic statement in which case the reader might miss out on symbolism associated with the actual original words useds.

There are many more inherent translation issues that I won’t address here, but I do want to note one other one before moving on, and that is the translator’s temptation to “improve” the passage in some way.

With this in mind, I ran across an interesting quote from someone doing a specialized translation of a portion of the Bible. Richard E. Friedman in The Hidden Book in the Bible explained his specialized translation this way:

…it is important that I convey the text of the original as carefully as possible.  So, for example, when a wording is unclear in the original in a few cases, I do not try to clear it up in the translation.  I use a translation that retains the unclarity of the Hebrew.  This may be annoying and frustrating to readers.  But that is the point: it is annoying and frustrating as one reads it in the original.  My task is to translate the Bible, not to make a better Bible.  I have to accept the fact that I am the translator, not the author.

His quote touches on a temptation that most if not all “normal” Bible translators have — to “help” the reader understand the text. While a noble gesture and somewhat necessary in some ways, it is my strong opinion that the more “literal” a translation is the better the translators are resisting that temptation, while the closer a translation is to a “paraphrase” version or even a “dynamic equivalence” version the greater the influence the translator has on subtly affecting the text. Translators may well defend their renderings, but in some cases we end up with a case of circular reasoning where doctrinal viewpoints affect translation decisions, but then unsuspecting readers use references where those decisions have been made and use them as “proof texts” for the doctrine in question. In general, therefore, I recommend that readers use more-literal translations especially for any careful study of the Scriptures.

For these and related reasons which I will not discuss for the sake of brevity, I strongly recommend that readers consider the New American Standard Bible (NASB, preferably the 1995 update) or the English Standard Version (ESV).

But as with so many other foundational issues on this website (inspiration, canonization, textual criticism), it turns out that for purposes of this website it doesn’t particularly matter which translation you use. I look at multiple translations on a routine basis, though at this stage of the website my chapter summaries are heavily based on the NASB95.

The only thing that might “alarm” some users or potential users of this website is that this website is not geared towards a “King James Only” view. Users of this website are more than welcome to use the King James whether or not they think it is the only allowable translation, but the website materials are not restricted to the KJV.

I might write about my views concerning the KJV at a later date, but this post is not the time and place to do so.