OK, I’m realizing that I’ve jumped into deep water on this one. I’ve counted and still have another 1,609 posts on Bible translation and Bible versions. I’ll try and whittle that number down a bit.
I need to say that for the most part, I don’t buy into most of the conspiracy theories about Bible translation. “They changed ___ to promote ____ doctrine.” I’ve only found that to be unquestionably true in one case, and that’s the New World version that the Jehovah’s Witnesses produced. They made changes in the text with no textual support, solely because their belief system told them that’s what the passage should say. Every other version that I have examined, up until now, seems to have been carried out in good faith.
One of the great treatises that has been written on biblical translation is the famous preface to the 1611 King James Version, “The Translators to the Reader.” Here are a few thoughts from this document (translated, as it were, into modern English):
Many men’s mouths have been open a good while (and yet are not stopped) with speeches about the Translation so long in hand, or rather perusals of Translations made before: and ask what may be the reason, what the necessity of the employment: Hath the Church been deceived, say they, all this while? Hath her sweet bread been mingled with leaven, here silver with dross, her wine with water, her milk with lime?
If you’ve dealt with any KJV-only Christians, you’ll have heard this argument. “If the KJV isn’t a perfect translation, then God allowed his people to have an insufficient witness. We know God wouldn’t do that, so the KJV must be perfect.” It’s funny that the same reasoning was used AGAINST the KJV when it first came out.
The translation of the Seventy dissenteth from the Original in many places, neither doth it come near it, for perspicuity, gravity, majesty; yet which of the Apostles did condemn it? Condemn it? Nay, they used it, (as it is apparent, and as Saint Jerome and most learned men do confess) which they would not have done, nor by their example of using it, so grace and commend it to the Church, if it had been unworthy of the appellation and name of the word of God.
In other words, if using a “modern” version is wrong, the very apostles were guilty of that sin. They used the Septuagint, which differs from the Hebrew. Many people panic when they discover that some verse that is in the KJV isn’t in some modern version. The same people would have condemned the apostles back in the day.
Now to the latter we answer; that we do not deny, nay we affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set forth by men of our profession, (for we have seen none of theirs of the whole Bible as yet) containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God. As the King’s speech, which he uttereth in Parliament, being translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and Latin, is still the King’s speech, though it be not interpreted by every Translator with the like grace, nor peradventure so fitly for phrase, nor so expressly for sense, everywhere.
What would the translators of the King James Version say about the ESV, the TEV, the NIrV, the HCSB, etc.? That they are all the Word of God.
Lastly, we have on the one side avoided the scrupulosity of the Puritans, who leave the old Ecclesiastical words, and betake them to other, as when they put WASHING for BAPTISM, and CONGREGATION instead of CHURCH: as also on the other side we have shunned the obscurity of the Papists, in their AZIMES, TUNIKE, RATIONAL, HOLOCAUSTS, PRAEPUCE, PASCHE, and a number of such like, whereof their late Translation is full, and that of purpose to darken the sense, that since they must needs translate the Bible, yet by the language thereof, it may be kept from being understood. But we desire that the Scripture may speak like itself, as in the language of Canaan, that it may be understood even of the very vulgar.
The purpose of the translators was to avoid hard-to-understand language, even when it was more accurate, choosing instead the language of the common man. Interestingly enough, that’s what the writers of the New Testament did when they wrote in the common Greek of the day and not the classical Greek used by scholars.
Many other things we might give thee warning of (gentle Reader) if we had not exceeded the measure of a Preface already. It remaineth, that we commend thee to God, and to the Spirit of his grace, which is able to build further than we can ask or think. He removeth the scales from our eyes, the vail from our hearts, opening our wits that we may understand his word, enlarging our hearts, yea correcting our affections, that we may love it to the end… The Lord work a care and conscience in us to know him and serve him, that we may be acknowledged of him at the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom with the holy Ghost, be all praise and thanksgiving. Amen.
Amen indeed.
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A few years ago I got into a discussion on the Internet about Bible versions. One man who worked as a missionary in India insisted that it was possible to perfectly translate something from English to Hindi then have someone else translate it back into English without changing a word from the original. All I can guess is that he didn’t speak Hindi and was easily fooled by his translators.