As I mentioned before, I’ve been participating in the Tyndale Blog Network, reviewing products that I receive from Tyndale. This time I’m a part of one of their virtual book tours, the Mosaic Bible blog tour. This Friday, October 16, The Kitchen will be hosting the tour, with Kevin O’Brien doing a Q&A session about the book.
In addition, Tyndale will be giving away a copy of The Mosaic Bible to one of the readers of this blog. On Friday, leave a comment indicating that you would like to be in the drawing for the giveaway.
Today’s stop on the blog tour: life. caffeinated.
A few months ago, we spent some time discussing versions of the Bible. I discussed, among other things, the theory of dynamic equivalence. This is the theory behind many of the Bible translations that have come out in the last 40 years or so.
Recently, I’ve been reading some articles by Leland Ryken (yeah, him again) that seek to promote “essentially literal translations” as being superior to those translated using dynamic equivalence. He makes some convincing arguments, some of which can be seen in the following articles:
On Bible Translations, Part 1
On Bible Translations, Part 2
Bible Translation Differences
I’ve had to admit that Ryken touches on some things that have bothered me over the years. Sometimes I find that “dynamic equivalence” translations seek to explain too much, that they try to pin a passage down to one certain interpretation, when the original is ambiguous enough to allow several translations. A prime example is the Greek word sarx, which the NIV translates as “sinful nature.” The word actually means “flesh,” “the soft substance of the living body, which covers the bones and is permeated with blood.” I prefer a literal translation that gives us room to determine the metaphorical sense the author is using.
In many settings, I favor a “simpler” version, especially for the person who is just beginning to read the Bible. But we can’t be overly dependent on such translations. As I said before, we need to use multiple versions in our serious study of the Word. (Does that conflict with yesterday’s post?)
Do some reading on Ryken’s arguments and tell me what you think of what he has to say. (He has an entire book on the subject, but I haven’t had a chance to look at it.) How literal should a translation be?
I’ve made some changes in my approach to Bible translations. As I spend a lot of time trying to share the Bible with new Christians and non-Christians, I’ve come to value readability in a text. A book I read pointed out that the New Testament was written in Koine Greek, the Greek of the street, not Classical Greek, the language of the scholars. It was written to be understood by the common man. The Bible versions that we use need to understandable as well.