Theology Thursday: Translation of Scripture

Welcome to Theology Thursday! Theology is the study of God, his relation to the world, and our relation to him. I hope these newsletters help enhance your faith and deepen your love for God and his people, the church.

Today's question:
Why are there so many versions of the Bible? What's the deal with Bible translations?

Pastor Brady’s thoughts:
Let’s continue our semi-regular series on scripture. To get the most out of our time in the word, we need to have a good understanding of not just what the Bible says, but what the Bible is.

So far, we’ve looked at the authority of scripture, the canon of scripture, and the inspiration of scripture.
 
Today, we’re going to focus on the translation of scripture. There are an estimated 900 translations of the Bible just in English alone! Pretty much all of them (with some unfortunate exceptions) have a ton of overlap and feature large swaths of nearly identical text, but they also contain differences: some minor, some fairly significant.  

If you’re a lifelong churchgoer, you may have experienced certain denominations or traditions preferring or even insisting on using a specific Bible translation basically exclusively.

The King James Version (KJV), in particular, has a passionate fan club, generally among older, seemingly more conservative (though I don’t like that label) congregations. The New International Version (NIV), English Standard Version (ESV), New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), New American Standard Bible (NASB), New Living Translation (NLT), and Christian Standard Bible (CSB), are among the other most popular and utilized translations, at least in America.

If the Bible is God’s word, why are there so many versions of it?

We have to remember that the Bible didn’t fall out of the sky; somehow the Holy Spirit inspired the biblical writers to accurately convey the divine narrative of creation, fall, salvation, and redemption, along with instruction for godly living. Our scripture is God’s holy word, but it has human handprints all over it. And, it wasn’t written in English but in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.

The original manuscripts (and their very early copies) that were selected by the ancient church to comprise our 66 books of scripture were discovered, collected, and compiled over time and exist on various types of parchments and scrolls. For the first couple hundred years after Jesus, the church did not have a complete set of books called “The Bible” that Christians could pick up and read, as we do today. In fact, while the 39 books in our Old Testament have largely been a settled question since about 400 years before the birth of Jesus, the first known list of the 27 books that make up the New Testament was crafted in 367 AD by Athanasius, a bishop of Alexandria. The councils of Hippo in 393 and Carthage in 397 then formally canonized the New Testament.

During the late fourth century, Jerome - one of the venerated fathers of the early church - was commissioned by the Pope to translate the Bible from its original languages into Latin. This effort produced what is called the Latin Vulgate, and this version of the Bible was the primary scripture available to the English-speaking world (the priests and bishops would have known Latin too) for the next several hundred years.

In the 1380s, Oxford professor John Wycliffe began the work of translating the Bible from Latin to English, and was declared a heretic by the Catholic Church for his effort. The King of England - Henry IV - actually outlawed English translations of the Bible in 1401. Despite this, work continued surreptitiously, though it took another century-and-a-half before there was a complete English translation of both the Old and New Testament in 1535.

The Catholic Church and England’s royal leadership eventually got over their insistence on the exclusivity of the Latin Vulgate, and after several other commissioned iterations, in 1611 the King James Version became the primary and prominent Bible of the English-speaking world for most of the next three centuries. While the KJV is still popular today, it has lost much of its dominant status in the past century.

The King James Version is beautifully written. I still use it (or the New King James Version, first published in 1979, which seeks to maintain the original’s translation choices with somewhat updated language) when I’m reading a particularly moving passage of scripture such as Psalm 23 or the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, especially if I’m going to be reading out loud for, say, a funeral service. But the reality is that there have been centuries’ worth of good scholarship and research since 1611, including the discovery of additional early manuscripts that present fuller, deeper, more complete texts than we had before, and these historical progressions render the KJV less accurate, and the evolution of language makes its readability more difficult for modern eyes.

Appreciating the evolution of language matters for our purpose here, because it helps explain why it’s valuable to continuously update the Bible every so many years to better reflect modern parlance (for example, the NIV published its first edition in 1978, and has made revisions for scholarship and language in 1984 and 2011).

Here’s what I mean: The KJV uses this language for 1st Thessalonians 4:15, “We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.”

From scholar Mike Bird: “By using the word prevent, one might think that Paul negates the possibility that the living can hinder the dead from rising, but that is not the issue at all. The original Greek has the word as phtano, meaning “to come before another,” and the KJV committee translated this with the word prevent, influenced by the Latin preveniens, “to come before another.” The problem is that in modern English prevent does not mean precede, but something more like “hinder” or “inhibit.””

The NIV has 1st Thessalonians 4:15 read, “We tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.” This changes the meaning of this verse significantly, and is just one example why the KJV is no longer as useful as it once was.

Most Bible translations are composed by a committee of scholars. The good ones feature scholars of varying Christian faith traditions and denominational backgrounds who come together with the unified goal of faithfully and accurately communicating divinely-inspired but ancient words into their appropriate and precise modern equivalents. This is no easy task!

These committees consist of scholars who are experts in the original biblical languages, and they get together to hash out exactly what the earliest manuscripts say and how those words can then be recreated into modern language, including not just words but phrases and terms.

The dual goals of reliability and readability means these translation committees often have to make decisions that balance staying true to the original text (and not just the words on the page, but the meaning of the words, which isn’t always the same thing) while actually making it possible for readers to understand it. That’s one reason there’s multiple modern versions of the Bible - different committees make different decisions as they seek this balance.

For example, translating John 3:16 word-for-word into English from the original Greek without caring about readability would produce something like:

For so loved, God, the world, that his Son, the only begotten, he gave, that everyone who is believing on him may not perish, but may life unto the age.

That won’t work, obviously, and so decisions have to be made that alter the literal words and orders of those words.

There are so many Bible translations partly because language is a moving target. Word usage changes, word meanings change, words are dropped from or added to modern vocabulary, etc. Each of the reputable modern translations (and there are some that are unreputable - I’m thankful to have a variety of translations to reference, but we do not need anywhere near 900 of them!) vary slightly in word choice or order or emphasis, but largely contain the same message.

The best approach, as you grow into serious Bible study, is to reference multiple versions, especially when there’s a word or verse that creates questions or confusion. When you come across such a passage, look at two or three other versions and see if they use the same term or phrase, or if they use a different word that might shed a different light on your text. I generally do my daily Bible reading and my weekly sermon prep from the NIV, though I study a few others - ESV, NLT, NRSV - when I’m diving deeper into a particular passage.

Even when the nuances and intricacies of our language are complicated or even uncertain, God’s word is perfect and, with some work, generally clear.
So, read your Bible. Even better yet: read your bibles!

P.S.

Occasionally, graphics and videos make the round on social media claiming that contemporary Bible translations are missing verses or have removed verses. At least for the major, scholarly translations such as the ones I’ve mentioned above, this is inaccurate. Worse, I see these claims as attempts to stir up controversy and division where there needn’t be any.
 
While it’s true that the KJV has verses and parts of verses that newer translations such as the NIV or ESV omit, this isn’t some conspiracy. Bible translations have become more refined as Bible translators get access to older copies of the books, most of which weren’t available when the KJV was translated. The verses included in the KJV but not others, we now know, were not part of the original manuscripts, and many in fact were added many years later. Thus, the KJV is actually less faithful and accurate, not more.

The KJV wasn't a bad translation for its time, but it is outdated. Contemporary scholars have access to better, more accurate copies of the Greek and Hebrew texts than the KJV translators did.

It’s also important to note that, in most Bibles, these passages aren’t really removed, they’re just moved to a footnote or endnote. No one is trying to hide these verses.

Bible translators and scholars care about these texts just as much as you or me. They care so much that they don’t want to include parts of verses that were added centuries after the original inspired books were penned.

Related Resources: 
Article (with videos) - Does a "Most Accurate" Bible Translation Exist?
Article - Explaining the Bible to Our Culture
History - One Bible, Many Versions
Video - Did the NIV Remove Verses from the Bible?

To know Him and to make Him known!
- Pastor Brady

Have a question for Theology Thursday? Send an email to minierccstaff@gmail.com and we'll respond, or we'll include in a future Theology Thursday Buffet.