Versions of the Bible

-- why it matters to use a quality translation.

What most Christians don't know about the NIV.

Vanished without a trace,,,,,Satan and Hell.

The ( abridged ) Lord's Prayer.

Lessons Kierkegaard teaches.

The Devil is in the details.

The Witch of Endor revisited.

There is no such thing as a problem free way

   to read the Bible.

A model for understanding the Bible.

The Washington Post and religion.

Historical secrets in the Bible.

Censorship culture.

Sodom and Gomorrah on the Potomac.

The Bible and homosexuality.

Sabotaging the Bible.

We don't need false choices.

 

 

 

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Versions of the Bible

Why it matters to use a quality  translation.

 

Every translation of the Bible has characteristic limitations,

Some, more than most people like to admit, have serious shortcomings

There is no way to avoid this problem, It is intrinsic to spoken or written language,

which, by it nature, can only " come close "  to the exact  meanings of other

languages for even the best translations. However,  as difficult as it may be to render,

say,  Hebrew,  into modern English, any conscientious reader has a worse problem

to confront :  Translator bias.

 

What makes this problem pernicious is the fact --and it is a fact--

that translators, my guess is ALL of them, have agendas that extend

beyond the task of accuracy in turning an ancient tongue into  a

contemporary language, English in this case.

 

There are three main forms of translator bias :

 

( 1 )  National speech traditions. Allow me to use one example from a version

that I find laudatory despite some flaws, the New English Bible of 1972

( later editions , about which more later, are bowdlerized ).  In various

places in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament ( abbreviated OT hereafter )

the word " minister" appears in the text where the more appropriate term

ought to be " president."

 

This is not simply  a matter of American preference. --which actually has

little or nothing to do with my complaint--  but with being true to the

original ancient era text. The word " president " happens to be Persian

in derivation , it doesn't really mean the same thing as " minister,"  and

when the Persian word ( or Hebrew variant ) is what is written, THAT

is what the English version should  say.

 

But the translators of ( part of ) the NEB took the view that the people who

would use their version would be, overwhelmingly, British ( or perchance Aussie

or Canadian ). And since Britons have never heard of the word " president"

then it would be best to use a word with which they are familiar, " minister."

 

Actually, there probably are NO Britons who are unfamiliar with the word

president, so even that rationale falls to the ground,  and we end up with a

translation that, on this point   --and quite a few  others-- is not accurate.

 

In defense of the NEB, there are passages where the word president is used.

So,  what we really get is a translation that sometimes is as reliable as anyone

might want, and sometimes is inadequate. But this is merely to reflect on the fact  that

all translations of the Bible these days are the work of teams of scholars. Thus the

expert assigned to translate the book of Amos, for example. will rarely if ever be the

same person who is responsible for Hosea or Micah. Some books, at that, may

be translated by two or three scholars, which may well be the case for lengthy

texts like Jeremiah ( which, by itself, can run to about 100 pages )

 

In other words, a given translation may be mostly accurate, even superlative,

but not be of that quality in all " books." And accuracy in most parts of the translation

may not hold true   --or as true--  elsewhere.

 

The 1972 New English Bible is accurate at a high level, I'd put the figure at

well in excess of 99  %., but why not attempt 100 % considering that this is,

after all,  the BIBLE ?

 

( 2 ) Religious tradition  / religious commitment. This can take any number

of forms but for starters let us consider the New Jerusalem Bible. This

version has a Catholic bias, as many Bible scholars have noted. This does

NOT make the NJB an inadequate translation. Quite the opposite. It may be

the very best version on the market. Many pages are supplied with notes

( footnotes ) that explain obscure allusions or define unusual words or that

provide some historical information when it is very much needed. But it still,

in all cases where there is question about the exact meaning of a passage and

where the meaning can be interpreted in a Catholic or non-Catholic manner,

the Catholic " spin"  is what we get.

 

Well, it is good that the NJB exists and can be consulted in cases where

the meaning of texts call for very close analysis ( in most cases that I know

about the issue of Catholic bias is moot ), this is THE version to turn to

except, anyway, the multi volume Interpreters Bible, or the even larger

Anchor Bible, with almost every one of the 66 books in the canon with

its own separate bound volume of VERY detailed notes and scholarly

analysis that is the very best , or damned close to it, anyone can find.

But for any normal use, and for the great majority of scholarly uses,

the NJB is tops, even if the NEB or pre- 2000 Oxford.are nearly as good.

 

Is sometimes is necessary to date different  versions since later editions

may feature new renderings of text that make the Bible more liberal or more

conservative than it was to begin with.in the original translation.

 

The big problem with the New Jerusalem is price, substantially higher

than just about all other versions .But it can be consulted in the Web,

for free.

 

( 3 ) Popular presentation, a goal of  " understandable modern English"

for " average people ."  Hence a large number of  more-or-less vernacular

translations, some in idiom. This approach, however, to be completely

candid about it, is blatant pandering. Hence it is intrinsically dishonest--

in the name of relevance, accessibility, and ease of comprehension.

 

Not that vernacular versions have zero worth.  For beginners they can have

good uses, as they can for dramatists or anyone puzzling over the meaning of

specific passages seeking to find someone's original " take,  " and then who

returns to a " true text "  translation for the " real words."  The point simply is

that otherwise such popular culture versions ALL have the problem of

what may be called a " not to be taken seriously " understanding.

 

Everyone knows that such versions are corruptions, to greater or lesser

extent , of the actual sacred text.. Ultimately they cannot be taken seriously,

Most of the time, in other words viz, overwhelmingly, they have negative value.

Therefore, why bother with them to begin with ?

 

 

We can disregard # 1, bias in favor of national speech usage, since it seems

to be the least problematic. But # 2 and # 3 have great importance inasmuch

as these factors are combined in what may be the most popular version

of the Bible in our time, the NIV, the New International Version. At least

215, 000, 000 copies are currently in print, the vast majority of those copies

in regular use by Evangelicals and other Protestants in the USA and

elsewhere. While there are a good number of  " cousins "  to the NIV,

like the Good News Translation, the New American Standard Bible, and

the New Living Translation ( successor to the Living Bible  ), the

fact remains that the NIV or its update, " Today's NIV, " happens to be

perhaps the very worst version available. What makes this especially

damaging is the fact, not a conjecture, that multitudes of  believers

take the view that the NIV is the best translation to be had.

This opinion is preposterous.

 

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What most Christians don't know about the NIV

: 

 

It had been my view for quite some time that the NIV should be avoided

in all cases where it mattered.  The reasons are scholarly. The fact is that

some extremely important verses of the Bible are mistranslated in the NIV.

These are not " honest mistakes, " the sort of thing you might tolerate if a

translator chose a synonym that didn't capture nuances of a complex passage,

for instance. The NIV mistranslations are doctrinal distortions of the text,

forcing  the Bible to conform to pre-determined theological positions. More

will be said about this , later.

 

Given my own use of " key texts " it seemed like a good idea to defend, if

possible, my preferred translations of the Judeo-Christian scriptures.  At the

same time I wanted to do a sort of " round up " of criticisms of the NIV.

So, I began web searching under such headings as " Bible version criticisms"

and " NIV problems," and many other such combinations of terms,.

 

What I expected to find was scholarly criticism , mostly by university teachers.

Instead what I found, and could not stop finding almost whatever word pairings

I selected, were vehement denunciations " from the Right, " as it were, by

Christian believers, few of whom were academics but all of whom had spent

considerable time on the issue.

 

Here are a few examples from Google to get us started :

 

Why Would Anyone Use the NIV?

So what's wrong with the NIV? In a word... EVERYTHING! Do you have any idea how many things were eviscerated (disemboweled) from the Bible by the NIV ... www.jesus-is-savior.com

 

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The NIV is a Really Bad Translation (2/2)

KJV Dictionary · Online text of the KJV Bible · Contact the Editor ... In my next post (NIV Examples 6) I will discuss some aspects of textual criticism we ... av1611.com

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The NIV Is The Worst Translation Of The Bible

The Living Bible does not claim to be a strict translation. It is a paraphrase by Dr. Kenneth Taylor, who admits in the preface: ... www.holysmoke.org

 

There are thousands of similar entries to choose from.

 

To be sure, most are from people who prefer the King James Version of 1611,

or maybe its modern-day semi-revision that simply substitutes modern English

words in those places ( about 9 or 10 % of the text ) where the original KJV

uses now-obsolete terminology. But, this said, every site I looked at that took

exception to the NIV, that is , objected  from a  " conservative  perspective ,"

did so thoughtfully and in almost all cases with obvious anguish.

 

Some things are now very clear--

 

A chasm has opened up, or is well along toward opening up, between

so-called  Fundamentalists ( including many or most Baptists ) and  the

majority of Evangelicals. At the center of this divide is the NIV and

what it is doing to the Christian community in the United States,

essentially undermining core Christian beliefs and values. It is doing

this while Evangelicals ( presumably a  majority of them ) assume that

the faith they have placed in the presumed  worth  of the NIV has

been all for the good. Actually it has done enormous harm, And the

harm it is doing is spreading and worsening.

 

Granted that the reason why the NIV was created in the first place ,

on the surface, had merit. The KJV, for all its beauty   --which is my

honest opinion--  simply cannot, in many places, be understood by anyone

who is not an historian of the English language.

 

Which is not even to take into account the literal meaning of de facto

sanctification of the 1611 Bible. That is, the " King James only " believers

tell us that this translation was divinely sanctioned. What they actually use, however,

isn't the actual 1611 edition, no-one does. Why not ? Because even in the

17th century several hundred errors were discovered, with about 400 ( most

caused by printers in an age of hand set type  ) removed in subsequent editions.

in 1613, 1616, etc, until the 1638 version which stabilized things for more than

a century. But what the " King James only "  people really mean is the 1769 edition.

 

That was deemed necessary since English spelling usage, conditioned by over

250 years of printing history, finally standardized how words ought to be spelled.

Until the 17th century English language terms might be spelled in all sorts of

ways, even within the same manuscript  --with variant spellings common  in

the works of Shakespeare.and many other writers.

 

The 1611 KJV, in other words, is actually the 1769 KJV and presupposes

a history of corrections and modifications to the text. Otherwise today's Biblical

literalists would use scriptures that look like this, a facsimile of part of the

original 1611 version :

 

 

Much more serious than spelling variation and typos is another fact of life,

however, word drift.

 

The basic rule of glottochronology is that about  2 + % of all words in any language

change their meaning over the course of a century. This rate is variable and may well

be accelerating in our era, but as a rule of thumb,  2 % has its uses. This says that approximately one out of ten words in the KJV cannot be understood by modern-day  Americans. Even when a word looks like it is standard contemporary English, the

meaning it had in 1611 may be very different  than is now the case. Which does not

count many terms  that have simply dropped out of use.

 

So, a new translation is a good idea. Or it would be if there weren't already

some very good current translations .available  When the NIV came on the scene in

the 1970s there already was an excellent fairly new translation on the market,

the RSV,   from the 1950s ( since then,  revised  further ).

 

While the  Revised Standard Version had some faults, it also received widespread

acclaim. Although it was a translation from ancient manuscripts it nonetheless sought

to stay true to the spirit of the King James, and its language is also beautiful.

But that wasn't good enough for the Christian Reformed Church and the

National Association of Evangelicals, the groups most responsible, and the

project was launched. While I have no proof at all, the motivation  may also

have had something to do with Zondervan, the company that was to  

publish the new Bible version.

 

To be almost cynical about it, but  maybe to hit the nail on the head,

here was a golden opportunity  to  make a lot of money ( a fortune ) from

the naive good will and gullibility of Evangelicals who, in their millions, might be

persuaded to purchase the new version created pretty much " just for them." .

In any case, that is exactly what happened.

 

This is what best seems to answer the question , why reinvent the wheel ?

 

As for the naive outlook of most Evangelicals, Zondervan's role in creation

of the NIV is all the proof anyone needs. But let actual Christian believers

tell the story in their own words.

 

Here is what is wrong with the NIV, and there is no way at all that

Zondervan's decision-makers did not know about these things

from the very beginning--

 

We can start with the NIV's  " demotion " of Jesus.

 

Not that I am someone who gets particularly exercized about titles.

Jesus is still Jesus, whatever epithets he has or does not have. HOWEVER, 

what possible justification can there be for playing games with the text of scripture ? 

Maybe, personally,  titles aren't all that important to me, but as a scholar I want

any translation I read  to be as close to 100 % accurate as humanly possible,

nothing less.

 

A.V. Publications of Ararat, Virginia , posts an extensive  list of changes

between the KJV and the NIV with respect to how Jesus is described in

the New Testament.( hereafter designated as NT ). 

 

To be sure, as noted,  the King James made some mistakes that  needed to be

corrected  But , regardlessly , ( 1 ) most of those errors were, in fact, disposed of, and

( 2 ) it is hard to believe that the  KJV made over 150 errors in titles for Jesus:

 

It would serve no useful purpose here to repeat all the information provided

by AV Publications on this subject , but just looking at the changes in two books

of the NT tells enough of the story to get the point across.

 

Some of these modifications on the part of the NIV translators are stylistic.

Thus Matthew 9 : 28 simply substitutes " he" for Jesus since the name does occur

in this part of the Gospel fairly often. Moreover, sometimes the defenders of the

King James do seem to be picking at nits. The NIV places the KJV verse 11 of

chapter one in the Book of Revelation at 1 : 9, and vice versa. No titles are lost, they

simply are moved form one place to another for, it seems certain, logical reasons.

But what about some other examples, of which there are a good number, where,

for instance, a verse no longer presents Christ as magisterial and, while I cannot

be sure,  may also be less accurate. At any rate, here are various NIV deletions

that King James people have noticed and object to--

 

        Matt. 8:29......................................Jesus
        Matt. 9:28......................................Jesus
        Matt. 13:36....................................Jesus
        Matt. 13:51....................................Lord
        Matt. 15:30....................................Jesus
        Matt. 16:20....................................Jesus
        Matt. 17:20....................................Jesus
        Matt. 17:22....................................Jesus
        Matt. 18:2......................................Jesus
        Matt. 18:11................................    Son of man
        Matt. 19:16..............................     *Good Master
        Matt. 23:8.....................................Christ
        Matt. 23:10...................................*Master
        Matt. 24:2......................................Jesus
        Matt. 25:13................................    Son of man
        Matt. 27:24...............................     just person
        Matt. 28:6......................................Lord
     
        Rev. 1:8................                         .the beginning and the ending
        Rev. 1:9...............................          Christ (twice)
        Rev. 1:11...........................          ..Alpha and Omega
        Rev. 1:11.....................                 .the first and the last
        Rev. 1:13................................       .*Son of man
        Rev. 12:17.....................................Christ
        Rev. 14:14...............................      .*Son of man

        Rev. 20:12......................................God
        Rev. 22:21..................................... Christ

 

In all these cases, said the AV Publications website, KJV titles were

replaced ( in some cases deleted ) by some other and inferior title.

To say the very least, this is not good, But it gets worse.

 

Here is what another site, matthiasmedia.com, has to say :

 

 

" Just what's wrong with the NIV?  Is it so bad really ? "

 

" The NIV does have problems, and many of us have come to realize that those problems are more serious than we first thought. Most of the difficulties stem from a philosophical commitment, on the part of the NIV translators, to giving priority to simplicity over accuracy. This commitment stems from a laudable desire to see the Bible's message reach out to everyone, but the unfortunate result is that the actual meaning of the Bible text is quite often tinkered with, in order to produce something that is simple, punchy and easy-to-read. Better to have something simple, the NIV seems to think, even if it is not what the original text actually says........."

 

In other words, my comments again,  the NIV falsifies meanings and does so

repeatedly throughout the Bible.  The matthiasmedia site seeks to be polite

about this, and give  as much benefit of doubt as possible, but I feel no such

restraint and feel entirely justified in being dismissive of the NIV. That is,

I do not use it and regard it as substandard.

 

Here are some other matthiasmedia criticisms :

 

" The logic of sentences. The NIV, as a matter of policy, breaks up the long Greek and Hebrew sentences of the Bible into shorter, simpler English sentences. In so doing, however, it often leaves out the vital connective words between ideas (such as 'for', 'and', 'but', 'therefore', and so on). The NIV also often renders participial clauses (which have some form of logical connection to a main verb) as new sentences. These translation practices make it very difficult in places to work out what the author is actually saying, since the logic of his flow of thought is hidden from the English-language reader. The English is punchier and simpler, in a superficial sense, but more difficult in another sense; it's actually harder to work out what the author was saying."

 

" Ironing out ambiguity: Quite often, the Biblical text carries a number of possible meanings, and the reader needs to ponder which meaning the author was intending (or whether, in fact, he wanted to suggest both meanings at the same time). The NIV routinely irons out these ambiguities, and presents the English with just one possibility (the one chosen by the translator). This means that the translator's judgement determines what the Scripture says at this point, and he may be wrong. It also means, of course, that the reader is prevented from thinking for himself, and coming to understand God's word more deeply."

 

" Consistency of word use: The NIV follows the common English language practice of avoiding using the same word too often within a sentence or paragraph. And so quite often, even though the word is the same in Greek, a different English word may be employed in the translation. Sometimes, this will make little or no difference. At other times, however, it will stop the reader from seeing the connection that the author is making by using the same word. It also stops the reader building up a picture of how a word is used in the Bible."

 

" Removing concrete metaphors: As a matter of modern English style, the NIV translators often replace a very concrete Biblical expression or metaphor, with a more abstract concept. Thus, the Bible often portrays our life as a 'walk', a journey that we are on. Ephesians frequently uses this expression: 'walk