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Bible Translations - Everything You Need to Know (Sort Of)
100 Plays1 year ago
KJV, ESV, NASB, NIV, NET, AMP, CSB, NLT, LEB, GNB, RSV, and on and on and on… How do you decide which English Bible translation to use? Translated from the Masoretic text or Dead Sea Scrolls? Textus Receptus or Critical Text? Formal or dynamic equivalence? Who pisseth against the wall? There are a lot of questions that have to be answered by Bible translators, and their decisions can have a serious impact on Bible reading. There’s no shortage of ideas about how to pick a translation, and they’re not all helpful. Matt and Nick discuss the limitations of translations, what they can do well, and some tools that help readers go beyond the limitations of reading in English.
Resources Referenced: The Hebrew Bible by Robert Alter, Sreetlights Audio Bible by Streetlights
Interlude Music: Try Try Try by Airae
Theme Song: Believe by Posthumorous
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Transcript
Introduction to Bible Translations
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of the ReParadigm podcast. Today we're talking about Bible translations. We discuss the importance of text criticism, translation theory, and we offer our advice for picking a translation that you're actually going to read.
Translating 'Mashtin Bakir'
00:00:27
Speaker
1 Samuel 25, 22 says, This phrase, any that pisseth against the wall, comes from the Hebrew, mashtin bakir. It's a phrase that shows up six times in the Old Testament, usually by someone who's expressing anger. It's taken by most modern translators to just mean males. But it's possible that the phrase is also being used as a vulgar expression for men, you know, kind of like those pissers. It could be a way of insulting people, a way of sort of calling them dogs. It may also be a way of referring only to males of a certain age. How are you going to translate this?
Literal vs. Understandable Translations
00:01:06
Speaker
You keep something easily understood like men, and then you risk losing the specifics of this phrase. Or do you keep the specifics of the wording like the KJV did, and you risk giving readers something they don't understand? But it's more colorful. It is more colorful.
00:01:19
Speaker
But I don't really know what that means. If somebody came and was like, ah, you you piss against the wall, don't you? I wouldn't know if they were insulting me or what they were trying to tell me. Fair enough, yeah. So would you try to find another option that communicates the same sort of emotion? And the point here is that translation can be very tricky. Yeah.
00:01:35
Speaker
It's pretty easy to see that translation is very hard, in fact. It's often, I think, a task of having to find the least bad option. But I think that exploring the difficulties and limitations of translation can actually be really helpful for those of us who use translation as our primary way of interacting with scriptures. Looking at some of the difficult questions that translators face can help us use our translations better.
Old Testament Translation Considerations
00:01:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:57
Speaker
So one of the big questions that any translator has to ask before they even start translating text is which text are you going to translate? Like questions of canon? There are questions around canon, like with the Apocrypha or which text. I was thinking even within just the Protestant canon. So like what manuscripts? Exactly. Yeah, so in the Old Testament, for a long time, when it came to translations, we used the Masoretic texts. ah But then in the 1940s and 50s, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, and they contained Hebrew scriptures that were way older than the Masoretic texts. They're pretty close, but they're not always identical.
00:02:32
Speaker
Yeah, so these are questions now relating to textual criticism. Exactly. So if you're going to translate the Old Testament today, would you stick with the Masoretic texts, or would you use the newly discovered Dead Sea Scrolls, which are probably older? Because sometimes the Dead Sea Scrolls readings are going to offer a different reading than did the Masoretic texts, and then in your English Bible, it'll feel like you changed the scriptures, even if you're recovering something older, more original.
Theological Implications of Source Texts
00:02:55
Speaker
Yeah, a really good example of that is in Deuteronomy 32.8. So the King James Version, they obviously only had the Masoretic texts because the Dead Sea Scrolls hadn't been discovered when the King James Version was translated. This verse reads, When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.
00:03:16
Speaker
But in the Dead Sea Scrolls, they have a little difference at the end of this verse. So instead of God dividing the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel, He divides the people according to the number of the sons of God. And sons of God is a common phrase that refers to divine beings, something like angels or lesser gods. In fact, the next verse right after this in Deuteronomy is, But the Lord's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.
00:03:40
Speaker
Yeah, sons of God, like think Genesis 6, and these are spiritual beings according to every Jewish interpretation yeah until and basically Christian theology came along and decided that might mean other things. So with the text of the dead, he scrolls. You see God dividing the peoples according to the number of divine beings, assigning each people group to their own divine being, but keeping Israel as his own assigned people.
00:04:02
Speaker
So Israel then is special because they were the people who were assigned to the greatest God, the creator Yahweh. So whether the translator chooses to go with that Masoretic text or this newly discovered Dead Sea Scrolls is really going to change the way you read this verse. This has theological implications because if the reading is correct, that has God dividing up the nations according to the number of the sons of God, basically God giving the nations to the other gods or demons, whatever you want to call them, spiritual beings.
Divine Allocation and Translation Impact
00:04:28
Speaker
so That has theological weight for then what happens in the Jesus moment and then what happens with the gospel going forth to the nations and the kingdom of God. like That can lead to all sorts of unique and interesting theological questions about God's fulfillment and the kingdom of God, etc, etc. But if you just have divided according to the number of the people of Israel, you don't even get those theological questions developed.
00:04:52
Speaker
Yeah. And it's not like translators all agree on this either. Modern good translations will sometimes go with different readings here. So the NIV, they stuck with the Masoretic Text. Yeah, the Christian Standard Bible also retained the Masoretic Text reading here. Okay. ESV, they chose to go with the Dead Sea Scrolls. So did the New American Bible Revised Edition. I like the Good News Translation. They went with the Dead Sea Scrolls. They got a little interpretive here. They actually just finished this verse by saying, he assigned to each nation a heavenly being.
00:05:22
Speaker
That would be the interpretation of that and it's probably the correct interpretation something like that. Yeah, but you can see depending on which text you choose to go with you can end up with a very different reading in your translation.
00:05:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good example because it actually has theological weight to it, depending on what route you go. Yeah. um Moving on to the New Testament.
Textus Receptus vs. Critical Texts
00:05:41
Speaker
Basically, most translators now will either go with an older textus receptus or they'll go with what's called a critical text. In 1516, a guy named Erasmus, we've talked about him a little bit, he put together all the Greek manuscripts he could find and published his first version of a Greek New Testament.
00:05:56
Speaker
So he went through several revisions, and one of these later revisions, actually after his life, got titled the Textus Receptus, which just means the received text. Yep, and what he's trying to do is reproduce as close as he can the original Greek New Testament. And I think for his time, he did a really good job. Given the resources he had available, he put together the best Greek text that he could. And so it's the one that translators used at the time. Now, in the last couple hundred years, there are some older Greek manuscripts that have been discovered or maybe made available. Right, and by older we mean closer to the time of writing. So let's say instead of eighth, ninth, tenth century manuscripts in medieval Europe, we're talking now maybe fifth, fourth, a couple third century manuscripts, getting us a lot closer to the apostolic age when these documents were produced in the first and second centuries. And that's a big deal because older texts are generally more reliable. Yeah, less of the telephone game going on. This is in a time before the Gutenberg press and digital media. So teams of scholars will review all of these manuscripts that we have available to us today. And they'll put together what they think based on all the evidence available is the most original version of the text as best as we can tell, right? Essentially, a best, very educated guess.
00:07:09
Speaker
So this guess is called the critical text. So most translations that have been done since the creation of this critical text have used this critical text, right? They're saying, oh yeah, this is based on the best evidence available, but there are some that choose to stick with the textus receptus.
00:07:23
Speaker
We should say too, so people kind of know the language here too. You won't probably find like something called the critical text at a library or something. You'd find like the NA28 or NA29 or the UBS4, UBS5 or SBLGNT. That's one. Yep. Those are entities that are publishing their own version of the critical text.
00:07:42
Speaker
Right. And those would all be very similar. Yes. Some of them will only vary based on like paragraph breakups or possibly punctuation, but they tend to all agree on the actual text to be used. So does whether you go with a Texas Receptus or a critical text actually make any difference?
Errors in Scripture Copying
00:07:57
Speaker
Yes, it definitely does. Describes copying scripture over time. They're hand copying scripture. And when you do that multiple times, small changes will come into the text and you get simple copying errors. Sometimes somebody will add a word here or there.
00:08:11
Speaker
Right. Sometimes people will copy a Bible and then they'll add their own kind of commentary notes. In the margin. In the margin. And they'll use that Bible for teaching. ah Maybe a future scribe will take that Bible with the notes on the side and they'll think, oh, somebody forgot this section of the text. And so maybe they'll move it into the text or maybe they'll think, oh, it's a very important note. I want people to see this every time they read it. So they'll move it into the text and maybe put it in bracket. And at some point in the process, it just becomes incorporated into the text when originally it was just a scribe's marginal note, perhaps. And that's exactly what happened with a very famous passage in 1 John. This is called the Johannine comma. So if you read this in the NIV, you'll get 1 John 5, 7 through 8 says, For there are three that testify,
00:08:55
Speaker
the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and the three are in agreement. But if you read the same passage in the King James Version, you get, For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood, and these three agree in one. Yeah, that's a big difference. One is like explicitly Trinitarian, and one is just silent on it. Yeah, yeah there's a big section in there that very explicitly states a Trinity doctrine, whereas the older manuscripts didn't have any of that.
00:09:24
Speaker
I think it's actually very telling. The new King James Version, which includes this full extended text, adds a footnote for this section. It says, only four or five very late manuscripts contain these words in Greek. In other words, don't include it. Yeah, it's their version of, we know this isn't supposed to be here, but if we take it out, people will get mad. We really like it. We know it wasn't in the Bible originally, but I like it.
00:09:49
Speaker
Yeah. See, you get the strange thing that happens sometimes where the verse numbering system that we use was based on the Texas Receptus. So when we learn, based on manuscript discoveries, that certain sections shouldn't actually be in the text and we remove them, sometimes you get verses that become very short or disappear altogether. Right.
00:10:08
Speaker
Now, if you go on the Internet, it's easy to find people making this claim that modern Bible translations remove verses from the Bible. Yeah, they're changing our Bible. Yes. And so they can point to sections where newer translations of the Bible have much shorter readings than the King James Version did. And this is exactly why it's because new translations know now that certain parts that were in the text were actually added by later scribes. So they are correctly removing them to better represent the text that would have been closer to the original
Preference for Critical Texts
00:10:35
Speaker
author's text. Right. Because if we care about what the apostles wrote, then we're going to prioritize what they wrote rather than a later text that it has what they wrote, but also has possibly some other stuff thrown in as well just through the years. I don't want to read a 12th century scribes note as if it's biblical, even if it got included in the King James Version. Right. I want to know ah that doesn't belong in there. So I don't want to see that in my Bible.
00:10:59
Speaker
If you have a high view of scriptures as given by God by inspiration, right, then you want to follow the critical text because the critical text is trying to get you to the original writings as best as it can. So all of this is why most modern translators will use critical text. However, even among translators who are using the critical text, they won't always necessarily use the exact same text.
Variant Readings and Interpretation
00:11:23
Speaker
Some can use variant readings of a text.
00:11:26
Speaker
ah variant reading would be like this early text says we the plural this early text says I the singular and they're both early texts but they're different texts from a different text family <unk> etc or you could say like these two texts say these readings and a commentary on the scriptures from Damascus that's even earlier says this reading so you have to wait all of those These organizations that put together the critical text, they're going to put together their best guess in the actual text itself, but they'll typically provide a whole bunch of notes to go along with this text. So anytime that the ancient manuscripts disagree on a passage, people putting together the critical text will take their best guess. They say, we think this is the original reading, but they're going to put in the notes. We don't think these are the best readings. We don't think these are original. That's why they're not in the text, but we're going to put them in the footnote so you can see these were other things that showed up in the manuscripts. It's kind of cool because then you can go ahead and decide for yourself. And that's exactly what translators will do sometimes. So even if they're using a critical text, they may occasionally go with a variant reading. That's exactly what happened in 2nd Peter 3.10.
Formal vs. Dynamic Equivalence
00:12:33
Speaker
So the new international version and NASB, they're both modern translations based on critical texts. But the 95 version of the NASB, they used a different variant reading here.
00:12:43
Speaker
to the end of this verse. The NIV, which kind of sticks with the critical text, says, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. However, the NASB 95, going with the variant reading, says the earth and its works will be burned up. Those two read very different.
00:12:59
Speaker
Yeah, they could lead to different theological conclusions as well. So it does matter. They definitely can. If you're expecting the earth to be fully destroyed, the NASB 95 reading is very much going to confirm what you think. Whereas the NIV reading might challenge you to consider that differently. So scholars even scholars who respect the NASB 95 greatly are going back, updating the translation, saying, yeah, actually, we should have just gone with a critical text. So they went with something like, the world and all of its works will be exposed or something was your original question. So this is all before a translator even starts to get into what is the more difficult part, which is actually translating the text that they've chosen. Right.
Translation Methodologies and Challenges
00:13:58
Speaker
When people talk about different Bible translations, the key methodology that they focus on is equivalence. So translations can tend to either be more formally equivalent or dynamically equivalent. This may also just be called word for word versus thought for thought. Right, yeah, that's a common way to put it.
00:14:13
Speaker
Different languages don't work the same way. So you can't just go along in Hebrew or Greek and swap each word for an English equivalent as you go along. Do tell. Actually, you could, I guess. But what you would end up with is what's called an interlinear. And trying to read one of these, I think, helps you appreciate the work that goes into translation a little bit. So here, let me let me read you a little section of one. So the context here, Abram and Sarah are traveling to Egypt because there's a famine in their land.
00:14:39
Speaker
Genesis 1211 from an interlinear would read, And he is becoming as which he neared to, to come of Egyptward. And he is saying to Sarai woman of him, Behold, please, I know that woman lovely of appearance you. It's beautiful, isn't it, Nick? It's worse than Yoda talk.
00:14:57
Speaker
Yeah, this makes for terrible reading in English. This verse is still, like, almost understandable, but a lot of verses wouldn't even be close. Right. So if you're a translator, right, obviously that's not gonna do. How are you gonna translate this sentence into English? A formal equivalence approach is basically gonna say, we're gonna make as few changes as possible to just make this grammatically correct English.
00:15:19
Speaker
Right, so that's the word for word yeah school of thought. Which would be represented by something like the Nasbee translation. So this verse in the Nasbee says, it came about when he was approaching Egypt that he said to his wife Sarai, see now I know that you are a beautiful woman. That's understandable. I at least know what it's saying. I mean, it takes me a moment as I read through it, because it doesn't feel like natural English. But okay, I understand what that's communicating.
00:15:42
Speaker
The other approach you could take is a more dynamic approach. So that would be to take this whole phrase and try to communicate what it's communicating, but in a more natural English way. So the NIV says, as he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife, Sarah, I know what a beautiful woman you are. That's much closer to the way people would speak. yeah So as far as like the specifics of the word selected and the word order, this takes more liberty, right? It's more willing to kind of mix stuff up and move it around to try to turn it into more natural English.
00:16:11
Speaker
Right, and actually to try to more effectively communicate what the original text is saying in its language, but try to communicate that same exact thing in normal modern English. So which of these approaches do we want to pick as we go purchase a Bible off the shelf? There's no shortage of advice online that will tell you that you absolutely must use formally equivalent word-for-word translation because anything else is untrustworthy.
00:16:37
Speaker
Never mind the fact that, as you noted, word-for-word translations do not exist. They just don't. So let's put that on the table. But you're right. Usually that is the encouragement. We'll get the most word-for-word type of thing as possible, at least for Bible study.
00:16:52
Speaker
If you're a Christian trying to dig deep in the scriptures, then you're going to want to use the most word for wordish, formally equivalent translation as you can come up with. Yes. I think the implication is basically if you stick with word for word, you're going to better understand the original text in all of its details. And the truth is that just doesn't work that way.
00:17:13
Speaker
The very simple fact is that when you're trying to translate, even if you're going to try to keep the sentence structure and keep as many things as you can about the original language, you're still going to have to deal with the fact that phrases and words in any language are not going to have perfect English equivalence. Oh, yeah. So maybe sometimes to retain the exact verbiage as close as possible is to lose the meaning of an idiom or the meaning of a turn of phrase, which you probably actually want to translate into English. If the author in Hebrew is trying to communicate something using an idiom or turn of phrase, then you're going to want to know what he meant to communicate. You have reading a whole bunch of idioms that don't exist in English, but translated from Hebrew aren't going to help you at all.
00:17:57
Speaker
you'd almost want your translator to take the liberty to turn that Hebrew idiom into an equivalent or even an English idiom that could stand in for it and communicate a similar thing.
Deviating from Formal Equivalence
00:18:08
Speaker
Try to give me that idea as best as you can in English, even if that doesn't mean that you're communicating to me the exact words.
00:18:14
Speaker
There's actually a famous example of this where the King James translation does this. It's a verse that says, in strong Greek terms, like, no, may this never be the case. And in English, the King James translation says, God forbid. That is not in the Greek text, but it is actually a creative way to feel the force of, say, Paul's words in Greek. It would be equivalent to an Englishman, I guess, in 1700 or whatever this text was produced, to say something like, God forbid.
00:18:41
Speaker
And then when NIV takes it out, they go, oh, look, NIV removed God's name from this verse. Even when you're not dealing with idioms, right? If you're dealing with just any Greek or Hebrew phrase, the words in that phrase are not going to have perfect equivalence. Take a look at 1st Timothy 3.15. Because on paper, this is a verse that should be a perfect verse to translate using a word for word method. The sentence structure, like the word order and everything, lines up pretty well with the way we would communicate in English.
00:19:07
Speaker
It's 1st Timothy 3.15 in the New American Standard Bible. i writes that you will know how one should act in the household of god which is the church of the living god the pillar and support of the truth focus on this last phrase the church of the living god the pillar and support of the truth This is very close actually to the Greek behind it. If you're a Greek I student and you're given this verse to translate, it's a pretty easy peasy one to go with.
00:19:32
Speaker
But after you've translated it, there's a small problem here. What is the pillar in support of the truth? Is the passage referring to God or to the church? Yeah. The way this is translated in English, it could actually be either one. It's an ambiguous statement. However, the Greek behind this is actually very clear.
00:19:49
Speaker
Because nouns in Greek have cases, and the cases tell you that it's the church that is the pillar and support of the truth. The Greek words carry more information than any English word can. So no matter how formally you try to translate this, you're losing something that the Greek words carried, and you end up with an ambiguous statement. So by sticking with a very formal translation style, you've actually made the English translation less clear than the Greek was. And less faithful to what the Greek was communicating.
00:20:18
Speaker
Yeah, potentially. This one's a little interesting because as a good Protestant here, there's a strong pole to understand the pillar and foundation of truth as a reference to God. And not the church, right? Exactly, yeah. So of the way this is translated means, oh, I'm probably going to misunderstand it. Because it's translated in a word for word equivalence, what should we do? In order to make this clear that the reference is to the church, you're going to have to add something to the text.
00:20:44
Speaker
Yeah, or rearrange the ordering of the words. Yep, rearrange it. you You've got to mix it up somehow. So the New Living Translation here says, this is the Church of the Living God, which is the pillar and foundation of the truth. So by adding the word which in there, the relative pronoun, the relative pronoun, they've made it clear that this is a reference to the Church rather than to the Living God.
00:21:05
Speaker
Now, if you go look at this in Greek, there's no Greek word you can point at and say, oh, that's where which is coming from. Right. So it's objectively a less formally equivalent translation, but it actually clarifies something that was in the Greek. Yeah, it better communicates what the verse is saying in
Language and Cultural Differences
00:21:19
Speaker
Greek. As you get into the the gritty details of translation, you end up having to face down this fact that for any given word or phrase in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek, there's not going to be a perfect English equivalent.
00:21:30
Speaker
So when we read an English translation that uses words like gospel, faith, grace, or love, it's important to know that these words in English do not carry all the meaning and nuance of the words they're translated from.
00:21:42
Speaker
To learn new languages is to learn new ways of conceiving a reality. Anyone who knows anything about linguistics understands this, but languages aren't just like, oh, here's the Greek word for that, the Mandarin word for that, the Spanish word for that. And they all are referring to the same thing, especially when you get into less concrete things and into more abstract things like ideas, virtues, stuff like that.
00:22:06
Speaker
There's no guarantee that one word is connoting all the same things in one language to another, even though you might select certain words in certain languages and think they're approximating the same thing. All they are is approximations of the same thing, because each language comes with an entire world of ideas behind it. So you can't just divorce language from the dominant stories that the cultures in those languages tell.
00:22:31
Speaker
I was struck by that when we interviewed Theresa Morgan, who's done a ton of research on the Greek word pistis. It's translated usually faith, but she argues that in different contexts, it can mean trust. It can mean loyalty. It can mean trustworthiness. It has this broad array of meanings that don't translate neatly into any one English word. So anytime you try to use one English equivalent, you're kind of chopping off a whole bunch of that nuance and depth of that word that was there in Greek. Yeah.
00:22:59
Speaker
Also, if you start to use words like faith or belief to translate, paststis you're potentially adding in a whole bunch of modern understandings that wouldn't have been there for an ancient audience. Yeah, well, you're certainly downloading into the text the Latin Church tradition and their understanding of that word for sure. I mean, you can't even get away from it. We've just inherited medieval European theology through the Roman Catholic Church and into Anglicanism. The English Bible words communicate kind of that history with them and you can't divorce them. So when you talk about salvation, well, that means a bunch of things according to our English tradition. And according to our American and European histories, that it is very hard to separate from that word. Obviously, in the text of the New Testament, the somewhat equivalent word, sozo, or whatever, for salvation, didn't mean what George Whitefield was using it to mean. And so, yeah, it is kind of interesting.
00:23:58
Speaker
ah John Barclay had a book that came out a few years ago, Paul and the Gift. He traces the history of a word like carus, which usually gets translated grace. He shows how it had a much kind of narrower definition for ancient audiences. And then he actually tracks throughout church history, how thinkers and theologians have added new elements to this word to the point where it means something much bigger for us now than it probably did So all this to say is, no matter what type of translation methodology you're using, if you're left having to translate a word in another language into a word in English, you're always going to be either losing some meaning or adding some meaning on. There's never going to be perfect equivalence.
00:24:38
Speaker
English translations are not especially good tools for trying to study scriptural texts at that kind of detail.
Conveying Scripture's Story Effectively
00:24:45
Speaker
Now, that certainly doesn't mean that they're not useful. Because thankfully, even though translations can't preserve the specifics and nuance of the original languages, they can do a really good job at preserving the big elements of scripture.
00:24:59
Speaker
A good translation can absolutely tell the story of Scripture well. Have you ever been over to the Mall of America near here and seen the giant Lego sculptures that they have? Yeah. There's this one of a tiger that's probably 30 feet long. From a distance, it looks like a photograph of a tiger. It's incredibly realistic. It's a really good representation of a tiger. The coloring, the anatomy, the way it's posed actually kind of gives you an idea of how a real tiger might move.
00:25:26
Speaker
I think these Lego structures are kind of like a good Bible translation. While no single Lego or even a little cluster of Legos is going to look just like a piece of a tiger, when they're assembled well, they can actually represent the tiger in a really good way. However, if you saw that tiger and you thought, oh, I really want to go study that tiger, so I'm going to climb up there on that Lego structure and I'm going to get out of microscope or a magnifying glass and look closely at its claws and try to study a tiger by looking at this Lego sculpture, you would learn nothing of any value.
00:25:56
Speaker
It is not helpful for that. If you wanted to understand Tiger Claw anatomy, you would have to go study an actual Tiger Claw. So in your illustration, the actual original text? Exactly. So is this why like Bible studies and teaching get so weird and kind of off when people think they're going deep into the text, but they're staying in English?
Limitations of English Scripture Study
00:26:20
Speaker
I mean, not to be like rude to my fellow evangelicals, but Bible studies are just crazy. cringe like the stuff you see on the internet and but honestly like personal Bible studies I've been in through the years points are often made off of like a repeated English word or something and it has nothing to do with what's going on in Greek nothing at all and so we're almost led astray into thinking we can look at the English text with the magnifying glass and like go really deep
00:26:47
Speaker
you just can't like you can read the text in English you certainly can almost all of our audience probably doesn't know Greek or Hebrew and I don't know Greek or Hebrew that well you know what I'm saying that's okay but you got to know your limitations and you got to know the limitations of English texts And it sounds like what you're saying is they can be very unhelpful and unwise, frankly, to look at the exact turns of phrases of the English text because you're not probably even making insights into the minutia and the details of the Greek or Hebrew text.
00:27:21
Speaker
you'll be let astray into thinking you are actually looking at that tiger stripe, but actually you're looking at a Lego representation of that tiger stripe. Absolutely. The more you zoom into the English, the less accurate your observations are going to be. Yes.
00:27:38
Speaker
We've talked about this a kind of two-part Bible reading. Yeah, yeah. First, go wide and then go deep. yeah When you're going wide and you're reading for big narrative pieces... You'll get it in English. You'll be fine. English translations are great at that. They tell the story of Scripture really, really well.
00:27:53
Speaker
Even when you read like Paul's letters, some things are obscure and weird cultural practices that are hard to like, I don't know what that means. But if you just cruise through Ephesians real quick in English, you'll get the general idea of what are he's talking about. Yeah, you go through Old Testament narratives, you go through Psalms, you go through a gospel. Yeah, the big parts of those stories, a good English translation is going to represent extremely well, you're going to get all that important stuff. Yeah.
00:28:15
Speaker
When you decide you want to slow down and really study a specific passage, when you want to start going deep, you got to recognize an English translation is going to provide very little help for that part of studying Scripture.
Tools for Deeper Study
00:28:25
Speaker
Yeah. But there are some tools that you'd recommend for getting that help.
00:28:29
Speaker
Oh, there's so many good tools. And what's awesome is you don't even have to speak or be able to read the original languages to interact with these tools that allow you to go beyond what an English translation would allow you to do. Yeah. Bible translators, right they're fully aware of the limitations of Bible translations. So a lot of Bible translations will come with additional tools designed to let Bible readers go deeper than the translation would typically allow.
00:28:52
Speaker
Some translators will even fit some of these tools right into the text. So you'll start to see footnotes, or capitalization, italicization, or additional marks or notes in the text. So Nasby will add an asterisk wherever they translate the Greek historical present using conventional English past tense for narrative. That might not be helpful if you're listening to somebody read the text, yeah but if you're reading it, this can help. Don't sit there and fixate on the meaning of a word that's italicized in a Nasby Bible because they had to supply it to make the text understandable. My point was, probably don't sit there and fixate on any English words, but... but Yeah, especially if it's italicized.
NET Bible Translation Notes
00:29:43
Speaker
My favorite easily accessible tool for going beyond just translation are the notes included with the NET Bible translation. These are notes that come from the translators. Actually, the notes end up being longer in a lot of cases than the biblical text itself. So they basically provide insight into the thought process, present some of the options that the translators considered, the decisions they had to make, and they present their reasoning for the decisions that they made. The NET Bible, it's available for free online or if you use the Bible app.
00:30:11
Speaker
If so, when you're using the Bible app, you'll notice a ton of little comment Bibles throughout the text. You just click on those and you get these amazing translator notes right there. So, going back to that first Samuel passage, right? The pisseth against the wall passage. Here's their note on that section. It says, in Hebrew, one who urinates against a wall.
00:30:28
Speaker
At first, this may seem to be a vulgar phrase because it refers to a bodily function and David is angry. But David uses the same phrase when he speaks in a conciliatory way to Abigail in verse 34. There is no clear point to his using a vulgar phrase in that context. The phrase refers to males is not with certainty crude, and the addition of the phrase at a wall does not communicate well in the modern setting. We have chosen to simply use male for this phrase.
00:30:50
Speaker
There you go. and So even if you disagree, you understand their argument and why they're doing what they're doing. Exactly. And you could go read 20 Bible translations, right? Two of them will have pissed against the wall, the other 18 will have males. Reading all those translations isn't going to help you actually get behind that translation at all, like a good note like this will.
00:31:08
Speaker
What's helpful about that note is now you can go to Google and do a search and look for articles and stuff like that that talk about that exact issue.
Using AI for Bible Research
00:31:17
Speaker
Now you've got language for this. Actually, one thing that's even more helpful than Google now for asking Bible questions about data and even getting to some research is chat GPT. Extremely helpful. Honestly, I could ask chat GPT right now. Watch this.
00:31:33
Speaker
Why does 1 Samuel 25, 22 translate as, pisseth against the wall? And some translations, all right, it's from Chet GPT. The phrase pisseth against the wall in 1 Samuel 25, 22 and other passages like 1 Kings 14 is a literal translation from the Hebrew phrase, mashtim bakar. This phrase, when translated word for word, means exactly that, one who urinates against the wall. It's a colloquial or an idiomatic expression in ancient Hebrew that refers specifically to males, as they are the ones who urinate standing up against the wall.
00:32:03
Speaker
And then it gives like an entire article here why some translations just use man instead. I can just ask like, can you point me in the direction of some scholars that have done some work on this or written a couple articles on this and it will point me in that direction and how to obtain them. Sometimes it's behind a paywall or whatever, but I'm well on my way to getting my questions answered.
00:32:23
Speaker
Textual commentaries are another fantastic tool.
Textual Commentaries and Debates
00:32:26
Speaker
ah Most people are probably familiar with more like theological-style commentaries, but a textual commentary will function really differently. Ideally, you should be looking for something that discusses different approaches taken to the translation, although these do tend to be expensive. What you want to know is, why have different translators translated this different ways? What's the conversation going on behind the translation?
00:32:46
Speaker
What are the questions they had to face when making the decision that went into this translation? So, if you're going to go with a sort of two-part approach to the Bible, translations are really going to shine in this step one,
Choosing Readable Translations
00:32:57
Speaker
right? This big, wide reading. So if that's what you're picking a translation for, what should you look for when you're picking a translation to do this first part well?
00:33:05
Speaker
Something that helps you read big and wide. Exactly. Much more than just a single verse or phrase at a time. I think you should make a habit of reading or listening to really big portions of scripture at a time. So find a translation from a reputable group of translators that uses the best available manuscripts and one that takes readability seriously. So this is a little bit subjective, but I think translations like the NIV, the NET, or the NLT are all really easy to read. Now I know there are a lot of other good translations out there, but I've said in too many Bible studies where people have struggled to read out of an NASB or an ESV to think that those are great first options for this first step of reading the Bible. Yeah. If you find yourself having to go back and read a section just to understand what it means multiple times, then that translation is not being especially helpful to you.
00:33:53
Speaker
not effectively communicating to you what the author was trying to communicate to the author's audience. How many people have abandoned a reading through the year plan but halfway through Leviticus because they got sick of reading passages and just not knowing what they mean?
00:34:07
Speaker
Yeah, and that is for sure to do with the content, but it is sometimes due in part to a bad translation or to a translation that just doesn't make it interesting or readable in English. And so you're just mentally taxed by the time you're done reading a chapter. You're like, I can't read another chapter of this. The content is kind of boring to me, and it's a struggle for me to even to make sense of it in English. So I'm frustrated.
00:34:31
Speaker
One of the other big benefits of a translation that's presented in really clearly understandable English is that you can listen
Recommended Readable Translations
00:34:37
Speaker
to them. Yeah. You turned me on to Robert Alter's translation of the Hebrew Bible. He puts an emphasis on preserving the listening experience of the Hebrew text. It's got a lot of word repetition and these VOC consecutive, so what would you call them, VOC consecutive?
00:34:51
Speaker
yeah Yeah, yes. So he's tried to preserve some of that rhythmic feel in his English translation. It's very enjoyable to listen to. And the entire thing is available for free on Audible. My buddy Andy, he turned me on to a Spotify channel called Streetlights with really well-produced scripture audio. So they've got like a little bit of music in the background and it's red. It's super easy to listen to and a lot of it's in the NLT. It was very clear, easy English.
00:35:16
Speaker
So if you're picking a Bible translation, my very simple piece of advice would be pick one that's easy to read because that's what you should be looking for a Bible translation to be used for. When it's time to go deeper, you're going to have to start using tools that are not just translation. You need to start being willing to look for other tools beyond just your Bible to help you go deeper.
00:35:35
Speaker
Fair enough. But you would also assume that if this is your first criterion, pick one that's easy to read. You're also assuming that it's actually a translation done by an actual committee of scholars. Absolutely. Like in your mind, when you say pick one easy to read, you're you're saying from the selection that are actually legitimate translations. yeah Don't just like grab one that your uncle translated. Yes, pick a translation done by somebody reputable.
00:35:58
Speaker
Yeah, a group. So it's not just one person typically. I would definitely pick one that's used the better more recently available versions of the text and preferably one that's done by committee and ideally a committee with people from different theological backgrounds. For sure. Yes, for
Importance of Diverse Translation Committees
00:36:13
Speaker
sure. Otherwise, I've seen this happen. Actually, it's really unfortunate.
00:36:17
Speaker
In that process of figuring out what English phrase to use, et cetera, et cetera, in the minutiae and the details, if you have a bunch of scholars from the exact same Baptist background, for example, not that this would ever happen, all of a sudden they're going to make decisions that favor a reading that would serve the apologetic purpose of supporting their tradition. At least they would be tempted to do that.
00:36:42
Speaker
And they might just blindly kind of limp into that based on their prior assumptions. One thing that helps you a little bit stay away from interested readings like that when there is questions is just to have a committee that is from a broad background. I think that's a protection against interested apologetic readings that can end up in the English text.
Narrative vs. Language Nuance
00:37:02
Speaker
Yeah. To a certain degree, interested readings are inevitable. You're never going to fully get away from them. I use the NIV as my go-to text. I know that its translators tend to lean a little reformed on special issues around justification. I know that Pissed is Christu in every version of the NIV that comes out for the rest of my life is probably going to read faith in Christ instead of the faithfulness of Jesus. Reading those passages as faith in Christ doesn't change the fact that those are still good representations of the big narrative of Scripture.
00:37:31
Speaker
Now, when I go to study passages in detail, I know the NIV, like any translation, is not going to give me everything I need to study that scripture in depth. Yeah, can I say this too? If you do have some knowledge of Greek or Hebrew, then more formally equivalent word-for-word translations can actually be helpful at some stage in Bible study, because what you can do with like a Bible software is you can link them to a Greek apparatus, for example, so that let's just say like the ESV,
00:38:00
Speaker
it will be linked to the Greek apparatus that you have so that if you click on a certain word, it will give you the Greek word that's used in the SBLGNT or NA29 or whatever. That can be helpful then at that point. But if you don't know Greek or Hebrew, then that option's not even helpful to you. And so I think I've said this to you before, I appreciate formally equivalent translations, word-for-word translations. I appreciate them for getting me back to Greek or Hebrew in a rather straightforward way.
00:38:30
Speaker
I don't appreciate them necessarily for the readability in English. Yeah, I second that for sure. They're sometimes a very helpful tool when you're doing that second part of your Bible reading, the going deep. Now, they aren't the only tool you can use there for sure. and Like you said, you're using them as a tool along with your translation of the original languages, so you're already starting to get beyond translations there.
00:38:52
Speaker
I hear expressed sometimes the concern by people who want to make sure that English readers know they can trust their Bible translations. And I think that's right in a way. If you're using a good translation done by a good team of scholars, you should absolutely be able to trust that they're trying to communicate to you the truth of Scripture as best as they can. You should absolutely trust that that English translation is going to present to you the narrative of Scripture really well, is going to provide to you everything that you absolutely need to know to be a Christian and to follow Jesus faithfully.
00:39:28
Speaker
yeah It does not, however, mean that you should trust your English translation to provide to you all of the detail and nuance that the original text did. Right. Your English translations are extremely helpful for reading big, but when you start trying to read small, you need to start looking for tools that are going to let you go beyond just your Bible to help you go deeper. No, you're right. And so your overall admonition then would be definitely use a translation that's using the critical text, which basically all of them are now, so that one's easy. But really prioritize in English a good translation that was done by a committee that is readable, because that's going to be the most helpful thing for you in English.
00:40:07
Speaker
Now, if you want to go deep, we might make more use of the word for word ones. If you start to try to learn some Hebrew, if you start to try to learn some Greek, then you really can make use of what those word for word-ish translations are are good at. But they're not going to help you a whole lot if you're just trying to soak in scriptures every day and be changed by their narratives.
00:40:28
Speaker
And I'll just add another little gentle reminder to don't be afraid of consuming a lot of the texts at once, letting the whole tapestry of that literary work shape you.
Appreciating the Overall Narrative
00:40:40
Speaker
We tend to view all the scriptures as like meditation snippets.
00:40:46
Speaker
That is the case for proverbs. You read a proverb or two and think about them. We tend to read, ah like, a lot of the scriptures are all of them as proverbs. They're not that. And so to drop down in 1 Samuel 7, 36, and to get stuck on one turn of phrase, you're probably not seeing something there that the text is trying to, like, tell you today. So just be careful about that. Read big. Thank God all of our English translations are delivering for us very readable and really accurate big picture readings that are faithful to what God wanted for the original audiences and for the world.
Upcoming Topics Preview
00:41:51
Speaker
We're coming up on a year now, and we want you to pay attention over the next couple of weeks for some updates to the podcast. Get ready to dig in on Jewish apocalyptic literature as we do a study on the apocalyptic Son of Man. Watch also for some new interviews, some conversation about resurrection, the afterlife, and everything in between. More to come.