WordHelp: 27 November 2018 – The History of

Vision: We lead people to LIFE-CHANGE that is only possible through JESUS CHRIST!

Mission: REACHING PEOPLE with the GOSPEL of JESUS CHRIST to ESTABLISH them in the BODY OF CHRIST, to the GLORY OF HIS NAME!

Jeremiah 17:7-8: “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD.8 He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

Welcome It is excellent to have you with us this evening. We trust that this evening will truly bless your soul and help you to mature significantly in the Lord and that you would progress in your sanctification this evening, becoming more and more like Jesus Christ, who is the only way to the Father. May we be filled with great thankfulness as we look at a short history of Bible Translations. It is because of this history that we have the Bible in languages that are known to us and enable us to have an accurate and clear knowledge of God. We stand on the shoulders of many other Christians who has gone before us and whom God has used to bring His Special Revelation through His Word to us! I pray that this will bring great praise in your heart towards God as well as a renewed fervour to study His Word and know Him more intimately! This is a class and we would love to have you participate freely and learn. We do not want to make this as much an academic exercise as we desire it to be a very practical tool for you to use as you go and make disciples in a world that so desperately needs Christ. Remember to pray regularly for this process and prepare well for every class so that you will be receiving the maximum reward possible from your investment of time and energy in these classes.

The Lord bless you… Pastor Jacques

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THE HISTORY OF BIBLE TRANSLATIONS

CONTENTS PAGE

1. INTRODUCTION 3 2. OLD TESTAMENT TRANSLATION 3 3. TRANSLATION 5 4. HOW THE BIBLE ENTERED INTO ENGLISH 5 5. THE TEXTUS RECEPTUS 8 6. CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS 10 7. TRANSLATION PHILOSOPHY 11 8. MEASUREMENT OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FREE AND LITERAL TRANSLATIONS 11 9. TRANSLATION SURVEY 12 10. TRANSLATION CHOICE 13 11. NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 14

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1. INTRODUCTION

The Bible and Bible Translations form an integral part of Christianity. Why? Because the Bible is God’s Word to mankind; His message to them; His revelation of Himself to them so that by grace man can come to a saving knowledge of Him through Jesus Christ and love Him with all their heart, soul, mind and strength. This knowledge comes through faith in this message and faith comes through hearing this message. (Rom 10:17)

In order for people to have a clear understanding of this message, the language barrier that separates so many people from this message has to be overcome and this is where Bible Translations form such an integral part of worldwide Christianity. The need for Bible Translations flows from the great commission (Matt 28:18-20; Acts 1:8) namely that we should make disciples of all nations. We are to be witnesses to the ends of the earth and this through the power of the Holy Spirit working in us. One way in which the Holy Spirit then powerfully worked and still works in Christians is to enable them to translate the Word of God into the languages of the nations so that they may come to a saving knowledge of God through Jesus Christ.

“Unlike religions such as Islam, where the Quran is only truly the Quran in the original Arabic, biblical Christianity has always believed that God's word can and should be translated into the common languages of all men. In any language in which the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are faithfully rendered, they are still the word of God, and so the Scriptures should be translated into any language necessary to bring the gospel message to all people everywhere.”1

2. OLD TESTEMANT TRANSLATIONS1

Translation of Scripture is older than Christianity itself. The Old Testament Scriptures of the Hebrew Bible were brought into other common languages for centuries before the coming of Jesus Christ, and indeed were a great help to the early church. After the time of Alexander, the Great, Greek became the common language of much of the ancient world. Many Jews dispersed throughout that world began to speak Greek as their primary language. This eventually led to the need for a Greek translation.

The Torah (The Books of Moses, Genesis through Deuteronomy) was translated into Greek in the third century BC, with the other Old Testament books shortly to follow. The Septuagint (also known as the LXX) is a translation of the Hebrew Bible into the Greek language. The name “Septuagint” comes from the Latin word for seventy. The tradition is that 70 (or 72) Jewish scholars were the translators behind the Septuagint. The Septuagint is often quoted verbatim (word for word) in the New Testament and was very important to the early church. Gentile Christians knew nothing of Hebrew, and so the Septuagint was their Bible. Indeed, after Christians embraced and so effectively used the Septuagint for their own teaching, worship, and evangelism, the Jews rejected it and sought to produce new Greek editions to suit their own community's needs. Even these, however, are often classified by some scholars as revisions of the Septuagint rather than new "from scratch" translations.

In the third century AD, Origen of Alexandria collected these various Greek editions (along with the Hebrew text of his day) and published them all side by side in parallel columns with notations of key differences in a massive work known as the Hexapla. The Hexapla had a profound influence on future copying of the Septuagint, and scholars give it a central position among the editions of the LXX. It was based on the assumption that, while the Septuagint should be revered as the word of God even in its peculiar readings, there is also value in the study of other translations. They, too, are the word of God, even when they differ from the Septuagint, and the church is richer from knowing them. The wide popularity and influence of the Hexapla shows that this view was held by many early Christians.

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Though many early Christians spoke Greek, not all did, and Christians were not content to leave the Old Testament only in Greek. They made various translations of the Greek Septuagint into many other languages during the 2nd-9th centuries, including Latin, Coptic, Ethiopic, Arabic, Gothic, Armenian, Georgian, and Slavonic.

Greek was also not the only language into which the Jews translated the Hebrew Scriptures. After the Babylonian exile, the dominant language among the Jews in and around their homeland began to shift from Hebrew to Aramaic. Hebrew and Aramaic are extremely similar languages, and it seems almost surprising that an Aramaic translation was needed at all. Indeed, the Aramaic did not supplant the Hebrew, which continued to be read aloud in worship. The Aramaic was the contemporary vernacular of the people, however, and so Aramaic translations were produced to aid in comprehension and application of the sacred text. We don't know when written Aramaic Targums were first produced, but our earliest manuscripts go back as early as the second century BC.

In addition to the Jewish Targums, the Samaritans also produced an Aramaic translation of the Torah. The Samaritan Targum is generally regarded as a plainer, literal translation while many of the Jewish Targums were often somewhat interpretive.

Probably in the late first or the second century AD but certainly before the fourth century, the Old Testament was also separately translated into a prominent eastern dialect of Aramaic known as Syriac. This translation shows clear markings of Jewish interpretation, but also betrays no obvious Rabbinic influence and was readily embraced and transmitted by Christians. For these reasons and more, it is unclear whether the translation was first produced by Jews, Christians, or perhaps a community who identified as both. At any rate, it is interesting to note that, while Aramaic translations already existed, a translation specifically into the Syriac dialect was considered both proper and needful.

As noted earlier, Christians translated the Old Testament from the Septuagint into Latin, and probably at a very early date. In the fourth century, however, a scholar named Jerome became convinced that it was important to produce a fresh Latin translation directly from the Hebrew. Jerome relied on the assistance of Jewish scholars. Because all translation is to some degree interpretation, this cooperation concerned some of Jerome's Christian contemporaries. They were worried that the translation would be slanted by Rabbinic exegesis against Christian interpretations of the text. The greater controversy, however, was in returning to the Hebrew rather than relying on the familiar and long trusted tradition of the Greek Septuagint. Even the slightest variation between Jerome's translation and the Septuagint was met with deep scrutiny and tremendous hostility. In one famous instance, a church in North Africa nearly rioted when Jerome's translation of Jonah 4 was read aloud and it identified the plant which sheltered Jonah as an ivy plant rather than the Septuagint's interpretation of the plant as a gourd. In time, however, cooler head's prevailed, and Jerome's translation from the Hebrew became the most popular translation in Western Europe for over a thousand years, later known as the Latin .

After the rise of Islam and the Arab conquests, Arabic became the dominant language in large portions of the world. In response to this, Arabic translations of the Old Testament began to appear. As mentioned above, the Christian community produced an Arabic translation from the Greek Septuagint. Based on the existence of composite manuscripts, Christians seem to have also either produced or adopted Arabic translations of some portions of the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew. The 9th-century Jewish Scholar, Saadia Gaon, also produced an Arabic translation of the Old Testament from the Hebrew as well. Additionally, the Samaritans produced an Arabic translation from the Hebrew text for their community. Thus, in Arabic as in all the dominant languages before it, we see the ancient importance placed on having an understandable translation available in the tongue most worshippers actually spoke.

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3. NEW TESTAMENT TRANSLATIONS1

From the beginning, the New Testament was built on the necessity of translation. Not only does it command the gospel be preached to all nations, the New Testament itself models translation to the common tongue. Every time it quotes the Old Testament, it does so in Greek rather than the original Hebrew. In several places in the gospels, words of Jesus or others are given in their original Aramaic and then immediately translated, and it is likely that other portions of Jesus' words were originally in Aramaic as well, but the New Testament offers them in the Greek language that the original readers would have known. Acts 22:1-21 presents a speech of Paul that it explicitly says he gave in the "Hebrew dialect," but it records the speech in a Greek translation so that the reader can understand it. The New Testament is itself an exercise in bringing all things into the common, everyday language of the readers. It is no wonder that that Early Christians took up the cause of translation in earnest.

Translation of portions of the New Testament into Syriac may go back as early as the second century AD. Syriac Gospels and other texts are clearly being cited by eastern Christian writers by the fourth century. The Translation was clearly widespread and well used, as we have found Syriac New Testament Manuscripts not only in and around Syria but as far east as India and China.

Similar to the Syriac, the Latin translation of the New Testament is very early, possibly as early as the second century and certainly by the third. The Latin dialect used in early Christian translations and other writings contains vocabulary so different from classical, literary Latin works that some scholars once speculated that Christians had practically invented their own language. Later examination of lower-level, every-day Latin works, however, have demonstrated that this was quite opposite the truth. Far from using some esoteric language unique to the Christian community, the Christian translators and authors were using the street-level, colloquial Latin of popular, every-day speech rather than the literary Latin of high works of art or academia. Even though multiple Latin translations existed by the fourth century, Jerome and other leaders of his day believed there was need for one more accurate and up to date, which he provided in what came later to be known as the Vulgate.

It is not known exactly when the New Testament was translated into Coptic (the language of the native peoples of Egypt.) We have surviving manuscripts, however, from the late third or early fourth century. The original translation must obviously have been before that, though not necessarily very long before. It is also noteworthy that Coptic has a number of different regional dialects. The early Christians did not expect all Coptic Christians of all dialects to learn to use one universal Coptic translation, but rather produced translations in each of the major dialects.

The Armenian language first developed an alphabet around 406 AD. An Armenian translation of the entire Bible existed by 414. Early Christians were obviously very zealous about bringing the Scriptures into the languages of the people. There were also very ancient translations of the New Testament into Palestinian Aramaic, Georgian, Ge'ez (Ethiopic), Arabic, Nubian, Persian, Sogdian (Middle Persian), Gothic, Slavonic, and others. The Early centuries of Christianity thus saw the Scriptures translated into a variety of vernacular tongues as the gospel spread throughout the known world. Biblical translation was clearly a high priority.

4. HOW THE BIBLE ENTERED INTO ENGLISH1

The first translation of portions of the Bible into English occurred much earlier than most people realize. Metrical paraphrases of the Bible were reportedly written in Old English in the 8th century, and Bede allegedly translated the Gospel of John into English in the 9th century, but no copies of these works have survived. Our Earliest surviving manuscripts of biblical texts in English are the West Saxon Gospels dating from around the 10th century, which is still startlingly early for an English biblical text. We also possess manuscripts of an 11th Century English translation of the

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"Hexateuch," (Genesis-Joshua). One such copy includes over 400 illustrations which were added to further aid average people in understanding the text. In time, as the English language changed, however, such early translations fell into disuse.

While we often call the Elizabethan English of the King James Version "Old English," it is actually an early form of modern English. These early translations were in the much early "Anglo- Saxon" or true "Old English." To better understand how the language has changed since the Old English of the 10th century, here are a few lines from the Lord's prayer in the West Saxon Gospel of Matthew:

"Fæder üre þu þe eart on heofonum; Si þin nama gehalgod to-becume þin rïce gewurþe ðin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofonum," (Matthew 6:9-10, West Saxon Gospels of 990).

If you are familiar with the passage, you can pick out some words (Fæder = Father, heofonum = heaven, etc.) Still, it is not hard to understand why speakers of later forms of English did not continue to use these translations. Occasionally, vernacular translations were made in various languages during the middle ages, including some in English (like the 12th-century Psalter attributed to Richard Rolle), however, the next major translation of the Bible into English was the John Wycliffe Bible of the 14th Century. John Wycliffe was in many ways a forerunner to the Protestant . He taught against the papacy, the idolatry of the mass, relics, and prayers to saints. He also inspired the first complete translation of the entire Bible into English. Wycliffe believed that the Bible belonged to all the people of God, and it was out of this conviction that arose the effort to bring the Bible into the common English of the day.

Wycliffe's teachings helped plant the seeds that would later sprout into the Protestant Reformation. When the Reformation began through men like Martin Luther, they quickly recognized the need to make the Word of God available in the languages spoken by everyday Christians. The Bible was not only for people wealthy and educated enough to read Latin or Scholarly enough to know the original Greek and Hebrew. The Bible was written and preserved for the benefit of all believers, and those believers needed access to it in their native tongues. The churches of the Protestant Reformation produced numerous translations into the languages of Europe, such as the German Luther Bible (1522), the Polish Brest Bible (1563), the Spanish “Biblia del Oso” (1569), the Czech Melantrich Bible (1549), the French d’Étaples translation (1530), Dalmatin’s Slovene translation (1578), and Chyliński’s Lithuanian Bible (1659), among others.

It was in the midst of this Reformation fervor of devotion to the Word of God that an English man named William Tyndale came to the conviction that the English people, too, needed a Bible in the common tongue of their day. Not only was the English of the Wycliffe Bible already out of date, the Wycliffe Bible was a translation of the Latin Vulgate, and Tyndale wanted to produce a translation that went back to the Greek and Hebrew. Greek manuscripts were not readily available in the Latin West, but an affordable printed edition of the complete Greek New Testament had very recently become available primarily through the labor of a man named Desiderius Erasmus.

One of the most well known and influential scholars of the day, Erasmus had published the first edition of his Greek New Testament in 1516, with four other editions to follow between 1519 and 1536. Erasmus derived his text primarily from two 12th-century Greek New Testament manuscripts, with a few others available for comparison. His oldest manuscript, one from the 10th century, was the one he utilized the least because it was least like the others. He had access to only one manuscript for the book of Revelation, and it was incomplete. To fill in the rest of Revelation and other occasional gaps in his manuscripts, Erasmus translated into Greek from the Latin Vulgate. Thus, in a few places, Erasmus' Greek text was based on his best estimate as to what the Greek might have been behind the early Latin text rather than on any hard evidence in front of him. It was, in these few places, a Greek translation of a Latin translation of a Greek original. Still, Erasmus' Greek

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New Testament was a vital tool in the hands of the Reformer's to produce their vernacular translations (It would later in 1633 be labeled the “Textus Receptus” See next chapter).

In 1526, William Tyndale published the first edition of his English New Testament, a translation from Erasmus' Greek text. Tyndale wanted, however, to produce the whole Bible. The Hebrew text for the Old Testament preferred by the Reformers was the printed edition of the Hebrew Bible produced by the Christian Scholar Daniel Bomberg, with the assistance of a Jewish convert to Christianity, Felix Pretensis. The 1524 edition which was most likely used by Tyndale contained not only the Hebrew text but also the text of the Aramaic Targums and Medieval Rabbinic commentaries as tools to help the reader ascertain a clearer sense of the text's meaning. Using such tools, as well as likely consulting, to a much more limited degree, the Septuagint, Vulgate, and Martin Luther's work, Tyndale published the English Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) in 1530. He was preparing the second section of the OT (Joshua through 2 Chronicles) when he was arrested and ultimately executed for his doctrine and for his translations. This section of his work was not lost, however, and was later used in the production of the 1537 Matthew Bible.

Tyndale died having not yet completed his goal of producing an entire English Bible. One of his associates, Miles Coverdale, carried on the work after him. In 1535, the Coverdale Bible was published, becoming the first complete Bible in modern English. Shortly afterward in 1537, a man named John Rogers (who himself would afterward die a martyr for his convictions), released a Bible under the pseudonym, "Thomas Matthew." The Matthew Bible, as was previously noted, was based largely on the work of William Tyndale, including the previously unpublished work on the Old Testament. For the books that Tyndale had not had the chance to translate (everything after 2 Chronicles), the Matthew Bible was a revision of Coverdale.

It was not long after this that the English Crown began to see the value in having the Bible in the native tongue. Rather than continue to resist and punish Bible translation, the state actually commissioned the first official, authorized version of the English Bible, which was first published in 1539. Miles Coverdale was actually chosen to carry out the project, and it was to be done as a revision of the Matthew Bible. The resulting translation came to be known as the "Great Bible," in part because its copies were printed very large and were meant for formal use in church services rather than for personal study at home. Other authorized versions would follow, namely the Bishop's Bible (published in several revisions from 1568-1602), and finally the famous King James Version of 1611. Before either of these, however, persecution against protestants broke out again in England and key leaders temporarily fled to Geneva for safe haven. There, they published the influential "Geneva Bible."

The Geneva Bible was a monument for several reasons: ▪ Miles Coverdale did not know Hebrew. Because of this, the portions of the Old Testament translated by him and retained in the Matthew and Great Bibles were translations of translations. ▪ The Geneva Bible is thus the first English Bible to be wholly translated from the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament from beginning to end. ▪ The Geneva Bible was also the first collaborative translation by a team or committee of scholars rather than by one primary translator with only assistance from others. ▪ The Geneva Bible was the first English translation to use verse numbers. It also included extensive study notes to aid the reader in understanding the sense of the passage, so much so that it is often considered the first English "Study Bible." ▪ The Geneva Bible was wildly popular and remained so even for many years after the KJV was published. In a very real way, the publication of the Geneva Bible marked the beginning of the modern printed Bible as we now know it.

Monarchs changed and soon most of the exiled scholars returned to their English homelands. Early in the reign of King James I, he called a council of bishops to debate some of the central ecclesiastical

7 issues between the Episcopalian traditionalists and Puritan Reformists within the Church of England. The most significant thing to occur at this gathering was not something originally on the agenda at all. A proposal was brought to the King to authorize and commission a new, official translation of the Bible to update and replace the Bishop's Bible. The king agreed, in part, because he was displeased with perceived "anti-monarchial" slants in some of the study notes in the Geneva Bible. The Geneva Bible was still the most popular English Translation, and the king hoped that the new translation would succeed in replacing it.

The translation was commissioned to essentially be a careful revision of the Bishop's Bible, retaining the familiar wording of the previous translation as much as possible without compromising faithfulness to the original Greek and Hebrew. They were also instructed to use the wording of other previous translations like Tyndale, Coverdale, and the Geneva wherever it was more faithful than the Bishops'. Thus, the KJV translators were rarely to produce a "fresh" translation, but were to, as often as possible, choose between the wording used by previous translators. Since these previous translations were often much older, this resulted in the side effect that the KJV retained some language that was dated even in its own day.

The KJV would not utilize extensive study notes the way the Geneva Bible had. The Church of England had various theological factions who could easily agree on the accuracy of a common translation but would not have readily united around a common set of study notes, which would necessity interpret disputed passages in one way or another and alienate someone. Interpretation was largely left to the preachers and readers. The margins were utilized, however, to occasionally note alternative readings where a difficult word might be better translated another way or where the Greek texts utilized by the translators might disagree. There was some controversy around this practice, critics fearing that it would sow doubt among readers about the accuracy and trustworthiness of the translation, but the translators insisted on including such notes of alternative readings and defended the practice in their lengthy preface to the reader. Likewise, words added in by the translators to make the grammar and syntax work which were not strictly found in the Greek and Hebrew were printed in a smaller typeface to identify them for the reader. (In most printings of the KJV today, smaller typeface is no longer used to mark of these words. Instead, they are printed in italics.) Like English translations before it, the KJV included the Apocrypha as an appendix. The translators did not hold the books to be inspired Scripture, but considered them valuable for their historical content and their place in Christian tradition. For the New Testament, the KJV translators consulted the Greek text of the various editions of Erasmus, as well as later revisions of his work by Stephanus and Theodore Beza. They compared these editions to one another and tried to make the best decisions they could as to the original reading of any given verse.

The KJV of 1611 was not identical to the traditional KJV of today. The text not only went through several formal revisions, it experienced informal corrections and alterations with virtually every printing. It took on its more or less final form now familiar to us in 1769 in the revision of Benjamin Blaney. There were other later revisions of the KJV, such as that of Noah Webster in 1833, but they failed to attain wide use, and the Blaney Revision has remained the essential form of the text down to today.

5. THE TEXTUS RECEPTUS2

What is the “Textus Receptus”?

The Textus Receptus (Latin for “Received Text”) is a Greek New Testament that provided the textual base for the vernacular translations of the Reformation Period. It was a printed text, not a hand-copied manuscript, created in the 15th century to fill the need for a textually accurate Greek New Testament. As the Christian message was carried abroad, the books of the New Testament were not only taken along, but also translated into the languages of the people to whom the message was given. In the transmission of the text, copies were made, mostly by Christians who were not trained

8 in the art of the task; therefore, not too much attention was given to the correctness of the copies. As the number of copies in the different languages proliferated, it became apparent that many differences and discrepancies were found in the various versions. Eventually, it became obvious that there was a need for someone to bring textual criticism into play.

Needless to say, the invention of the printing press with movable type in the mid-fifteenth century revolutionized the world of literature. The first Bible to be printed in 1456 was the Latin Vulgate. This was also known by the Gutenberg Bible. Bible scholars at that time were little concerned about the Greek text of the New Testament; the Latin Vulgate was their Bible.

Then in the late fifteenth century, the Greek language—unknown for hundreds of years—was recovered in the West, the geographical area of the Latin Church. With the rediscovery of Greek and its inception as the language of the people, the Latin Vulgate translation was subjected to a critical examination in comparison with the Greek original. Scholars discovered numerous mistranslations or outright errors in the Vulgate. This provided a reason for printing the New Testament in its original language, Greek.

Erasmus, a 15th-century Dutch theologian, working at great speed in order to beat to press another Greek New Testament being prepared in Spain, gathered together what hand-copied Greek manuscripts he could locate. He found five or six, the majority of which were dated in the twelfth century. Working with all the speed he could, Erasmus did not even transcribe the manuscripts; he merely made notes on the manuscripts themselves and sent them to the printers. The entire New Testament was printed in about six to eight months and published in 1516. It became a best seller, despite its errors, and the first printing was soon gone. A second edition was published in 1519 with some of the errors having been corrected.

Erasmus published two other editions in 1527 and 1535. Stung by criticism that his work contained numerous textual errors, he incorporated readings from the Greek New Testament published in Spain in later editions of his work. Erasmus’ Greek text became the standard in the field, and other editors and printers continued the work after his death in 1536. In 1633, another edition was published. In the publisher’s preface, in Latin, we find these words: “Textum ergo habes, nunc ab omnibus receptum,” which can be translated as “the [reader] now has the text that is received by all.” From that publisher’s notation have come the words “Received Text.” The Textus Receptus became the dominant Greek text of the New Testament for the following two hundred and fifty years. It was not until the publication of the Westcott and Hort Greek New Testament in 1881 that the Textus Receptus lost its position.

The reason for its losing its prominent position as a basis of biblical textual interpretation was the inception of textual criticism. Influential scholars paved the way for the acceptance of a critical text. The work of Westcott and Hort brought about the final dethronement of the Textus Receptus and the establishment of the principle of a critical text. However, the Textus Receptus is not a “bad” or misleading text, either theologically or practically. Technically, however, it is far from the original text. Yet three centuries were to pass before scholars had won the struggle to replace this hastily assembled text with a text which gave evidence to being closer to the New Testament Autographs.

Many consider the King James Version of the Bible to be the crown of English Bibles. Even at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Greek text used in preparing the KJV was the Textus Receptus. Both Luther and Tyndale translated the Scriptures into their vernacular languages using the same basic Greek text. Luther used the second edition of the Erasmus New Testament, and Tyndale utilized the third edition.

Regardless of one’s position on the Textus Receptus, it is evident that it had great influence on preserving God’s inspired Word through many centuries. Textual criticism of the Scriptures is so evidently important that all scholars and students of the Word of God need to utilize its principles in

9 order to fulfill the biblical mandate, “Study to show yourselves approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).

6. CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS1

Though a variety of other English Bible translations were produced in the 18th and 19th centuries, they were minimally used, and the Blaney Revision of the King James Version remained essentially the English translation from 1769 until the twentieth century. At that time, another era of English translation dawned, and many new versions came into popular use in both personal study and in cooperate worship. Among the most widely accepted were the New International Version (NIV), first published in 1978, the New American Standard Bible (NASB), first published in 1971. Like the KJV before them, these translations have both undergone revisions since their first publication, and will likely see more in the future. The New King James Version (NKJV) of 1982 has also proven a significant contribution to the contemporary development of English Translations and, in more recent years, the English Standard Version (ESV), Christian Standard Bible (CSB), New English Translation (NET), and many others have also attained notable usage.

There are multiple reasons for the proliferation of new translations, but the primary three are that: ▪ English has changed since the time of Tyndale. Its changed since 1611. We speak quite differently than Benjamin Blaney did in 1769. Many words have fallen out of use. Punctuation is used differently. Numerous words and phrases mean entirely different things today than they did then. Grammar and syntax have changed. What was once a clear translation into common English is now much more difficult to understand. Even many people who think they understand the KJV actually walk away with a completely different meaning of some passages than what the translators intended. This is only natural. It is inevitable for languages to change and for new translations to be required. Wycliffe replaced the West Saxon gospels because of changes in English, and Tyndale replaced Wycliffe for the same reason. The dawning of new translations periodically as languages change is the normal and healthy historical pattern. ▪ In the 16th century when Tyndale first translated the New Testament into modern English, the western world was only beginning to rediscover biblical Greek. Learning Hebrew had been controversial for much of the middle ages due to hostility toward the Jews. Over the centuries since then, we have learned much about these languages we did not know back then. This opens the door to the possibility of even more accurate translations of the Greek and Hebrew texts. ▪ Since the time of Erasmus and his revisers, scholars have had the chance to compare far more manuscripts. We have also discovered manuscripts and fragments of the New Testament much earlier than anything Tyndale or the KJV translators could have imagined such as the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus. There have been similar discoveries in Old Testament texts, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls which are literally a thousand years earlier than any Hebrew text we possessed before. All of this new data led to the demand for fresh translations that would take all of these manuscripts into consideration.

Miles Coverdale, the associate of William Tyndale who translated both the Coverdale and Great Bibles and was also involved in the committee for the Geneva Bible, once noted: "Sure I am that there cometh more knowledge and understanding of the Scriptures by their sundry translations than by all the glosses of our sophistical doctors. For that one interpreteth something obscurely in one place, the same translateth another, or else he himself, more manifestly by a plain vocable of the same meaning in another place. Be not thou offended therefore, good readers, though one call a scribe that another calleth a lawyer."

Coverdale argued that, far from obscuring or confusing the text, multiple translations help the reader better understand the text through careful comparison. They serve, in a sense, as commentaries on one another to help explain the meaning of passages that may be difficult in one. It seems that Coverdale's viewpoint has prevailed in our era. Most contemporary English-speaking Christians are not dogmatically committed to only one particular translation, but often read from

10 several. Indeed, modern translations have not even utterly supplanted the classic KJV, which is still widely purchased, read, and quoted. Instead, they have come alongside it and added to the study tools of the modern Christian to aid in understanding. And understanding has always been the point of translation since the very beginning of Christianity.

7. TRANSLATION PHILOSOPHY3

You can separate modern Bible translations into two basic groups—formal equivalency and dynamic equivalency. Formal equivalency attempts a word for word rendition, providing as literal a translation as possible. Dynamic equivalency is more like a paraphrase, trying to convey ideas thought by thought.

Since no one language corresponds perfectly to any other language, every translation involves some degree of interpretation. A translation based on formal equivalency has a low degree of interpretation; translators are trying to convey the meaning of each particular word. When faced with a choice between readability and accuracy, formal equivalency translators are willing to sacrifice readability for the sake of accuracy.

By its very nature, a translation based on dynamic equivalency requires a high degree of interpretation. The goal of dynamic equivalency is to make the Bible readable, conveying an idea- for-idea rendering of the original. That means someone must first decide what idea is being communicated, which is the very act of interpretation. How the translators view Scripture becomes extremely important in the final product.

Sadly, there are many in the Bible-translation industry who have a low view of the Scripture. They think the Bible is merely a product of man, replete with mistakes, contradictions, and personal biases. Many translators today have also adopted the postmodern idea of elevating the experience of the reader over the intention of the author. They make the contemporary reader sovereign over the text and demote the intended meaning of the historic human writers who were carried along by One Divine Author (2 Peter 1:19-21).

Therefore, it’s vital that you find a translation that represents what the Holy Spirit actually said as faithfully as possible. Who’s interested in some contemporary translation committee’s spin on what they think contemporary readers want to read? We want to read what the author intended us to read, which is what the Holy Spirit originally inspired.

8. MEASUREMENT OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FREE AND LITERAL TRANSLATIONS4

Evaluations of translations in regard to the philosophies of their translation techniques have usually been general in nature, such as: "The NEB is a free translation, tending to paraphrase and, in some instances, to wordiness." "The NIV is also too free in its translation." "The NASB is a literal approach to the translation of the Scriptures." "The NAB is more faithful to the original than is either the JB or the NEB." "The Modern Language Bible sought to avoid paraphrase, and so is a "fairly literal" translation."

General appraisals such as these are helpful as far as they go, but are at best vague in their connotation and at worst open to question as to their accuracy. Can they be made more definitive and defensible? In other words, can tests of dynamic equivalence and formal equivalence be applied to various versions so that equivalency of effect and conformity to the original can be measured? The answer in the case of dynamic equivalence is a qualified "no," and that in regard to formal equivalence is "yes."

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Testing the communicative effectiveness of translations and thereby determining their degrees of dynamic equivalence is a very inexact task. According to Nida, a translation should stimulate in a reader in his native language the same mood, impression, or reaction to itself that the original writing sought to stimulate in its first readers. This is an unattainable goal and one that can be only approximately achieved. Impressions of different people will vary widely after reading the same biblical passage. Also "equivalent effect" is difficult to quantify, because no one in modern times knows with certainty what the effect on the original readers and listeners was. To assume that a writing was always clear to them as is frequently done is precarious.

The test of formal equivalence is more successful, however. It is a test of "deviation values." First formulated by Wonderly, this procedure consists of five steps. ▪ The first of these steps is to take a passage of suitable length, say from thirty to fifty Hebrew or Greek words, and number the words consecutively. ▪ Secondly, each word is translated into its nearest English equivalent, in accord with standard lexical tools. This stage, known as the "literal transfer," is carried out without rearranging the word order. In cases where alternative English renderings are possible, both possibilities are included. The consecutive numbers from step one remain in their proper sequence. Of course, the result of this step is incomprehensible English. Nevertheless, this is an important intermediate stage. ▪ The third step consists of changing the English word order and making any other changes necessary to produce a readable English format. Changes thus made are kept to a minimum, being only those absolutely necessary to make the sense of the English comprehensible. This process is known as the "minimal transfer." In this rearrangement each word or phrase retains its original sequential number, the result being that the numbers no longer fall into their previous consecutive sequence. The result of this step is called the "closest equivalent" translation. This closest equivalent constitutes a standard to which various published translations may be compared. ▪ The fourth part of procedure for determining deviation values of English versions is the comparison of these versions, one by one, with the closest equivalent translation in the section of Scripture under consideration. Such a comparison will reflect five types of differences: changes in word order, omissions from the text, lexical alterations, syntactical alterations, and additions to the text. Each time a translation differs from the closest equivalent, an appropriate numerical value is assigned, depending upon the degree of difference between the two. When the values for the five kinds of differences are totalled, a deviation value for the section is established. From this deviation value for the thirty to fifty words is extrapolated a deviation value per one hundred words. ▪ The fifth and last step is to repeat the whole process in other passages, until a sufficient sampling of the whole book is obtained.

The deviation values from all the passages are then averaged together to obtain a single deviation value per one hundred words for the whole book. This can be done for each book of the Bible in any selected version. The deviation values obtained through this test have no significance as absolute quantities, but when the value for one version is compared to that of another, the versions that are closer to the original text can be identified, as can the versions that differ more extensively from the original.

9. TRANSLATION SURVEY3

The most popular dynamic-equivalency translations, which dominate the evangelical world, are the New International Version (NIV), Today’s New International Version (TNIV), The Message (MSG), The Living Bible (TLB), the Good News Bible (GNB), and the New Living Translation (NLT). Of those, the NIV is the most reliable.

The NIV was completed in 1978. Its translators did not attempt to translate strictly word for word, but aimed more for equivalent ideas. As a result, the NIV doesn’t follow the exact wording of the

12 original Greek and Hebrew texts as closely as the King James Version and New American Standard Bible versions do. Nevertheless, it can be considered a faithful translation of the original texts, and its lucid readability makes it quite popular, especially for devotional reading.

The four most popular formal equivalency translations in English are the King James Version (KJV), the New King James Version (NKJV), the New American Standard Bible (NASB), and the English Standard Version (ESV).

The KJV is the oldest of the four and continues to be the favourite of many. It is known as the Authorized Version of 1611 because King James I approved the project to create an authoritative English Bible. Although it contains many obsolete words (some of which have changed in meaning), many people appreciate its dignity and majesty. The NKJV is a similar translation, taken from the same group of ancient manuscripts, that simply updates the archaic language of the KJV.

The NASB, completed in 1971 and updated in 1995, is a revision of the American Standard Version of 1901. It is a literal translation from the Hebrew and Greek languages that incorporates the scholarship of several centuries of textual criticism conducted since the original KJV. It quickly became a favourite translation for serious Bible study.

The ESV is the most recent translation, which stands firmly in the formal equivalency tradition. It is a very solid translation in updated language that aims to reproduce the beauty of the KJV. The result is one of the most poetic and beautifully structured versions that maintains a high degree of accuracy and faithfulness to the original languages.

10. TRANSLATION CHOICE3

Which version is the best to use? Ultimately, that choice is up to you. Each of the formal equivalency versions have strengths and weaknesses, but they are all reliable translations of the Bible. If you want to read a dynamic equivalency translation, the NIV is the most reliable.

Ideally, as a serious student of Scripture, you should become familiar enough with concordances, word-study aids, and conservative commentaries so that even without a thorough knowledge of the original languages, you can explore the nuances of meaning that arise out of the original texts.

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11. NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

Notes: 1. Taken and adapted from Wayne, L, 2018. A Brief History of Bible Translations. 2. Taken and adapted from Got Questions – What is the Textus Receptus? 3. Taken and adapted from Grace to You – Which Bible Translation is Best? 4. Taken and adapted from The Masters Seminary Journal - Bible Translations: The Link Between Exegesis and Expository Preaching.

Bibliography:

Wayne, L. 2018. A Brief History of Bible Translations. https://carm.org/a-brief-history-of-bible-translations

MacArthur, J. 2009. Which Bible translation is best? https://www.gty.org/library/questions/QA167/which-bible-translation-is-best

Thomas, R.L. 2009. Bible Translations: The Link Between Exegesis and Expository Preaching. https://www.tms.edu/msj/msj1-1-4/

Got Questions: What is the Textus Receptus? https://www.gotquestions.org/Textus-Receptus.html

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