Against the Theory of Dynamic Equivalence

Among Bible scholars there is a school which is always inquiring into the genres or rhetorical forms of speech represented in any given passage of the Bible, and also the social settings which are supposed to be connected with these forms. This approach is called form criticism, and it was developed largely by German scholars in the early twentieth century. Among these scholars, whether they be German or English-speaking, one constantly hears German phrases. The social setting is called the Sitz im Leben. The "oracle of salvation" introduced by "Fear not" is the Heilszusage, and so on. When I was in the seminary learning about all this, I at first wondered why it should be necessary to use these German words; but then I learned that the German words are used because they are recognized as technical terms, and the English equivalents are not. Students were expected to learn the terminology of the field, just as in any other field of study.

Likewise, there were many Greek and Hebrew words to be learned. These were the "technical terms" of the Bible itself. The professors often warned us students about the important semantic differences between various Greek and Hebrew words and their closest English equivalents. The Hebrew word תורה (torah), for instance, was not always equivalent to the Greek νομος (nomos) or the English law, and the Hebrew נֶפֶש (nephesh) did not always refer to the soul, etc. Anyone who has been to a theological school knows very well how often points like this are emphasized by scholars.

I mention this at the beginning of this essay on Bible translation because I want the reader who has not been exposed to this kind of study to know how much is made of words and their precise usage in theological schools. Ministers in training cannot go through three years of seminary without being impressed with the undeniable differences between Hebrew, Greek, and English, and with the delicate problems of translating many key words of the Bible into our language. It is not a simple and easy task. Indeed, it is not fully possible, and that is why ministers are taught the biblical languages in seminary. And in addition to this, in the more advanced studies, one must also learn a whole set of technical terms in German. The student in this case might well ask why these German terms are adopted rather than translated, but again, the scholarly culture of linguistic precision is such that the question would seem almost foolish. These are technical terms, and if they are adopted from another language, so much the better, because then they will not be confused with informal expressions used in our everyday language.

It is easy to get carried away with fine distinctions. Scholars are often accused of losing their common sense in a multitude of hair-splitting distinctions, and of using foreign words and difficult terminology merely to impress the unlearned. In some cases this undoubtedly happens. We also must be on guard against the elitist attitude taken by many in the Roman Catholic tradition, which in its extreme form caused the Roman Catholic Church to oppose the translation of the Bible into English in the first place. But I want to suggest here that those who are not used to careful study of the Bible may easily fall into an opposite error: the error of despising many distinctions which really do make an important difference in our understanding of the Bible, despising the role of trained teachers in the Church, and generally failing to recognize the bad effects that arise from vague and loose words on any important subject. The Bible is a very important book, and it deserves our utmost care. This is all the more true when we consider that the later portions of Scripture often dwell upon linguistic details in the earlier books. And if we believe that every word of the Bible is inspired by God, how can we be careless of these words?

I also mention form criticism, with its emphasis on the text's situation in life, for another reason: I believe that a translation of the Bible must take account of the "sociological setting" in which the Bible came to be, and in which it belongs: namely, the Church of Jesus Christ. The translator must remember that this book was given to the Church and it belongs to her. And this fact, this Sitz im Leben of the Bible as a whole, is not without some consequences for our methods of translation.

The Bible in the Church

This passage from Nehemiah gives an account of the day when Ezra and his fellow-ministers of the Word gathered the people together and began to teach them the contents of the "Book of the Law of Moses." It says that they read from it distinctly, and that they caused the people to understand the meaning of the words. Jewish tradition says that this was the beginning of those translations into Aramaic called Targums, free renderings of the Hebrew which were used by Jews in later times to explain the meaning of the archaic Hebrew text. But it is unlikely that such a translation is referred to here, because farther on in the book we read of Nehemiah's indignation when he discovered that some of the children of the Jews who had married foreign women could not understand "the language of the Jews." ⁽³⁾ Nehemiah was not inclined to provide a translation for such, but rather, turning to their fathers, he "contended with them, and cursed them, and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair, and made them swear by God ..." (13:25) Hebrew was not forgotten by the Jews so quickly during their short captivity in Babylon. At a later time they did forget their mother tongue, but in the days of Nehemiah this had not yet come to pass. This passage therefore describes a situation which is very familiar to us as Christians. The people come together. The Scripture is read to them in portions, followed by explanatory comments. We would call it "expository preaching." This is how most Christians in all ages have acquired a knowledge and an understanding of the Bible. But there are other ways:

And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to Philip, "Go over and join this chariot." So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" And he said, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this:

He was led as a sheep to the slaughter;
And as a lamb before his shearer is dumb,
So he openeth not his mouth:
In his humiliation his judgment was taken away:
His generation who shall declare?
For his life is taken from the earth.

And the eunuch said to Philip, "About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else? Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. (Acts 8:27-35.)

Here is a situation which is also familiar to many of us. The man is alone and reading his Bible. Probably he is reading the Septuagint version. In any case, he is having a problem understanding the passage that he is reading. When Philip comes along he asks the man if he understands the passage, and the man readily admits that he is in need of help. It is for this purpose that the Lord has sent Philip to him, who explains the passage he is reading and several others besides.

What do these two situations have in common? Both of them involve a Bible, an audience or reader, and a teacher appointed for the purpose of explaining the Bible. It is taken for granted that the Bible is not self-explanatory, and that the common reader or hearer stands in need of a teacher. The prologue to Luke's Gospel states that it was written "that you may have certainty concerning the things (λόγων) you have been taught." The word translated "you have been taught" here (κατηχήθης, katēchēthēs) pertains to a course of instruction in religious matters, κατήχησις, katēchēsis. The Gospel is thus presented not as a substitute for catechesis, but for the further education and confirmation of one who has already been catechized. And in addition to this teaching ministry in the Church we encounter several statements in the Bible declaring that the Bible cannot be rightly understood by those who lack the Spirit of God. Jesus says to his questioners, "Why do you not understand my speech [λαλια]? It is because you cannot hear my word [λογος]" (John 8:43). And Paul declares, "these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit ... we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God ... connecting spiritual things with spiritual." (1 Cor. 2:10-13, a passage which we will have more to say about below). The relationship, then, between the Bible and its intended readers is not simple and direct. It is conditioned by the reader's relationship to Christ and to his Church. The Bible itself declares that it is not easy to be understood by all.

The Bible apart from the Church

Our observation that the Bible is a difficult book to those who are outside the church does not sit well with many people these days. "On the contrary," they say, "the Bible is really quite simple: it is all a matter of translation. The old literal method of translation, which makes for such hard reading, is to blame. But if we will only put the Bible in simpler and more idiomatic English it will need no explanation. People who are unfamiliar with 'church jargon' might then read and understand it with ease." This is the basic presupposition of the method of translation called "dynamic equivalence."

The name of Eugene Nida, an American linguist, is usually mentioned in connection with this method of translation, because it was he who coined the phrase "dynamic equivalence." He is generally regarded as the seminal theorist behind it. Nida was for more than thirty years (1946-1980) the Executive Secretary of the Translations Department of the American Bible Society, and during this time he published a number of books and articles explaining and promoting this approach. ⁽⁴⁾ But in fact there is little that can be called original in Nida's books. His contributions were more on the practical side than on the theoretical. He gathered up a number of ideas about language that were current among linguists in his time, he applied them to the task of Bible translation, and he presented these ideas in a very engaging and understandable way. He was essentially a popularizer of theoretical ideas and principles that might serve to bring some methodological discipline into "the pioneering efforts of missionaries translating the Scriptures for remote, primitive tribes." ⁽⁵⁾ His books are packed with examples of translation problems drawn from the experience of missionary translators who were trying to put the Bible into the local languages of South-American and African tribes (most of which lacked even a system of writing at the time), and his examples show very plainly that if people were to have the Bible in these languages, in versions that were to be immediately intelligible to the uneducated, the only practical approach to the task was to use a paraphrastic method. Reading his books, one gets a vivid impression of how difficult the task is, and how wrong it is to think that an essentially literal translation could be produced in these languages in their present state of development.

For our purposes, it is important to notice that Nida was not primarily concerned with English translations. He was preoccupied with the problems of translating the Bible into the tongues of primitive tribes who were at that time being reached for the first time by Christian missionaries, and with the need for new approaches to deal with the kind of linguistic constraints that made translations into these languages so difficult. This missionary orientation is conspicuous in Nida's writings on the subject. But it should also be noticed that in addition to the purely linguistic constraints that he discusses, Nida also imposes some constraints which are non-linguistic in nature. These come from his philosophy of ministry, in particular his conception of the task of the Christian missionary. Nida believed that a missionary should not be much concerned with the planting of churches, or with the perpetuation of any tradition of biblical interpretation.

From this and other similar statements we can see that Nida was concerned with producing versions of the Bible which might be useful outside the context of an established church—outside of or prior to any teaching ministry, that is. Obviously, such a version could not be one which required explanations or any introductory preparation of the readers; the versions would have to be made as simple and idiomatic as possible — not only because of the nature of the languages into which it is being translated, and not only because of the primitive cultural state of the people who spoke these languages, but because the teaching ministry of the Church was simply left out of the equation. Nida asserted that "the real test of the translation is its intelligibility to the non-Christian," and he even maintained that "there certainly must be something wrong with the translation" if phrases in it are misunderstood by "illiterates who have not been under the influence of the missionary's teaching." ⁽⁷⁾ The Bible is simply delivered into the midst of a society, in such a form that it may be immediately understood by the common people. Here Nida is making statements as a missiologist, not as a linguist; and he is using a particular philosophy of ministry as the basis for his philosophy of translation.

Although Nida's primary focus was on foreign missions, he observed that his principles of translation might also be applied in the making of English versions for people in civilized nations. We notice the phrase "whether in central Africa or central Kansas" in Nida's paragraph above. It was not only the primitive tribes who were to receive the new "indigenous" versions, but all peoples everywhere. Despite the fact that in civilized nations we have a fully-developed Christian ministry, in which a special vocabulary has always been used for theological subjects, the new versions would pretend that none of this existed. This is the attitude towards the Church and its ministry which underlies the "dynamic equivalence" approach.

The remainder of this essay will largely concern itself with the goals, effects, characteristics, and the presuppositions of this method, under whatever name it may be practiced. The Good News Bible (also called Today's English Version) of the American Bible Society may be taken as the best example of what Nida was proposing. The Contemporary English Version and the New Living Translation are other well-known examples.

We have already brought under discussion the first, and, I believe, the most fundamental presupposition of the method: the idea that the Bible precedes the Church. This is an alluring idea for us Protestants, because it agrees with our idea that the Church is founded on the Scriptures, not the other way around, as in Catholicism; but in fact Nida's idea represents an extreme position which does not comport with other elements of Protestant ecclesiology. Strictly speaking, the Bible as we have it did not precede the Church. The Church was founded by the oral ministry of the prophets and the apostles, which is incorporated in the Bible; but the writings which we have in the Bible in their present form are addressed to the Church as already founded. This is evident even on a superficial level, in the forms of address used throughout the Scriptures; and it is true at much deeper levels also, in the many things that go unspoken or unexplained in the Bible. There is much in the Scriptures which cannot be understood—not even in a "dynamic equivalence" version—without preparation of some kind.

Historically, at least, Protestants have recognized that the gospel must first be preached, and that people must be introduced to the Christian faith and the Bible by various summaries and explanations, whether they be written out in the form of catechisms, or conveyed from the pulpit, or included in editions of the Bible. The early Protestant translations of the Bible included a good deal of explanatory material in prefaces and marginal notes. It is said that Tyndale once claimed that he would make "the boy who drives the plough" know Scripture better than his Popish adversaries did, ⁽⁸⁾ but to this end he supplied the ploughboys with prefaces and footnotes. His preface to the Epistle to the Romans (which was for the most part a translation of Luther's) was longer than the epistle itself! The makers of the Geneva Bible included thousands of explanatory marginal notes. These early versions were in fact "study Bibles." Luther and Calvin gave much of their time to writing commentaries, catechisms, and theological treatises. The Protestant Reformation came about through much more than the mere circulation of copies of the Bible. No, the Church does not spring from the Scriptures in the simple manner that Nida envisions, and God did not intend for it to do so. The Bible is not a rack of cartoonish tracts, to be picked up willy-nilly by mildly interested individuals who are unwilling to give time and effort to understanding it.

Undoubtedly the reductionistic view of Scripture and the casual denigration of the Church that we see in Nida and other champions of "dynamic equivalence" has much to do with the extreme individualism which has been destroying all sense of community in Western societies for the past century. We are now assumed to be reading the Bible at home alone. And so of course the idea comes that the Bible must be made free of difficulties, easily understood throughout. It should be unambiguous, simple, and clear even to the "first-time reader" who has not so much as set his foot in a church. But however much these versions may smooth the way for such a lonely reader on the sentence level, they cannot solve the larger questions of interpretation which must press upon the mind of any thoughtful reader, such as question asked by the Ethiopian in Acts 8:34. After all the simplification that can be done by a translator is done, there is still the need of a teacher.

The Language of the Bible

So said the makers of the Geneva Bible in their preface. It is very interesting that the Puritans who gave us this version would find in Scripture itself their guidance for a method of translation. The Apostles themselves were translators, after all. They did not give us a complete translation of the Old Testament, choosing rather to use the familiar Septuagint in their ministry to the Greek-speaking nations; but in a number of places where they quote from the Old Testament they do not use the Septuagint, and give us their own rendering. From these examples we can see readily enough that the inspired authors of the New Testament favored literal translation, with Hebrew idioms and all carried straight over into Greek. And why? Undoubtedly they believed that there was something significant in every word of the Scripture, as do some of us today. In any case, the Bible was certainly not written in idiomatic and colloquial Greek, as some defenders of dynamic equivalence have claimed. A truer estimate is made by E.C. Hoskyns:

I do not think that the promoters of simple everyday language in Bible translation have any appreciation for the important conceptual differences which uncommon "biblical" phrases and words often serve to convey. In the Good News Bible at 2 Cor.12:2 we read, "I know a certain Christian man." The expression εν Χριστω "in Christ" is often rendered "Christian" in this version. But they are not really equivalent expressions. The phrase "in Christ" conveys a whole package of meaning. It implicitly teaches the relationship of the man to Christ, and emphasizes Christ himself over the man. It makes a metaphysical statement: the man is in Christ. They are in vital union with one another. ⁽¹¹⁾ The man is not merely one of a category of people who go by the name of "Christian" as a descriptive adjective. This is important. It is not trivial. The language teaches us something that cannot be translated into banal newspaper language. This is the kind of thing that is always being discarded in "dynamic equivalence," and the cumulative effect of so many changes like this is that it prevents us from entering fully into the concepts that are unique to the Scriptures. We are allowed to remain in the newspaper-world of twenty-first century America, and this is not for our benefit.

The Scriptures say in several places that God spoke his words through or by means of the prophets. For example, in Matthew 1:22 we read that the Lord spoke δια του προφητου "through the prophet," and in Hebrews 1:1, εν τοις προφηταις "by means of the prophets." This manner of speaking is meaningful. It is not equivalent to the expression, "God's prophets spoke his message to our ancestors" as in the Contemporary English Version at Hebrews 1:1, or "the Lord's promise came true just as the prophet had said" at Matthew 1:22. These renderings do not convey to the reader the emphasis on God as the initiator and author of the prophetic message, and it does not convey the concept of mere instrumentality on the part of the prophets. The word "through" is a little preposition which carries a lot of meaning here.⁽¹²⁾ But the literal translation was avoided by the CEV translators because they thought it too difficult. Barclay M. Newman explains, "The use of through with persons or abstract nouns has been rejected by the CEV translators because doing something 'through someone' is an extremely difficult linguistic concept for many people to process." ⁽¹³⁾ Indeed this manner of speaking may seem strange to someone who is unfamiliar with the concept of inspiration which it expresses, but in such a case would not this verse and several others like it, as literally translated, serve well as a means of explaining inspiration?

A similar case is in John 3:21, "But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God" (RSV). In his commentary on John's Gospel, Westcott explains that the phrase "wrought in God" (ἐν θεῷ ἐστιν εἰργασμένα) means that the works of a believer are produced "in union with him, and therefore by his power. The order [of the Greek words] lays the emphasis on God: 'that it is in God, and not by the man's own strength, they have been wrought.'" ⁽¹⁴⁾ Compare this with the New Living Translation: "But those who do what is right come to the light gladly, so everyone can see that they are doing what God wants." This is indeed simpler and more natural-sounding than any literal rendering could be; but the meaning of the Greek, as explained by Westcott, is completely hidden by it. Instead of the believer working with and through God (ἐν θεῷ) to bear the fruit of righteousness, he simply does "what God wants." Even worse is the rendering of Today's New International Version: "... so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God" — in which the words "sight of" have been inserted quite arbitrarily. In both versions the distortion of meaning is caused by forcing the statement into something that sounds more idiomatic in everyday English.

In the passage quoted from E.C. Hoskyns above, he mentions the presence of "literary allusions" in the Bible. In literary criticism, an "allusion" is an indirect reference to something written by another author, as distinguished from a direct quotation. One standard handbook of literary terms defines "allusion" as follows:

It is perhaps misleading to talk about the allusions in the Bible as a "literary" phenomenon, however, because the allusions in the Bible are not just artistic literary touches to be appreciated by those who read the Bible "as literature." In Milton's Paradise Lost there are many allusions to the epic literature of pagan antiquity, but these literary allusions do not carry the same religious significance as his allusions to the Bible. Milton did not believe the pagan myths and legends that he alludes to. Likewise many authors of the Victorian Era allude to the Bible without any serious religious purpose. Their allusions are merely literary. But when the Apostles who wrote the books of our New Testament allude to something in the Old Testament, they are not merely decorating their writings with literary bric-a-brac. They are interpeting events of their time as fulfillments of the Word of God.

Some allusions are so obvious that very little knowledge of the Old Testament is required to perceive their meaning. When John the Baptist says "Behold the Lamb of God" (John 1:29, 36), this is an allusion to something in the Old Testament, and the meaning of it would have been clear to any Jew of the first century. It expresses the atoning purpose of God in Christ, by comparing him with the sacrificial lambs of the Mosaic Law. This does however require some knowledge of the Old Testament to be understood. The New Testament contains hundreds of such allusions to the Old Testament, some of them more obvious than others. Some depend upon just a word or two, when an unusual expression or combination of words serves to bring to the reader's mind something in the Old Testament. But if the text is translated loosely, so that the verbal correspondence no longer exists, these allusions are lost.

For example, I think most interpreters would agree that in Galatians 1:15 there is an allusion to Jeremiah 1:5. ⁽¹⁶⁾ When Paul says that God set him apart "even from the womb" of his mother, and called him to preach "among the Gentiles (or, nations)," one is reminded of the word of the Lord to Jeremiah: "Before I formed you in the belly I knew you, and before you came forth from the womb I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet unto the nations." The allusion is signaled here by the use of the Hebraic expression "from the womb" (ἐκ κοιλίας, comp. מבטן or מרחם) in connection with being sent "to the nations," and the effect of this allusion is to suggest that Paul conceived of his calling as being like the prophet Jeremiah's. But the allusion is weakened if the words that constitute the verbal link are not translated literally. In modern versions we have in Galatians 1:15 the renderings "before I was born" and "from birth" instead of "from the womb." These renderings expresses the sense in a general way, but the very generality of them weakens the allusion, which depends upon distinct verbal cues. In many cases this loss is wholly unnecessary. Readers who are not very familiar with the Old Testament would of course fail to recognize the allusion in cases like this, and we admit that the literal rendering "from the womb" may seem rather odd or unusually graphic for modern Americans; but few readers will fail to see that it means "from birth" or "from before birth," ⁽¹⁷⁾ and if the verbal correspondence with Jeremiah 1:5 is preserved, the allusion may be noticed in due time.

Words that are unremarkable, bland and ordinary can never be very allusive. In order to be allusive, words must somehow stand out and point to a special context elsewhere. Translators who are more interested in making the text "idiomatic" for the reader than in preserving significant verbal connections like this have practically erased most of them from the New Testament in recent Bible versions.

Consider Acts 5:30, which in the New Living Translation is rendered, "The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead after you killed him by crucifying him." ⁽¹⁸⁾ Literally Peter's words are, "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree." This expression as literally translated ought to give some pause to the reader. Why does Peter say "hanging him on a tree" (επι ξυλου) instead of "crucifying him"? Anyone who has read Galatians will know where the unusual phrase comes from, and what it means. It is from Deuteronomy 21:22-23, quoted in Galatians 3:13-14, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree." See also 1 Peter 2:24 and Acts 13:29. And so by this phrase "hanging him on a tree" Peter evokes the whole theology of the cross! But apparently the translators missed it, or found this to be unimportant. By flattening out and simplifying the language they have caused the reader to miss this thought-provoking allusion.

In 1 Peter 1:13 the expression "girding up the loins of your mind" has been rendered "prepare your minds for action" in the New International Version. Peter's use of the peculiar "girding up the loins of your mind" may at first sight seem clumsy and even a little weird to many people. It certainly is not idiomatic in English. But neither was it idiomatic in Greek. Peter deliberately uses this Hebraic expression as a way of bringing to his readers' minds the words spoken to Israel concerning the Passover: "and thus you shall eat it, with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand" (Exodus 12:11). This would have been one of the most familiar passages of the Old Testament to a Jew like Peter, because it was recited every year at the Passover holiday. One commentary on the Greek text here states that the reference is "unmistakable." ⁽¹⁹⁾ But readers of the NIV (and most other modern versions as well) will miss it entirely. Instead of an accurately translated verbal allusion, they are given an "equivalent" expression.

Someone may ask, What exactly is gained when we see an allusion to the Passover here? Isn't Peter's main purpose here to exhort his readers to be prepared, and doesn't "prepare your minds for action" serve this purpose well enough, without an allusion to some ancient Jewish commemoration? In answer to this, we must concede that those who have never identified with the Israelites will gain little. But for a Jew who has been taught to identify with them, and for all those who are able to identify with Israel on that night, it can make a very great difference when an allusion invites them to do it. The effect of an allusion like this—when it is recognized as an allusion—is to add a whole new dimension of meaning. The few words of the allusion are invested with all the historical and religious associations of the passage alluded to, and so the amount of meaning gained by allusions can be very large. We might compare a sentence without allusions to a house built up in the usual way, with individual boards, bricks, and panels being fasten together on site. These pieces correspond to the words of a sentence under construction. But when an allusion is introduced, the construction goes modular. A prefabricated "living room" arrives on the truck, and at one stroke, a large and complex module of meaning is added to the sentence. The same meaning might perhaps be built on the construction site, but it would require several chapters of additional text to build it there, and there is no reason to do that if the prefabricated unit already exists in the reader's mind, to be summoned by an allusion. Of course the reader must have the "module" in his head, or else the allusion fails; but the writers of the New Testament assume that their readers' minds are stocked with the usual "modules" of popular Hellenistic Judaism.

Another allusion in 1 Peter which will be missed by readers of some modern versions is in 4:12-19. Here the NIV renders the Greek word πυρωσει in verse 12 as "painful trial" instead of the more literal "fiery ordeal," and in verse 17 the word οικου is rendered "family" instead of "house." These renderings are defensible enough in the immediate context, and we grant that some readers may be helped by a translation which explains that "house" often means "family" in Scripture, but it may be doubted whether any considerable number of Bible-readers really need this explanation, and, as so often happens in paraphrastic renderings, the "helpful" interpretation here really hinders the reader's ability to discern the correct meaning. As Dennis Johnson points out, "a proper application of the principle of context in word studies must give attention not only to the word's immediate literary context but also to more distant literary contexts to which the author may be making conscious allusion," ⁽²⁰⁾ and he convincingly shows that there is an allusion here to Malachi 3:2-6, "... he is like a refiner's fire ... and he shall purify the sons of Levi ... that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness." The reader who is familiar with this passage from Malachi will catch the allusion to it in 1 Peter 4 when the phrases "fiery ordeal" and "house of God" are in the translation before him, but who would perceive it in the NIV? The phrase "house of God" may refer to the "family" of God in some contexts, that is true, but here we see that it is probably an allusion to the Temple, with which the Church is being compared.

An extreme example of this erasure of allusions is found in Isaiah 31:5 in the Good News Bible. In the last clause of this verse, Isaiah uses the Hebrew verb פסח, lit. "pass over," which occurs elsewhere only in the Passover narrative of Exodus, chap. 12. The allusion may be seen in a literal rendering:

When Isaiah says that the Lord will cause Jerusalem to escape (that is the proper meaning of the hiphil of מלט) from destruction by "passing over" it, he is of course alluding to that great deliverance of the children of Israel, when he "passed over" their houses while slaying all the firstborn of the Egyptians, allowing them to escape from death. But apparently the translator of the Good News Bible regarded this last clause as a mere repetition, adding nothing meaningful to the preceding one. Therefore, being warned by Nida that "in most parts of the world ... receptors are often irked by what they regard as obnoxious repetition and tautology in Semitic poetic forms," and following his counsel that "synonymous expressions" in adjacent lines may be deleted if they serve only to impart emphasis, ⁽²¹⁾ he left out the whole clause:

The translators of some other versions use the word "spare" instead of "pass over" for פסח here, and translate the hiphil form of מלט as "rescue" (RSV, NRSV, ESV), which is better than nothing, but still inadequate for the purpose of conveying the allusion. ⁽²²⁾

In all of these examples of lost allusions, the loss is caused by a philosophy of translation which seeks to eliminate anything unusual in the diction. Because allusions depend upon relatively uncommon expressions that stand out from the immediate context and point to another, they are bound to suffer this fate in a version that systematically "normalizes" the style and diction. This tendency to normalize anything that strays from the beaten path of everyday language affects not only allusions, but all sorts of interesting linguistic features of the text.

In Isaiah 57:15 there is a striking expression in the Hebrew text: שכן עד (shokeyn ad), lit. "he who inhabits eternity," which theologians commonly point to as an expression of God's transcendence. God is not bound by time, nor does he live within time; rather, he transcends time and space. He "inhabits eternity." ⁽²³⁾ D.A. Carson calls this memorable phrase one of Isaiah's "fine expressions that stretch the imagination" of readers, as they ponder the transcendence of God. ⁽²⁴⁾ Unfortunately, the reader of the NIV will not encounter Isaiah's expression here. Instead of "he who inhabits eternity" the NIV has a rather unsatisfactory and prosaic rendering, "he who lives forever." This is certainly easier to understand, but it is not equivalent to the original.

In Mark 1:12 we find a typical example of the NIV's tendency to turn what is semantically sharp and colorful in the Greek text into something very bland in English: "the Spirit sent him out into the desert." Here the Greek αυτον εκβαλλει, lit. "pushed him out," is translated as "sent him out;" but this is unsatisfactory, because the Greek word carries a connotation of command and compulsion, which is why more literal versions try to express the meaning with "drove him out" (ESV), "impelled him to go out" (NASB), etc. One of the NIV translators later recalled that this expression was the subject of irreverent levity at the committee's meeting, with some of the editors "facetiously wondering what kind of a car the Spirit used" to "drive" Jesus into the wilderness. ⁽²⁵⁾ But Mark's word is no joke. Commentators have often observed that it is a strong word, descriptive of our Lord's "sense of urgency" (Meyer) his "intense preoccupation of mind" (A.B. Bruce), and the "dynamistic" working of the Spirit in Him (F.C. Grant). ⁽²⁶⁾

Words that are normal and ordinary for the average modern reader inevitably convey only thoughts that are ordinary for such readers. But what if the things expressed in the original are not ordinary for modern American readers?

Recently while giving a lesson on the topic of modesty I referred to 1 Timothy 2:9, where the Greek text has the phrase μετα αιδους και σωφροσυνης. These are words that ancient authors commonly used in their teachings about personal virtues, and they describe attitudes or states of mind, not merely (or even primarily) outward actions. The first noun here, αιδως, denotes a capacity to feel shame, in a good sense, as opposed to shamelessness or impudence. In modern English versions it is usually translated "modesty," but "bashfulness" may sometimes be a more adequate way of expressing its connotations. John Wyclif's "shamefastness" is nearly perfect, and would still be the best rendering if that word had not become obsolete. ⁽²⁷⁾ The second noun, σωφροσυνη, denotes an habitual self-regulation or moderation of desires and thoughts, as opposed to mania, self-indulgence and excess, and it is usually translated with "sobriety" or "self-control." My purpose in referring to these words was to emphasize that "modesty" in the Bible is not merely outward compliance with some dress code, but a state of mind characterized by a capacity for shame and self-inhibition, and that the biblical authors connect this cultivated "sense of shame" with virtue and honor, especially in the case of women. This is a commonplace of exegetical writings, and it needs to be emphasized, because it is so foreign to the modern liberal ethos that dominates our society. ⁽²⁸⁾ My students on that occasion had copies of the NIV translation, and so I asked them to turn to that place, expecting to find something close enough to build the lesson on. But to my surprise, I found that μετα αιδους και σωφροσυνης was translated "with decency and propriety." Evidently the translators felt that these prissy words would be in some manner equivalent to the original. ⁽²⁹⁾ I suppose they are the sort of words that a modern American would fall back on when recommending clothing that is suitable for Christians. But they do not begin to convey the meaning of Paul's words. People associate "decency" with conformity to minimum standards of social behavior, and "propriety" with things like proper etiquette, but Paul speaks of something much more personal — a virtuous sense of shame, coupled with self-control. The problem here is not just about an archaic word that needs to be updated, it has to do with an ancient moral concept that has no name in the modern idiom. I am not sure what should be done in this case. Even "modesty" seems very inadequate. Perhaps we need to reclaim the word "shamefastness." But there is no use pretending that "decency" will convey the meaning of αιδως. The inadequacy of colloquial modern English in this instance brings to mind an observation of J.D. Michaelis:

Perhaps most serious of all is the normalizing treatment that χαρις (charis) receives in some modern versions. This word lies at the heart of the gospel message, and I think it is no exaggeration to say that its translation and interpretation is crucial to a true understanding of Biblical theology in general. The first English versions of the New Testament translated it "grace," and this English word has been used in most translations right up to the present day. In English dictionaries the range of meanings for the word in biblical and ecclesiastical contexts is given under the heading of "theological" usages, as in the Oxford Universal Dictionary:

All of these "theological" senses of the word are quite old, dating from the period of Middle English (c. 1150-1450), and are well-established in our language. None of them is obsolete. Nevertheless, certain linguists who think that readers cannot understand what is meant by "grace" in the Bible have urged translators to use "kindness" and "favor" instead, and so that is what we find in the Good News Bible, the God's Word version, and the New Living Translation. But the χαρις of God is much more than kindness or favor. As James Dunn says, "In Paul ... χαρις is never merely an attitude or disposition of God (God's character as gracious); consistently it denotes something much more dynamic—the wholly generous act of God. Like 'Spirit,' with which it overlaps in meaning (cf., e.g., [Rom] 6:14 and Gal 5:18), it denotes effective divine power in the experience of men." ⁽³¹⁾ Again, Louis Berkhof says it ordinarily denotes the "operation of God in the heart of man, affected through the agency of the Holy Spirit." ⁽³²⁾ It is probably true that many non-Christian readers will not understand "grace" in this biblical sense, and will think that it means "graciousness." We do think, however, that the biblical meaning of "grace" can be gathered easily enough from the context in many places, even if the reader does not make use of an English dictionary, or have the benefit of explanations. Substituting "kindness" for "grace" only ensures that the reader will not understand what the biblical authors mean by χαρις.

One gets the impression that the editors of the New Living Translation did not understand it either: Acts 4:33, "God's great favor was upon them all;" 11:23, "he saw the proof of God's favor;" Romans 1:5, "given us the privilege and authority;" 3:24, "God in his gracious kindness;" 5:17, "gracious gift of righteousness;" 5:20, "kindness became more abundant," and so on, throughout the New Testament. We notice that in Romans 6:14 the word "grace" is used, but the translation ensures that the word will not be understood as a divine influence: "for you are no longer subject to the law, which enslaves you to sin. Instead, you are free by God's grace." This makes good sense within the framework of a false interpretation of Paul's gospel, and a popular one, to be sure; but it differs substantially from what Paul means by ἁμαρτία γὰρ ὑμῶν οὐ κυριεύσει, οὐ γάρ ἐστε ὑπὸ νόμον ἀλλὰ ὑπὸ χάριν — "For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace." By ὑπὸ χάριν "under grace" he means not "freedom" or "forgiveness" but a condition in which one is subjected (ὑπο) to the sanctifying influence (χαρις) of the Holy Spirit, which breaks the dominion of sin in the heart, more than the Law ever could. ⁽³³⁾ The New Living Translation, by injecting the word "free," and using the word "grace" in the sense of "kindness," practically converts this into the opposite of what Paul really said.

We should have thought that a long-established English word which perfectly corresponds to the meaning of the Greek would be cherished by translators, even if some readers might need help understanding its "theological" sense. But no. Because the perfect word in this case is not sufficiently ordinary, and hence might not be understood by everyone, a more "everyday" word is used, as being the "closest natural equivalent," though it obviously fails to convey the true meaning in many places.

Many further examples could be given. Hundreds, in fact. But these few may be enough to illustrate the points made here. The reader of these versions has not been required to enter into the conceptual framework of the Bible as it is expressed over and over again in its phraseology; he has been deprived of the opportunity to perceive the network of allusions and verbal associations which give the Bible such richness of meaning; and he is protected from exposure to anything very demanding or unusual. The reader is left in his own familiar and everyday world of thinking. And this is the whole purpose—and the explicitly stated purpose—of those who are promoting "dynamic equivalence" in Bible translations. The whole idea is to present nothing to the reader which is strange. Nothing foreign or "offensive." Nothing evocative. Nothing which requires a pause for reflection, orientation, and discovery. Nothing that stretches the imagination. ⁽³⁴⁾ I submit that this theory of translation is not only unscriptural, but self-defeating and perverse.

Transculturation

Apologists for "dynamic equivalence" commonly make a distinction between it and "transculturation," which involves an adaptation of the text not only to the language but also to the cultural and historical context of the modern reader. Robert Bratcher, the chief translator of the Good News Bible, makes this distinction while criticizing Eugene Peterson's The Message:

But Nida's own explanation of the goals and characteristics of a "dynamic equivalence" version makes this distinction hard to observe. In his book Toward a Science of Translating (1964), he introduces the theory thus:

It is hard to see how Phillips' "hearty handshake" (as an equivalent for "holy kiss") could be approved on the same principles that would rule out Peterson's "takes unfair advantage of you" (as an equivalent for "forces you to go a mile"). In fact it really seems to us that of these two, the former is more of a "transcultural" rendering than the latter. Peterson at least refrains from turning the original saying into something specific to our culture, and merely generalizes the thought; but the "hearty handshake" is unquestionably an instance of transculturation. It is a relatively unimportant instance, but in view of the fact that Nida himself chose to illustrate his theory with it, one can hardly claim that his theory rules out any kind of transculturation. And moreover, his description of the method's goal even seems to require this kind of adjustment. It aims "to relate the receptor to modes of behavior relevant within the context of his own culture." Other statements in the same chapter show that this call for cultural accommodation is not a mere slip of words:

Here Nida twice repeats his dictum that a dynamic translation must be adapted to the culture as a whole. If left unqualified, the practical implications of this principle are enormous. But to be quite fair, we must hasten to add that Nida also warned against attempts to completely "naturalize" the text. He writes:

A key phrase here is "all traces." The idea is that transculturation is theoretically desirable and should be carried to a certain point for the sake of "dynamic equivalence," but unfortunately, not everything can be "naturalized" for the modern reader without seriously compromising the meaning of the text, and so the cultural accommodation cannot be perfect. After giving some examples, Nida leaves it to the wisdom of translators to discern what other "foreign" features of the text should be allowed to remain in a Bible version.

People who are already familiar with the Bible and its background may not realize the extent of the changes that would be necessary for a version which really aspires to be "dynamically equivalent" for those who are completely ignorant. The problem here is not even primarily verbal. For instance, in an old version of Judges 12:14 we read that Abdon the son of Hillel judged Israel for eight years, "and he had forty sons and thirty sons' sons, that rode on threescore and ten ass colts." The Good News Bible modernizes this language by saying that he had "forty sons and thirty grandsons, who rode on seventy donkeys," but the meaning of this will not be any clearer to modern readers if they do not know that having many sons, and riding about on a donkey, were status symbols in Israel at that time. The forty sons could not have been possible without multiple wives, a sign of great wealth. We know that the infant mortality rate in ancient times was more than 50 per cent, even among the wealthy. Ludwig Köhler informs us that "Marcus Aurelius [Emporer of Rome] had thirteen children, but the majority of them died young. Sultan Murad III (1574-95) had one hundred and two children, but at the time of his death there were only twenty sons and twenty-seven daughters still living." ⁽³⁶⁾ Only when this kind of information is provided can the reader really appreciate what the text is designed to convey. American readers who are unfamiliar with status symbols of the second millennium before Christ are likely to associate donkey-riding with poor hillbillies and other rural folk of low degree. Having many sons, by several wives, is not a sign of status in modern Western society. So it cannot be taken for granted that uneducated readers will intuitively understand that the purpose of the statement is to indicate how wealthy, blessed, and prominent this man was. Implicit in this statement is quite a bit of cultural information. It is not hard for a teacher to explicate it, but what can a translator do with this verse to make explanations unnecessary? If any reference to the donkeys is retained, the reader needs to be brought into an ancient setting where riding on a donkey was a luxury.

Familiarity with ancient agriculture is necessary to understand many things in the Bible. As just one example of this, consider the complex metaphor used in Micah 4:11-13.

Why is the "daughter of Zion" (Jerusalem) suddenly transformed into a beast with horns and hoofs in this passage? Because in ancient times, the sheaves of the harvest were often threshed by driving oxen over them on the threshingfloor. Thus the nations who know not God shall be threshed, as the wheat is beaten from the chaff by the hoof of the farmer's ox. Now, this metaphor should be interpreted, and a Christian preacher would do well to explain it in a spiritual sense, after the example of Edward Pusey:

But the translation of the passage cannot and should not be adapted to the limits of someone who does not know anything about threshing. It is very instructive to see how this passage is handled in some "dynamic equivalence" versions. In the New Living Translation, instead of "Arise and thresh (דּוּשׁ), O daughter of Zion," we read "Rise up and destroy the nations, O Jersusalem." In the Good News Bible we find, "People of Jerusalem, go and punish your enemies! I will make you as strong as a bull with iron horns ..." Likewise in the Contemporary English Version, "Smash them to pieces, Zion! I'll let you be like a bull ...." These loose translations depart from the threshing metaphor in the Hebrew text, presumably because the translators felt that it would not be understood. Instead of a literal translation of דּוּשׁ, "thresh," which implies the ox, two of them substitute the figure of a rampaging bull. Although both figures involve an animal with horns and hoofs, the meaning is quite altered. And in the rendering of the New Living Translation we note how "destroy the nations" clashes with the observation made by Pusey, that "the very image of the 'threshing' implies that this is no mere destruction," and practically excludes it. Thus readers and preachers alike are paying a high price for this pottage of "equivalence," which is really no equivalence at all.

The New Testament assumes that the reader is familiar with the Old Testament, or at least with some important elements of Jewish religion based on it. Paul's argument in Galatians 3 is addressed to recently-converted Gentiles, but it would not have made much sense to a reader who did not already know who Abraham was. Even the title χριστος "Christ" would be confusing to Greeks who knew nothing about the Old Testament, because the sense "anointed one" is a Hebraism introduced by the Septuagint, used only in Jewish Greek, and the custom of anointing kings was unknown outside of Judaism. In ordinary secular Greek the word χριστος was an adjective meaning "to be used as an ointment," specifically a pharmaceutical ointment. So "Jesus the Christ" would have meant "the ointment Jesus," if it meant anything at all to the heathen. But it seems that they commonly confused χριστος with χρηστος, meaning "benevolent," and understood it as a name. ⁽³⁷⁾ Despite this, we do not find in the New Testament any explanation of the term, or any avoidance of it. The writers simply required readers to know what "Christ" means.

The New Testament also assumes that the reader is familiar with many aspects of ancient Jewish culture that cannot be learned from the Old Testament. Luke's use of the phrase "a sabbath day's journey" in Acts 1:12 assumes that the reader is familiar with the Jewish custom of limiting travel on the Sabbath day to about two thirds of a mile (two thousand cubits, to be exact). ⁽³⁸⁾ And the knowledge assumed by the writers consists of far more than isolated bits of information like this. Consider what the reader must know to understand Matthew 12:38-41.

In order to fully understand these three sentences, readers must know who the scribes and Pharisees were, and what kind of "sign" they were asking for. They must know the story of Jonah, and of Christ's death and resurrection. They must also know the meaning of the phrases "Son of Man," "the judgment," "adulterous generation," and "heart of the earth" — the last two being understood as figures of speech. If I were giving an unhurried lesson on this passage, I would also like to explain that "generation" does not express all that is meant by γενεα here, because γενεα refers not only to a group of people born at about the same time, but also to people of a common origin and nature (something like "brood" or "kindred"). And I would think readers must have some explanation about how Old Testament stories present types of the Messiah, in order to understand why Christ focuses on the "three days ... in the belly of the whale." Again, what can a "dynamic equivalence" version do to convey all this?

I chose this last example (Matthew 12:38-41) because Nida himself, in a sentence we have quoted above, mentioned the "Pharisees" and the "adulterous generation" concept as examples of "foreign" elements which cannot be converted into something more familiar to modern Americans without a loss of meaning. To say that they are "deeply imbedded in the very thought structure of the message" is a rather obscure way of putting it. A better way of describing this linguistic situation would be to say that these words have meaning within the context of first-century Judaism that they cannot retain when taken outside the whole interconnected system of people and ideas that constitutes the religious culture of the time. The phrase "adulterous generation" serves to invoke a concept developed in the writings of the prophets, that the people of Israel have violated the terms of their covenant with God like an adulterous wife, and have estranged themselves from the covenant, like the Gentiles who worship other gods. Jesus, who speaks as a prophet here, describes the γενεα that "desires a sign" in these terms because he is comparing them (unfavorably) to the heathen people of old Nineveh. One cannot convert "adulterous" into "faithless," as in the New Living Translation, without losing important culturally-specific content. The complex metaphorical concept represented by the phrase "adulterous generation" is a cultural specialty for which there is no ready-made equivalent in other cultures and languages. Again, Nida recognizes this in the case of "Pharisees" and "adulterous generation," in his short list of "foreign objects." But the point I would make now is this: the same may be said for all of the things I mentioned in connection with Matthew 12:38-41 above. None of the key words of the passage can retain their meaning outside the total context of people and ideas to which they belong. Acknowledging a few terms as exceptions really misrepresents the situation, because the meaning of words and sentences in a discourse like this cannot ordinarily be abstracted from the cultural context. The mind of the reader must become acculturated to the world of the Bible to get the meaning.

"Foreign objects" that require some degree of linguistic acculturation are especially abundant in the words of Christ. In the dominical saying recorded in Matthew 11:11 and Luke 7:28 we find the expression γεννητοις γυναικων "those born of women" used in reference to humanity. This is a Hebraism, corresponding to the phrase ילוד־אשה used in Job 14:1, 15:14, and 25:4. The expression used in these places is not idiomatic in secular Greek or English, and doubtless many readers who are unfamiliar with idioms of Scripture will fail to perceive its import, but it is not merely another way of saying "all who have ever lived," as the NLT translates it in the Gospels, or "humanity," "human," or "who in all the earth," as we find it translated in Job. In Scripture the facts pertaining to the birth of a man are supposed to indicate his nature. Therefore אדם ילוד־אשה is not just a pleonastic way of saying אדם, "mankind." It refers to man according to his condition from birth, or even according to his inherited nature, which is often associated with weakness and impurity in Scripture. The meaning of "born of woman" includes the concept expressed elsewhere in Scripture by "that which is born of flesh" (John 3:6, compare 1:13) and "born according to the flesh" (Gal. 4:23, 29). ⁽³⁹⁾ If we translate it simply as "humanity," the most interesting part of the meaning is neglected and made completely invisible to the English reader.

Someone may object that a more literal translation leaves the uninformed reader in no better position, because the background information must be supplied in either case. But it is only the promoters of the "dynamic" approach who claim to remove the need for such a learning process, by making the text immediately understandable to people of widely different cultures. We grant that a smoother path is made for the reader when awkward and foreign-sounding expressions like "those born of women" and "sons and sons' sons" are converted to something which flows better in our ears. But even small adjustments like this, which might seem to be only a matter of style to many, often leave out part of the meaning, or involve little transculturations which distort the meaning in subtle ways. ⁽⁴⁰⁾

The most important kind of cultural background information concerns items of mental culture, which often cannot be conveyed in quick explanations. Take for example the usage of the word αληθεια ("truth") in John's Gospel. This has been the subject of many discussions among scholars, and not all agree in their conclusions; but one thing agreed upon by all is that John's usage is anything but "modern" or even common in its day. When John quotes Christ saying Εγω ειμι ... η αληθεια "I am the truth" (14:6) he is not just using some idiomatic Greek expression meaning "I am truthful." Εγω ειμι η αληθεια is no more idiomatic in Greek than "I am the truth" is in English. And in two places we find αληθεια used as the object of ποιεω ("do the truth," in John 3:21 and 1 John 1:6), apparently after the pattern of the Hebrew expression עשה אמת, which means "keep faith," i.e., "act faithfully." It seems that John's αληθεια bears connotations, at least, derived from the Hebrew equivalent אמת. But the dualistic meaning attached to αληθεια in Hellenistic philosophical writings — eternal spiritual "reality" as opposed to the unsubstantial and temporary things of this world — is clearly intended in most places where the word is used.

The meaning of these pregnant words, concerning a spiritual kingdom, to which those who are "of the truth" belong, cannot be adequately conveyed by any English translation if the reader is not familiar with the background of Jewish-Hellenistic thought, in which αληθεια "truth" and αληθινος "true" refer to "the realm of pure and eternal reality, as distinct from this world of transient phenomena." ⁽⁴¹⁾ We have no word or any stock phrases that could evoke the Hellenistic concept of αληθεια in modern colloquial English, because it is mystical and foreign to anything that might be expressed in an ordinary conversation. For most readers of the Bible, who lack this background, an explanation is necessary. What we find in versions that try to make explanations unnecessary, by use of "equivalent" expressions that are easily understood by everyone, is something rather different from the true meaning. For example, in John 18:37 the New Living Translation has, "I came to bring truth to the world. All who love the truth recognize that what I say is true." This banality is the "closest natural equivalent" that the translator could find in the conceptual scheme of uneducated modern people—but it is not equivalent to the original, and it will only interfere with a teacher's efforts to convey what Jesus is really saying here. A true understanding requires some study or instruction, in which the English word "truth" receives a "biblical" sense borrowed from αληθεια in its Hellenistic milieu. Any English words used for this purpose must be adapted and bent to the meaning of the ancient Greek. There is no possibility of conveying the meaning in "Common English."

It sometimes happens that the "common English" requirement works indirectly to suppress certain attitudes and ideas. In most versions of the Bible it will be noticed that the people of God are sometimes called "the saints." The words commonly translated thus are קדשׁים in Hebrew, קדישׁין in Aramaic, and ἁγιοι in Greek. When these words are used in reference to people, they mean the people sanctified and consecrated to God. Our word "saint" began as "sanct," borrowed from Latin (sanctus, holy one), as an exact equivalent. But in the New Living Translation קדשׁים is translated with such phrases as "the Lord's people" (Psa. 34:9), and ἁγιοι as "God's children" (Rom. 12:13), "God's people" (Phil. 1:1), "believers" (Rom. 8:27) "Christians" (Rom. 15:25), and so forth, in which the idea of sanctification goes unexpressed. The same is true of the Good News Bible. Clearly the reason for this is that modern Christians do not usually call themselves the "saints" or "the sanctified ones." And a translation that adheres to habits of "common English" must use words as they are commonly used today.

But why don't we call ourselves "the saints" or "holy ones"? Probably because in our modern church culture it would be seen as presumptuous, or perhaps we just don't feel that we deserve the name of saints. This same feeling, a thousand years ago, may be one reason why some began to use the term "sanct" for only the holiest Christians, so that "saint" came to have the ecclesiastical sense: "persons who are formally recognized by the Church as having by their exceptional holiness of life attained an exalted station in heaven" (Oxford English Dictionary). Ordinary language is not theologically neutral. It is shaped by our culture.

A clear example of systematic transculturation in some recent versions of the Bible is the attempt to suppress the so-called "sexism" of the authors. When we translate Romans 12:9-10 literally as "Let love be without hypocrisy, abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good, love one another with a brotherly love ..." it is alleged that the last phrase is "sexist," or at least that it would be perceived as such by many modern readers, though not by the original recipients. For this reason several recent versions have given loosely approximate renderings like "genuine affection" (NLT), "love" (TNIV) and even "be good friends" (The Message), instead of "brotherly love." But the fact is, Paul used the word φιλαδελφία, which means brotherly love. We should not have to point out how much more brotherly love implies than mere friendship, especially in a culture where family membership means everything. The translators or editors of these new versions, if they are at all competent, know this full well; but they were more interested in adapting the text to modern sensitivities than in conveying the full meaning of the original. The revisers of the "Inclusive Language Edition" of the New International Version (1996) stated this plainly enough when they explained that their purpose was "to mute the patriarchalism of the culture of the biblical writers through gender-inclusive language," and claimed that "this could be done without compromising the message of the Spirit" (Preface, p. vii).

Some of the gender-neutralized renderings that have appeared in recent Bible version partake of all the absurd evasiveness that we have come to expect from politically correct speech. For example, the Contemporary English Version tries to convey the kinship connotation of אחים "brothers" in Psalm 133:1 by rendering the verse, "It is truly wonderful when relatives live together in peace." The problem here, of course, is that "relatives" does not have the connotation of closeness or the extended sense that "brothers" has in such contexts. So the sense of the verse is really destroyed, in the interests of gender-neutrality. The Good News Bible and Today's New International Version use "God's people" here, which fails in another direction. But again, the editors believed that readers had to be protected from the Psalmist's intolerable "sexism."

Much more could be said about this ideological agenda of "dynamic equivalence" versions, because the number of inaccuracies introduced on its account run into thousands, but I have elsewhere treated the subject at length, in an essay on The Gender-Neutral Language Controversy.

Giants and Windmills

In the famous story of Don Quixote, a Spanish nobleman who has been reading legends about giant-slayers, among other things, goes forth to live the life of romantic adventure. Coming upon some windmills on a plain, he sees them as giants, and attacks them. One might say that the windmills were the closest thing to giants in his environment. But what a difference there is between giants and their "closest equivalent"! Still, he goes from one adventure to the next, "translating" the stories he had read into real life, using whatever equivalents he can find around him.

I would describe Nida's theory as Quixotic, in the sense that it leads to many incongruous identifications. A translator should not be trying to bring the original message into a present-day context to make it directly "relevant," if in fact it does not belong in the present. Cultural differences are not just an inconvenient barrier to conveying "the message" to modern people. The original message itself pertains to the original situation, and it cannot always be abstracted from its situation and transferred to another setting, as if the cultural context were just some accidental stage-scenery. The attempt to "naturalize" a text that comes from so long ago, and so far away, is bound to come to grief. Readers should instead be conscious of a distance between themselves and the original receptors of the biblical writings, because an awareness of the differences as well as the similarities is necessary for right interpretation and application. Whether they realize it or not, all Bible-readers are interpreters of the Bible, and they must take into consideration the historical context. This is one more reason why the Bible should not be "naturalized" in a translation.

I do not want to discourage the natural impulse of Christians to apply the teachings of the Bible to themselves personally, insofar as possible. This is actually very important, and I think most people do not do enough of it. But it must be recognized that not everything in the Bible is equally relevant for everyone.

Consider, for example, Christ's polemic against the Pharisees of his day. It presupposes their dominance at the time, as the established authorities in a very legalistic religious regime. In this context, his teachings often stand out as relatively "liberal." Certainly many of his sayings were designed to promote an attitude more liberal than the prevailing one, concerning such things as sabbath observance and fasting. So an "equivalent response" in our own times would be for us to become more liberal than usual, and less careful about the Sabbath, fasting, prayer vigils, and so forth. But is that really appropriate for us, who are already so liberal, and so much at ease in Zion? If Jesus were to return now, I doubt that his arraignment against our generation would have much to do with excessive traditionalism, legalism, and works-righteousness. He is more likely to convict it of complacency: "Remember then from what you have fallen, repent, and do the works you did at first!" (Rev. 2:5). In our effete times, harping on the evils of legalism, and using the most rigorous or scrupulous people as bad examples, is like sparring with shadows. The opponents are now absent and largely imaginary. We cannot edit Scripture to suit our ideas of what needs to be said today, of course; and in any case, different things need to be said to different people within the same cultural setting; but a proper interpretation and application of Christ's polemic against the Pharisees comes when the reader knows just who the Pharisees were, what the religious culture of the Jews was like in the middle of the first century, and how radically different it was from the culture of today. The "dynamic equivalence" principle leads instead to the transformation of the Pharisees into timeless bogeys, to be equated with anyone in the modern Church who would criticize the prevailing complacency and lukewarmness. Or worse still, it may lead to a facile equation of the Pharisees with modern-day Jews — who are more like modern Episcopalians than ancient Pharisees. Ultra-observant Jews who do resemble the Pharisees are today a marginal group which does not represent modern Judaism any more than the Amish represent Christianity, and they do not pose any threat to the Church.

David Burke, former Director of Translations for the American Bible Society, has warned that "poorly informed" readers are likely to interpret the polemic against "the Jews" in the New Testament as if "Jews of all time are somehow implicated." ⁽⁴²⁾ His concern is well-founded, because for more than forty years his organization has been promoting the idea that poorly informed readers should be able to read (and thus interpret) the Bible for themselves. How can the reader of a "dynamic equivalence" version avoid equating "the Jews" who persecuted the early Church with "the Jews" of their own time and place, when the whole purpose of the translation is to produce an "equivalent effect" in "the language of today"? Burke's solution to the problem is to eliminate the word "Jews" from Bible translations, so that the reader will not think of modern Jews wherever Jews are criticized in the Bible. He boasts that Bible versions produced by the ABS have been most innovative in this regard, and criticizes more literal versions (specifically the RSV and NRSV) for not being "sensitive to this issue." But Burke fails to recognize that the problem is created by "dynamic equivalence" in the first place. A version that preserves the forms of antiquity and does not try to force the Bible into modern molds does not invite such anachronistic equations. But when Jesus and his apostles are disguised as modern Americans, the reader can hardly be blamed for interpreting them as if they were.

An outstanding example of inappropriate contemporization is the use of "Israelis" instead of "Israelites" in the Living Bible (Exodus 9:4; 12:34; 14:20; 19:1; Judges 7:14; 1 Sam. 14:21; Isaiah 14:1, etc.). The use of "Israelis" in these contexts equates the ancient people of Israel with the occupants of the modern-day state of Israel.

This is congenial to certain literalistic interpretations of prophecy, to be sure; but it involves the same kind of cultural foreshortening that would equate modern-day Jews with the "scribes and Pharisees" of ancient Palestine. On the same principle, one might also translate םלך בבל ("King of Babylon") as "President of Iraq." But surely it is better to translate the text in such a way that readers can sense the cultural and temporal gap that intervenes between the ancient civilizations and our own. Whatever is proper to the ancient world should not be domesticated.

The general point made here is, not everyone should identify with the original receptors in all respects, because these original receptors were often addressed in situations radically different from our own. If the shoe fits, we should by all means wear it. But in order to know whether it fits or not, we must have knowledge of the original cultural context. In Scripture there are many lessons that are always pertinent, for which the historical setting makes little difference. But very often it does make some difference when, where, how, why, and to whom something is said.

Literary Conventions

The impracticality of attempts at "dynamic equivalence" become even more obvious if we turn our attention to units of discourse larger than the sentence or paragraph. Readers of the Bible will find that in order to understand it one must give up any expectations that the narratives will be composed according to modern Western conventions. This is one of the common expectations of naive readers, and it generates many problems for them. Take, for example, the famous question about Cain's wife. In Genesis 4:17 we read "And Cain knew his wife," before the existence of any woman (other than Eve) has been mentioned, and so the skeptic captiously asks, "Where did Cain get his wife?" The answer is simple (he married a sister), but many are temporarily baffled by the question, because they would have expected at least some mention of the fact that daughters were born to Adam and Eve before one is abruptly brought on the scene as Cain's wife. The reader has to reckon not only with the fact that the sons of Adam would have only their own sisters to marry, but he must also get used to the fact that the narrators of the Bible tend to omit things that we would certainly not omit if we had composed the stories. The difficulty felt by readers here arises from false expectations about the Bible's literary form, and it disappears only when it is recognized that the biblical writers felt no need to mention the birth of daughters, ⁽⁴³⁾ or to explain the existence of Cain's wife. When these narratives were first written and compiled, they satisfied the expectations of an ancient Near Eastern audience; but nothing short of a re-writing of the Bible, after the manner of Sholem Asch's The Apostle or Walter Wangerin's The Book of God, could bring them into line with modern expectations. It is for this reason that works of biblical fiction like Asch's and Wangerin's have been written. They alone can satisfy the culturally-determined expectations of modern readers.

Disintegration of Biblical Concepts

Language influences thought in several ways. When we have a word for some object of thought, it focuses and clarifies the thought. When we distinguish between things by making a distinction in words, it sharpens our perception of the difference. When we use the same word for different things, it tends to keep them together in the mind. The words of the Bible sometimes have these effects. They set up distinctions, and also establish conceptual bridges and connections between things. When a single word is used in Scripture for things that we would ordinarily distinguish by the use of different words, we ought to consider the possibility that the original words establish or facilitate a conceptual relationship that would be weakened if different words were used. A translator should not hastily or unnecessarily separate what the biblical languages put together.

Of course it is not always possible to translate concordantly, using the same English word for all occurrences of a Hebrew or Greek word. For example, both the Hebrew word כַלָה (kallah) and the Greek word νυμφη (nymfē) mean "bride" in some contexts and "daughter-in-law" in others, and we cannot consistently use only one English equivalent to translate these words in every place, ignoring the demands of the context, because we do not have a word that can refer to both. ⁽⁴⁴⁾ Sometimes it is impossible to translate a word concordantly even within the same context, as for example in Romans 12:13-14, where Paul uses forms of the word διωκω in two different senses, "pursue," and "persecute." The word-play here cannot be fully reproduced in English.

One very important word in the Greek New Testament that cannot be translated concordantly in English is the word λογος (logos). This word occurs often in the New Testament (about 300 times), and it is translated several different ways in English versions. In the great majority of cases it is translated "word," but it ordinarily refers to a "saying" or "statement" that expresses an idea or a series of connected thoughts, especially those which involve reasoning. Some of the connotations of λογος may be seen from the fact that it has entered the English language as logic, and as part of the words prologue, epilogue, and Decalogue (the "ten statements" inscribed on the "tables of the testimony"). The suffix logy at the end of many English words (biology, theology, psychology, etc.) reflects the meaning "treatise" or "reasoned discourse." Λογος may also refer to a "calculation" (hence our word logistics), "an accounting," a particular "reason," etc. In at least two places in the New Testament, it is used in a special metaphysical sense, refering to the personified Λογος of God (John 1:1, 14, and in the Johannine Comma). Although it is usually translated "word," it does not have the sense that "word" usually has in English: "a speech sound or series of speech sounds that symbolizes and communicates a meaning without being divisible into smaller units capable of independent use." That it does not refer to the mere sound of words, may be seen in John 8:43 — "Why do you not understand my speech [λαλια]? It is because you cannot hear my λογος." The λογος here refers to the mental concept expressed by the audible speech.

Ironically enough, some versions misinterpret this saying, by failing to distinguish the λαλια and the λογος. The RSV (followed by the ESV) does this, and tries to give point to the saying by interpreting "hear" as "bear to hear." ("Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.") The NEB effectively conveys the meaning with, "Why do you not understand my language? It is because my revelation is beyond your grasp." The NLT's rendering provides an outstanding example of how much meaning can be lost in a "dynamically equivalent" translation: "Why can't you understand what I am saying? It is because you are unable to do so!" Here λογος is simply quashed, and the saying is reduced to an empty tautology, losing virtually all of its meaning. ⁽⁴⁵⁾

The semantic associations of λογος are also inherited by words derived from it, such as the adjective λογικος (borrowed into English as logical). Because the word λογος acquired spiritual significance through association with the Word of God, the derived adjective can mean "spiritual" in addition to "reasonable." And thus in 1 Peter 2:2 the λογικος milk would be understood as "spiritual" milk, but λογικος also suggests a connection with the "living and abiding Λογος of God" which has just been mentioned. And hence we find in some English versions "milk of the word" (KJV, NKJV, NASB). It is not helpful to ask which of the alternative renderings gives the meaning; rather, what needs to be seen is that no English rendering can be entirely adequate, because we lack a word like λογικος which suggests both concepts, or invokes the same cluster of associations. As one scholar observes, in this context λογικος implies that "the spiritual food the believers consume comes to them verbally through the Word of God." ⁽⁴⁶⁾

Again, it is important to bear in mind that a word often has different meanings in different contexts. One should not try to find all of the senses of a word in every context where it occurs. But, as I hope to illustrate with this example, it sometimes happens that the sense-distinctions we would make for the purpose of English translation are not so distinct in the original word, which may represent a complex concept that combines ideas in ways that English does not. Consider the following sentence from Athanasius' treatise On the Incarnation.

This is not a mere play on words. Athanasius (who is among the least playful of authors) is linking ideas in a way already prepared by his language. He makes these connections quite naturally in his language because he has a set of terms that refer to "reason," "word," and the Logos of John's Gospel. It is really almost inevitable that a Greek theologian would connect the image of God with the Logos, and the Logos with rationality in particular. Anything created as a reflection of the divine Logos must first of all be logikos, rational. The tendency of the Greek language to combine these things is very evident here. But the connection fails in English, because we habitually make a linguistic distinction between the internal reasoning and the external speech, and so we have no word that refers to both. Someone might say that the Greek vocabulary lends itself to the confusion of two different things here, but from another point of view the Greek λογος represents a concept that disintegrates in English. In any case, the translator who would bring the full meaning of this sentence across the language barrier has no choice but to override the restrictions of the English language and bring over the Greek words themselves, either in brackets or footnotes, to exhibit the chain of thinking. Despite the fact that these same words have already been adopted into English in several ways, expressing various meanings belonging to them, we still do not have a word that means both reason and word!

English translators have always sensed the inadequacy of their language when faced with the problem of translating λογος in the prologue of John's Gospel. There is no English equivalent for the metaphysical sense in which it is used there. In such cases it may be best simply to borrow the word in a transliterated form, as James Moffatt did in his "Modern Speech" version of the New Testament ("The Logos existed in the very beginning ..."), and allow teachers to explain the meaning of it. It would not be the first time this word has been borrowed.

The vocabulary of Biblical Hebrew also includes words that resist translation. The word חֶסֶד (chesed), for instance, combines the concepts "covenant obligation," "loyalty," "act of kindness" and "love" in a way that no English word can match. It denotes a kind of dutiful love, connected with promises, family relations, and covenants; and also any action that is motivated by such love. When attributed to God, חֶסֶד implies much "mercy" within the context of a covenant. The word thus has different shades of meaning in different places; but it is not as if it meant "kindness" in one place, "mercy" in another, and "loyalty" in another. It represents a complex concept which cannot be reduced to just one of these English nouns in any of its occurrences. The חֶסֶד concept goes to pieces in English.

The Hebrew word נֶפֶש (nephesh) refers to the "soul" of a human being, but its connotations are not nearly so ghostly as the English word's are in modern usage. Like "soul" it refers to the personal living essence which continues to exist after death, but it also commonly denotes the source of primal bodily urges like the appetite, along with the deepest emotions. A man's נֶפֶש is what really motivates him, either spiritually or carnally. ⁽⁴⁸⁾ It may also mean "life" itself, as a condition of the body, and by a synecdoche (the most important part standing for the whole) it may refer to any "living being." (It is important to note that in the Bible, all animals have souls. The soul is what makes any creature alive. Man is not set apart from the beasts by the possession of a soul, he is set apart by being created in the image of God.) All of this is also true of the Greek word ψυχη (psyche), which was used to translate נֶפֶש in the Septuagint, and is used in all these senses in the Greek New Testament. Concerning the translation of ψυχη the BAGD Lexicon rightly says, "It is often impossible to draw hard and fast lines between the meanings of this many-sided word" (p. 893), because the different senses blend into one another, producing ambiguity, and the concept of "the soul" as an entity casts its shadow over all the various usages of ψυχη and נֶפֶש. As an example of this linguistic chemistry in action, consider the following words of Isaac to Esau in Genesis 27:4.

Syntactically, the phrase "my נֶפֶש" here is functionally equivalent to the personal pronoun "I," or to any other way of referring to oneself, but semantically it is not just another way of saying "I," because in addition to serving the function of self-reference, it refers to the soul. And this is generally true in cases where an expression with נֶפֶש refers to persons. It is used in contexts where the fact that they are living is pertinent, where a matter of life and death is prominent, or where the most primal desires of the person are in view. In this context, both the carnal appetite and the impending death of Isaac have made a reference to his soul especially appropriate. Obviously it means more than "I," and so the NIV's "that I may give you my blessing" fails to express the whole meaning. The only way to convey the whole meaning in a case like this is to translate literally, "that my soul may bless you," and to explain in a note that the word translated "soul" may also refer to the "appetite."

This important text briefly sets forth a theology of the atonement. The first נֶפֶש evidently refers to a person, but again, its function is not merely referential, it is used for the sake of its "soul" connotations. Moreover we note that the participle and pronouns connected with it are grammatically feminine, which gives the impression that it is the soul (a feminine noun) which eats and is cut off. In its second and fourth occurrences נֶפֶש might seem at first to mean vitality or life, but in the intervening "atonement for your נֶפֶשות" it must be understood as "souls" or "selves" (the NRSV's "atonement for your lives" makes no sense), and this reacts upon the interpretation of the other occurrences, because the sentence clearly equates the נֶפֶש of the sacrificial victim with the נֶפֶש of its presenter, for the purpose of explaining how atonement is accomplished. If the word is translated three different ways in these two verses, the connections which are obviously being made in the mind of the author are dissolved. But that is exactly what happens in many English versions. Some versions give no indication that a "soul" is ever mentioned in this passage. The NLT renders it thus:

Observe here that not only is the "soul" missing, but also the "altar," and any indication of the substitution of one life for another on the altar. The substitutionary idea was expressed in the original by verbal connections which are completely eliminated in the English translation.

No version can entirely avoid this phenomenon of translation, in which the semantic connections of important words "disintegrate" in the passage from one language to another, but the problem becomes most acute in versions produced under the dynamic equivalence philosophy, which demands complete naturalness of expression in the receptor language. This demand is often incompatible with the requirements of an accurate translation. A translator must sometimes employ the principle of concordant rendering, even if it goes against the idiomatic grain of the receptor language, in order to preserve the meaning.

Fortunately, the defects of our language are not so numerous and serious that we are unable to produce a serviceable, tolerably accurate translation of the Bible. But the linguistic capacity we do enjoy is often owed to the historic influence of Greek and Hebrew upon English, as mediated by literal translations of the Bible. The English word grace owes its range of meaning to the fact that for so many centuries it was used in English Bibles as a translation of χαρις, and in this way had acquired all the meanings of the Greek word. When such a process of linguistic preparation has occured, it is foolish not to use the especially prepared words. Our ability to produce a fully adequate translation really depends upon them.

One biblical concept that has suffered unnecessary disintegration in recent versions is the concept expressed in Scripture by the Hebrew word בָשָׂר and the Greek word σαρξ, traditionally rendered "flesh" in English versions. These words refer not only to "flesh" in the narrow sense, but to creatures made of flesh, humanity in distinction from God, and human nature in general. Often the words are used in a pejorative sense, emphasizing the mortality, corruptibility, and weakness (both physical and moral) of mankind. This usage is not confined to musty old Bibles, it is a recognized sense in common use. People do not assume that "the flesh" in a phrase like "the world, the flesh, and the devil" refers only to skin and muscle tissue, anymore than they would assume that "the world" refers simply to the planet earth. They understand that "flesh" in such a context refers to the impulses of the flesh, that is, the natural or instinctive desires of the body. But the NIV does not use "flesh" in that sense; it uses the word only where it is thought to refer to the material of the body. Elsewhere it offers, as translations of the word σαρξ, such abstractions as "sinful nature" (Rom. 7-8, etc.), "sinful mind" (Rom. 8:7), "human ancestry" (Rom. 9:5), "human standards" (1 Cor. 1:26), and "human decision" (John 1:13). In some places the word is not translated at all (Rom. 4:1), or its place is filled with a mere pronoun (Matt. 24:22, Rom. 3:20, 1 Cor. 1:29, etc.). One of the NIV translators, Ronald Youngblood, has responded to criticism of its renderings thus:

We do not deny that the word has this range of meaning. Our point is, when the word is rendered in so many different ways, the reader cannot perceive how these things are associated and sometimes even identified in the Greek language. With regard to two of them Herman Ridderbos observes that it is an "indication of the universality of sin, in that flesh on the one hand is a description of all that is man, and on the other of the sinful in man." ⁽⁵⁰⁾ We might also observe that the same word is used for corruptibility, sinful tendencies, and biological descent, which suggests not only the universality but also the inheritability of the sinful nature. The whole matrix of semantic connections and connotations is destroyed when different words are used for the different aspects of this complex concept.

Youngblood apparently believes that Hebrew and Greek readers are able to discern the intended meaning of the word in each context, but he does not seem to recognize that the context will in the very same way indicate the meaning to readers of English versions that translate σαρξ consistently as flesh. Why should the defining effect of the immediate context be acknowledged for the one and not for the other? It is as if the constraints and indications of the immediate context are not really thought to be adequate. Readers are assumed to be incapable of inferring the meaning of the term from the context. But is there really any basis for the idea that readers cannot perceive what is meant by "flesh" in places where it means something more than the physical substance? In some places it quite obviously refers to unregenerate human nature in general (e.g. Galatians 5).

More recently Douglas Moo has explained that members of the committee who revised the NIV in 2002 "thought that the word flesh in contemporary English would either connote 'the meat on our bones' or (where context rendered that particular meaning impossible) the sensual appetites, and especially sexual lust." ⁽⁵¹⁾ But the special association of "the flesh" with sensual desire is not just a quirk of contemporary English. The word σαρξ also had this connotation in first-century Greek. ⁽⁵²⁾ It is no coincidence that Paul in his list of "works of the flesh" (Galatians 5:19ff.) begins with three items associated with sensuality. Martin Luther complained that the Latin equivalent caro and the German das Fleisch were also commonly understood as referring either to "meat" or to "lust" in his day. ⁽⁵³⁾ But notwithstanding this, Luther found such significance in the Bible's use of "flesh" as a designation for humanity and human nature, that he preferred to translate σαρξ and בָשָׂר literally as Fleisch. ⁽⁵⁴⁾ The approach taken by Luther may be illustrated by comments in his Preface to the Epistle of Paul to the Romans.

He goes on to define these key words for his readers. The difference between Luther and the translators of the NIV is that Luther had higher expectations of his readers, despite the fact that in his time illiteracy was much more of a problem than it is today. ⁽⁵⁵⁾ He did not believe that a Bible version without explanatory notes and prefaces could convey the whole meaning while making all misunderstandings impossible. He expected readers of his translation to read his notes and prefaces, and he expected preachers to explain the Bible in their sermons also. But the NIV is shaped by much lower standards and expectations, as Moo explains:

Moo agrees that a concordant and literal translation of σαρξ is probably best for "the careful reader" and for those who have received instruction, but he assumes that the majority of Christian readers will not be careful and will not receive instruction. So, careful readers are marginalized by the NIV, while the careless readers are treated as normal. But we do not share such low expectations. We object to the idea that the entire congregation should be using a Bible version adapted to the limitations of those who will not read it carefully, and who are expected to learn nothing from teachers.

The desirability of concordant renderings may also be seen when we consider the metaphorical relationship that often exists between different senses of the same word. In Hebrew the word שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) means both sky and heaven, and the same is true of the Greek word ουρανος (ouranos). But this is no mere accident or coincidence of language. It is by a metaphorical extension of meaning that the word for "sky" came also to mean "heaven," in the sense of God's dwelling-place. The metaphorical sense no doubt originated in the intuition that divinity must be "above" our world, because power and authority is naturally associated with being in a "higher" position. God is so high, he is above the clouds. Scripture often uses variations of this "God is high" metaphor, and some events recorded in Scripture give sanction to it. At the Baptism of Christ, "the heavens were opened." When he ascended into heaven, he quite literally went up into the sky. If we modern people imagine that the symbolism of such an act is no longer necessary or helpful, we are deceiving ourselves.

Although it may seem poetic, until recently no one thought it would be hard to understand if ουρανος were translated "heaven" in places where it denotes the sky. But it seems that many Bible translators now think that "heaven" must be distinguished from "the sky." Even the NASB reflects this, by giving two different renderings for the same word in Acts 1:10-11, and the Good News Bible consistently avoids calling the sky "heaven" or "the heavens" even in poetic contexts (e.g. Psalm 19, "the sky reveals God's glory"). What is lost when the sky can no longer be called "the heavens" in the Bible? Chiefly the power of a metaphor, which sets the throne of the Most High God upon the stars.

The teaching concerning death and resurrection is sometimes expressed in Scripture by extended senses for words meaning "sleep" and "awake." In Daniel 12:2 we read, "And many of those sleeping (ישׁני) in the dust of the earth shall awake (יקיצוּ), some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting abhorrence." The word translated "sleeping" here is an adjective derived from ישׁן ("sleep," BDB Lexicon p. 445). The word translated "awake" is a form of קיץ ("awake," BDB p. 884). See also the use of these words in 2 Kings 4:31, Job 14:12, Psalm 13:3, Isaiah 26:19, and Jeremiah 51:39, 57. In the New Testament, see the use of the verbs καθευδω ("sleep," BAGD Lexicon p. 388) in Matt. 9:24 (= Mark 5:39, Luke 8:52), 1 Thes. 5:10; and κοιμαω and its cognates ("sleep," BAGD p. 437) in Matt. 27:52; John 11:11, 13; Acts 7:60, 13:36, 1 Cor. 7:39, 11:30, 15:6, 18, 20, 51; 1 Thes. 4:14; and 2 Pet. 3:4. I would also point out the parallelism in Ephesians 5:14. Surely it means something that words which in their primary sense mean "fall asleep" are also used in reference to the death of the body. To say that one of the senses is "fall sleep" and the other is "die" is to miss the significance that derives from the connection of the senses. ⁽⁵⁷⁾ For if the dead "sleep," they will awake! But the connection is lost in the NLT rendering of Daniel 12:2 ("those whose bodies lie dead and buried will rise up"), 2 Kings 4:31 ("the child is still dead"), Psalm 13:3 ("I will die"), 1 Thes. 5:10 ("dead or alive"), Matt. 27:52 ("who had died"), Acts 7:60, 13:36 ("he died"), and in all places where a word meaning "sleep" is used to speak of death in the epistles. ⁽⁵⁸⁾

Earlier in this essay, under the heading of "Transculturation," I discussed the semantic range of the words אָח and αδελφος. The primary meaning is "brother," but in addition to referring to one who was born of the same mother and father, they may also refer to a "member of a religious community," "fellow countryman," "neighbor," etc., and these various senses are enumerated in the lexicons. Here again the meaning has been extended metaphorically, and so the extended senses retain the connotation of the primary sense, "brother." It certainly means something that a fellow-Christian is called an αδελφος in Scripture. Therefore, in order to preserve the meaning, a concordant rendering is desirable. We should translate it as brother in all places. If we avoid the word brother and use expressions like "member of the church" or "fellow-Christian" when αδελφος refers to someone who is not literally a brother, then the metaphorical meaning is lost.

Apologists for "dynamic equivalence" typically ignore such considerations. Some have even denied, on a theoretical level, the reality of the linguistic phenomenon we have been talking about here. One new member of the NIV committee, Mark Strauss, has written:

In an illustration of this, Strauss discusses various meanings of the Greek verb ποιεω ("do," "practice," "make", "cause," "give," etc), and belabors the rather obvious point that ποιεω cannot always be translated the same way. And so he concludes:

The issue is thus framed by a refusal to acknowledge that the primary sense of a word commonly gives connotations to the extended senses. A semantically mercurial word like ποιεω is offered as proof of this, as if it were typical. After a little specious reasoning we then come to a point where people are even claiming that "member of the church" is an entirely adequate translation for αδελφος, and anyone who thinks that it must still connote "brother" when it refers to a member of the church is said to be guilty of a linguistic fallacy.

Strauss will not even tolerate footnotes that give the primary meanings of words. He objects to a footnote in the ESV, in which the translators indicate that Greek word σαρξ literally means "flesh," though they have translated it as "human being" in the text. He says that with this footnote "they promote a false and misleading view of language and translation." ⁽⁶¹⁾ Likewise he charges the translators of the NRSV with a "fallacy" when they give a footnote indicating that αδελφοι literally means brothers, though they have given the gender-inclusive rendering "brother and sisters" in the text: "This is a lexical fallacy. First, the Greek word is not 'brothers'; it is adelphoi. Second, adelphoi does not have a literal meaning, but a range of possible senses." ⁽⁶²⁾

No one denies that Hebrew and Greek words usually have more than one sense, and that the context determines which sense is meant. Anyone who is familiar with the languages knows that these senses often do not match up very well with English words. But Strauss fails to recognize the true extent of the problem. He assumes that it can be solved by giving different renderings in different places. But we perceive that a variety in the rendering does not always solve the problem, and that it sometimes creates other problems, which he does not acknowledge. When the senses of אָח are severed from one another in the "contextually nuanced" translation, much of the meaning is lost. The same is true of נֶפֶש and בָשָׂר and many other words.

English often does have the words needed to express these meanings, but not at the conversational "Common Language" level. Sometimes it is necessary to use borrowed words (e.g. Hades), and sometimes we must take advantage of the "biblical" senses acquired by English words through their usage in literal translations ("brother," "flesh," "heart," "know," "sleep," and so forth). The earliest English versions established these senses by using literal equivalents for the primary sense of the words, and allowing the context to indicate the extended biblical senses. The use of English words in senses that they have acquired through biblical translation has been derided as "biblish" and "church jargon" by Common Language purists, but, as I have pointed out already, the apostles used a similarly modified language in which Greek words were used with the Hebrew meanings they had acquired through the influence of the Septuagint.

Unnecessary ‘Help’

In the example of 1 Peter 4:12-19 given above the NIV's paraphrastic translation of πυρωσει may also be put in a large of class of paraphrastic renderings which may be described as "unnecessary help." Obviously the NIV translators felt that they were helping the reader. But did they suppose that ordinary readers of the Bible are so dense that they are incapable of understanding that "fiery ordeal" here refers to painful trials?

Many similar instances of 'unnecessary help' could be mentioned. For example, in 1 Corinthians 2:11-13 Paul writes:

The last clause here, πνευματικοῖς πνευματικὰ συγκρίνοντες, lit. "matching spiritual things to spiritual," looks like a general maxim—the kind of pithy saying that Paul often uses to clinch his arguments. But many translators have felt the need to make the statement more specific. The New Living Translation, for example, has "using the Spirit's words to explain spiritual truths," and its marginal note reads, "Or, explaining spiritual truths in spiritual language, or explaining spiritual truths to spiritual people." There are other interpretations which might just as well have been added to the note. But these different interpretations are not mutually exclusive, and it is likely that Paul would endorse them all as implications of his statement. Why are the translators not content with the general statement? Why not leave it at that, and let the reader discern the implications, the way Paul left his own readers? The urge to explain seems to get the better of them, when no explanation is needed.

Perhaps the most common occasion for excessive interpretation is the treatment of genitive constructions, in which nouns modify other nouns in ways that are sometimes ambiguous. In many places we must be content to say that the genitve merely indicates a connection, the nature of which must be discerned from the context; but these genitive contructions are often analyzed too closely in translation. A good example of this is the treatment of the phrase δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ "righteousness of God" in Romans 1:17. Luther famously translated it, die Gerechtigkeit, die vor Gott gilt, welche kommt aus Glauben ... "the righteousness that is valid in the sight of God, which comes from faith," etc., interpreting the genitive in an objective sense. This interpretation, which seems rather forced, reflects Luther's eagerness to introduce the doctrine of imputed righteousness. Calvin explains it in the same way as Luther ("I take the righteousness of God to mean, that which is approved before his tribunal"), but he cautiously refrains from injecting this interpretation directly into the text of his Latin translation, and gives instead a literal rendering, justitia Dei. The NIV translators, like Luther, prefer to give a particular interpretation — "a righteousness from God" — but unlike Luther, they interpret the construction as a genitive of author or origin. ⁽⁶³⁾ There are other possibilities as well, such as understanding it as a subjective genitive denoting either a quality or an action of God. Commentators of the past two centuries have proposed an amazing variety of interpretations, and the exegesis is further complicated by the different meanings assigned to δικαιοσύνη, which in Jewish Greek had acquired the sense of "covenant faithfulness." ⁽⁶⁴⁾ The NLT seems to be combining at least two interpretations with its highly paraphrastic rendering, "how God makes us right in his sight." But now I would ask: why not simply accept the fact that the Greek genitive construction does not always demand such an exact and specific analysis? There is no good reason to suppose that at this point Paul is saying anything more than that "a (covenantal) divine righteousness" is revealed in the gospel, as opposed to a merely human righteousness. The phrase itself does not express the specific ideas we find in the translations of Luther, the NIV, or the NLT, and the immediate context does not require us to elaborate or constrain the meaning to any one of them. ⁽⁶⁵⁾ If we want to know more about this "righteousness of God," we must read on! Not everything is said at once. The Greek language does not lack the means for saying specifically "a righteousness from God" if that is what Paul had meant to express here. He might have written δικαιοσύνη ἐκ θεοῦ here (as in Philippians 3:9), but he did not. And when we get to 3:26, it appears that Paul means at least two different things by the phrase "righteousness of God" — "to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." So here, as in many other places, the "dynamic" translations seem to be presenting overly-specific interpretations.

In cases like this, where the meaning cannot be narrowed down without risk of eliminating part of the intended meaning, it is best to translate the Greek genitive construction with a correspondingly ambiguous English genitive. In Romans 1:17, δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ should be translated either "righteousness of God" or "God's righteousness." ⁽⁶⁶⁾

In the same verse, the phrase εκ πιστεως εις πιστιν (lit. "from faith to faith") has received much analysis. The NIV interprets this rather cryptic saying as "a righteousness that is by faith from first to last," sparing readers the burden of figuring it out for themselves. But here, as often, the difficulty in the literal rendering is not created by the translators: it lies in the Greek text. Many scholars do favor the NIV's interpretation, but many do not. Some understand it quite differently, and others prefer to leave it an open question. ⁽⁶⁷⁾

Inadequate Marginal Notes

It is generally admitted by proponents of "dynamic equivalence" that interpretive renderings can be risky, because they tend to foreclose interpretive options that may be more correct. The standard reply to objections based on this consideration is to point out that the translator can always use marginal notes to indicate other possibilities. In one book co-authored by Nida and Jan de Waard, they write:

One of the examples used by the authors is the expression "righteousness of God" in Romans 1:17, which we have discussed above. Nida and de Waard maintain that a translation must prevent readers from interpreting this as "a statement about God's own personal character." They claim that misunderstandings of this phrase cannot be prevented by "an informed clergy," because they believe that too many clergymen are uninformed, and cannot be relied upon to give the correct interpretation (p. 34). Judging from my own experience in American churches, I am inclined to agree that pastors often commit errors of interpretation. But the same is true of many scholars also. The appeal to "the best scholarly judgments" here will carry little weight with those who are really familiar with exegetical literature, because in it highly-educated scholars have argued with one another about the meaning of nearly everything in the Bible. In the past century, especially, it seems that every scholar tries to make his mark by inventing new interpretations. In these circumstances the ability of translators and editors to sort out "the best scholarly judgments" can hardly be taken for granted. One can usually find scholarly support for interpretations found in paraphrastic translations, but they are very often questionable, and represent only one side of a long-standing disagreement between scholars. Sometimes they represent fads of interpretation that prevail only for a generation or two.

Nida's argument that alternative interpretations can be given in the margin had better not be just a way of dismissing legitimate concerns about this method of translation. Translators had better be careful to do it. But we find time and again that they do not provide such marginal notes, even where the most questionable interpretations are foisted into the text. In the very nature of the case, one might suppose that translations of this type would include more footnotes than the literal versions, in order to ensure that interpretive options and nuances are not suppressed. But an examination of the versions reveals an opposite tendency: the "dynamic" versions tend to have far fewer footnotes than the literal ones. The extent of the difference can be illustrated by the number of footnotes in Job, a poetic book that is particularly rich in ambiguous lines. The following table gives the total number of footnotes in seven of today's most widely-used versions.

We observe that one of the most literal versions, the NASB, has more than fifteen times as many notes as the NLT. The correlation is not proportional, but in general we find that the more "dynamic" a version is, the fewer footnotes it contains. What is the reason for this correlation? I think a clue is given by Nida and de Waard in the same book quoted above, when they state that "for private devotional reading of the Scriptures people normally prefer a text which is not encumbered with numerous references and footnotes" (p. 18). It would be more accurate to say, however, that the editors of the more paraphrastic versions have in view a class of readers who do not want their minds encumbered with the tricky details, alternative renderings, and nuances that might have been provided in the margin. And perhaps they sense that a margin that gives too many alternative interpretations and literal renderings will only damage the credibility of the translation.

The details and alternatives that are commonly neglected in the translation of Job are not trivial. For example, in 13:15 we find the rendering "God might kill me, but I cannot wait" in the NLT, without a footnote, and "I've lost all hope, so what if God kills me?" in the Good News Bible; whereas other versions have "Though he slay me, I will hope in him" (NASB, ESV), "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him" (KJV, NKJV), or something similar. Who will say that this is unimportant? The translators could not have been ignorant of it, and clearly a footnote here is in order. ⁽⁶⁸⁾

When interpretive translators fail to indicate viable alternatives in the margin, they sometimes cause serious difficulties for teachers, even for those who are well versed in Scripture. I once visited an adult Bible class being taught by a young seminary-trained pastor, in which one woman asked a question about Hebrews 11:26, which says that Moses counted "the reproach of Christ" (τὸν ὀνειδισμὸν τοῦ Χριστοῦ) greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. Unfortunately everyone there was using the NIV, which states that Moses "regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt," and she wanted to know how a determination to suffer "for the sake of Christ" could be attributed to Moses (even before the ministry of the prophets), and why the Old Testament failed to mention this motive in its account of Moses. The pastor was caught flat-footed by this excellent question, and began to stumble. He looked at me hopefully, but I could give no help, because I had never heard such a statement being quoted as Scripture, and I had no better version of the Bible with me to jog my memory of the verse. If Hebrews 11:26 had been quoted in a more literal form, I might have explained "the reproach of Christ" in the way that I have always understood it; but I could not explain the NIV's "disgrace for the sake of Christ." As happens far too often in modern versions, the NIV here imposes a very questionable interpretation on the text, currently favored in some circles, without providing readers with a note giving the more literal rendering, or in any way indicating the more likely traditional interpretation of the phrase. ⁽⁶⁹⁾ In its defense, one might argue that it is just possible to interpret the simple genitive construction in this way, if we suppose that the author was being somewhat lax in his style; but it cannot be said that the Greek genitive ever expresses "for the sake of." For that, a prepositional phrase is required, like δια with the accusative. The simple genitive construction τὸν ὀνειδισμὸν τοῦ Χριστοῦ is here more naturally understood as "the same reproach that fell upon Christ," and this meaning is not hard to discern from a literal rendering like "the reproach of Christ" in this context. The question raised by the woman in my friend's Bible class would not have been raised if it were not for the "helpful" NIV rendering, which made the true sense of the phrase virtually inaccessible to the class; and it would not have been hard to answer if a less interpretive rendering were given in the margin.

Sometimes we find in modern versions "dynamic" renderings that are exegetically impossible, without any alternative renderings given in the margin. An example of this is Matthew 12:33 in the NIV, "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit." The Greek verb translated "make" here is an imperative (ποιησατε), and it simply cannot be interpreted as if it were a subjunctive verb in a conditional clause, meaning "if you make ... then." The Greek imperative cannot function like that. It is difficult to imagine how a group of conscientious scholars could have decided to put this in the text without a marginal note. ⁽⁷⁰⁾ The rendering usually found in more literal versions — "Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad" — is indeed not very helpful, and likely to be misunderstood; but at least it allows a teacher to bring out the meaning clearly and deftly by explaining the word "make" in the sense of "consider." The NIV's very loose rendering, on the other hand, is so unlike the Greek that it cannot even be used as a starting point for the explanation of the verse. It is necessary to reject the whole sentence as a mistranslation, and offer in its place a rendering quite unlike it in form. Again, this would not be so bad if the version had included a footnote that could be used as the basis for the explanation.

All of which goes to show how empty is Nida's statement that a translator can always "provide in marginal notes the appropriate alternatives." The whole ethos of dynamic equivalence frowns at the kind of carefulness that would supply details and alternatives in the margin, while encouraging translators to take unprecedented liberties with the text.

Needless Limitations of the Vocabulary

In one of the examples cited above, I used the word "reproach" to translate the Greek ονειδισμος. This English word, "reproach," is today rarely heard in conversation. In colloquial speech its use is practically confined to the phrase "above reproach," and the word has a distinctly literary if not biblical flavor to it. For some time now, many translators who adhere to principles of "dynamic equivalence" have been avoiding words like this, because they suppose that words rarely used in conversation are liable to be misunderstood. Therefore instead of "reproach," we see "disgrace" in several modern versions, in places like Hebrews 11:26 and 13:13. But the word "disgrace" does not have quite the same meaning as "reproach." The two words are very close in meaning, but "disgrace" implies some fault, giving sufficient cause for dishonor, whereas "reproach" does not. "Reproach" has reference to public reputation only. A righteous man might be said to suffer "reproach" (e.g. by public insults and ridicule for his unpopular views), but we do not speak of a man's "disgrace" without implying that his reputation is deserved. This illustrates one of the great advantages of the English language: its relatively large stock of words, which puts at our disposal many synonyms that enable us to make such fine distinctions. If, however, we choose to artificially limit this vocabulary, using only those words which are commonly used in conversation, our ability to express ourselves is greatly diminished. Translators who avoid words rarely used in conversation, though they are generally understood by English speakers, are limiting their own ability to convey shades of meaning in the original, and for no good reason.

In Acts 9:22 it seems impossible to express the meaning of συνέχυννεν concisely in English without using either the word "confounded" or "discomfited." Both words combine the sense "defeat" with "throw into confusion," and that is just what the Greek word means here. Paul confounded the Jews of Damascus with his powerful arguments. The rendering "confounded" goes back to Wycliffe, and its fitness is so obvious that it was used by all subsequent translators up to the twentieth century. It continues to be used in several recent versions. If it is rejected now as being too unusual for the modern reader, what equivalent can be found in "common English"? We end up with such renderings as the NIV's "baffled" and the CEV's "confused," which express only half the meaning; or the NEB's "silenced," or such paraphrastic treatments as the NLT's "the Jews in Damascus couldn't refute his proofs," which expresses only the other half of the meaning. This is what happens when translators are prevented from using all the resources of the language. When the range of words allowed in a translation decreases, inaccuracy must increase.

In this connection, we are told that the use of archaic language in the older Bible versions presents problems for many people, and this is true to some extent. I once met a man who had been reading the KJV Bible nearly every day for more than 30 years, but he did not know that "meat" in that version means "food." We can do without confusion like that. And who today would want to keep the unfortunate "superfluity of naughtiness" in James 1:21? But in my experience as a teacher, archaic words and expressions are much less of a problem than some would have us believe. It is claimed, for instance, that people will have difficulty with the word "begat" in the genealogies, and so we must have "was the father of" instead. But it so happens that "begat" is a more accurate translation of εγεννησεν, and in twenty years of teaching I have never encountered anyone who did not understand the word. The same is true of "behold," and "thou," and many other old-fashioned words. If for any reason a translator or reader prefers these words, there is no harm in it.

Is the purpose of accurate translation met when Hebrew and Greek words for which the "dynamic" translator can find no modern-sounding equivalent are left untranslated? This has been the case with the Hebrew interjections הֵן and הִנֵּה ("behold, lo"), and the corresponding ιδου in the New Testament, in many recent versions. A translator who cannot bear to use any biblical-sounding word like "behold" sometimes ventures to use "see" or "look" as an equivalent, but with results that are even less natural to spoken English than "behold." For example, the NIV in Matthew 24:15 reads "See, I have told you," and in 26:45, "Look, the hour is near." Is Jesus pointing to a clock here? When there is nothing to look at or see with the eyes, English-speaking people do not naturally use the words "look" and "see" as emphasizing interjections, in the same way that the biblical authors use הִנֵּה and ιδου. The NIV translators evidently felt the oddity of using "see" and "look" like this in most places, but having ruled out "behold," they found no way of conveying the meaning at all; and so they simply left the Greek and Hebrew words untranslated in hundreds of places (e.g., Luke 1:48). We grant that, all other things being equal, it is usually good to use words of the common sort, rather than needlessly archaic ones. But translators should not reject words that are understood by virtually everyone just because they are not currently popular in colloquial speech. A translator who needlessly hobbles himself with such a stylistic principle will often find that he simply cannot express the meaning. ⁽⁷¹⁾

Sometimes the advocates of "dynamic equivalence" exaggerate the supposed need for common language so much that it seems they think ordinary people are stupid. For instance, Nida in one of his books explained that in Psalm 23 the old-fashioned rendering, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," was unacceptable because "many persons understand this traditional rendering to mean: 'The Lord is my shepherd whom I shall not want.'" ⁽⁷²⁾ This is the kind of ridiculous misunderstanding that "many" people fall into when the language of colloquial speech is not used, we are told. But perhaps we are entitled to a higher opinion of people's intelligence. As for those few who really do have such problems, we wonder if it would be wise to encourage them to think they could understand much of anything in the Bible without constant help from teachers.

A False View of Linguistic Development

One should not underestimate the abilities of ordinary people to learn words, or new meanings for existing words. This was brought home to me in an interesting way recently, when one of my children asked me to get a "thing of pop" at the grocery store. Without even thinking about it, I knew that he meant a two-litre bottle, because not long ago I had heard my wife casually refer to one of those large bottles as a "thing" of pop. My son had immediately picked up the usage, and he correctly perceived that this was her way of indicating a large bottle, as distinguished from the smaller ones we usually think of when we say "bottle." So now in my family the word "thing" has acquired a new and highly specific sense when referring to liquid containers. By the age of eight all my children knew the usual English words for liquid containers in our house: cups, glasses, mugs, bottles, cans, cartons, jugs, canteens, pitchers, etc. Their knowledge of what these words specifically refer to was gained without effort, merely by example and inference, without anyone stating definitions.

One word they all knew by the age of five was "ark," as in "Noah's Ark." I don't remember ever being asked what an "ark" is. It was just accepted as the name of that huge vessel that Noah built. The word is not common in speech, and, like "tabernacle," it is one of those biblical words that people must learn from the contexts in which it is used. But this is no different from my son's learning that when his mother says a "thing of pop" she means a two-litre bottle—it is no trouble at all. And it turns out that this unusual word "ark" is worth learning, because it represents an unusual Hebrew word: תֵּבָה (teivah), which means not really a "boat" but a box-like container or vessel. Interestingly enough, this Hebrew word occurs in only one other place in the Bible: in the infancy narrative of Moses, where his mother builds an "ark" to float him on the Nile. Like a second Noah, Moses is thus preserved from death by means of an "ark" on the water. Probably Moses used the word תֵּבָה here, in the story of his own deliverance, with Noah's ark in mind. Of course this allusion, like all the others mentioned above, is lost in some modern versions, because they will not use such an unusual word as "ark."

Another false notion promoted by "common language" advocates is that words of Latin origin must be avoided. We get the impression that they think these words do not really belong in the English language. They claim that words derived from Latin are somehow exotic, unduly formal, and lack the force of native Anglo-Saxon words. This assertion is usually made without argument, as if it were self-evident. But is it really true? Is it true, for instance, that the word "disciple" (from the Latin discipulus, "pupil," "apprentice") is just a fancy Latinate way of saying "follower"? We rather think that "disciple" is the stronger word, more definite in meaning. A "follower" does not always know his leader personally, or necessarily learn much from him; but the word "disciple" suggests a closer relationship, and also conveys the idea that the relationship is that of a learner with his teacher. Probably the word "disciple" has this stronger meaning in English because it is less common, being especially associated with the Bible and religion, and having acquired from its biblical usage all the meaning of the Greek μαθητης. Below I will elaborate more on this point, and argue that the most common words in a language do not in fact have more meaning or force than uncommon words, but less. Here I am only concerned with the unreasonable prejudice against English words inherited from Latin.

Barclay Newman, translator of the Contemporary English Version, solemnly informs us that the word grace—which we have defended above—"comes from the Latin word gratia," and that "the expression 'grace of God' did not enter the English language until A.D. 1175." ⁽⁷³⁾ The assumption here seems to be that words or phrases unattested in English before the twelfth century are somehow illegitimate. He complains that grace, like most of the other words he finds objectionable (e.g. righteousness and repentance), was brought into English versions "from the Latin Bible" by John Wycliffe — "a Latin scholar who knew little Greek." And so we are urged to reject the word, because it came from Latin. Again, if we had hoped that the word grace, after eight centuries of use in English-speaking churches, and a million choruses of "Amazing Grace," might have gained a secure place in the English language by now, we were mistaken.

This reminds me of the patriotic encomiums to Tyndale found in some nineteenth-century British authors, who praise his New Testament for its "pure Saxon" vocabulary, drawn from "the well of English undefiled," and so on. ⁽⁷⁴⁾ Statements like this are so far from the truth, they can only be understood as expressions of the French-hating "blood and soil" romanticism of their authors. They seriously misrepresent not only Tyndale's vocabulary, but also the very nature and history of the English language. The truth is, from the fourteenth century onward it has not been possible for a speaker of English to avoid Latin-derived words. Modern English is not merely a development of Old English (Anglo-Saxon) in which a few expendable inkhorn terms have been borrowed from Latin along the way. It is the outcome of a hybrid of Old English and Old French formed in the centuries following the Norman conquest of Britain, in which much of the vocabulary of Old French was thoroughly naturalized. The Latin-based French words came to the British Isles in such a flood that probably more than half the words of Modern English can be traced to them. Not only that, but many native Anglo-Saxon words have acquired meanings from their Latin equivalents. An example of this is the word "thing." Originally in Anglo-Saxon a "thing" was an "assembly," but under the steady and pervasive influence of Latin during the Middle Ages it gradually acquired all the senses of its Latin equivalent, res, and finally its old Anglo-Saxon meaning became obsolete. ⁽⁷⁵⁾ It has been estimated that Modern English "has appropriated a full quarter of the Latin vocabulary, besides what it has gained by transferring Latin meanings to native words." ⁽⁷⁶⁾ This momentous change in the language might be forgotten, but it cannot be reversed. We cannot go back to a "pure Saxon" vocabulary by avoiding Latin derivatives, because Latinate words have displaced much of the old Anglo-Saxon vocabulary. There is nothing "foreign" about Latinate words that have been in our language continuously for 800 years; but many of the Anglo-Saxon equivalents, if they ever existed, have become as foreign to us as German. This may be illustrated by the fate of the Old English word for "savior." That word was hælend (comp. German heiland), and in Anglo-Saxon translations of scripture hælend was also used to represent the name of Jesus. But by the time of Wycliffe this familiar Saxon word had been pushed aside by the French sauveour, descended from the Latin salvator. A descendant of the word hælend did survive the Norman invasion, with a more restricted meaning, in the form of our word "healer;" but the sense of "savior" has been taken from it and given to the adopted French word. And this is how it went with many common Anglo-Saxon words during the Middle English period. We are far beyond the point when anyone might refrain from the use of Latin-derived words like this, which long ago became an integral part of our language. And if it were possible, it would still not be desirable, because the great versatility and precision of the English language is mostly due to this infusion of Latin vocabulary; as one German grammarian has said: "The Blending of the Germanic [Anglo-Saxon] with the Romance [Latin and French] imparts to English in general a richness of expression for all shades of thought, possessed by no other modern language." ⁽⁷⁷⁾

Even in languages which have not undergone the kind of transformation that English went through in the Middle Ages, the borrowing of words from other languages is not uncommon. In fact the Hebrew word תֵּבָה ("ark"), mentioned above, is probably a loan-word from Egyptian (see the etymology in the Koehler-Baumgartner lexicon). In the Greek New Testament, we find a number of loan-words from Hebrew and Aramaic. All the European languages have borrowed words from Hebrew, Greek, and Latin; and many of these borrowed words are now household words in our language: the words "Christ" and "Bible" are anglicized Greek (χριστος and βιβλια), "Amen" is Hebrew (אמן), and these words came into our language through ecclesiastical Latin (Christus, Biblia, Amen). The idea that words borrowed long ago from the ancient languages should not be used in a Bible version is unreasonable; it involves a false view of language development, and it ignores the fact that many words have entered our language by means of Bible translations in the past.

The Shallowness of Ordinary Language

Nothing is more characteristic of life in the modern age than its shallowness. For many who have turned to Christ in recent years, the first prompting of the Spirit was an overwhelming sense of the sheer emptiness and superficiality of their lives. They come to a church looking for something deep and permanent enough to give meaning to their lives. But at the same time many churches have fallen victim to the shallowness of our age, and what visitors too often find in them, instead of depth, is an inane and faddish "pop Christianity." Seekers may even find that the very Word of God has been rendered insipid and shallow by our modern translators.

"Dynamic equivalence" versions seem to have a genius for trivialization that prevails even against some basic principles of their method. An example of this is the use of "happy" instead of "blessed" as a translation for אַשְׁרֵי and μακαριος in the context of blessings. J.B. Phillips was the first to use this rendering for μακαριοι in the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:3-12), though he used the more appropriate "fortunate" in some other places. His "happy" has been copied by the Good News Bible and the New Century Version. In the latter we find the ludicrous rendering, "Those who are sad now are happy" for Matt. 5:4. The translators of the King James version used "happy" in the old sense of "fortunate" in a few places where these words refer to the enjoyment of favorable circumstances, but presumably the poor readers of the Good News Bible and New Century Version will understand "happy" only in its ordinary modern sense, as denoting an emotion. Clearly μακαριος in the beatitudes refers to something more spiritual in nature — a "blessed" state of being under divine favor. ⁽⁷⁸⁾ Nevertheless, it seems that Phillips and the others preferred "happy" to "blessed" here just because it sounds more colloquial and contemporary. "Blessed" is one of those stilted and old-fashioned words that the modernizing translators shun, as belonging to the stained-glass vocabulary of yesteryear. Modern youngsters and non-Christians just don't say that people are "blessed." So we have "happy" instead.

In front of me is a recently-published book called A User's Guide to Bible Translations, whose author strongly recommends the use of dynamic equivalence versions, which he calls "meaning-driven" versions. ⁽⁷⁹⁾ He writes:

This writer—said to be a "Baptist minister in England" on the back cover of the book—seems to think that the Greek word traditionally translated Repentance (μετανοια) in the New Testament means nothing other than "turning away from sin, and turning toward God." But this technical definition leaves out the remorse, the sorrow for sin, the hearty determination to change, that are also denoted by the word. Thayer in his Lexicon explains that μετανοια denotes "the change of mind of those who have begun to abhor their errors and misdeeds, and have determined to enter upon a better course of life, so that it embraces both the recognition of sin and sorrow for it and hearty amendment, the tokens and effects of which are good deeds." (2nd ed., p. 406.) All of this is implicit in our word "repentance." ⁽⁸⁰⁾ We are aware of the fact that this stern old word, so charged with religious meaning and emotional depth, is rarely heard outside of church. But the claim that it may not "make sense" to Bible readers is implausible. The same writer also states that the word sin "may not be understood properly" (p. 46), and worries that salvation may also be too hard for some readers to understand, because it is "a long word with an abstract meaning" (p. 69).

In the New Living Translation's rendering of Mark 1:4 we notice also that "to show that they had turned to God" construes the repentance connected with John's baptism as a previous or contemporaneous action to be "shown" by the baptism. This is apparently the translator's attempt to explain what is meant by βαπτισμα μετανοιας "baptism of repentance" in the original. But Scripture itself does not explain the relationship of baptism to repentance in this way. This same baptism "of repentance" is elsewhere called a baptism unto or for repentance (εις μετανοιαν) in Matthew 3:11, and from that we gather that the "baptism of repentance" is the sacred inauguration or pledge of a life-long repentance, as Luther said, ⁽⁸¹⁾ and not the seal upon a completed act, as others have represented it. For this reason Thayer and others have explained the genitive phrase βαπτισμα μετανοιας in Mark 1:4 as "a baptism binding its subjects to repentance." Predictably enough, the New Living Translation not only gets this wrong, but also glosses over the expression in Matthew 3:11, where it has "baptize ... those who turn from their sins and turn to God" instead of "baptize ... unto repentance." And it does this without a marginal note. We would expect someone with a theological education to notice how the New Living Translation pushes a particular view of repentance and baptism here with its paraphrastic renderings; but the only problem that our Guide sees is "a long and wordy sentence."

How could such faults escape the notice of a minister who is focusing on the rendering of the New Living Translation here for the purpose of discussing its merits and shortcomings? What has happened to theological education in England, that the only problem he would see here is that the rendering is "long and wordy" in comparison with the other versions he quotes? One gets the impression that advocates of "dynamic equivalence" are so enamored with the idea that everything should be recast in some simple and colloquial way, that they fail to see even the most obvious problems in versions that attempt it.

Quite aside from any theological qualms we may have about the wording used in modern versions, we often sense that the "everyday" language that replaces the richer vocabulary traditionally used in Bible translations makes the text mean less than it should. Words like "blessedness," "grief," "remorse" and "sorrow" are rarely used in conversation, but they cannot be replaced with everyday expressions like "be happy" or "feel bad" without trivializing the thoughts and feelings that the sacred authors want to convey. We "feel sorry" about small things that are soon forgotten; but "remorse" denotes a deeper and more enduring emotion. This is practically a law of language — words and expressions that are common in everyday speech are associated with things that happen every day; but for things that do not happen every day, we require other words. If those who claim that everyday English needs to be used in order for the text to be understandable were really consistent, they would not use words like "sorrow" or "remorse," as does the New Living Translation in 2 Corinthians 7:9. The error of the "everyday language" principle becomes evident, however, when it is actually adhered to and consistently put into practice, as in the CEV.

It is not only the discriminating littérateur who will feel that something is wrong with the CEV here. By using such expressions as "hurt feelings" and "feel bad" the translators have substituted paltry and commonplace emotions for those that are great and rare. They have trivialized it, and have violated a well-established rule of language. One cannot use such ordinary household expressions in reference to powerful spiritual convictions and awakenings.

One might as well replace the expression "they were cut to the heart" in Acts 2:37 with "their feelings were hurt." This would be ridiculous, but the rendering of the CEV there is not far different: its says, "they were very upset."

Professor Ryken of Wheaton College, in his valuable book The Word of God in English, ⁽⁸²⁾ criticizes many renderings like this from the standpoint of a literary critic, and he very aptly describes them under such headings as "Impoverishment of language," "How to lower the Bible's voltage," and "The importance of getting the tone right." But I wonder how many of his readers understand what is really at stake in matters of style and tone. The difference here is not just a superficial matter of "form," without consequences for the "content" of the message. A real distortion of meaning occurs when everyday household language is used to describe extraordinary things. When we speak of "hurt feelings" and being "upset" we are referring to relatively minor agitations — the average teenage girl gets "upset" and has "hurt feelings" several times a month — but these words cannot refer to the kind of anguish that can change a man's life.

Ryken emphasizes the fact that the style of the Bible in its original languages is largely poetic. The Psalms are all written in poetic style. The Prophetic books are mostly poetry. Job and the Song of Solomon are poetry. There are also some long poetic portions in the books that are mostly prose, such as the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 32. In the New Testament, the sayings and discourses of Christ often exhibit poetic features, especially the parallelism of clauses which is the distinguishing mark of Hebrew poetry. There is good reason to think that most of his preaching was delivered in this rhetorical form, which was associated with inspiration and prophetic speech. ⁽⁸³⁾

Nida not only acknowledges this, he even states that the Jews "placed high value on the poetic language of the prophets," and felt that "its very distinctiveness marked it as somehow inspired." Among the Jews, he says, "something in poetic form achieved greater authority because of its distinctive vocabulary, structure, and rhythm." ⁽⁸⁴⁾ Evidently the prophets also felt that formal and poetic language was most suitable for the communication of the Word of God, or else they would not have spoken as they did. This feeling is by no means confined to Israelite prophets and their Jewish readers. People throughout the world have connected inspiration with impressive, unusual, and even mysterious language. The speech of sages and oracles is expected to be figurative. The book of Proverbs is full of figures, word-plays and other clever and interesting turns of phrase, in line with the conventions of wisdom literature. And it is a universal tendency of human beings to associate authority with a formal and impressive style of language. As a linguist Nida surely knows this, but as an apologist for the Good News Bible he is constrained to minimize the importance of any stylistic considerations.

If he were speaking as a disinterested linguist here, Nida would not be trying to downplay the common association of authority and inspiration with impressive forms of speech, by dismissing it as a "mistake." It is not the part of a linguist to reject as "mistaken" any common linguistic tendency or expectation. He and his followers know full well that it is not only "some" people who would expect divine revelations and commands to be more impressive than the newspaper. They are aware of the fact that much of the Bible is poetic, and that most of the prose sections are written in an elevated style. They must also know how unlikely it is that "common language" versions will ever command the same respect as versions that imitate the formal style of the original. But the high place occupied by demands for "naturalness" and "common language" in their hierarchy of concerns really dictates a simple conversational style in all circumstances. The versions most favored by Nida, the Good News Bible and the Contemporary English Version, do not even rise to the stylistic level of most newspaper articles. The tendency in these versions is to reduce the text to a uniformly bland, prosaic, and even childish manner of speaking throughout the Bible.

The Guide to Bible Translations quoted above tries to forestall any recognition of this by portraying as bombastic any diction that rises above the kindergarten level:

But this example does not illustrate what the author thinks it does. It does not demonstrate that polysyllabic words are especially hard to understand. In fact they are not hard to understand. The word "refrigerator" is not more difficult to understand than "ice box." The words "electricity," "unsympathetic," and "elementary" are not hard to understand, though each of them has five syllables. There is no necessary connection between the number of syllables in a word and the ability of people to understand it. The simple truth is, the words that people do not understand are the words that they have not learned. What the example really demonstrates is the semantic cloudiness that results from the avoidance of familiar words, and from the unnecessary use of definitions or abstract and general terms in their place. It also illustrates rather comically the pretentiousness of trying very hard to sound learned or official in one's speech when simpler words would serve the purpose of communication much better. This might be a warning to us, that we should not use vague abstract words and periphrastic expressions when concrete and precise equivalents are available in our language. But it gives us no reason to avoid righteousness as a translation for δικαιοσυνη, repentance for μετανοια, and salvation for σωτηριον. These English words are exact equivalents for the Greek words. Their degree of abstraction mirrors that of the Greek words precisely. These terms will seem foggy and indefinite in meaning only to people who have not spent much time reading the Bible.

Before I put our Guide to Bible Translations back on the shelf, I would add one more example that illustrates what is wrong with its advice.

Here we see the hermeneutical consequences of the demand for "ordinary language." For it does not even occur to the Guide that Jesus is not talking about ordinary love in an ordinary way. He assumes that Jesus is saying something that we might say, and tries to understand the expression μείνατε ἐν τῇ ἀγάπῃ τῇ ἐμῇ (lit. "abide in the love that is mine") in terms of what a man might say to his wife. But the αγαπη of God in Christ is not the same as human love. Like χαρις, the divine αγαπη denotes a life-giving power that flows from the throne of grace. It is the life of the vine, the bond of the vital union with Christ. It is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). It moves us and constrains us (2 Cor. 5:14). To abide in this divine love is to remain under its influence, to be mindful of it at all times, to keep receiving it by faith, in an attitude of entire dependence. The fruit of this love is grateful obedience, and love for others. ⁽⁸⁷⁾

The more literal versions leave all this unexplained. One must read John's Gospel and epistles, and the epistles of Paul, in order to learn what is meant by the αγαπη of God in these writings. But the literal versions at least make it possible for a reader to do this. The observation that "abide in my love" is "not natural English," as the Guide complains, is the kind of observation that will first indicate to the reader that there is something unusual about this "love." But unfortunately, the "meaning-driven" CEV only illustrates how much damage can be done to the meaning of the text when we bring the wrong questions to it. The wrong question in this case is, "how would we say this?" When Christ says "abide in my love," he is saying something that we cannot say.

In this last example of "shallowness," I hope to have illustrated the kind of exegetical shallowness that I often find in modern versions of the Bible. The "ordinary language" requirement constantly drives the interpretation down to a mundane level, where the biblical authors are forced to say only the things that we might say in our ordinary lives.

A Science Falsely So Called

"Science" as a rendering of gnosis in 1 Tim. 6:20 may not be as obsolete as some modern people think. Tyndale used this rendering because he perceived that Paul was referring not to "knowledge" in general, but to a formal system of teachings which pretended to confer knowledge — a system now commonly known by the name of "gnosticism." Many people in ancient times were fascinated by speculative philosophies like this, especially if they were couched in enough mumbo-jumbo to give them an air of profundity and authority. Our modern "science" is supposed to be different, being founded on an empirical method, in which directly observable facts replace mythopoetic speculation; but some things that vaunt themselves as "science" in our time are not much more empirical than ancient gnosticism.

During the twentieth century many academic disciplines re-invented themselves as "sciences." Political philosophy gave birth to political science. Epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge) was narrowed down and refashioned as cognitive psychology. Philology (the study of languages) gave rise to linguistics. In these disciplines the study of human qualities and behaviors was supposed to be based on observable phenomena, and pursued with modern scientific methods. But in some cases, the new "sciences" turned out to be less helpful than their predecessors, and certainly less helpful than the physical sciences after which they had been modelled. One prominent American sociologist, Robert Nisbet, has said that after World War II the social sciences came to be dominated by people promoting liberal ideology under the guise of science, and have been characterized by "scientific posturing" and a "pretentious and unconvincing scientism" ever since. ⁽⁸⁸⁾ My own experience as a college student in the 70's tends to confirm Nisbet's estimate of the "social sciences." Fields like sociology are so thoroughly infected with political ideology that undergraduates are not likely to hear anything that is not calculated to serve some political purpose.

Although the field of linguistics (the science of language) might at first sight seem to be an unpromising one for ideological agendas, this field also has its share of them. Those who take courses in linguistics will first of all be taught that a linguist must never make any value judgments about languages and dialects. If one were to say, for example, that classical Greek is a more precise language than Hebrew, and hence better for scientific purposes, or that modern English is better than Romanian in some other respect, a professor of linguistics would not let it go unpunished. Students are not allowed to say things like that, because they involve value judgments. They are supposed to think (or at least say) that all languages are equal. But obviously this principle is itself a value judgment, and has nothing to do with "science." It is an ideological fiction, designed to discourage cultural chauvinism. As such, it may help to put students in the proper frame of mind for disinterested inquiry and learning, but it may also interfere with their ability to say or think things that are true.

The fact is, languages are closely adapted to the mental culture of societies in which they are used, they differ greatly in their powers of expression, and the differences between literary and vulgar forms of the same language are not unimportant. There are many things that cannot be transferred from one language to another, or from literary to vulgar forms of the same language, without the need for explanations. The meaning of some words and expressions can never be fully appreciated by people who do not belong to the culture in which they are used. Moreover, a language not only reflects but also reinforces the mentality of its culture; it not only conveys thoughts from one mind to another, but also serves as a channel or instrument of thought, which tends to shape thinking along the contours of the culture. I explain this aspect of language more fully in another article. Here we are concerned only with the rise of a "science" of translation which ignores and practically denies these things.

In the 1950's and 1960's the field of linguistics was dominated by thinkers who were more interested in emphasizing things which all languages had in common. Language per se, and its universal characteristics, was the focus of research. The most dominant figure in linguistics at that time was Noam Chomsky, who formulated his theories of language in deliberate opposition to behaviorist and cultural-environmental accounts. One historian writes:

It was during this time that Eugene Nida published his book Toward a Science of Translating. Nida aimed to make Bible translating more scientific by using principles of this universalistic "linguistics."

In his book, Nida explains human language in much the same way that a modern physicist understands atoms and molecules. He theorizes that people "generate" sentences by unconsciously transforming and combining basic psycho-linguistic elements called "kernels," which he defines thus:

The importance of "kernels" for translation theory is explained on page 39, in this manner:

All of this seems very scientific, until one realizes that the elementary "kernels" to which everything is reduced, and upon which everything is based, are only figments of the kind of grammatical analysis peculiar to generative grammar. And despite the use of the "kernel" metaphor, in which these postulated entities are compared to physical objects, they are not at all like physical objects, whose existence can be observed or demonstrated. They refer to unobservable processes of the subconscious mind. The existence of these kernels can no more be proven by empirical methods than can the æons of gnosticism. So here we are in the realm of unverifiable speculations, not empirical science. Nor does this theory have much explanatory power. The reductionistic account of language put forth here is quite incapable of explaining how human language works to create and convey complex thoughts and feelings. It brings to mind the lines in Goethe's Faust about logicians who have tried to analyze human thought by reducing it to a few mechanical processes.

In truth the subtle web of thought
Is like the weaver's fabric wrought:
One treadle moves a thousand lines,
Swift dart the shuttles to and fro,
Unseen the threads together flow,
A thousand knots one stroke combines.
Then forward steps your sage to show,
And prove to you, it must be so;
The first being so, and so the second,
The third and fourth deduced we see;
And if there were no first and second,
Nor third nor fourth would ever be.
This, scholars of all countries prize, —
Yet 'mong themselves no weavers rise.
He who would know and treat of aught alive,
Seeks first the living spirit thence to drive:
Then are the lifeless fragments in his hand,
There only fails, alas! the spirit-band. ⁽⁹⁰⁾

What Goethe calls the spirit-band (geistige Band) of the original web of thought (Gedankenfabrik) cannot survive all the methodical dismemberment it must suffer when reduced to a series of syllogisms, nor can it survive the similar treatment it receives in Nida's "science of translation."

Recent Developments in Linguistics

Theoretical linguistics is now in the midst of a paradigm shift, in which the basic ways of thinking about language which Nida and his followers have taken for granted are coming to be seen as obsolete. The old way of thinking — if anything less than sixty years old can be called that — represented language as a kind of code which somehow carried thoughts from one mind to another. This "code model" served well enough to describe what happens in a some very simple linguistic events (e.g. informing someone that "the cat sat on the mat"), but it cannot serve very well as a model of language in general. Words are not really like vessels that conduct culturally-disembodied "messages" from one mind to another; they are more like activating signals that invoke, vivify, combine, and modify various elements of a pre-existing and shared body of knowledge. Trying to transfer the elaborately ramified "message" of the Bible apart from the body of knowledge it presupposes is like trying to transplant a full-grown tree by cutting it off at the roots and sticking it into the ground in another place.

There is something absurd about the situation in which such obvious things need to be stated, against the writings of "linguists," who, of all people, should not need to be told how closely language is connected to culture. But recently some linguists who have written on the subject of Bible translation have begun to show some awareness of what is really involved in Biblical interpretation. Ernst-August Gutt, for instance, has written several articles on this subject, in which he takes advantage of a new development in linguistics known as "relevance theory" to promote more adequate ideas about translation.

Eventually it may dawn upon the linguists that a translator can never succeed in conveying what the author of the epistle to the Hebrews meant by "the prophets" if the reader is not acquainted with the prophetic writings. Nor can a translation make readers understand why the New Testament begins with a genealogy, in which our Lord is introduced as a son of Abraham, if they are ignorant of the Old Testament. There is no magical science of translation that can make this historical and cultural preparation for the gospel unnecessary.

The Editorial Sausage Factory

An old saying goes, "Laws are like sausages — it is best not to see them being made." The same thing could be said about some versions of the Bible. People who know how they were made are not likely to have much respect for them.

It should be made known to readers of some modern versions that not everything in them can be attributed to the biblical scholars who are employed by the publisher as members of the "translation team." People tend to assume that the scholars were the actual translators of the version, and that they are responsible for whatever is finally published. We have this picture of several expert scholars sitting around a table and hammering out the version together, over a period of years, with very learned discussions, followed by voting. And when all is finished, people imagine that the manuscript goes straight from the scholars' conference table to the printer. This is a substantially true picture of how some versions in the past came into being. The King James Version, the English Revised Version, and the Revised Standard Version were created by such a confidence-inspiring process. But in the case of many modern versions, the picture is substantially false. The more usual procedure now is for a publisher to enlist various scholars as "reviewers" or "consultants" who send suggestions for portions of a version that is being revised by the publisher's editorial staff. The scholars never sit down at a table together, and there is no voting. It is really the editors who create the version, although they are usually not scholars of any great reputation.

The rationale for this way of doing things was provided by Nida in his book The Theory and Practice of Translation (Leiden: Brill, 1969), in which he states that "too much knowledge of the subject matter" of the Bible is undesirable in a translator, because "theologically trained persons have special problems in learning how to translate for a level other than the one on which they habitually operate." So it is better for the first draft to be produced by a "stylist" who "has some grasp of the source language but is not a scholar in it," and afterwards a real scholar can review it, "bringing to the attention of the stylist errors of various kinds." He claims that "experience has shown that it is much easier to achieve the proper combination of accuracy and adequate style in this manner than in the more traditional approach in which the scholar translated and the stylist corrected." Moreover, the final draft should be submitted to "a stylist who is not a Christian, or at least who is not familiar with the Bible." (pp. 99-104.) In an appendix to the same book, Nida admits that "not all reviewers will give as much time to this work as they should" (p. 185), but he seems more interested in emphasizing that their role should be limited: "From time to time the reviewers may be called together to discuss a specific agenda covering points on which the translators need guidance, but they should not meet as a committee to discuss in detail all that the translators have done. It should be emphasized that their function is supplementary and advisory. They do not constitute a committee of censors." (pp. 179-80.) And again: "In some projects the reviewers have insisted on meeting together as a committee and going over the whole draft verse by verse. This is rarely a desirable approach. Not only can such a committee spend endless hours debating over details, but the end results are rarely as good as the work of the translators which was the basis of the discussion. The reviewers and the consultative group ⁽⁹²⁾ should remember that it is not their work to be censors." (p. 186.)

Now, it is certainly true that a committee of scholars is likely to produce a more literal version, and one that requires more from the reader. But we observe here, how the corrections that might have been made by a committee of careful scholars are disparaged as "censorship," and how their deliberations are dismissed as nitpicking — "endless hours debating over details."

Under this kind of arrangement, where scholars are merely asked to make suggestions by mail, one can never be sure whether at any given point the translation really represents the consensus of scholarly opinion, or even the opinion of anyone who was paid to "review" the version for accuracy. The first draft and the final decisions are made not by scholars, but by people who do not have "too much knowledge" of the Bible to produce the kind of "dynamic equivalence" that is desired by the publisher.

English versions that have been produced by such a process include some well-known ones, including the New Living Translation, the Good News Bible, the Contemporary English Version, and the New Century Version. The publishers of these versions have been less than frank about it in their prefaces and in their advertising, and for obvious reasons. They would not want the public to see their sausage-factory in operation. The Bible version that emerges from this process is not even primarily the work of professional scholars. The publishers have even rejected the whole concept that a Bible translation should be made by professional scholars.

Dynamic Theology

In another passage of Faust, Goethe gives us a scene full of irony, as Faust sits down to translate a passage of the New Testament.

Our spirits yearn toward revelation
That nowhere glows more fair, more excellent,
Than here in the New Testament.
To open the fundamental text I'm moved,
With honest feeling, once for all,
To turn the sacred, blest original
Into my German well-beloved.
He opens a volume and applies himself to it.
'Tis written: "In the beginning was the Word!"
Here now I'm balked! Who'll put me in accord?
It is impossible, the Word so high to prize,
I must translate it otherwise
If I am rightly by the Spirit taught.
'Tis written: In the beginning was the Thought!
Consider well that line, the first you see,
That your pen may not write too hastily!
Is it then Thought that works, creative, hour by hour?
Thus should it stand: In the beginning was the Power!
Yet even while I write this word, I falter,
For something warns me, this too I shall alter.
The Spirit's helping me! I see now what I need
And write assured: In the beginning was the Deed! ⁽⁹³⁾

As we noted above, the word λογος in the prologue of John's Gospel presents a problem for translators. Faust begins to tackle the problem sincerely enough, but in the end he wanders far from the meaning of the Greek word, and sees in it only a reflection of his own ruminations on the need to turn away from mere words to the essence of things, and to deeds. The irony is that he imagines the Spirit is helping him, but what spirit is really present? In the room with him is Mephistopheles, the demon to whom he will turn for help at the peril of his soul.

A translator must indeed be careful. Weighty theological lessons sometimes depend upon having a strictly accurate translation of the Bible. A good example of this may be seen when we compare Bible versions at Genesis 50:20. Here as Joseph comforts his brethren he makes a statement full of theological implications. The ESV gives us a literal rendering of the verse: "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today." This is truly an interesting statement, often quoted by theologians in the context of explaining the sovereignty and providence of God behind even those events which seem to be evil. As John Calvin explains in his Genesis commentary here,

Yet what does the user of the New Living Translation read here? "As far as I am concerned, God turned into good what you meant for evil. He brought me to the high position I have today so I could save the lives of many people." Here there are several things that might be pointed out which vitiate the theology implicit in Joseph's words. We wonder how the phrase "As far as I am concerned" can be justified here, because it corresponds to nothing in the Hebrew text and it makes the statement merely an opinion rather than a statement of fact. This in itself is an important change in the meaning of the verse. We notice that the phrase "He brought me to the high position I have today" has been inserted. So instead of the bald statement that God planned the harmful action of the brothers for the good of many (this is even clearer in the Hebrew than in the literal English), a good thing is inserted, namely Joseph's prosperity, as the thing that God used as the means of saving people. We see that "so I could save the lives of many people" attributes the good outcome to the will of Joseph rather than attributing it to the will of God alone, as in the Hebrew. But we notice especially the paraphrastic rendering "God turned." Gone from the verse is the mysterious secret providence of God, expressed in the words "God meant it," which required Calvin's explanation, and in its place we see that the New Living Translation has substituted the idea that God afterwards "turned" evil actions to his use. So in at least four ways in this one little verse the use of "dynamic equivalence" has obscured an important theological lesson which shines through in the literal rendering. Probably the NLT translator believed that he was helping the reader to understand the verse with these adjustments, but for all the good intentions we may attribute to the translator we perceive in this officious meddling with the text the hand of someone who is attempting to change not only the verbal form but the very teaching of the verse into something that is easier to understand and accept. ⁽⁹⁴⁾

Someone might object to this criticism by saying that the method of dynamic equivalence itself cannot be blamed for misinterpretations. It is the fault of the translator not the theory, because the translator must understand the original text before he can recast it in equivalent English expressions. Yet does it surprise anyone that when so much emphasis is placed upon the ease of the reader, we find not only easy language but also easy theology? Moreover, it is an impractical theory which requires the translator to interpret the text so thoroughly while avoiding interpretations that flow naturally from his own intellectual presuppositions. It expects something that we cannot reasonably expect from a human being. In his book The Text of the Old Testament, Ernst Würthwein emphasizes the importance of taking a psychologically realistic view of Bible versions:

Here Würthwein is speaking of ancient versions of the Old Testament, such as the Greek Septuagint, the Aramaic Targums, and the Latin Vulgate; but what he says concerning these ancient versions must also be said about modern English versions. And if it is “especially true of the versions of the Bible which were produced to meet the practical needs of a community” — i.e., versions like the Targums, which have their contemporary readers very much in mind, and which aim to make the text highly accessible and pertinent to them — then it is also especially true of modern English versions that are of this same character. This warning about the use of highly interpretive versions does not lose its relevance when the versions are modern, and it pertains just as much to simple questions about the meaning of the Greek and Hebrew words as it does to the specialized text-critical research of scholars like Würthwein.

Scholars never trust ‘dynamic’ translations, because they know from experience the strength of the tendencies which lead even learned men to accommodate any admired author to their own mentality. At one time the prestige of Aristotle was such that philosophers, at least, could hardly be trusted to quote him accurately! In 1813 one complained "how easy it is for a translator of Aristotle (in consequence of the unparalleled brevity which he sometimes effects) to accommodate the sense of the original, by the help of paraphrastical clauses, expressed in the phraseology of modern science, to every progressive step in the history of human knowledge. In truth, there is not one philosopher of antiquity, whose opinions, when they are stated in any terms but his own, are to be received with so great distrust." ⁽⁹⁶⁾ This is even more true of St. Paul, whose rapid style gives many occasions to interpreters.

We might as well notice here the role that Nida's theories have played in recent controversies about missionary "contextualization" of the Christian religion, reconceptualizations of biblical theology according to the worldview and thought-forms of various cultures. In the 1970's Charles Kraft of Fuller Theological Seminary even used the phrase "dynamic equivalence" in reference to this, urging the creation of "dynamic equivalence churches" in which principles of "dynamic theology" would allow the development of indigenous "ethnotheologies." ⁽⁹⁷⁾ Various things which are being done under the banner of contextualization and "ethnotheology" are clearly syncretistic. For example, missionaries may explain the efficacy of prayer in line with Voodoo concepts about magical utterances, or Jesus could be described as being the son of the most powerful deity already being worshiped by a tribe. "Contextualizations" like this are now common on the mission field, even among missionaries associated with reputedly conservative mission agencies such as the Wycliffe Bible Translators. ⁽⁹⁸⁾

This kind of thinking is not confined to missionary theorists and translators in primitive places. Recently one of Nida's disciples wrote:

It might be argued that this goes beyond what Nida himself had in mind for Bible versions, but there are many programmatic statements in favor of cultural contextualization in Nida's published works, with extensive discussion of examples, and it is difficult to say where he might draw the line between dynamic equivalence and contextualization. In his books he mixes these things together so much that it is sometimes hard to tell which of the two subjects is under discussion. In any case Nida himself clearly wished to convey the idea that dynamic equivalence and contextualization are intrinsically related, being two aspects of the same principle of immediate "equivalent effect" in communication, and so it is not unfair for us to connect these things also. At bottom they are related, and our attitude toward contextualization will have implications for our evaluation of dynamic equivalence. The root of both is the idea that everything important in the Bible can be so thoroughly naturalized that it does not seem to be foreign to the language and culture into which it is introduced, and that if there is anything that cannot be so naturalized, it must not be "essential" to the message or "pertinent" to modern readers of the Bible.

In the pursuit of contemporary relevance, the Bible translator had better beware of what spirit is helping him.

The Bible for Children

Much of the support for paraphrastic Bible versions has been due to the desire of some to provide a version which children might be able to understand. This is well-meant, but I think it should be obvious to anyone who is really familiar with the Bible that it was not written for children. Let us be realistic. We have always had catechisms and Bible story books for the children, and anyone who has been involved in teaching the children knows very well that these supply more than enough material for young minds; and they are far better suited for the education of children than any simplified version of the Bible can be. There is only so much one can do with the Bible to make it clear or interesting to children, and in the end a selection of passages is going to be made anyway—which, if it is a good selection, will differ little from the selection in the old Bible Story books. I remember that when I was a child in Sunday school we did have copies of the "Good News for Modern Man" New Testament on hand (I still have the copy that was presented to me one "promotion Sunday"), but I also remember that we did not use it. The catechism took up all of our time. The truth is, there is no good reason why the Bible should be adapted for this purpose. And there is a danger in it. The danger is, the Bible simplified for children will become the Bible of adults. I have seen "Good News" Bibles in the pews of mainline churches. The American Bible Society had removed the cartoons for this "pew bible" edition. And then there is the case of the Living Bible, which Ken Taylor originally meant for children, and yet Billy Graham quickly made it into one of the most popular versions for adults. This was bound to happen, given the mental laziness of so many people, both in the pew and in the pulpit.

The publishers of the "dynamic equivalence" versions have at any rate been very aggressive in promoting these versions as if they were suitable for everyone, young and old, Christian or non-Christian. The New Living Translation now is making much headway in our churches as a version for the whole congregation, being used in the pulpit and in Bible study classes. I wonder how superficial the preaching and teaching must be in such churches, where this simplified version is thought to be adequate or necessary. What if a man who has been under such a steady diet of pablum happens to open an exegetical commentary and read there the comments of a scholar, or visits a church where the Bible is explained in some detail? He will not be long in seeing what a false impression has been given by his easy-reading version. It is not at all as he was led to suppose. The main ideas of the Bible are indeed simple enough, in any version; but it is very far from being true that every verse of the Bible is simple. Moreover, if he reads any moderately detailed treatise of theology he will find that the great theologians of Protestantism habitually call attention to linguistic details that are simply absent from his Bible version. If a man knows the Bible only through such a version, and has been encouraged to think that it is just as accurate as any other, how well has he been served? He has been treated like a child or a simpleton. Is it any wonder that many educated people scoff at Christianity when even our Bibles have been so dumbed down that they offer nothing above the level of a ten-year-old child? Is it any wonder that we have such problems getting the interest of the men (who ought to be the spiritual leaders of their households) when everything is designed for children? In regards to this, perhaps the words of the old Scottish preacher, James Stalker, bear repeating.

Stalker's counsel here is to preachers, who in their sermons must engage the attention of grown men and educated people as well as the simple. He takes it for granted that the reader will agree with him that the Bible itself is not always simple, and is itself "meat for men."

The Bible for Everyone?

Mention was made above that the publishers of the dynamic equivalence versions have presented them as being for everyone. We have already questioned this claim from one direction, but there is another angle to be considered which is perhaps even more important. Everyone who has had some experience of actually using the Bible in ministry is surely aware of the problems which arise from different people having different versions in front of them. Someone reads a passage out loud, and others follow along in their own Bibles, in whatever version they may be, and the differences between the versions sometimes give rise to difficult questions. This problem is not severe when the different versions are all essentially literal, having only minor differences which are easily taken in stride. I have been involved for many years in group Bible studies, at which various versions were being used, among them the King James, the New American Standard, the New International, the Revised Standard Version, and others, all of which can be read together without much trouble. But when such a version as the New Living Translation is read, it is quite impossible for people to follow along in other versions. They soon lose track and look up from their Bibles in confusion. I have seen this several times in recent Bible study meetings. As a practical matter, then, I find that a "dynamic equivalence" version can only be used very extensively if everyone uses it. This being the case, I think we have a right to ask whether it can ever be appropriate to use such a version for teaching. It is unreasonable to expect everyone to use the same "dynamic equivalence" version. People will have their own Bibles, after all, and they will choose between versions for their own private reading; but a teacher must use a version that is not always going its own peculiar way.

Until recently most people who attend church were not even aware of the existence of most of these new versions. But in the past ten years, many preachers in the evangelical churches have been using canned sermon series that come with Power Point slides, and these slides often use some of the worst "dynamic equivalence" versions for Scripture quotations. In this they are following the example of Rick Warren, author of the wildly popular "40 Days of Purpose" series. I have seen some renderings on these slides which almost make me despair, they are so bad. (Some of the examples I have used in this essay first came to my attention in this way.) But many people in the congregation will have no idea how inaccurate those renderings are. Just twenty years ago it was normal for people in evangelical churches to bring their Bibles to church. Their pastors would encourage them to open their Bibles to the passages quoted in the sermon, and would even wait for them to find the place. ⁽¹⁰¹⁾ But recently I heard a sermon in which the preacher, who wanted to quote a paraphrastic rendering, found it necessary to say, Don't turn to it in your Bibles, just listen to this. Of course he knew the rendering would not be accepted by those who compared it with a more accurate one. At one popular "megachurch" in my area, the pastor does not have to worry about this anymore. The last time I visited his church, I heard him mocking the old custom of carrying a Bible to church. In his sermon he referred to it as an example of ostentatious and phony religiosity. Evidently he had been saying this for some time, because although there were over a thousand people there, I saw not one person with a Bible.

The new "dynamic equivalence" versions are not really replacing the older literal versions in ministry, without a significant change in the character of the ministry itself. They are brought in under a new concept of ministry, in which the Bible does not have the same place it formerly occupied. Their use increases in proportion to the casualness with which the Bible is treated, and, I might even say, in proportion to the devaluation of its role in the ministry. These versions will never be accepted as authoritative by educated people, and the practical effect of their use is to discourage any close or reverent attention to the text.

Conclusion

We have shown that the dynamic equivalence method represents a departure from tradition, and from the principles of translation used by the Biblical authors themselves. Its pretensions to "scientific" principles of linguistics are dubious, as has been pointed out by numerous linguists and biblical scholars. It results in a simplification of the text in which important features of the Bible are erased. It proceeds from false assumptions about the relationship of Scripture to the Church and to the reader. Finally, as a practical matter, we have seen that the versions produced with this method cannot "get along" with other versions already in use.

Notes

1. ESV margin, "or, with interpretation, or, paragraph by paragraph. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon says the word מפרש (mephorash) here most probably means "distinctly" (which may mean either "clearly" or "in sections") though it mentions the sense "interpreted" favored by some (page 831). C.F. Keil in his commentary favors "explaining" but rejects "translating" as the meaning here. He writes, "It is more correct to suppose a paraphrastic exposition and application." (Hendrickson edition, vol.4, p. 145). The Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti libros (KBL) of Koehler and Baumgartner (Leiden, 1953) favors "divided into parts." The latest English edition of the revised KBL (Leiden, 2001) favors "making an extempore translation," so that the meaning of the Hebrew word corresponds to the Aramaic mepharash (Ezra 4:18). But this understanding of the word seems to depend upon a redactional analysis which treats the statement in verse 8 as anachronistic. It seems unlikely that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah themselves would have been written in Hebrew if this language could no longer be understood by most Jews at the time.

2. The BDB Lexicon says that the phrase ושום שכל (wesom sekel) means simply "set forth (the) understanding." (p. 968).

3. See Nehemiah 13:23-25. Hebrew, and not Aramaic, is meant by "the Jews' language" here and elsewhere in Scripture. See Loring Woard Batten, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Books of Ezra and Nehemia (International Critical Commentary; Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1913). Gesenius also (Hebrew Grammar, ed. Kautzsch, §2.t) concludes that "the supplanting of Hebrew by Aramaic proceeded only very gradually" and that Hebrew was still understood by the common people as late as 170 B.C., centuries after the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. W. Robertson Smith agrees: "The fall of the Jewish kingdom accelerated the the decay of Hebrew as a spoken language. Not indeed that those of the people who were transported forgot their own tongue in their new home, as older scholars supposed on the basis of Jewis tradition: the exilic and post-exilic prophets do not write in a lifeless tongue. Hebrew was still the language of Jerusalem in the time of Nehemiah in the middle of the fifth century B.C.," and in a footnote he adds, "An argument to the contrary drawn by Jewish interpreters from Neh. 8:8 rests on false exegesis." (W. Robertson Smith, "Hebrew Language," Encyclodaedia Biblica; a Critical Dictionary of the Literary, Political and Religious History, the Archaeology, Geography, and Natural History of the Bible, Volume II, ed. T. K. Cheyne and J. Sutherland Black [New York: The Macmillan Company; London: Adam and Charles Black, 1899], column 1988.) Likewise Gustaf Dalman concludes that "in the time of Nehemiah the Law could still be understood in the original Hebrew in Jerusalem," but he suggests that its language needed some occasional explanations: "Nevertheless, it required interpretation when read at public services, probably not merely as to the contents (Neh. 8:7f.). Later a full translation into Aramaic was considered to be absolutely necessary, so that the 'the clear and understandable' reading (Neh. 8:8) was interpreted as meaning the addition of a full translation." (Jesus-Jeshua: Studies in the Gospels [New York: MacMillan Co., 1929], p. 9.) D. Winton Thomas also concludes that "Hebrew continued to be the normal vehicle of expression" for some time after the return of the exiles ("The Language of the Old Testament," in Record and Revelation, edited by H. Wheeler Robinson [Oxford, 1938], p. 387). If this is not the case, and if in fact Hebrew was not understood by most Jews in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, this means that the post-exilic parts of the Hebrew Old Testament (1st and 2nd Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi) were written in a scholarly language that could not be understood by the people.

4. See Nida's books Message and Mission: The Communication of the Christian Faith (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960); Toward a Science of Translating, with Special Reference to Principles and Procedures Involved in Bible Translating (Leiden: Brill, 1964); The Theory and Practice of Translation (Leiden: Brill, 1969); and also the book he later co-authored with Jan de Waard, From One Language to Another: Functional Equivalence in Bible Translation (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1986). I should mention that much of what Nida wrote on the subject does not square very well with the translations which have been produced under the banner of "dynamic equivalence." Nida himself coined this phrase in an effort to distinguish his method from unrestrained "paraphrase." Later he complained of abuses of the method he outlined, and for this reason in his later writings he distanced himself from the term "dynamic equivalence," preferring instead "functional equivalence." (On this, see the preface of his book, From One Language to Another, in which he says, "Some Bible translators have seriously violated the principle of dynamic equivalence as described in Theory and Practice of Translating [sic] and Toward a Science of Translating.") Recently some others have preferred to call it "meaning-based translation," or "closest natural equivalence" — a phrase which Nida also sometimes used in his writings. These shifts in terminology do not represent changes in the method. I use the term "dynamic equivalence" because it continues to be the one most widely used. For an explanation of Nida's own use of this term see my article Dynamic Equivalence Defined.

5. Toward a Science of Translating (1964), p. 1. A perusal of the essays collected in Douglas Robinson's Western Translation Theory from Herodotus to Nietzsche (Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing, 1997) will reveal just how commonplace the basic ideas about translation usually associated with Nida were, long before his birth. The need for "idiomatic" renderings was emphasized by writers in ancient times, and the desirability and possibility of producing an "equivalent effect" was thoroughly discussed by translators in the middle of the nineteenth century. Nida adds nothing substantial to these old discussions, which were quite sophisticated, and he does not even interact with them in such a way that the difficult problems raised in them are addressed. Other more technical aspects of his theoretical writings are little more than ad hoc applications of various concepts developed by other linguists. See for example chapter four of his book Toward a Science of Translating, in which the special concepts and terminology of Chomsky's generative grammar are pressed into service in some very questionable ways. For Nida's dependence on Chomsky see Edwin Gentzler, Contemporary Translation Theories (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 44. Gentzler writes, "Despite claims to the contrary, Nida's theory crystallized with the addition of Chomsky's transformational component—Nida read Chomsky's Syntactic Structures in mimeograph form two years before it was published. With the adoption of Chomsky's theoretical premise, his transformational rules, and his terminology, Nida's theory solidified ..." Gentzler also points out that it was the acceptance of Chomsky's ideas among linguists that set the stage for the favorable reception of Nida's theories of translation: "Generative transformational grammar, along with its legitimacy within the field of linguistics, lent credence and influence to Nida's 'science' of translation." For an extended critique of Nida's use of Chomsky's ideas see V.S. Poythress, "Truth and Fullness of Meaning: Fullness versus Reductionistic Semantics in Biblical Interpretation," in Translating Truth: The Case for Essentially Literal Bible Translation (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2005). Nida himself contributed nothing new to a general theory of language, and his use of concepts developed by others is often facile. In short, it seems to me that his contributions to translation theory have been overstated.

6. Eugene Nida, Message and Mission (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), p. 221.

7. Eugene Nida, Bible Translating: An Analysis of Principles and Procedures, with Special Reference to Aboriginal Languages (New York: American Bible Society, 1947), p. 21. The criteria laid down here are so extreme, one might be inclined to regard them as overstatements, written in the heat of enthusiasm; but Nida often made assertions like this in academic contexts, where one would expect to find a more sober and judicious statement of principles. In 1969 he wrote that translators who rightly discern the "needs of the audience" will see that "Non-Christians have priority over Christians. That is to say, the Scriptures must be intelligible to non-Christians, and if they are, they will also be intelligible to Christians. Not only is this principle important in making the translation of the Bible effective as an instrument of evangelism, but it is also necessary if the language of the church is to be kept from becoming an esoteric dialect ..." (Theory and Practice of Translation [1969], pp. 31-2). For many years he was apparently unconscious of how impractical his ideas were. Only after his retirement did he begin to acknowledge the failure of this whole approach. For the article on "Translations" in The Oxford Companion to the Bible (1993) he contributed a sub-section on "Native American Languages" in which he wrote: "For a variety of reasons the publication of the scriptures in some Indian languages has not been a success, but where there have been missionaries or leaders of national churches who have encouraged literacy, instructed people in the meaning and relevance of the Bible message, and trained local leadership, the response has been remarkable" (p. 778, emphasis added). Experience shows that devotional Bible reading cannot be expected outside the context of a church with a sustained teaching ministry.

8. The words are not found in any writing of Tyndale, nor do they resemble anything found in his writings; but they were attributed to him in a report of a conversation in Foxe's Book of Martyrs: "Master Tyndale happened to be in the company of a learned man and, in disputing with him ... the man said, 'We are better to be without God's laws than the pope's.' Master Tyndale, hearing this, replied, 'I defy the pope and all his laws;' and added, 'If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture than thou dost.'" Although the report may well be true, it is misleading to quote this riposte as if it constituted some "theory of translation."

9. Addison, English poet and literary critic, described the effect of these idioms with the following words: "There is a certain Coldness and Indifference in the Phrases of our European Languages, when they are compared with the Oriental Forms of Speech; and it happens very luckily, that the Hebrew Idioms run into the English Tongue with a particular Grace and Beauty. Our Language has received innumerable Elegancies and Improvements, from that Infusion of Hebraisms, which are derived to it out of the Poetical Passages in Holy Writ. They give a Force and Energy to our Expressions, warm and animate our Language, and convey our Thoughts in more ardent and intense Phrases, than any that are to be met with in our own Tongue. There is something so pathetick in this kind of Diction, that it often sets the Mind in a Flame, and makes our Hearts burn within us. How cold and dead does a Prayer appear, that is composed in the most Elegant and Polite Forms of Speech, which are natural to our Tongue, when it is not heightened by that Solemnity of Phrase, which may be drawn from the Sacred Writings." (Spectator, No. 405; Saturday, June 14, 1712). See also Robert Alter, "Beyond King James," Commentary 102/3 (1996), pp. 57-62. Alter decries what he calls the "heresy of explanation," the idea that "translation should explain the Bible rather than simply representing it in another language" and laments the general demise of literary translations after the King James Version. He concludes, "There is no good reason to render biblical Hebrew as contemporary English, either lexically or syntactically." Alter is Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981) The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), Genesis: Translation and Commentary (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1996).

10. E.C. Hoskyns, The Riddle of the New Testament (1931), pp. 19-20. This opinion of the language of the New Testament is shared by many linguists and other scholars, and in fact there is none who denies that the language of the New Testament often mimics the Hebraistic "translation Greek" of the Septuagint. Even Nida was compelled to acknowledge the obvious fact: "Bible translators ... have often made quite a point of the fact that the language of the New Testament was Koine Greek, the language of the 'man in the street,' and hence a translation should speak to the man in the street. The truth of the matter is that many New Testament messages are not directed primarily to the man in the street, but to the man in the congregation. For this reason, such expressions as 'Abba Father,' Maranatha, and 'baptized into Christ' could be used with reasonable expectation that they would be understood." (Toward a Science of Translating [Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1964], p. 170). Yet, as Stanley E. Porter observes, "there is no place in Nida's framework for the language of the New Testament being anything other than the common language that was in use in the Mediterranean world of the first century. Theories regarding the special nature of the Greek ... have no place in his analysis" (Porter, "Eugene Nida and Translation," The Bible Translator 56/1 [January 2005], p. 10).

11. The scholarly literature on the meaning of the expressions εν Χριστω Ιησου, εν Κυριω, etc., is very extensive. Adolf Deissmann in his Die neutestamentliche Formel "in Christo Jesu" (Marburg, 1892) explained the εν as a spatial metaphor expressing incorporation by mystical union with Christ. Moulton likewise relates it to "the idea of the mystic indwelling" (A Grammar of New Testament Greek, vol. 1 [Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1906], p. 103). J. Dick Fleming concludes that the "thought of vital union is the central and original conception of the phrase [εν Χριστω] used by St. Paul." (Art. "In" in vol. 1 of Hastings' Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels [Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1906], p. 795). For a review of others up to 1955 see E. Best, One Body in Christ, 1955. In Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Oepke explains that the εν in εν Χριστω Ιησου, εν Κυριω, and related formulae expresses inclusion within "Christ as a universal personality." (English edition [Eerdmans, 1964], vol. 2, pp. 541-2.) Though Deissmann compared εν Χριστω with Hellenistic parallels, obviously it does not belong to the realm of secular and "popular" Greek. To claim that the English word "Christian" adequately conveys the meaning would be to dismiss all that has been written on the subject by scholars.

12. The significance of this has often been noticed by theologians. For example, Geerhardus Vos: "In a very striking way God regularly appears as the speaking subject in the quotations made from the Old Testament. Where Paul contents himself with the formula, 'as it is written,' or 'as the Scripture says,' Hebrews prefers to make the affirmation of the divine authorship explicit and employs the formula 'God says.' That this is not the result of meaningless habit, but possesses doctrinal significance, appears from the cases, where, rhetorically considered, it would be unnatural to introduce God as the speaking subject, since in the passage quoted He is the Person spoken of. Even in such cases the author insists upon emphasizing that the statement about God came from the mouth of God Himself. It is God who said 'the Lord shall judge His people' (x. 30). And so vivid is the realisation of this supreme fact of the direct divine authorship of Scripture that what we call the secondary authors, that is, the writers of the Biblical books, are, again in distinction from Paul's custom, scarcely ever mentioned. The only case where the name of a Bible writer is introduced is chap. iv. 7, and even here the phrase is not 'David saying' but 'God saying in David.' There are even passages where pains seem to have been taken to bring out the relative unimportance of the secondary authorship by more positive means than the mere omission of the writer's name. In a couple of instances use seems to have been made for this purpose of the indefinite pronoun 'some one' and the indefinite adverb 'somewhere': 'One has somewhere testified saying' (ii. 6);' For He hath spoken somewhere of the seventh day on this wise' (iv. 4). By this manner of statement the impression is conveyed that in view of the authority wherewith God invests every word of Scripture the human instrumentality through which the divine word was mediated becomes a matter of little or no importance. As a matter of fact the word of revelation is so literally to the writer's mind the word of God that it is represented as having been spoken by God being locally present in His messengers : 'God of old times spoke unto the fathers in the prophets'; 'God said in David.' The conception is not instrumental, as if 'in' were a Hebraizing construction for 'by means of'; it should rather be compared with the similar form of statement by our Lord to the disciples: 'it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you' (Mat. x. 20), and by Paul who offers to the Corinthians a proof of Christ speaking in him (2 Cor. xiii. 3)." ("Hebrews, the Epistle of the Diatheke," Princeton Theological Review 13/4 [1915], pp. 626-27). Even if it be regarded as a metaphor it cannot be dismissed as insignificant. See Michael Reddy, "The Conduit Metaphor," in A. Ortony, ed., Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge University Press, 1979.

13. Barclay M. Newman, Creating and Crafting the Contemporary English Version (New York: American Bible Society, 1996), p. 17.

14. Brooke Foss Westcott, The Gospel According to St. John: the Greek Text with Introduction and Notes, vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1908), p. 124. Likewise Hermann Olshausen explains, "the words, 'are wrought in God' ... represent God, the source of truth, as the ground of all truth and sincerity in a creature, so far as they are manifested in him. Hence εν, in, retains its proper meaning; and the expression may be explained by εν δυναμει θεου, in the power of God. (Biblical Commentary on the New Testament, by Dr. Hermann Olshausen, Translated from the German for Clark's Foreign and Theological Library, First American Edition, revised after the fourth German edition, by A.C. Kendrick, vol. 2 [New York: Sheldon & Co., 1860], p. 364.) The kind of semantic reductionism that interprets this expression merely as "wrought with God's approval" (Hendriksen) is naturally favored by those who are trying to make the text easier to understand. But if εν θεω receives this treatment, one might as well also translate εν Χριστω as "pleasing to Christ."

15. C. Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature (4th edition; Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1980), p. 12. Holman further writes, "Complex literary allusion is characteristic of much modern writing, and discovering the meaning and value of the allusions is frequently essential to understanding the work." But literary allusions are not less frequent and important in ancient and medieval works.

16. See also Isaiah 49:1, which seems equally pertinent. I chose this example quite at random from the "Index of Allusions and Verbal Parallels" appended to the third edition of the Greek New Testament published by the United Bible Societies (Stuttgart, 1983), which lists over two thousand allusions. Some of those listed may be seen as questionable, but regarding this one, Herman Ridderbos says "Paul is obviously alluding to" Jeremiah 1:5. (The Epistle of Paul to the Churches of Galatia [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953], p. 63).

17. I leave open the question of whether ἐκ κοιλίας μητρός μου means "from the time that I was in my mother's womb" or "when I came from my mother's womb" here. But the former rendering seems preferable to me, especially if we are right in seeing it as an allusion to Jeremiah 1:5 or Isaiah 49:1.

18. In this article "New Living Translation" refers to the first edition of the version, published in 1996. The second edition (published in 2004) makes some improvements. In Acts 5:30 it reads "killed him by hanging him on a cross," and it gives a literal translation in a footnote: "Greek, on a tree." Other differences between the editions will not be noticed in this article.

19. J.H.A. Hart, in The Expositor's Greek Testament vol. 5 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1910), p. 48. The connection with the words of Exodus is not just literary decoration here. Hart observes that in this epistle Peter "is engrossed with the conception of the Church as the new Israel which has been delivered from idolatry—the spiritual Egypt—by a far more excellent sacrifice." Nevertheless, in his book Toward a Science of Translating, Nida mentions this Semitic idiom as an example of a "semantically exocentric" phrase which is "meaningless or misleading if translated literally" (p. 170). We grant that the meaning of "gird up your loins" is not obvious to many people in our day, and that it requires an explanation.

20. Dennis E. Johnson, "Fire In God's House: Imagery From Malachi 3 In Peter's Theology of Suffering (1 Pet 4:12-19)," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 29/3 (September 1986) p. 285. In criticizing the NIV along with the other versions mentioned in this essay I do not mean to put the NIV on the same level as the others with respect to "dynamic equivalence." The NIV is ordinarily more literal. However, many Bible teachers will agree with me when I say that the NIV does too often give paraphrastic renderings. It is not so much a problem of "accuracy" (narrowly defined) as a regrettable loss of imagery, vividness, and allusiveness in this version. As Daniel Wallace has said, the NIV "is so readable that it has no memorable expressions, nothing that lingers in the mind. This is a serious problem for the NIV that is not always acknowledged." (The History of the English Bible Part IV: Why So Many Versions?) Leland Ryken, who focuses on literary qualities, includes many criticisms of the NIV along with criticism of more paraphrastic versions in his recent book, The Word of God in English: Criteria for Excellence in Bible Translation (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2003).

21. Toward a Science of Translating, pp. 211, 231. Nida also advises translators to eliminate repetitition in From One Language to Another, pp. 87, 96, 119. The translators of the Good News Bible frequently eliminate or combine clauses that are seen as repetitious. Another good example may be seen in Hosea 2:4-5, where parallel lines of the prophet's poetic discourse are reduced to non-repetitious prose.

22. As R.B.Y. Scott observes, the KJV's "passing over is better than he will spare, because it preserves the allusion to the deliverance commemorated by the Pesach (Passover) festival; the verb appears in the O.T. only here and in Exod. 12." (Interpreter's Bible, volume 5 [New York, 1956], p. 340.) The NEB's rendering, "standing over her," is in accordance with a newly proposed sense for the word פסח in this place. Likewise the New JPS version's "protecting." Baruch Levine in his article on "Feasts and Festivals" in The Oxford Companion to the Bible (1993), p. 226, continues to assert that the word "properly means 'to straddle, stand over,' hence 'protect' (Isa. 31.5)." But most scholars have rejected this proposal, there being no sufficient evidence that in Isaiah 31:5 the word means something other than what it has always been understood to mean—and clearly it does mean "pass over" in Exodus. The REB revision of the NEB substitutes "sparing her" for "standing over her" in Isaiah 31:5.

23. Thus St. Augustine writes concerning God's omniscience, Quid est praescientia nisi scientia futurorum? Quid autem futurum est Deo, qui omnia supergreditur tempora? Si enim in scientia res ipsas habet, non sunt ei futurae, sed praesentes, ac per hoc non jam praescientia, sed tantum scientia dici potest. "What is foreknowledge except a knowledge of future events? What, however, is future in the sight of God, who transcends all concepts of time? For if he has the events themselves in the scope of his knowledge, they are not future as far as he is concerned but present; and by this very fact it can no longer be called foreknowledge but only knowledge." (De Diversis Quaestionibus ad Simplicianum, II. ii. 2., cited in Charles Hodge's Systematic Theology, vol. 1, p. 401.) Some commentators have doubted whether Isaiah could have intended such an idea of transcendence. Franz Delitzsch assets that this thought is "quite outside the biblical range of ideas," and so he thinks the expression must mean only "the eternally dwelling one" (Commentary on the Old Testament by C.F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, vol. 7, Isaiah, translated by James Martin, Hendriksen reprint, 2001, p. 549). Yet the Hebrew text says plainly, "he who inhabits eternity," and so it is translated thus in essentially literal versions (KJV, ASV, RSV, NASB, ESV, etc.). We reject the notion that the mind of this great prophet could not have received such an idea of God's transcendence, and we think it is only a low view of inspiration which will put it "outside the biblical range of ideas."

24. D. A. Carson, "God's Love and God's Sovereignty," Bibliotheca Sacra 156/623 (July 1999), p. 262. It should be noted that in the current controversies about "Open Theism," in which some people are even denying that God transcends time, this phrase in Isaiah 57:15 becomes more than a "fine expression" that stretches the mind: it becomes a point of reference for the teaching and defense of orthodox theology.

25. "I can remember times when working on Mark in Cincinnati that the committee spent a half an hour or more deciding on the meaning of one word in a verse. For example, in Mark 1:12 the King James Version says that "the spirit driveth (ekballei) him into the wilderness," using the first meaning of ekballo given in the lexicons. I can still remember some of our participants facetiously wondering what kind of a car the Spirit used to transport him into the wilderness." Wesley L. Gerig, "Translating the New International Version," Reflections, official publication of the Missionary Church Historical Society, vol. 5/2 (Fall 2001), p. 6.

26. It is maintained by some that in the first century the sense of the word ekballo was weakened so much that it meant merely "sent," without a connotation of command or compulsion, and so this has been given as a meaning of the word in some Greek Lexicons. But the NT citations offered in support of this opinion (Matt. 9:38, John 10:4, Acts 16:37, etc.) fail to establish it, and it is not acknowledged in Lust's Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (2003). In the Septuagint and in the New Testament the word is nearly always associated with commands or the use of force. Probably the NIV translators favored a weakened sense here, against the weight of the evidence, because they feared that ordinary readers would think "impelled him to go out" meant that Jesus was compelled against his own will.

27. Strangely enough, Wyclif chose this excellent equivalent for the Greek word while translating, not directly from the Greek, but from the Latin Vulgate, which has verecundia here. "Shamefastness" was used by the KJV translators also (though corrupted to "shamefacedness" in later printings), and retained in the ERV and ASV revisions. That αιδως and its cognates denoted a sense of shame appears clearly in the following quotations from Epictetus, a moralist of the first century: πεφύκαμεν δὲ πῶς; ὡς ἐλεύθεροι, ὡς γενναῖοι, ὡς αἰδήμονες. ποῖον γὰρ ἄλλο ζῷον ἐρυθριᾷ, ποῖον αἰσχροῦ φαντασίαν λαμβάνει; τὴν ἡδονὴν δ' ὑπόταξαι τούτοις ὡς διάκονον, ὡς ὑπηρέτιν, ἵνα προθυμίας ἐκκαλέσηται, ἵν' ἐν τοῖς κατὰ φύσιν ἔργοις παρακρατῇ. "And how are we constituted by nature? Free, noble, modest: for what other animal blushes? what other is capable of receiving the appearance (the impression) of shame? and we are so constituted by nature as to subject pleasure to these things, as a minister, a servant, in order that it may call forth our activity, in order that it may keep us constant in acts which are conformable to nature." (Discourses, book 3, chap. 7). καίτοι καὶ δέδωκέ μοι ἡ φύσις αἰδῶ καὶ πολλὰ ὑπερυθριῶ, ὅταν τι ὑπολάβω αἰσχρὸν λέγειν. τοῦτό με τὸ κίνημα οὐκ ἐᾷ τὴν ἡδονὴν θέσθαι ἀγαθὸν καὶ τέλος τοῦ βίου. "And indeed nature has given to me modesty, and I blush much when I think of saying any thing base (indecent). This motion (feeling) does not permit me to make (consider) pleasure the good and the end (purpose) of life." (Fragments, 52. English translation from The Discourses of Epictetus, with the Encheridion and Fragments, translated by George Long [London: George Bell and Sons, 1877]; Greek text according to the edition of Heinrich Schenkl [Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1916]).

28. Cf. the monograph by Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature (Oxford University Press, 1993). A good introduction to the subject as it relates to the New Testament is in Jerome H. Neyrey's Honor and Shame in the Gospel of Matthew (Philadelphia: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1998).

29. The NIV translation here is so uncommonly bad that I was prompted to look for an explanation for it in works written by the original NIV committee members. I found one in a book by Ralph Earle, Word Meanings in the New Testament (Baker, 1986). Earle quotes J.H. Bernard's opinion that "aidos here signifies that modesty which shrinks from overstepping the limits of womanly reserve," and says "in our opinion, that states the case with accuracy and relevance" (p. 338). We can agree with that judgment. But Earle does not clearly explain why we should think the NIV's "decency" is an accurate rendering. He seems most interested in contrasting the NIV's rendering with the KJV's "shamefacedness." Speaking of women "in this day," he says that "something between shamefacedness and boldfacedness" should be sought, and so he recommends the NIV's rendering because it expresses a "golden mean." This is unacceptable, if we are being asked to think that αιδως denotes some state of mental poise equally distant from shyness and boldness (!) — but it does indicate that the NIV translators knew what the word αιδως means. Bernard, whom Earle quotes in part, even says in his commentary that "shamefastness and sobriety ... is as near to the Greek as we can go in English." (The Pastoral Epistles, edited with Introducation and Notes [Cambridge, 1906], p. 45.)

30. Johann David Michaelis, A Dissertation on the Influence of Opinions on Language and of Language on Opinions. Second edition. (London: W. Owen, 1771), p. 28. English translation of Beantwortung der Frage von dem Einfluß der Meinungen in die Sprache und der Sprache in die Meinungen (1760).

32. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, 1949), pp. 426-27. No scholar will deny that the word χαρις commonly has this meaning in the New Testament.

33. See the parallel in Gal. 5:18, in which "Spirit" stands where "grace" is used here. This is no sectarian understanding of "grace" that I insist on. On Romans 6:14 John Calvin writes "by the word grace we are to understand both parts of redemption—the remission of sins, by which God imputes righteousness to us—and the sanctification of the Spirit, by whom he forms us anew unto good works.... it is hence impossible that we should be subject to sin, when the grace of God reigns in us; for we have before stated, that under this term grace, is included the spirit of regeneration." Likewise the Lutheran commentator R. C. H. Lenski writes concerning "grace" here, that it "includes all that comes to us from the favor Dei through Christ: justification, baptism, the new life and newness of life... grace removes the curse of sin, breaks its dominion, joins us to Christ and God, fills us with spiritual power to trample unrighteousness under foot and to work righteousness. Gratia non solum peccata diluit, sed ut non peccemus facit ['Grace not only remits sins, but brings it about that we might not sin']. Augustine. 'Under grace' still regards us as being subjects. Man is or can never be independent. But being subjects to grace is pure blessedness for sinners, for while law comes with threatening demands which we are helpless to fulfill, grace showers upon us not only what we need but all that it possibly can bestow, even the capacity to receive." The failure to understand χαρις as a divine power was one of the features of the ancient Pelagian heresy, against which Augustine wrote, Tu vestro more, qui de vestro descendit errore, non agnoscis gratiam, nisi in dimissione peccatorum; ut iam de cetero per liberum arbitrium ipse homo se ipsum fabricet justum. "You, according to your custom, which stems from your error, do not acknowledge grace except in the remission of sins, that now from henceforth a man by his own freedom of will might make himself righteous." (Contra Julianum, ed. Migne, § CCXXVII.) Some who have defended the use of "favor" have falsely claimed that Tyndale used it instead of "grace" in his translation of the New Testament. This impression was probably created by a sentence in his Answer to Sir Thomas More's Dialogue, in which he defends an occasional use of "favour" where it seemed best to him, and says that "grace" was one of "juggling terms" of Roman Catholics, who "were wont to make many divisions, distinctions, and sorts of grace." But the fact is, he used the word "grace" in the great majority of places where χαρις occurs in the New Testament. In his edition of 1526, he used "grace" in 106 of the 148 verses where it occurs; and in the revision of 1534 he increased it to 116. (The King James version adds only ten more, using "grace" in 126.) Evidently Tyndale knew that in most cases the word "favor" could not express the meaning of χαρις, and felt that "grace" was the better word.

34. Gerald Hammond puts it well: "While the Renaissance Bible translator saw half of his task as reshaping English so that it could adapt itself to Hebraic idiom the modern translator wants to make no demands on the language he translates into ... The basic distinction between the Renaissance and the modern translators is one of fidelity to their original. Partly the loss of faith in the Hebrew and Greek as the definitive word of God has led to the translators' loss of contact with it, but more responsibility lies in the belief that a modern Bible should aim not to tax its reader's linguistic or interpretive abilities one bit." (Gerald Hammond, The Making of the English Bible [Manchester: Carcanet New Press, 1982] pp. 212-13).

35. Review of "The Message" in The Bible Translator 46/1 (January 1995), p. 155.

36. Ludwig Köhler, Hebrew Man, translated from the German Der Hebräische Mensch by Peter R. Ackroyd (London, 1956), p. 43. This little book gives much useful information about the cultural setting of the Old Testament.

37. Cf. Nigel Turner, Christian Words (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1981), p. 65; Konrad Weiss, "χρηστος," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament vol. 9 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), pp. 488-9; Walter Grundmann, "χριω, χριστος," in idem, p. 495. Grundmann writes, "χριστος is never related to persons outside the LXX, the NT, and dependent writings." J.B. Lightfoot writes, "'the anointed' would convey no idea at all to a heathen ignorant of the Old Testament and unacquainted with Hebrew customs." (St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians [third ed; London, 1873], p. 16, n. 1.)

38. See the interesting discussion of the Jewish interpretation of the Sabbath commandment in James Kugel's The Bible As It Was (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 389-91.

39. On the import of the expression in Job see Franz Delitzsch, The Book of Job, translated by Francis Bolton, on Job 14:1 and 4. "Woman is weak, with pain she brings forth children; she is impure during her lying-in, therefore weakness, suffering, and impurity is the portion of man even from the birth (ch. 15:14, 25:4) ... he acknowledges an hereditary proneness to sin." Similarly Marvin Pope, Job (Anchor Bible series; Doubleday & Co., 1973), pp. 105-106. "Birth with its blood and messiness gives man a taint of uncleanness from the start ... from an unclean thing (woman) no clean thing can be expected." A note in the Jerusalem Bible (1966) at Job 14:4 explains, "The emphasis is laid on the physical (and therefore ritual) uncleanness which man contracts from the moment of his conception, cf. Lv 15:19f, and birth, cf. Lv 12:2f, since he is born of a woman, Jb 14:1, cf. Ps 51:5. But this ritual uncleanness involves a corresponding moral weakness, a tendency to sin, and Christian interpretation has seen in this passage at least an allusion to what was later recognised as 'original sin' passed on from parent to child. Cf. Rm 5:12." On the γεννητοις γυναικων in Matt. 11:11, see Heinrich Meyer, Critical and Exegetical Hand-Book to the Gospel of Matthew, trans. P. Christie (New York, 1884), p. 223. "Among those born of women" is "intended to denote the category of men according to that nature which is peculiar to the whole race in virtue of its origin (mortality, weakness, sinfulness, and so on)."

40. A moment's reflection will find the difference between "grandsons" and "sons' sons." The two expressions are not fully equivalent, and the difference between them does have some cultural significance. Today even some of the most literal versions put "grandsons" here, because it is possible to interpret בני as including daughters. But to those who are familiar with the ancient patriarchal culture, it is by no means clear that בני here is meant to include daughters, so that בני בנים would include the sons of daughters also.

41. C.H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge, 1953), p. 176. We note that most of the versions that aim for "dynamic equivalence" still refrain from altering such expressions as "true light" (John 1:9) "true bread" (John 6:32) "true vine" (John 15:1) and "true tabernacle" (Hebrews 8:2), but the meaning of "true" in these expressions will not be understood by readers who are unfamiliar with the eternal archetype concept denoted by αληθινος in John's Gospel and the Epistle to the Hebrews. A "dynamic" equivalent for "I am the true vine" eludes us, but it would have to be something like: "I am what the grapevine symbolizes; I embody the everlasting Vine-Idea in the mind of God, from which all earthly vines have derived their imperfect and temporary existence, as symbols and shadows of what is truly real in heaven."

44. There is, however, some cultural significance in the fact that the same word is used for "bride" and "daughter-in-law." The same word is used for "bride" and "daughter-in-law" in ancient Hebrew and Greek because both languages are dominated by the perspective of the patriarchal father in a patrilocal society, where the "daughter-in-law" is a "bride" acquired for his son, and brought into his extended household. To use a single word in reference to "bride" and "daughter-in-law" is to see things from the standpoint of the ancient pater familias.

45. "The two words must be distinguished or the sentence is meaningless. λαλια is audible speech, the spoken word (not, of course, 'chatter' or 'loquacity' as often in earlier Greek): the Jews fail to understand the sayings they hear (cf. their frequent misunderstandings, e.g. in this chapter vv. 19, 22, 25, 33, etc.). This is because they cannot grasp and obey (for this use of ακουειν see on 5.24) Jesus' message, the divine Word which he bears (and indeed is). ου δυνασθε must be given full weight; cf. 12.39." — C.K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John (London: S.P.C.K., 1965), pp. 288-9.

46. Simon Kistemaker, in the continuation of Hendriksen's New Testament Commentary, ad loc. See also the translation and comments of Bo Reicke, The Epsitles of James, Peter, and Jude (Anchor Bible series, 1964), pp. 88-90.

47. Bindley translation, p. 52. The Greek is as follows. οὐχ ἁπλῶς, ὥσπερ πάντα τὰ ἐπὶ γῆς ἄλογα ζῷα, ἔκτισε τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ εἰκόνα ἐποίησεν αὐτούς, µεταδοὺς αὐτοῖς καὶ τῆς τοῦ ἰδίου Λόγου δυνάµεως, ἵνα ὥσπερ σκιάς τινας ἔχοντες τοῦ Λόγου καὶ γενόµενοι λογικοὶ διαµένειν ἐν µακαριότητι δυνηθῶσι, ζῶντες τὸν ἀληθινὸν καὶ ὄντως τῶν ἁγίων ἐν παραδείσῳ βίον.

48. I recommend the helpful book on this subject by Franz Delitzsch, A System of Biblical Psychology, translated from the 2nd German edition by the rev. Robert E. Wallis (2nd ed. Edinburgh, 1885).

49. Ronald Youngblood, quoted in Kenneth L. Barker, Accuracy Defined and Illustrated: An NIV Translator Answers your Questions (International Bible Society, 1995), p. 54. See also the brief explanation by Herbet M. Wolf, "When 'Literal' Is Not Accurate," in The NIV: The Making of a Contemporary Translation, edited by Kenneth L. Barker (Colorado Springs: International Bible Society, 1991), p. 130.

50. Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), p. 95. "This relationship of identity of sin and flesh is one of the most distinctive and radical data of Pauline anthropology. What is important for our present context is that there is here a new indication of the universality of sin, in that flesh on the one hand is a description of all that is man, and on the other of the sinful in man." For a good discussion of other aspects of this issue see Robert P. Martin, Accuracy of Translation (Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Banner of Truth, 1989), pp. 32-37. I want to make it plain here that I do not endorse any criticism brought against the NIV's rendering "sinful nature" by those who refuse to accept the teaching that fallen man is inherently sinful. I am sure that James D. G. Dunn is quite wrong when he contends that "Flesh for Paul was neither unspiritual nor sinful. The term simply indicated and characterized the weakness of a humanity constituted as flesh and always vulnerable to the manipulation of its desires and needs as flesh." (The Theology of Paul The Apostle [Eerdmans, 2006], p. 70.) He is correct, however, in his observation that "the range of translations for the same term destroys any sense that Paul had an integrated concept of sarx, whose spectrum of meaning might have a coherence and integration which helped explain that spectrum." (ibid., p. 70.) I contend that the interpretive rendering "sinful nature" is not necessary, because where "flesh" is used in this sense it is obvious.

51. Douglas J, Moo, "'Flesh' in Romans: A Challenge for the Translator," in The Challenge of Bible Translation: Communicating God's Word to the World. Essays in Honor of Ronald F. Youngblood, ed. Glen S. Scorgie, Mark L. Strauss, and Steven M. Voth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), p. 374.

53. In his Large Catechism, commenting on the phrase "the resurrection of the flesh" in the Apostles' Creed, Luther writes: "Dass aber hier steht 'Auferstehung des Fleisches,' ist auch nicht wohl deutsch geredet. Denn wo wir Fleisch hören, denken wir nicht weiter denn an die Scharren. Auf recht deutsch aber würden wir also reden: Auferstehung des Leibes oder Leichnams, doch liegt nicht große Macht daran, so man nur die Worte recht versteht." ("The term 'resurrection of the flesh,' however, is not well chosen. When we Germans hear the word Fleisch [flesh], we think no farther than the butcher shop. Idiomatically we would say 'resurrection of the body.' However, this is not of great importance, as long as the words are rightly understood.") In his commentary on Galatians (1519) he writes at 5:17, "Just as 'spirit' in this passage does not signify chastity alone, so it follows necessarily that 'flesh' does not signify lust alone. I have had to say this because it has become an established usage almost among all to understand 'desires of the flesh' only in the sense of 'lust.' According to this usage, it would be impossible for the apostle to be understood." And on verse 21: "Here most plainly of all it is evident that flesh is understood, not only in the sense of lustful desires but as absolutely everything that is contrary to the spirit of grace." (English translation from Luther's Works, edited by Jaroslav Pelikan, vol. 27 [St Louis: Concordia, 1964], pp. 362, 7.)

54. cf. Siegfried Raeder, "The Exegetical and Hermeneutical Work of Martin Luther," in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation. II: From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, edited by Magne Sæbø (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), pp. 401-2. Raeder explains that Luther used a literal rendering of "flesh" even though it was foreign to the German idiom, because the word was so expressive of a "humble anthropology":

55. Luther was well aware of the ignorance of the common people. In the Preface to his Small Catechism (1531) he wrote: "Diesen Katechismum oder christliche Lehre in solche kleine, schlechte, einfältige Form zu stellen hat mich gezwungen und gedrungen die klägliche, elende Not, so ich neulich erfahren habe, da ich auch ein Visitator war. Hilf, lieber Gott! wie manchen Jammer habe ich gesehen, daß der gemeine Mann doch so gar nichts weiß von der christlichen Lehre, sonderlich auf den Dörfern, und leider viel Pfarrherren fast ungeschickt und untüchtig sind zu lehren ..." ("The deplorable conditions I found during a recent tour of inspection has impelled me to publish this catechism, or statement of Christian doctrine, after having prepared it in very brief and simple terms. May God help us! what a pathetic state of affairs I saw! The common men know nothing at all about Christian doctrine, especially those who live in the villages; and unfortunately many pastors are very inept, and unfit to teach.") Again I would point out that he did not choose to address the problem by simplifying the Bible. Instead he provided a catechism, and demanded a more effective teaching ministry.

57. Any argument that the two senses would have had no semantic interaction founders on John 11:11, 13, where the ambiguity of the words is exploited.

58. In this connection I would also draw attention to the remarks of Leland Ryken, in The Word of God in English: Criteria for Excellence in Bible Translation (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2003), p. 179.

59. Mark L. Strauss, "Form, Function, and the 'Literal Meaning' fallacy in English Bible Translation." Address at the 2003 annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. Accessed online. (Later published in The Bible Translator, Vol. 56, No. 3 [July 2005] pp. 153-168.)

61. He objects to this note because he thinks it implies that "flesh" is a more accurate rendering, and because he thinks the primary sense "flesh" has no relevance for the interpetation of Paul's usage of the word. He fears that the rendering "flesh" will be "susceptible to an inappropriate Platonic or Gnostic dichotomy between mind/spirit and matter." Nevertheless, "Because the English lexeme 'flesh' has — through centuries of use — become for Christian readers a technical term with most of the same connotations as Greek sarx, translations produced primarily for Christian readers may choose to retain this term."

62. ibid. Strauss will not tolerate any indication at all that the primary meaning of αδελφοι is "brothers" because he has been one of the most vehement advocates for gender-neutralization of the biblical text. He claims that the meaning "brothers" is excluded by the context and that "brothers and sisters" is "well attested" for αδελφοι "both in secular Greek and in the New Testament." But against these claims see my article, The Translation of Αδελφος and Αδελφοι

63. Some commentators wrongly confuse the two. William Hendriksen, for example, writes, "Both Luther and Calvin defined the term which in the A.V. is rendered "the righteousness of God" as indicating the righteousness that avails before God. And there can be no question about the fact that this kind of righteousness is indeed indicated.... It is clear then that ... the term in question should be rendered "righteousness from God, meaning that God, its Author, imputes this right standing to the sinner, who accepts it by faith." (Exposition of Paul's Epistle to the Romans, p. 62). This is in line with the teachings of Luther and Calvin, but obviously they did not interpret or translate the genitive construction in Romans 1:17 as meaning "righteousness from God."

64. The BAGD lexicon's treatment of δικαιοσύνη in Paul's epistles is tendentious and disappointing. It states, "In specif. Pauline thought the expr. η εκ θεου δικ. Phil 3:9 or δικ. θεου Ro 1:17; 3:21f, 26 (s. Reumann, below); 10:3; 2 Cor 5:21 (here abstract for concrete; δ. = δικαιωθεντες), and δικ. alone Ro 5:21; 9:30; 1 Cor 1:30; 2 Cor 3:9 all mean the righteousness bestowed by God; cf. η δωρεα της δ. Ro 5:17, also 1 Cor 1:30 (cf. IQS 11, 9-15; IQH 4, 30-37). In this area it closely approximates salvation (c.f. Is 46:13; 51:5 and s. NHSnaith, Distinctive Ideas of the OT '46, 207-22, esp. 218-22; EKäsemann, ZThK 58, '61, 367-78)." One must look in the works cited (Snaith and Käsemann) to understand what is being said in the last sentence. The explanation of δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ given by Abott-Smith (Edinburgh, 1937) is better: "a righteousness divine in its character and origin." For a good brief discussion of the Hebraic sense "covenant faithfulness" acquired by δικαιοσύνη in Jewish Greek see James D.G. Dunn, Romans 1-8 (Dallas: Word Books, 1988), pp. 40-42.

65. An adjectival genitive in which the meaning is simply "X that pertains to Y" is far more common than many grammarians and commentators are willing to admit. Many tend to expect an unwarranted degree of exactness in the thinking of the writer. Concerning δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ in Romans 1:17, Benjamin Jowett comments:

66. Strauss (op. cit.) wrongly asserts that "English does not have a genitive case and so it is impossible to render it [the Greek genitive] literally." He claims that the "s" inflection serves only as a possessive, and quibbles that the prepositional genitive with "of" is not an inflected form. But English certainly does have a genitive case, and it can serve nearly all the same functions as the Greek genitive. See a full discussion of the matter with examples in George O. Curme, A Grammar of the English Language (D.C. Heath and Co., 1935), vol 1, p. 133-6, vol. 2, pp. 70-88. And Strauss even acknowledges that the English prepositional genitive largely corresponds with the Greek: "The genitive phrase dikaosune theou may be a possessive genitive referring to an attribute of God (God's own righteousness); it may be a genitive of source referring to a status given by God (righteousness from God); or it may be a subjective genitive, indicating an activity of God (the righteousness shown by God). The English phrase 'righteousness of God' can be understood in any of these three ways. Its ambiguity makes it a suitable substitute in this context." But he does not see that Paul may have intended more than one sense here, or may not have intended to make a distinction between them ("Paul certainly knew which of these meanings he intended").

67. It is not even clear how ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν should be connected to the rest of the sentence. Should it be construed with δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ "righteousness of God" or ἀποκαλύπτεται "revealed"? The prepositions are so ambiguous, and the connection to the sentence so uncertain, we must concede that the phrase defies any exact and sure analysis.

68. The difference of rendering here is due to the fact that the Hebrew words לא or לוא "not" and לו "to/for/in him" sound alike and may also be spelled alike. The translator must decide which way to go. In ancient times the Targums, the Syriac version, and the Vulgate interpreted it as "I hope in him," and English versions have usually followed their lead. Part of the Septuagint tradition also supports this. The "I have no hope" interpretation found in some twentieth-century versions (beginning with the ASV, and followed by RSV, TEV, etc.) is favored by scholars who maintain that it is most suitable for the context, but there is no ancient precedent for it. The NLT interpretation is a novelty. The 2004 revision has changed the wording to "God might kill me, but I have no other hope," but still fails to give an alternative in the margin. The failure even to notice the traditional interpretation here is astonishing, because the KJV rendering "though he slay me, yet will I trust in him" has often been quoted, and is one of the most famous lines of the Old Testament. One commentator (Marvin Pope) observes that it "has been hailed as the quintessence of the Hebrew spirit of faith." But the vanity of our modern translators is such that this venerable interpretation can suddenly be eliminated without a trace, in a version intended for devotional readers.

69. For exposition along traditional lines see the commentaries of Calvin, Matthew Henry, Alford, etc. Alford writes, "All Israel's reproach was Christ's reproach: Israel typified Christ: all Israel's sufferings as the people of God were Christ's sufferings, not only by anticipation in type, but by that inclusion in Christ which they, his members before the Head was revealed, possessed in common with us. Christ was ever present in and among God's people; and thus De Wette well and finely says here, 'The writer calls the reproach which Moses suffered, the reproach of Christ, as Paul, 2 Cor. i.5; Col. i.24, calls the sufferings of Christians the sufferings of Christ, i.e., of Christ's dwelling, striving, suffering, in his Church as in his body; to which this reproach is referred according to the idea of the unity of the Old and New Testaments, and of the eternal Christ [the Logos] already living and reigning in the former.'"

70. Richard T. France appears to be trying to justify the rendering of the NIV in his recent commentary on The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2007) when he says that the imperative here "probably reflects a popular proverbial style, as in our 'give him an inch and he'll take a mile'" (p. 485); but the English verb in his example is not in the imperative mood, and he offers no evidence that a Greek imperative was ever used in such a conditional sense. France does not give a reasonable explanation for the interpretation in the NIV, and he ignores the interpretation given by nearly all other commentators, who understand ποιησατε in the sense "consider." The BAGD lexicon states that the meaning here is "assume, suppose" (p. 682).

71. We should point out here that the use of "behold" in the New Testament is a distinctly Hebraistic and biblical usage, and not colloquial Greek at all. In many places it does not correspond in meaning with "look here," or any normal usage of ιδου found in secular Greek literature or non-literary papyri; but its use does correspond perfectly with that of the Hebrew interjections הֵן (hen) and הִנֵּה (hinneh), translated as ιδου in the Septuagint. James Hope Moulton writes, "We very rarely use the interjection 'Behold' in ordinary speech, and normal late Greek speech did not use it much more than we do. In those parts of the New Testament which come from Aramaic sources, or are written by men (like St. James) who continued to use Aramaic as their ordinary language, we find this 'behold' extremely often." (The Science of Language and the Study of the New Testament [Manchester, University Press, 1906], p. 16.)

72. Jan de Waard and Eugene Nida, From One Language to Another (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1986), p. 9. I am aware of the fact that many young people do not know that "I shall not want" means "I shall not lack what I need" here. When I asked my 13-year-old daughter about it, I discovered that she thought it meant "I will not desire more than I need." But I find it very difficult to believe that anyone would interpret it in the way that Nida supposes.

73. Barclay M. Newman, Creating and Crafting the Contemporary English Version (New York: American Bible Society, 1996), p. 26.

74. This canard continues to be repeated even by those who must know better. For example, Alister McGrath in his book In the Beginning (New York, 2001), asserts that Tyndale "avoids Latinate terms" (p. 78). But an examination of any given chapter of his New Testament quickly reveals that he did not avoid Latinate words. He often uses them when he could easily have used Germanic words instead. For example, we find that he uses the word "concupiscence" to translate επιθυμια in Romans 7:8, though he used "lust" to translate the same word in 7:7. McGrath notices this, and says that "the assumption here must be that Tyndale believed that his readers would be familiar with this term," but it must at least be admitted that he did not consciously avoid Latinate words. And it should be noticed that Tyndale's use of "lust" in 7:7 is straight from Luther, whose version Tyndale used as a model, yet he departs from Luther's Germanic diction to use the Latinate word in 7:8. Evidently the vocabulary of the English peasant ("the boy who drives the plough") was not much in mind when he did his translation, and much of his "Anglo-Saxon" diction derives from the work of the Saxon Reformer.

75. Thomas Pyles and John Algeo, The Origins and Development of the English Language, third ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), p. 246.

76. James B. Greenough and George L. Kittredge, Words and their Ways in English Speech (London: MacMillan, 1901), p. 106.

77. An English Grammar: Methodical, Analytical, and Historical ... by Professor Maetzner of Berlin, translated from the German, with the sanction of the author, by Clair James Grece, vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1874), p. 9.

78. In secular Greek the usual word for "happy" is not μακαριος but ευδαιμων, a word that does not occur in the New Testament or in the Septuagint. The BAGD Lexicon observes that in the New Testament μακαριος usually has the sense "privileged recipient of divine favor," and that the rendering "O the happiness of ... scarcely exhausts the content which μακαριος had in the mouths of Greek-speaking Christians" (p. 486).

79. David Dewey, A User's Guide to Bible Translations (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2004), p. 46.

80. Our word "repentance" is derived from the Latin word poenitentia, "regret," and is related to our words penitence and penalty. With this etymology in mind, some authors have thought that the word gives too much prominence to the negative or emotional element of meaning in μετανοια, and have associated it with Roman Catholic teachings that emphasize the need for contrition, confession, and penitential exercises. Treadwell Walden, for example, insisted that "repentance" perpetuates "the insidious influence of a Latin tradition" (The Great Meaning of Metanoia [New York, 1896], p. 140). But in point of fact, the meaning of the English word is not so narrowly confined to its etymology that it does not denote a positive change of mentality and amendment of life in addition to sorrow for sin. Walden and others have argued that the word μετανοια means simply a "change of mind." Concerning this claim, Nigel Turner writes: "Writers like de Quincey, Matthew Arnold and Percy Dearmer seized on the secular meaning [of μετανοια] to support their protest against the Christian's obsession with repentance and sin. The aim of these writers and many humanists is to eliminate the emotional and mystical element from associations of repentance and to substitute for conviction of sin the recognition by the 'sinner' that he has made a mistake, to see repentance as the unemotional and non-mystical admission of a failing, with consequent change of mind and will. We cannot think that this is what the words mean in a Christian vocabulary. They are more than touched with a little emotion. They rend the heart, passionately." (Christian Words [Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1981], p. 377.) Most scholars agree with Turner. The best concise definition of μετανοια I have seen is B.B. Warfield's — "the inner change of mind which regret induces and which itself induces a reformed life." ("On the Biblical Notion of 'Renewal,'" Princeton Theological Review 9/2 [April 1911], p. 257.)

81. In his famous Ninety-Five Theses, Luther defined the poenitentia commanded by Christ as an odium sui, "self-loathing," and declared that "the whole life of believers should be one of repentance."

82. Leland Ryken, The Word of God in English: Criteria for Excellence in Bible Translation (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2003). This book is the most helpful popular-level work on the subject that I am aware of.

83. Poetic parallelism may be found even in some of the briefest sayings of Christ recorded in the Gospels. For example: "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." (Matt. 8:20, Luke 9:58.) Luke says that the people of Nazareth were amazed at "the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth" when he preached in the synagogue (Luke 4:22). That is, they wondered how the son of a tradesman in their little town could have become such a gifted speaker. For complete treatment of this subject see Charles F. Burney, The Poetry of Our Lord: An Examination of the Formal Elements of Hebrew poetry in the Discourses of Jesus Christ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925).

85. ibid., pp. 200, 202. I would point here that when Nida calls it a "mistake" that people expect the Word of God to be impressive, he does not speak as a linguist, but as a language reformer with an agenda, or perhaps as an apologist for the kind of versions being published by his employer. A disinterested linguist does not raise protests against the assumptions commonly held by speakers of a language.

87. St. Augustine, In Evangelium Ioannis Tractatus Centum Viginti Quator, Tractate lxxxii, §3. "Quid est ergo: Manete in dilectione mea, nisi, manete in gratia mea?" ("What then is 'Abide in my love' except 'Abide in my grace'?") Therefore when Jesus says in the next verse, "if you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love," it is only another way of saying that an obedient heart is the result of God's love for us. An English translation of Augustine's sermon on these verses is available in vol. 7 of A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, edited by Philip Schaff (New York, 1888), p. 347. Not everyone will agree with Augustine's identification of God's dilectio with his dynamic gratia, but I do. Westcott finds special significance in the form of expression here: "The exact form of the phrase, which is found here only (τῇ ἀγάπῃ τῇ ἐμῇ), as distinguished from that used in the next verse (τῇ ἀγάπῃ μου), emphasizes the character of the love, as Christ's: the love that is mine, the love that answers to my nature and my work."

88. Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 284-88.

89. Roger Smith, The Norton History of the Human Sciences (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1997), p. 835.

90. From Goethe's Faust, as translated by Anna Swanwick. "Zwar ist’s mit der Gedankenfabrik / wie mit einem Webermeisterstück, / wo ein Tritt tausend Fäden regt, / die Schifflein herüber hinüber schießen, / die Fäden ungesehen fließen, / ein Schlag tausend Verbindungen schlägt. / Der Philosoph, der tritt herein / und beweist Euch, es müsst’ so sein: / Das Erst’ wär’ so, das Zweite so, / und drum das Dritt’ und Vierte so, / und wenn das Erst’ und Zweit’ nicht wär’, / das Dritt’ und Viert’ wär’ nimmermehr. / Das preisen die Schüler allerorten, / sind aber keine Weber geworden. / Wer will was Lebendigs erkennen und beschreiben, / sucht erst den Geist herauszutreiben, / dann hat er die Teile in seiner Hand, / fehlt leider! nur das geistige Band."

91. Ernst-August Gutt, "Translation, Metarepresentation and Claims of Interpretive Resemblance," in Similarity and Difference in Translation, edited by Stefano Arduini and Robert Hodgson (American Bible Society, 2004) p. 96-97. On the last sentence Gutt notes "For example, neither the Translator's Handbook on the Letter to the Hebrews (Ellingworth and Nida 1983) nor Deibler's Index of Implicit Information in the New Testament (Deibler 1999) draws attention to the existence of this substantial body of implicit information." More detailed discussion of the need for background knowledge is in Gutt's "Aspects of 'Cultural Literacy' Relevant to Bible Translation," Journal of Translation 2/1 (2006), pp. 1-16, where he complains of the picture "often conveyed in the literature on translation, where one gets the impression that implicit information consists of comparatively small bits and pieces of information" (p. 4) and argues that "It is not just missing bits and pieces of information that hinder people's comprehension, as has often been assumed, but the absence of whole mental models." (p. 15)

92. The "consultative group" is described in Toward a Science of Translating rather cynically, as "persons needed to provide a kind of representative blessing on the work. In other words, they approve what has been done, but do not themselves participate to any considerable extent" (p. 247).

93. "Wir sehnen uns nach Offenbarung, / Die nirgends würd'ger und schöner brennt / Als in dem Neuen Testament. / Mich drängt's, den Grundtext aufzuschlagen, / Mit redlichem Gefühl einmal / Das heilige Original / In mein geliebtes Deutsch zu übertragen, / (Er schlägt ein Volum auf und schickt sich an.) / Geschrieben steht: »Im Anfang war das Wort!« / Hier stock ich schon! Wer hilft mir weiter fort? / Ich kann das Wort so hoch unmöglich schätzen, / Ich muß es anders übersetzen, / Wenn ich vom Geiste recht erleuchtet bin. / Geschrieben steht: Im Anfang war der Sinn. / Bedenke wohl die erste Zeile, / Daß deine Feder sich nicht übereile! / Ist es der Sinn, der alles wirkt und schafft? / Es sollte stehn: Im Anfang war die Kraft! / Doch, auch indem ich dieses niederschreibe, / Schon warnt mich was, daß ich dabei nicht bleibe. / Mir hilft der Geist! Auf einmal seh ich Rat / Und schreibe getrost: Im Anfang war die Tat!" English translation from Faust, Parts One and Two, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated by George Madison Priest (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952, reprinted from the edition published by Knopf in 1941), from line 1217. Goethe published the first part of his Faust in 1808.

94. Ardel B. Caneday notices the importance of this verse in current debates about "Open Theism." In a review of John Sanders' 1998 book The God Who Risks, he describes Sanders' interpretation: "Gen. 50:20, a verse that affirms that God effectively succeeds at his plans, has consoled innumerable Christians. But it now means something quite different. Sanders explains, 'I take this to mean that God has brought something good out of their evil actions. God was not determining everything in Joseph's life, but God did remain with him.' (p. 55) The subject and its verb—'God intended it for good'—has nothing to do with intention at all, but refers to God's ability to mop up the mess, which is 'to bring good out of evil human actions' (p. 55)." ("Putting God at Risk: A Critique Of John Sanders's View Of Providence," Trinity Journal 20/2 [Fall 1999] p. 137.) We wonder if Sanders has been reading the New Living Translation. Is it asking too much of Bible translators that they should avoid giving 'proof texts' for such heretical ideas in their versions?

95. Ernst Würthwein, The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Biblia Hebraica. Translated by Erroll F. Rhodes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), p. 47. The English version quoted here was translated from the fourth edition of Würthwein's Der Text des Alten Testaments (Stuttgart, 1973).

96. Dugald Stewart, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, in The Works of Dugald Stewart, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Hilliard and Brown, 1829), p. 97. Emphasis added. It should be noted here that distortions of an author are likely to increase with the degree of admiration in which he is held. Therefore when the preface of a Bible translation says, "the translators were united in their commitment to the authority and infallibility of the Bible as God's Word in written form," practical wisdom might sometimes require us to beware of this trendency.

97. See his book Christianity in Culture: A Study in Dynamic Biblical Theologizing in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1979) esp. Chapter 15, "Dynamic-Equivalence Theologizing," pp. 291-312, and his article "Dynamic Equivalence Churches: An Ethnotheological Approach to Indigeneity," in Missiology, vol. 1 (January, 1973), pp. 39-57. The relationship of Kraft's missiology to Nida's theory of translation is not merely verbal. For a good discussion of the matter see Robert L. Thomas, "Dynamic Equivalence: A Method of Translation or a System of Hermeneutics?" in The Master's Seminary Journal 1/2 (Fall 1990), pp. 149-76.

98. In a conversation with one retired missionary from the Wycliffe Bible Translators I learned that this "contextualization" stategy sometimes has very bad consequences. Before introducing Jesus Christ to one tribe he asked them which of their gods was most powerful, and then proceeded to tell them that this god has sent to them a Son. The tribesmen were not at all receptive. Later the missionary discovered that this god, with whom he had associated Jesus Christ, was the god most feared and hated by the tribe, a malevolent diety more like Satan than God. For the true God of the Bible they had no "equivalent."

99. Stanley E. Porter, "Hermeneutics, Biblical Interpretation, and Theology," in I. Howard Marshall, Beyond the Bible: Moving from Scripture to Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), pp. 125-6. Porter (currently President and Dean of McMaster Divinity College in Ontario) is largely supportive of Marshall's contention that "Orthodoxy is not tied to specific vocabularies and forms of words."

100. James Stalker, The Preacher and His Models (London and New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1891). Rev. James Stalker, D.D. (1848-1929) was best known for his books Life of Christ, Life of St. Paul, and Imago Christi. He was Professor of Church History at Free Church College, Glasgow, and a notable preacher in his day.

101. For a good discussion of the drawbacks of "dynamic equivalence" versions for preaching, see Robert L. Thomas, "Bible Translations and Expository Preaching," chapter 17 in Rediscovering Expository Preaching, edited by Richard Mayhue (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1992).

TEV	"John ... preaching, Turn away from your sins and be baptized ... and God will forgive your sins."
CEV	"John ... told everyone, Turn back to God and be baptized! Then your sins will be forgiven."
NLT	"John .... preached that people should be baptized to show that they had turned to God to receive forgiveness for their sins.

NLT	CEV
"...the pain caused you to have remorse and change your ways. It was the kind of sorrow God wants his people to have, so you were not harmed by us in any way."	"God used your hurt feelings to make you turn back to him ... when God make you feel sorry enough to turn to him and be saved, you don't have anything to feel bad about."

NASB	NKJV	RSV	ESV	NIV	TEV	NLT
474	247	127	103	102	84	31