Why I Trust My Bible - Lesson 10

1. Challenge 

In this session we’re going to look at the whole issue of translations. The basic challenge is with all the different translations and how they are at times really different from one another, how can we trust any of them? I mean if a bunch of translators over here translate a certain way, and a bunch of translators over there translate another way, and there’s significant differences, how can you trust anything that they are doing? It’s a real honest question, and one that I know a lot of people deal with. Let me start with what are the problems in translation, and it’ll kind of show you why things are different.  

2. Three Problems 

Number one is the Bible’s not written in English. The Old Testament is mostly in Hebrew, a little bit of Aramaic, and all of the New Testament is written in Greek. So, if you want to read the Bible, unless you want to learn these three languages, you need to use a translation. I remember talking to someone once and the person said, “You know, the King James is good enough for Paul, it’s good enough for me.” And I felt bad, there’s no way to answer that. If I had answered it, I would have said, “Well, that’s kind of awkward since English wasn’t even invented as a language until at least a thousand years after the time of Paul. Alright, if you want to look at Middle English or Old English, they’re generally taught as foreign languages. If you want to read Chaucer in English, it’s almost a foreign language, it’s so difficult. So, the Bible’s not written in English, and so that presents the initial problem. 

The second problem is that languages aren’t codes. And what I’m going to say, if you know multiple languages, you’re going to say that’s really an odd thing to have to point out. But a lot of people don’t know what I’m about to say. When I started learning Greek, I thought that languages were in a sense, codes that for example: ‘Bill’ in Morse code is: da dit dit dit dit, dit da dit dit, dit da dit dit. I just assumed that ‘Bill’ in Greek would be another series of dots and dashes, but they would just be different dots and dashes. In other words, I was thinking that there was an exact equivalence between languages, equivalence of vocabulary and equivalences of grammar. And I found out very quickly that that is not even remotely the case, and that it is virtually impossible to say the same thing in one language that’s being said in another. 

If you listen to simultaneous translators do their work, often you will find that the translation takes quite a bit longer to say than the original, and that’s because the translators having to say a few more words to really convey the idea that is being said by the main speaker. Even a word as simple as ‘the.’ Okay, we have a definite and we have an indefinite article in English (‘the,’ ‘an,’ ‘a’). Greek doesn’t even have an indefinite article. There is no Greek word for ‘a’ or ‘an.’ So if you want to say ‘an apple’ how do you say that? But even the word ‘the,’ there’s a Greek word ‘ha’ in Greek that is often translated as ‘the,’ but sometimes ‘ha’ is translated as ‘his.’ Sometimes it’s not translated at all because it’s a grammatical marker; it has no meaning in terms of actual words. It has a grammatical function but it has no other meaning function to it. So, even as something as simple as the word ‘the’ in English, doesn’t really correspond with ‘ha’ in Greek. This is just the nature of languages. They’re not codes; you can’t go smoothly from one language to another. And this is certainly true at the word level where there’d be the word ‘the.’ But think of the English word ‘can.’ Think of all the ways the word ‘can’ can function. My doctoral supervisor used to say, “Americans eat what they can and can what they can’t.” See, different uses of the word ‘can.’ Well, there’s not a Greek word that has that same kind of flexibility, that same kind of what’s called ‘semantic range.’ Words have bundles of meanings. A word doesn’t have just one meaning. It has a group of meanings. And you can’t find (except in pretty unusual circumstances), you can’t find another word in Greek that has the same set of meanings. So, we see this issue crop up in words. 

Another example is the Greek word ‘sarks.’ You come across, you’re reading Paul and you read about ‘sarks;’ or you’re reading John and you come across ‘sarks.’ What does it mean? Well, the basic, what’s called ‘gloss,’ kind of a basic meaning of the word, is ‘flesh.’ So, in John 1, John says, “Jesus came, and he tabernacled among us, and the Word became flesh.” You know, you remember that passage? Well, he’s saying he became this stuff hanging on our bones. Alright? He became fully a human being. That’s one of the more important verses for the Incarnation. Now you read along in Paul though, and sometimes he’ll use the word ‘sarks,’ and it’s clear that what he really means by it (again, this is another stick in that bundle of meanings), what he means by ‘sark’ is ‘sinful humanity.’ Well see, if you say ‘flesh,’ you’re not conveying what Paul wants to convey, and that is the idea: we have a sinful nature. See, so you don’t have an exact equivalence. 

Recently, the real debate has been around the Greek word ‘doulos.’ Is it a ‘servant’ or is it a ‘slave’? Are we ‘servants’ of Christ or are we ‘slaves’ of Christ? And in some contexts, ‘servants’ of Christ works well. Sometimes ‘slaves’ of Christ does work well. But the real problem for an American who’s familiar with the pre-war South and our horrid institution of slavery that we had back then, and then if you compare that to what slavery was in the Roman Empire, yes, slavery is always a bad thing; and there was some overlap. But slavery in the Roman Empire largely was really unlike slavery in the southern part of the United States. So, the minute you say we are a ‘slave’ of Christ, it’s going to bring up ideas that simply weren’t in Paul’s mind.  

So, you have this problem of language not being codes at the word level. We also have it at the phrase level, and my favorite illustration is the Greek phrase ‘me genoito.’ Paul’s going along in Roman 6. He’s been talking about, “…should we continue in sin that grace can abound?” (That some people were claiming that Paul was teaching.) In other words, should we continue to sin because when we sin, we’re really doing God a favor because it gives him the opportunity to forgive us and to express his grace towards us. So, we should keep on sinning in order that God’s grace can be seen for what it really is. And Paul responds in the strongest way in Greek you can say “Absolutely no way.” And he uses the word ‘me’ (which is one of the words for ‘no’). And he uses a word ‘genoito’ (which is from the verb meaning ‘I am’ or various things); and it’s in an optative mood, which means ‘may it not even be a wish.’ 

In other words, it is this idea of sinning in that grace can abound—“Me genoito.” “May that not even be as far away from fact as possible, not even be a wish. I mean, absolutely positively no!” It’s Paul screaming in the text when he says “Me genoito.” “No way.” Okay, so how do you translate that? Well, you’re going to find that there is no exact equivalence for the phrase ‘me genoito.’ New American Standard says, “What then, shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace?” (the other half of Romans 6). And they say, “May it never be, may it never be.” That’s pretty good, it’s pretty strong. ESV says, “…by no means.” Hmmm, that’s okay. The New Living (the NLT), which I’m going to say some pretty positive and pretty negative things about; but here it’s pretty negative. They translate ‘me genoito’ as “of course not.”  

That’s a terrible translation. “Of course not, yeah, whatever, no.” Paul’s not shouting at all, “Of course not.” That's not what the phrase means. The King James actually has, what I think is the best phrase, and that is, “God forbid!” Now the Greek doesn’t have the word for ‘God.’ The Greek doesn’t have the word for ‘forbid.’ But the phrase ‘God forbid’ is the strongest way in English that I know of, to say “Absolutely not – me genoito." 

So this is the problem of languages, that they’re not codes, and we see it at a word for word level and at a phrase for phrase level. You just can’t move back and forth between languages easily. 

There is a third problem, I would add, to this whole issue of translations, and that has to do with the word ‘literal.’ I don’t like the word ‘literal’ because people misunderstand it. If you ask the average person on the street corner (or maybe I should say on the pew), what kind of Bible do you want? Often you will hear, “Why, I want a literal Bible.” And what they understand that to mean is that it’s as close to the Greek and Hebrew as we can possibly get; and that if Greek uses three words, English should use three words. It should be as transparent as possible to the Greek and the Hebrew. The problem with that understanding of ‘literal’ is that that’s not what the word means in English. ‘Literal’ doesn’t affect form. The word ‘literal’ has to do with meaning. This is a definition from Webster for the word ‘literal’: “It’s in accordance with involving or being the primary or strict meaning of a word.” So, a ‘literal’ Bible is one that conveys exactly the same meaning as the original, but not necessarily in the same form. So, people use the word ‘literal’ inaccurately. 

Let me give you an example: if you want a ‘literal’ translation, here’s John 3:16, “In this manner for he loved the God the world so that the son the only he gave in order that each the believing into him not perish but have life eternal.” Alright. Now we have Bibles that translate that way. They’re called Interlinears, and they’re not really Bibles. They’re Interlinears because nobody can read that; nobody can understand it, right?. So, be careful with the word ‘literal.’ The English word has to do with the meaning, and we want a ‘literal’ Bible. We want a Bible that conveys the same meaning. The question’s how do you convey the same meaning?

You know, another example of this ‘literal’ issue is something that happened to me in Germany. I went to Germany to learn German. And most of my friends were much more advanced in their German studies than I was, and so they were very fluent in the language. And it was cold one day and we were outside in a park, and I wanted to say something in German because that’s what you’re supposed to do. And so, I said, “Well I want to say I’m cold.” So ‘I’ is ‘ich,’ ‘am’ is ‘bin,’ and ‘cold’ is ‘kalt.’ So, I said “ich bin kalt,” and my friends were rolling on the floor laughing. They were laughing and laughing. I said, “What did I say? Ich bin kalt – I am cold, that’s how you say it.” And when my friends finally regained their composure, they said, “Oh Bill, if you want to say that you’re cold, you say in German, “It is to me cold – es zu mir kalt.” Forgive my poor German pronunciation, my German friends. But anyway, ‘it is to me cold.’ I said, “What did I say?” They said, “You said that you’re sexually frigid.” Well, ‘ich bin kalt,’ that’s what it means. So, you understand the problem of our misunderstanding of the English word ‘literal.’ 

3. Solution 

Alright, so that’s the problems. And so, the question is how do we solve it? What do we do when we do translation? Basically, every translation has a translation philosophy. Now I’ve been on two translation committees. I was the New Testament chair of the ESV for the first ten years, and I’m currently on the NIV translation committee. And so, I’m going to use ESV and NIV because I’m most familiar with it. These two translations, and the other ones as well, all have a translation philosophy. They’ve come to an understanding of how they want to translate the Bible. And this is a bit of a simplification but this is the best way I know to explain it. Think of yourself on the edge of a knife and you are translating along. And everybody tries to go word for word if they can; they try to just follow the Greek. But what happens when you come to a passage that you can’t go word for word? What happens when the grammar is too complicated, or the vocabulary is too complicated, or if you go word for word you will miscommunicate? What happens in that situation; what do you do? Well, the translation philosophy establishes that. And what will happen in translations is that when translators come to these difficult passages where you just can’t go word for word, they are going to fall off one side or other of the knife blade. And they’re either going to fall over on the side of words, or they’re going to fall over on the side of meaning. The ESV falls over on the side of words. The NIV falls over on the side of meaning. To state it another way, when we come to a passage that’s a little difficult, the ESV’s tendency is to say “Well, we’re just going to translate the words, that’s the function of the translator, and the Bible student or the pastor is going to have to help people understand what those words mean.” It’s a perfectly legitimate way to translate the Bible. 

The NIV is going to fall on the other side and say “No, the Bible needs to be understandable by people. It needs to hit English readers in the same way that the Greek hit Greek readers.” And that means we have to work, not harder, but work a little differently to get the same meaning across. But the point is, translations, when they can’t stay on the edge of that knife, are going to fall over onto the sides of words, and that’s the NASB and the ESV, or they are going to fall over on the side of meaning which is the NIV and the NLT for example, okay? 

Here’s another example: a very important word is ‘hilasterion.’ And ‘hilasterion’ describes what Christ accomplished on the cross. What was he doing there? You can see, for example, in Romans 3:25. So they come along and we hit ‘hilasterion.’ Well, the old RSV translated with one word, ‘expiation.’ ‘Expiation’ means that the force of what Christ did on the cross was directed towards human guilt and our ability to accept forgiveness. ESV comes along and says, “No, it’s not ‘expiation,’ it’s ‘propitiation;’ that what Christ did on the cross is directed towards God’s wrath and appeasing God’s wrath caused by our sin.” Okay, but both those translations fell over on the side of words to convey ‘hilasterion.’ Now I still remember on the ESV, we actually opened up Webster’s and we read ‘propitiation,’ and I said, we said, “Is that accurate?” We said, “Yeah, that’s what we think ‘hilasterion’ means.” And so, we translated it ‘propitiation.’ The NIV comes along, and it says, “No, no, no, people don’t know what ‘expiation,’ ‘propitiation’ means. What can we translate it with?” And this is one of the really great translations of the NIV. It translated ‘hilasterion’ as an ‘atoning sacrifice,’ that’s what Christ did on the cross. It was a sacrifice that atoned for our sins. 

But even that didn’t convey all the meaning, because ‘hilasterion’ also refers to the place of atonement. So, in the Temple, the place of the atonement, the ‘hilasterion’ was the top of the Ark of the Covenant where the blood was sprinkled, where forgiveness was granted. For the Christian, the ‘hilasterion’ is the cross. So, it’s just not human guilt and God’s wrath against sin, it’s the cross. And ‘atoning sacrifice’ gets some of that but not all of it. It’s interesting, the initial release of the New Living Translation translated ‘hilasterion’ with a very long phrase. They said, “It was to take the punishment of our sins and to satisfy God’s anger against sin.” Pretty expansive, but you see they’re trying to get the meaning of ‘hilasterion’ across. In the second release of the NLT, they shortened it to ‘sacrifice for sin.’ But you can see what’s happening, and the point of the illustration is, we came to a word, in this case ‘hilasterion,’ and the RSV and the ESV went over and tried to find a single word. The NIV and the NLT went over the other and tried to convey the meaning of that word. I could give you thousands of these kinds of illustrations, both with words and phrases and grammar, and whatnot. But I think you understand what I’m talking about.  

So that’s what a translation philosophy is; which side are we going to err on? Okay. There’s obviously a lot of other things involved in a philosophy, but I think that’s the heart of the issue.  

4. Formal Equivalence Translation Group 

Okay, so, basically, I’m going to break translations down into four different categories. It’s general to break them down into two, but I think we have to have four, you’ll see why in a second. The first grouping of translations are what are called ‘formal equivalence,’ and The New American Standard and the ESV are good examples of formal equivalence. And by ‘formal equivalence,’ we’re talking about a ‘grammatical equivalence;’ that if there are seven words in Greek, we’re going to try to use seven words in English. If it’s a participle in Greek, we’re going to try to use a participle in English. Part of formal equivalence is something called a ‘concordance’ where we try to use the same English word for the same Greek word, so it’s all transparent; so that when you see ‘city’ in the NASB, you’ll know that it is translating ‘polis.’ But it’s a ‘formal equivalence,’ a ‘formal grammatical equivalence’ that as much as possible we are going to stick to the Greek and to the Hebrew. And formal equivalent translations all agree that it’s not always possible. There are idioms and there are other ways in which Greek will express itself that you can’t do this word for word thing. But for the most part we’re going to really try. 

There’s some really good things about formal equivalence. One of them is that they’re very transparent to the Greek and to the Hebrew. If you know Greek and you’re reading the NASB and the ESV, you can usually see what’s going on in the Greek and Hebrew behind the English. And that’s a good thing, although I would point out, I hear some people say, “Well, I like these ‘formal equivalent’ translations because they’re transparent to the Greek and Hebrew.” And I’ll usually say, “Oh, you know Greek and Hebrew?” And often they say, “Well, no.” I go, “Well then, what does it matter? And I wonder why you’re saying, “It’s good for me to be reading the ESV because I know that there’s a Greek structure visible behind the English if I don’t know what the Greek structure is?” I suspect there’s something else going on in that person. But anyway, it is a good point to be kind of transparent. In fact, in the NASB, they have this policy of italics that when they insert a word where there’s no corresponding English word to it, they put it in italics so you can see that they’re adding to their translation.  

The other good thing about formal equivalence is that they’re less interpretative. In other words, if you just want to say ‘expiation’ or ‘propitiation’ and leave it at that, you still have had to do some interpretation, right? You’ve had to choose between ‘expiation’ and ‘propitiation.’ So, there is some interpretation, but there’s less interpretation in these translations than in some of the others. If anyone, by the way, ever says to you, “Oh, I use the Bible that is not interpretative, it doesn’t interpret, it just gives me what the Greek and Hebrew says.” They don’t know what they’re talking about. That’s absolutely impossible! Okay? Categorically impossible! All translation involves interpretation, ‘expiation’ or ‘propitiation,’ there’s no way to get around it. I’m going to show you some other examples in a second. All translations are interpretative. Formal equivalent translations tend to be a little less interpretative, but they’re still interpretive. But anyway, those are the good points; they’re transparent and less interpretative. 

But there’s also some pretty serious problems with formal equivalent translations. Number one is that they’re often terrible English. Every once in a while, I’ll read a sentence and I’ll go, “That’s not even English, that’s not how anybody talks.” So, you run the real problem of really butchered English for the sake of sticking to the Greek and to the Hebrew.  

But a second problem is that formal equivalent translations, especially when it comes to concordance, can obscure meaning. I mean, their strong suit is that they’re less interpretive; they’re not interpreting in order to get the meaning out. They’re letting you do the interpretation, so they say. But the point is that sometimes these translations, the NASB and ESV, can actually obscure meaning as well. The best example I know is the NASB’s translation of ‘polis.’ ‘Polis’ occurs 163 times in the New Testament, and every single time the NASB translates it ‘city.’ Okay, that’s concordance. They call Nazareth a city. Do you know how many lived at Nazareth in Jesus’ day? Well, archeology suggests that there was about 600. Well, if you have 600 people living in one place, it’s not a city, right? Cities are big. I live near Vancouver. It’s a couple hundred thousand. Portland is a million or so across the river. I mean, cities are big. 600 people is a village or a hamlet, or maybe a wide spot in the road, I don’t know. But it’s not a city. And so sometimes these translations will obscure meaning, especially when it comes to concordance.  

A third problem with formal equivalent translations (and again, it’s a problem for all the translations; but it really is one for formal equivalent), it is that sometimes it’s simply not possible. Sometimes you have to interpret it, there’s no choice. You can’t say, “I’m going to be neutral; I’m going to be vanilla; I’m going to be ambiguous.” I remember in the ESV, if we had an ambiguous Greek phrase, we would look for a similarly ambiguous English phrase. And sometimes we’d find one, and that’d be great. But usually you can’t, and usually on these things you have to interpret. 

Let me give you an example: in 1st Timothy 3, Paul is going through the requirements for church leaders. So, he starts with elders and goes through the requirements, and then he gets to deacons. And he goes, and he's giving the qualifications for what it takes to be a deacon in a church. And you get to verse 11, and the Greek word is ‘gynaikas.’ It’s ‘gyne’ (goo-nay); and the problem is that ‘gyne’ can be translated either ‘wife’ or ‘woman.’ There is no English word for both of those. You have to choose, and the choice is significant. In the RSV, they translated it, “…the women, likewise must be serious, no slanderers but temperate, faithful in all things.” Now, if ‘gyne’ is translated as ‘women,’ who are the women? So, it has to be the deaconesses. Alright? And we know that there were female deacons very early in the church. Actually, about the first 300 to 400 years, there were a lot of deaconesses that performed very important functions. It’s interesting, the feminine form of the word ‘deacon’ in Greek apparently wasn’t created until about the 300s. So, women were called deacons in the early church.  

I remember when I was pastoring, they were doing the by-laws and they wanted to talk about deaconesses, and I said, “No, we’re not going to genderize this thing: women and men together are deacons.” That’s how the Bible treats it. Anyway, that’s reading ‘gyne’ here as ‘women,’ i.e. ‘deaconesses.’ The ESV comes along (and I didn’t check, but I’m sure there’s a footnote on this) and it says, “Their wives, likewise, must be dignified.” Well, in other words, we’re still talking about deacons. Now we’re talking about the deacons’ wives, and Paul will go on to talk about the deacons’ children, the family life. But the point is you have to choose. There is no English word that could mean woman or wife; you have to choose.  

Another really good example is John 2:4. This is the story of Jesus at the wedding in Canaan, and they ran out of wine. And so, in verse 4 the NASV translates, “…and Jesus said to her (to his mom), ‘Woman, what does that have to do with us? My hour has not yet come.’” (It’s the same Greek word, ‘gyne’ by the way.) ‘Woman.’ Now in English, in modern English, there’s only one way to hear that phrase, right, and that is pejorative. Mary says, “Hey Jesus, they ran out of wine; do something about it” (was the implication). Jesus says, “Woman.” See, the only way to hear that in English is in a pejorative, negative, demeaning way; in a way that Jesus would have never talked to his mom. Alright? Never in a million years would Jesus have been this cruel to his mom. Okay, so just saying ‘woman’ miscommunicates, doesn’t it? 

It’s interesting, in the NIV (I wasn’t on the committee when this happened), but it’s a pretty good translation; they said, “Dear woman.” Now there’s no Greek word for ‘dear,’ but they are trying to soften the ‘woman’ and how we hear it in English. It’s interesting, the NLT, they simply give up, and they say (and I understand why), “There’s simply no way to translate ‘gyne’ as ‘woman’ and have it communicate properly.” So, they say “‘How does that concern you and me?’ Jesus asked.” They simply drop the ‘gyne’ completely out because there is no way to say it in English. So, the point being, that even formal equivalent translations will fail at times, and will have to be interpretive. I mean, they know that; this is not a surprise. But there’s this thought out there that, “Well, if I have a formal equivalent translation, it’s not interpretive.” That’s simply not true. 

There’s an old Italian proverb that, translated into English, is that “Translators are traitors.” And I’m told by people who know Italian that even in moving from Italian to English, you lose something; this confirming the truth of the maxim. Translators are traitors. In other words, we’re all traitors to the meaning of the original text. We might over translate a little, do a little more work to convey the meaning, or we might under translate a little, not convey all the meaning of the English. But it’s virtually impossible to hit the nail on the head when it comes to translations, and so there’s always a little bit of traitor going on in terms of the original meaning of the text. Anyway, that is formal equivalent translations, good and bad. 

5. Function Equivalence (NIV) 

The next main category is called ‘functional equivalent’ translations, or now they’re using more the word ‘dynamic equivalent’ translations. And the NIV and perhaps the NLT, although we’ll talk about that in a bit, fit into this category. In a functional equivalent, they’re not concerned about the grammar. They don’t care if this is a participle. They don’t care if it’s seven words in Greek. The question is, what is the Greek saying, what does it mean, and what words do I use to convey the same meaning in English? Okay, so that’s the basic distinction; they’re falling on that side of the knife. And there are some really good things about functional equivalent translations. One is that they do convey meaning; they’re understandable; they make sense. I remember my son, when he was younger, was reading a formal equivalent translation, and he came to me and said, “Dad, I don’t understand it.” So, I went and bought him an NLT, and he… “I love it, I can actually understand it!” So that’s the advantage of these functional equivalent translations. They’re much more understandable because the translators are being a little more interpretive to do a little bit better job at conveying the meaning of the passage. And they tend to be better English; they don’t make the disciples or the writers sound ignorant. They write in proper English and good English.  

The problem with functional equivalent translations, as you might expect, is that they can become too interpretive. In other words, in an attempt to get the meaning across, we have to make decisions, or we have to add in words to convey that meaning. And so, there’s a little more of the translator present in a functional equivalent translation. Again, let me give you an example, and let me stress: all translations are interpretive. It’s not like this is a problem just with functional equivalent translations. It’s a problem with all. But, let me give you an example. Have you ever heard someone say, “Well, if a person’s divorced, they can’t be an elder in the church?” And you say, “Where does the Bible say that?” “Oh, it’s 1st Timothy 3:2.” Okay, let’s clear this up right from the beginning. The word ‘divorce’ does not occur in 1st Timothy 3:2. The word ‘married’ doesn’t occur in 1st Timothy 3:2. It’s not there. Get an interlinear look if you don’t believe me. Those words don’t exist. If you go word for word, the requirement for an elder is that he be “Of one of woman man,” or “Of one of wife husband.” In other words, the word for ‘woman’ can also be ‘wife.’ The word for ‘man’ can also be ‘husband.’ But there’s an added problem. If that’s not hard enough, there’s an added problem, and that is, in English word order is used to convey meaning. So, if you have a verb, you want to know who’s doing the action of the verb, where the subject is, you look in front of it. If you want to see who’s receiving the action of the verb, the direct object, you look at the word that follows it, right? So, word order affects meaning. In Greek, there’s a different linkage at work; so that the subject can come after the verb, the direct object can come before the verb, they can all come at the end of a sentence; they can be all over the place. There is a standard order for Greek sentences, but you really don’t have to follow it at all. 

What you do, then, in Greek, one of the things that determines order is that when you want to emphasize something, you move it to the front of the sentence. And again, because of this linkage system (called ‘case endings’), you can push the word or the phrase that you want to emphasize forward, and then put the subject or direct object, or whatever, later. We do the same thing somewhat in English: “For by grace you have been saved.” You hear the emphasis? It’s by grace. Subject: ‘you,’ ‘been saved’: verb. So, I mean, English can do it a little, but Greek can do it a lot. And so usually the words at the beginning of a sentence are the ones that have slightly more emphasis. The reason that’s important is that the emphasis in this requirement is on ‘one;’ “Of one of woman man,” or “Of one of wife husband.”  

Okay, how are you going to translate that? You have to be interpretive, and you have to be really interpretive. The odd thing in this phrase is that we can’t find this phrase anywhere in Greek literature. We can go to the Perseus Project, and we can do searches for this phrase. It doesn’t come up anywhere in any known Greek literature. One of the questions I have for Paul is, “Why did you use such an odd phrase?” Now, my guess is he’ll say, “Oh, it’s kind of a slang expression, Bill; if you really knew Greek you would know what I was saying.” But…we don’t know what this expression means, not for sure. And that’s why when people say “An elder can’t be divorced,” they need a little dose of Greek and a larger dose of humility, because we don’t know for sure what the passage says. Alright? 

But look at the translations. ESV translates: “Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife.” So, we took the position that it’s a husband, not a man; a wife, not a woman. And we said, ‘the husband of one wife;’ tried to stay as vanilla as we could. But you notice, even in doing that, we’ve lost all the emphasis on ‘one.’ We say “A husband of one wife.’ You don’t hear the emphasis on ‘one.’ You almost hear the emphasis ‘they have to be married,’ which is, historically, one of the positions, interpretive positions, on this verse (for the most part, discounted today). But you lose the emphasis on the ‘one.’ 

But it’s really interesting to look at the other translations. The New RSV says, “…married only once.” Wow! See what they’re doing? They’re keying off the emphatic position of the ‘one,’ and they’re taking it as ‘wife and husband.’ The 1984 version of the NIV says “…the husband of but one wife.” Where’s the word ‘but’ from? Emphatic position of ‘one.’ The New Living (and I think they’re right on this one) is that “He must be faithful to his wife.” Now we have an expression today, “A one-woman kind of guy.” And I’m not saying that’s the equivalent; anyway, they’re not exactly the same thing. But it gets at what I think Paul is saying: that we’re talking an elder, overseer, must be faithful. The false teachers in Ephesus were sexually active, especially among the young widows, and Paul is saying “No, that’s not what an elder is; an elder is somebody faithful to his wife.” (Which is also the translation of the 2011 NIV.)  

So, the point, though, of this (and that was just an illustration), but the point is that in functional equivalent, as in all translations, they have to be interpretative, and sometimes, if they’re really committed to conveying the meaning, they have to be a lot more interpretative than even they’re probably comfortable with doing. 

6. Paraphrase 

There is a third category and I’m going to call it ‘paraphrase.’ The word ‘paraphrase’ is used in a lot of different ways. But that’s the only word I can think of to describe this third category. And perhaps the New Living belongs in this. The New Living is right in between these two categories, but there are places where it is incredible paraphrastic. J.B. Phillips’ translation is a fantastic translation. My mom became a Christian reading J.B. Phillips and C.S. Lewis, so I love J.B. Phillips. The translation’s really good. But it is very paraphrastic. It’s very interpretative. It reads in very much modern, in his case, British English. And these are good if you understand what’s going on. The good part is that it often will say things in different ways that it helps you look at the verse a different way. Let me give you an example. In Romans 12:2, the NIV says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Okay, a very famous verse. Phillips comes along and says, “Don’t let the world squeeze you into its own mold, but let God remold your minds from within.” Alright…uh, ‘squeeze,’ ‘transformed,’ ‘remold,’ ‘renewing;’ okay, that’s pushing it. It’s not strictly a translation; it’s more a paraphrase. 

But it really helps you understand, and in this case very accurately understand, what Paul is saying. By the way, let me just mention on the side about Phillips. All other translations, other than Phillips and The Living, were done—are done by committees. And I would never try to do a translation by myself, not one that was going to be disseminated widely and used. You need committees because we all hear things differently. We all have different registers, and so we want to bounce words off, and so many times in committee meetings I’ll say, “Well, I think we should use this word,” and someone will look at me and go, “Bill, I think I hear that word totally different than you.” And they do. So, translations are generally done by committees. That’s what makes J.B. Phillips so unusual, that he was able to produce a reliable paraphrase by himself. But anyway, that’s what paraphrases are good for. They’re so understandable, and they are helpful to you to convey meaning. 

What’s bad about them is that they’re usually very interpretative, and when you read them, you don’t know whether you’re reading the Bible or you’re reading additional words that are interpretative in terms of the meaning. And that’s why I would never study from an NLT or for Phillips. Now I love to read them, and I’m going to talk in my conclusion about when you should read them. But there's just so much of the translator in these paraphrases, that you have to be very, very careful; you certainly can’t do word studies based on a paraphrase because you don’t know whether that word is the translator’s added in word, or whether it actually is in the Bible.  

Let me give you an example. I came across this the other day. In Acts 27:17, Paul’s on his trip to Rome, and they’re in the middle of the storm. They’re fearing shipwreck. And the ESV translates verse 17 this way: it says, “Fearing that they would run aground on the Syrtis…” (which is what the Greek says), “…on the Syrtis…” (and it capitalizes the ‘s’ because it’s a place), “…they lowered the gear…” (which is kind of an odd translation; it’s a sea anchor; don’t know why we didn’t say ‘sea anchors,’ but anyway) “…they lowered the gear and thus they were driven along.” Well, it's not English, right? “And thus, they were driven along.” Well, it means driven along toward the Syrtis with the sea anchor slowing them down, but nobody says “and thus they were driven along.” But anyway, they translated the Syrtis. The NIV came along, and again, I wasn’t on the committee when this happened, but I can hear the conversation; “What’s the Syrtis?” Well, in the ESV, they said, “Go look it up.” NIV goes, “Ah, we need to fall off from the side of meaning here.” So, they translated it, “They (meaning the sailors) were afraid they would run aground on the sand bars of Syrtis.” Okay, so the Syrtis is a place where there are sand bars that would, the Mediterranean gets very shallow there. 

The NLT comes along and says, “No, we need to fall further off the side of the knife blade,” and they translate “They were afraid of being driven across the sand bars of Syrtis off the African coast.” Uh, ‘off the African coast?’ It’s not in the Bible, and personally, I think that the NLT crossed over the line between translator and expositor, translator and commentary, translator and study Bible. It’s hard enough to read “…the sand bars of Syrtis.” But it’s really hard to read “…off the coast of North Africa.” So does it help you to understand what’s going on? Does it help you know where the ship was headed? Absolutely. Is it what the Bible says? Absolutely not! Now that’s an extreme example for the NLT. In fact, it’s one of the most extreme examples I found, but it illustrates what’s good and bad about paraphrases, right? That they’re so interpretative, they’re so trying to help you understand the meaning. And that’s a good thing, right? I mean, it’s a good thing to help people try to understand what the Bible means. You just have to be aware that’s what’s going on in these paraphrases.  

7. Running Commentary 

There is a fourth category, and I just had to put this in there, that belongs for the original Living Bible and the Message. And I just call them ‘running commentaries.’ There is simply so much of Kenneth Taylor in the Living, and the Living has a—God used the Living as one of the tools to save thousands of people to Heaven, into Heaven. I mean, so many good things in it. But there is so much Kenneth Taylor in the Message [recte the Living Bible], that you can’t study from it. There’s so much of Eugene Peterson in the Message that you can’t study from it. And what I tell people is read them to see what the translators think it means, or maybe more modern ways of expressing Biblical truths. But I would never call them a Bible; they’re more running commentaries. 

8. Test Case – Romans 16:16 

Let me give you a single test case, and this will kind of summarize the kinds of issues. In Romans 16:16 Paul tells the Roman church to “Greet one another…” and the NIV, it says, “Greet one another with a holy kiss.” Now what on earth is a ‘holy kiss?’ And it is the word ‘holy’ (that’s the Greek word behind it). What’s a ‘holy kiss’? See, it doesn’t really convey meaning, does it? Because I don’t know what a ‘holy kiss’ is. The Good News Bible, later called the TEV, comes along and says, “Greet one another with a brotherly kiss.” See, they’re interpreting the word ‘holy’ to mean ‘brotherly’ in the way that Christians, brothers and sisters, would greet one another. That’s pretty good, actually. ‘Holy’ miscommunicates; ‘brotherly’ at least gets closer to what the meaning is. Later on, the Good News changed it to say, “Greet one another with the kiss of peace” (which strikes me as a very odd translation). My guess is they wanted to get away from the word ‘brother,’ and so ‘brotherly kiss’ went to ‘kiss of peace’ (vastly inferior, I would argue, translation). The original Living says, “Shake hands warmly with each other.” Now, before you snicker, that’s a really good translation. “Shake hands warmly with each other.” (I’ll come back and tell you why). Phillips says, “Give each other a hearty handshake all around.” I’m assuming that’s more British than American English, but “Give each other a hearty handshake all around.” The second edition of the NLT says, “Greet each other in Christian love.” Again, just like they did with ‘woman’ in John 2, they simply threw out the idea of a kiss. They said, “There’s no way to convey what a holy kiss is, so just ‘Greet one another in Christian love.’”  

Alright, how would you translate ‘holy kiss’? Welcome to my world! Yeah, how would you do that? Well, I think what Paul is meaning is that in church, in the church assembly, when brothers and sisters are together, they are to greet each other in the standard way in which people greet each other, but with affection, with purity perhaps. I guess today it’s a hug; I don’t really like, I don’t like hugging other women, I’m sorry. I tell people “I’m married, I don’t do that.” That’s just me. Especially when I was a pastor, I was very uncomfortable with this hug, hug, hug stuff. But that’s me, okay? I like to shake people’s hands. I wish we could bring a good hearty handshake back. But the problem is when I go to shake a younger person’s hand and they’re expecting a hug, it’s kind of like, “That was weird!” It’s almost taken in a negative sense now. So, how do you greet one another in Christian love? What is the standard way? Maybe it’s a hug. I guess I’m ok with that. But, the “hearty handshake,” the Living: “Shake hands warmly with each other.” Greet each other and really mean it. That’s what Paul’s telling the Roman church. How are you going to translate it? Well, it all depends upon your translation philosophy. By the way, on the online lecture, there’s a chart of translations and where they kind of fit along this continuum. So, if you want to see at least where I think they belong, then you can do that. 

9. Agnosticism 

Before I close, though, on this whole issue, I want to say one other thing, and it’s just because it came up the other day in discussion. And if it had just come up in normal discussion with someone at the barbershop, or whatever, I would have dismissed it. But this came from someone that was raised in a conservative Christian home, and I was shocked to hear what (it happened to be a woman), what she said. Basically, she said that “We can’t really know what the words of the Greek and Hebrew mean since we don’t live in the same cultural context, and therefore we can’t make any definitive statements about what anything in the Bible means.” Well, I’ve never heard this kind of historical or linguistic ‘agnosticism’ in my life. But what she was saying was that because the Bible is written in different contexts, we really have no idea what it means. 

Boy, it’s hard to know how to respond to that. It is a totally unrealistic view of language and of history. Alright? Can I understand what anyone means in German? Well, I may not understand exactly what they mean. I may not catch all the nuances. But if you know the language, you can catch the gist of what’s being said. You’re not completely blind to what they are trying to convey, right? And you’re talking about cultural differences. According to this position, no man can understand what any woman says, or vice versa. Because in broad general stereotypical terms that are only generally true, want to be careful, women and men have different gender cultures, and does that mean you can’t understand them? No. Robin and I have been married over 33 years now; we’re very good at communicating. And there are, still at times, when we look at each other and go, “I have no idea what you just said.” We can repeat the words, but we have no idea what they meant. Well, yeah, I mean, even though there’s different cultures, even though if you’re dealing with different languages, even if our knowledge isn’t exact, you can certainly understand (especially if you keep talking about it) the gist of what the other person’s saying. Alright? We don’t need to be this negative. You know, the Google translator, I’m told, translates a billion words a day. So many things that you can convey meaning from one language to another, alright? But this ‘hyper-agnostic’ view of language is just simply, it’s untenable. It doesn’t make any sense at all. Our knowledge of the Greek and Hebrew may not be perfect, but it’s pretty close, pretty close. 

10. Conclusion 

Alright, so let me conclude. Three things: Number one: you need to understand the limitations of a translation. And if you use the NASB or the ESV, you need to understand there are pros but there are cons. So, there’re limitations. If you use an NIV or NLT, then you also need to understand what they’re good at doing, and what the challenges are, that kind of translation. You have to know their limitations.  

Second of all, please, you can trust your Bibles. My experience in translations (I absolutely love doing translation work), and my experience in translations is that there’s always a reason. I have never found a random translation, whether it’s the NASB on one end or the NLT on the other one. I look at them, I look at them long enough, and if I do my exegesis and my word studies sufficient, I can always go, “Oh, that’s why they do what they do.” Or, “That’s why the NLT does what it does.” I may agree or disagree; that’s not the point. The point is that there’s always reasons. And I have to tell you, I obviously know all the ESV translators. I know all of the current NIV translators. I know most of the Holman Christian Standard translators. I know a lot of the NLT guys and gals. These translators are good people. They love the Lord, as far as I know. They certainly all have a very high view of Scripture. They’re certainly all very good scholars, and they don’t do random. They don’t do random. There’s reasons for why they do what they do. And so, when I hear someone ripping into a translation as if the translators are incompetent, that tells me a lot more about the person speaking than the translator. Translations are done by good people in good committees; it’s a slow, methodical, sometimes painful process. And what is produced is very trustworthy. 

I wrote a book called Greek For The Rest Of Us. And it was basically to learn enough Greek so you can make sense of your computer programs; so, you can do Greek word studies and understand better commentaries, that kind of thing. And when I went into it, I did a tremendous amount of comparison of the different translations. And I had a hoot doing this. I really, really enjoyed it! And I went in expecting to find all kinds of contradictions; I didn’t find that. In fact, I found very, very few contradictions among the translations. What I found was that translations like the NASB and the ESV tend to be a little more ambiguous in these problem passages. Translations like the NIV and the NLT tend to be a little more specific. “The love of Christ constrains me;” well, is that my love for Christ? Or Christ’s love for me? You know, on these more ‘word for word,’ they’re going to say “…love for Christ” and you’ve got to figure it out. Get over the NLT, they’re going to take a position. The NLT hates ambiguity; it wants to communicate clearly and precisely, and one way to do that is to remove that ambiguity. And so, when there’s an ambiguous Greek construction, they take an interpretative position, I think almost always, almost always. But that’s what I found as you translate these things; “the Syrtis,” “the sandbars of the Syrtis,” “the sandbars of the Syrtis off the African coast.” Some are more ambiguous; others are more specific. That’s the difference that I found in translations. But they don’t disagree with each other. It’s an issue of ambiguity and specificity. So, you can trust all of these standard Bible translations; good people, good work; just different translation philosophies. 

And thirdly, let me really encourage you to always read two Bibles. I think a really good reading pattern is to pick up the ESV or the NIV, and make that your dominant Bible; make that your study Bible. That’s the one you highlight, markup, and write notes in, and you keep. You need to focus in, for your study, on one translation. But then what you should always do is have a second version that is in a different grouping. So, if you’re in the ESV and NIV for your study Bible, get an NLT, or get a Phillips, and read it as a balance. Certainly, if you like to read the NLT as your standard Bible, get an NIV or an ESV, or a Holman Christian, something that will provide a balance, a different way of looking. But I would really encourage you to always have two Bibles, a main one, and then a second one just to kind of help you see verses from a different standpoint.  

But the main point of this session is, simply, Bibles are different, not contradictory, but different. Because there’s different translation philosophies; do you err on the side of words, or do you err on the side of meaning? Know where your Bible fits in that continuum, and read it, and enjoy it, and trust it.