In preparation for our bible study tonight, I’ve been using Thomas Nelson’s new Bible translation – the Voice. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out, you need to. I’ve added a link to a free .pdf copy below.

A Cool Format

Here’s what I instantly loved about the Voice. It’s written in a screenplay format. Character dialogue stands out from the page like a script.

It’s perfect for reading in groups. Instead of having people read a few verses one after the other you can now read the part of Jesus or John or the narrator. It’s made to be voiced.

But it’s useful for personal study as well.

When I taught at Canby Bible College I provided my students with a copy of each gospel without chapter and verse divisions. I then I’d ask them to highlight the dialogue in colors according to character.

The reason is that the identity of the person speaking and what they are saying is more indicative of narrative divisions than our chapter and verses – which sometimes get it wrong.

Dialogue also clues us in on important narrative themes. In the Gospel of Matthew, for instance, the Scribes and Pharisees always call Jesus teacher and never lord while the disciples always call him lord and never teacher. That is one important exception.  Judas, right before he betrays Jesus with a kiss!  But of course we can’t know this unless we pay attention to the dialogue.

The Voice encourages its readers to do just that.

An Important Focus

The format points to the Voice’s even more important focus – helping readers connect with the story of scripture.

The Bible isn’t like a modern novel or movie. It’s a collection of books written by more than 40 different authors on three different continents over the course of 1400 years. And if that wasn’t enough to confuse a generation immersed in modern ways of story telling, the last book is separated from our own time by 2,000 years.

Ancient customs and idioms don’t easily translate into our language and culture. For instance, how might a translation of “it’s raining cats and dogs” sound in spanish? To cope with the apparent disconnect many modern translations become a clutter of charts and footnotes to explain these details to readers.

The voice cleans the page up by bringing out such information within the translation itself. It does this through a Thought-For-Thought method of translation.

Instead of searching for near equivalent words and ordering those words in ways similar to the original text, the Voice translators tried to capture the thought of the biblical writer through phrases that more adequately reflect the authors meaning.

A word like repent for instance becomes “seek forgiveness and change your actions” in Mark 1:15. And “Christ” once again becomes “anointed one” rather than Jesus’ last name.

Tying the whole translation together is the theme of God’s Voice. Genesis 1:1-2 reads

In the beginning, God created everything: the heavens above and the earth below. Here’s what happened. At first the earth lacked shape and was totally empty, and a dark fog draped over the deep while God’s spirit-wind hovered over the surface of the empty waters. Then there was the voice of God.

I love that! The theme is sounded again in the Gospel of John’s opening verse.

Before time itself was measured, the Voice was speaking. The Voice was and is God. This celestial Word remained ever present with the Creator; His speech shaped the entire cosmos. Immersed in the practice of creation, all things that exist were birthed in Him. His breath filled all things with a living, breathing light – a light that thrives in the depths of the darkness blazes through murky bottoms. It cannot and will not be quenched… The Voice took on flesh and became human and chose to live alongside us. (John 1:1-14)

A Great Failure

Translations are never perfect. As I said in a previous post, translation is a balancing act between accuracy and clarity. It’s an impossible task that is never quite right. But I really do like the way that this translation fails. I’m looking forward to using tonight.

If you’d like to experience the Voice yourself you can receive a free .pdf download of the New Testament here.

Without fail!  It happens every time I talk about bible translations.  Someone approaches me and says they’ve heard that the King James Version is the most accurate translation around.

I’m sorry.  It’s not.

• I know its the version your family read, you’re church read and the one you’ve studied, memorized and cherish.
• I know its the most widely distributed translation in English.
• I know it was accurate for its time.

But it’s really time you shelve the King James Version and pick a new translation!  Here’s why.

1. The KJV is not based on the most accurate manuscripts.

If you read the KJV you’re reading things the Biblical authors DID NOT WRITE.  It’s not that it’s translators were in some secret conspiracy to deceive the masses.  They weren’t.  They were working with the best copies they had at the time.  But these copies had errors – errors which entered the text over 1400 years of hand copying hand copies.

The vast majority of these errors were small and unintentional.  If you’ve ever tried copying a lengthy handwritten document you may have experienced some of the following.

• errors caused by sight.
• errors caused by hearing and transcription.
• errors caused by lapses in memory.

But some copyists intentionally changed the text – a fact that later copiers could not rectify because all they had was the copy in front of them.  It’s similar to the errors created and passed on in the game of telephone.  The famous 4th century Bible translator Jerome said,

They write down not what they find but what they think is the meaning, and while they attempt to rectify the errors of others, they merely expose their own.

These copyists made

• spelling and grammar changes
• harmonistic alterations
• factual corrections
• conflations
• and even support for certain doctrines

The later is clearly evident in 1 John 1:7 where the King James reads,

For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

It’s great proof text for the trinity.  The problem is that no church writer quoted it when the doctrine of the trinity was being hammered out in the 3rd and 4th century.  The reason is that not one manuscript contained these words until the late middle ages.  It’s an insertion and not at all what John wrote.

And it’s not the only one.

2. The KJV is not the language we speak today.  

The King James Version may sound poetic but it’s not easily understood by the vast majority of modern English speakers.  And it’s not just because of the thees and thous.  You may have heard some of these words.  But can you tell me what they mean?

abjects, afore, agone, amerce, artificer, bethink, bewray, botch, bray, by and by, caul, chargeable, concupiscenece, coping, cotes, cumbered, dissimulation, doleful, durst, emerods, fan, felloe, firkin, froward, gainsay, grisled, holden, holpen, ignominy, lade, lees, lucre, minish, mote, paps, paradventure, platted, quick, remission, requite, shambles, sheepcote, slow bellies, superfluous, thitherward, twain, unction, wimples, wont 

OK, I’m sure you could get close to their meaning if you read them in context.  But are you sure its the right meaning and not just a faulty guess?

You can learn a lot about the English language from reading the King James Version.  But is that the point of reading the Bible?  To broaden our vocabulary?  I don’t think so.

The dedication to the King James version is the same love Catholics have for language of Latin.  It’s traditional.  It’s what we’ve always done.  But stop and ask yourself does it still work?  Is it helpful?  Or are the people in the pews just hearing someone speak in tongues (1 Corinthians 14:19).

3. There are better versions available!  

It’s perfectly acceptable to read the King James Version IF nothing better is available.  I’ve often read it when it was the only Bible I could find.  But that’s not often the case today!  There are two other translations, the NASB and the ESV which are based upon more accurate manuscripts and that use the King James Word-For-Word method of translation.  While the New KJV attempts to modernize some of the KJV’s language it still does not address the underlying manuscript issues.

What do you think?

I’ll never forget sweet Grandma Lydia’s awkward pause as she read 1 Samuel 20:30 from the Living Bible.

“Saul boiled with rage.  “You son of a b…

You could see that she didn’t know what to do.  She stood there in front of our Sunday School class, a blush spreading across her cheeks.

“Come on,” I said with a smile. “If it’s in the Bible its OK to say.”

She never read it. God bless her!

I like to open discussions of translation with this particular rendering of scripture.  It’s ear-opening to say the least.

It certainly amused me, finding as I did in my daily devotions at the age of 17.   I approached my youth pastor the next Sunday, handed him my bible and said, “God gave me 1 Samuel 20:30 as a word for you” :0.

Don’t worry.  He eventually forgave me.

Such an out-of-place word causes us to wonder about the differences between Bible versions.  What makes a good translation?  Is there one better than the other?

What do you want most in a translation?  Every time I ask my students this question it comes down to these two issues:

Accuracy: we want a translation that is faithful to the original language.
Clarity: we want a translation that is easy to read and understand.

The problem for translators, however, is that these two desires are not easy to meet with equity.  Accuracy and clarity are like two sides of a scale, focus too much on one and the other side gets out of balance.

Words in one language, for instance, don’t have the same range of meaning that they do in another.  In John 3:3 for instance, Jesus tells Nicodimus, “no one can see the Kingdom of God unless they are born anothen.” The word anothen means a “second time” but it also means “from above.”  No English word possesses this range of meaning.  Any single word used in translation will at least partially obscure its meaning.

Likewise, the ordering of words in translation can upset the balance of accuracy and clarity.  We say, “This is my friend.”  We don’t say, “Friend my this is.”  But in Hebrew and Greek the later construction is quite natural and reveals a great deal about the the meaning of the sentence.  We know that stressing different words changes the implication of a sentence.

• This is my friend. Neutral
• This is my friend. As opposed to someone else’s friend.
• This is my friend. As opposed to my enemy or something else.

The free ordering of words in Hebrew and Greek reveal the stress on any given word.  It tells us what ideas are more important and what ideas are less.  Reordering the words so they make sense in English without losing meaning can be difficult.

Finding the right balance between accuracy and clarity is the reason we find so many versions today.  To this end, Bible translations break down into three groups, each representing a particular method.

Word-For-Word translations (a.k.a formal equivalence): The translator tries to find the nearest equivalent words and to place them in as close a corresponding order to the original text as possible.  The NASB, ESV, KJV and NKJV follow this translation method.

Thought-For-Thought translations (a.k.a. dynamic equivalence): The translator attempts to grasp the meaning of the sentence or phrase and to translate that meaning in whatever words or phrases that are deemed most useful. The NIV, TNIV, NET and the NLT follow this more modern method.

Transliterations:  These “translators” follow a Thought-For-Thought method but begin with a Word-For-Word translation instead of the Greek text.  They are twice removed from the original language.  Like a copy of a copy they are interpretations on top of translations.  The Message and the Living Bible are the more popular representations of this group.

A Word-For-Word translation of 1 Samuel 20:30 reads,

Then Saul’s anger burned against Jonathan and he said to him, ‘You son of a perverse rebellious woman!’ (NASB)

Though it may not be a Word-For-Word rendering, I think the Living Bible rendering captures Saul’s thought quite nicely.

What do you think?