accuracy and bias in english new testament translation.pdf

7/27/2019 Accuracy and Bias in English New Testament Translation.pdf

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Jason David BeDuhn has written a book,

Truth in Translation Accuracy and Bias in English

Translations of the New Testament.(2003)

not to be missed by any serious one who is concerned with Bible translation,

especially who is working in the translation work.

Here in this PDF file are Introduction (pp. xiii xix) and the Content from

the book for the readers' thoughts.

Though the topics in his book may not be accepted or agreed as he argues,

each issue he discussed merits serious consideration. My own brief comment

on each is to be made and included in this file in future updates.

http://tiny.cc/bostonreaders - for new English translation of N.T. in IRENT

series as an online serial uploaded as they are being updated.
http://tiny.cc/bostonreadershttp://tiny.cc/bostonreadershttp://tiny.cc/bostonreaders


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TRUT INTRANSLATION

ccuracy and Bias in English Translationso he New Testament

ason David BeDuhn

University Press of America Inc.Lanham New York Oxford


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INTRODU TION

What do I mean by the words "accuracy and "b ias used in this book'stitle? By writing this book, I am involving myself in debates that havebeen going on for a long time before me and no doubt wi ll continue longafter me. People have already been throwing around the words"a ccuracy" and bias" quite freely, and I am merely taking up this rhetoricand focusing it on solid reasons and criteria for judging the applicabilityof the words to particular cases.

People are quick to charge inaccuracy and bias in someone else'sBible. On what basis do they make such charges? Charges of inaccuracyand bias are based upon the fact that a translation has deviated from somenorm of what the translation should be. So what is the norm? t seemsthat for many the norm is the King James Version of the Bible. fa newtranslation varies very far from that norm, it is criticized as i n ~ c u r t e an Qerroneous,. and its translators are suspected of ulterior motives inproducing a different translation, a hidden bias that perverts the truth ofthe KJV. You hear it all the time: someone has "c hanged the Bible byoffering a new translation. The change" is from the standard of the KingJames Version, which was, after all , presented as the "standard"translation. If a translation differs from the standard," clearly it must bewrong.

Unfortunately , this view of things is based on ignorance of themost basic facts about the Bible. The King James Version was not the firstBible (not even the first English Bible) ; it was itself a translation . t just


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xiv TRUTH IN TRANSLATIONhappened to be a translation that was used by many people for a longtime. Age adds a certain sanctity to things. It starts to seem that it hasalways been that way and any change is a dangerous innovation. Whena new translation is made, it is of course, different from the longestablished KJV, and people fault it for that. But what else can people do?The only thing they have to compare a new translation to is the oldtranslation. They have no means to assess real accuracy and biasbecause they do not have a valid norm by which to compare translations.

But the fact that the general pub I c does not have access to avalid norm does not mean that one does no t exist. In fact there is such anorm that is available to anyone who is willing to take the trouble to learnhow to use it: the original Greek New Testament.

Truth in advertising in the realm of Bible translation centers onthe word translation. By claiming to be a translation, an English Bibleis being put forward as an accurate communication of the meaning ofthoriginal text, in the case of the New Testament, the original Greek text. Ifa translation freely departs from the meaning of the Greek, and rewrites theBible, leaving some things out and adding other things in , it must bejudged very poor in its accuracy. Notice that I said sticks to the me ningof the original Greek text. Accuracy does not require following the Greekin a hyper-literal, word-for-word way. Such a translation is what we callan interlinear translation, and it is not really a translation at all, as youcan see if you ever try to read an interlinear. An interlinear is a stage onthe way to a translation, correctly identifying the basic meaning andfunction of each Greek word, but not yet assembling that information intocoherent English sentences .

The important thing in judgments of accuracy is that thetranslators have found EngI sh words and phrases that correspond to theknown meaning of the Greek, and put them together into Englishsentences that dutifully follow what the Greek syntax communicates. If atranslator chooses rare or otherwise unattested meanings for Greek words,and constructs English sentences which do not straightforwardlycommunicate the most likely sense of the original, then he or she isproducing an inaccurate translation. Comparison to the original Greek isabsolutely necessary to make judgments of accuracy or inaccuracy.Without the Greek as a factor in the comparison, no valid judgment can bepassed. Bias comes into the picture when we try to identify why atranslation shows inaccuracy in its handling of the original Greek text. So


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INTRODUCTION XVfirst we have to demonstrate deviation from the meaning o the Greek, andonly then can we see i bias is the cause. After all, everyone makesmistakes. Furthermore , in any translation there are several ways to conveythe meaning o the original. There is a very good and untroubling reasonwhy Bible translations differ among themselves. Put simply, Greek is notEnglish. Greek words do not have a one-to-one correspondence withEnglish words in terms o their meaning. Greek sentence structure andpatterns o style differ radically from the English structure and stylisticsthat would be used to get the same idea across. So there is room forlegitimate variation in translation. Bias does not necessarily enter into it

Bias is involved when differences in translation cannot beexplained by reasons based in the likely meaning o the original Greek.When a translation seems to come out o nowhere, we are likely to findthat it involves certain ideas that the translator would like to see in theBible. Most people interested enough to undertake the arduous work omaking a Bible translation have an investment in a particularunderstanding o Christianity, and this investment can affect theirobjectivity.Since there are many different forms o Christianity, bias in NewTestament translation can be in various directions. Sometimes, translatorsmake their biases explicit, by identifying themselves with certaindenominations or interpretive agendas. The New American Bible wasprepared by Catholics, for example. The New World Translation wasproduced by Jehovah's Witnesses. The New International Versiontranslators confessed explicitly their commitment to "evangelical"Christian doctrines and biblical harmony. And so forth. But eventranslations made by broad inter-denominational committees can besubject to the collective, "mainstream Christian" bias o the translators.The hardest bias to catch is one that is widely shared, and it is quiteunderstandable that the common views shared by modern Christians omany denominations would influence how the Bible is translated.Understandable, but not acceptable. The success o numbers or o timedoes not guarantee truth .

Accuracy in Bible translation has nothing to do with majorityvotes; it has to do with letting the biblical authors speak, regardless owhere their words might lead. t has to do with strictly excluding biastowards later developments oi-Chri?tian though . Avoiding bias involvesobeying probable mean rather than wished-for mean The firstchoice when faced with options o how best to translate the original Greek


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xvi TRUTH IN TR NSL TIONusually should be the most obvious, straightforward, unspecializedunderstanding of the word or phrase. Any other choice needs to bejustified by strong evidence from the literary context or historical andcultural environment. Such evidence can sometimes make a less obviousmeaning possible, even probable; but it cannot rule out the other possiblemeanings allowed by the known rules of the Greek language.

When there is no way to resolve rival possible meanings, wereally can t blame translators for following the one that corresponds withtheir beliefs. But they owe it to their readers to make a note of theuncertainty. In passing judgment on how well or poorly translators havedone in avoiding bias, we have to give them the benefit of the doubt. Ifthe translation given is at least within the realm of possibility for themeaning of the Greek, we must grant that fact and not be too hard on thetranslators for preferring one possible meaning over another. But if theystretch beyond that rather generous range and reach for the truly novel ,rare, or unlikely sense of the Greek, we must be very suspicious of theirmotives. We have to wonder why they couldn t let the Bible say what ithas to say, why they had to put some other idea there in place of the morelikely, obvious meaning of the original biblical text.

Accurate, unbiased translations are based on I) linguisticcontent, (2) literary context, and (3) historical and cultural environment.The very same three things are consulted to assess a translation once itis done. We use these three bases for making and assessing NewTestament translations because we presume certain things about how theNew Testament was written by its authors. Our reliance on linguisticcontent presupposes that an author used Greek correctly, in line with thelinguistic conventions of his or her time. If he or she didn t, we reallyhave no way to know what might be meant. Our use of literary contextassumes that an author was relatively consistent and non-contradictoryin what he or she said. If the author has not assembled a coherent pieceof writing, we would be unable to judge our ability to understand it Ourattention to the historical and cultural environment presumes that anauthor worked with images and ideas available in his or her world (even ifworking to redefine or transform them), and that a contemporaneousaudience was the intended readership. If the books of the New Testamentwere written in a way that was incomprehensible to the earliest Christians,they never would have been valued, preserved, and collected intoscripture.

Having identified I) linguistic content, (2) I terary context, and


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INTRODUCTION xvii(3) historical and cultural environment, as the basis for valid assessmentof Bible translation, it follows that the person qualified to assess Bibletranslations is the person who knows these three things. Let's considerthese credentials more closely.

In order to have any abil ity to make a j u g e m ~ n t about theaccuracy of a translation of the New Testament from its original Greek intomodern English, you have to know how to read Greek, and the particularkind of Greek in which the New Testament was orig inally written(something known as Kaine or common Greek). I am sure this seemsobv ious to you. Yet, amaz ingly the majority of individuals who publiclypass judgement on Bible translations -- in print, on television and radio,on the internet, and in letters they send to me -- do not know how to readGreek.

The obvious question to be asked here is: then how can they te what is a good translation and what is not? The fact is that they cannot.Their opinions are based not on the accuracy of translating Greek wordsin to English words, but on the agreement of the final product with theirown beliefs about what the Bible must say. In practice, people who do notread Greek compare a new translation with an existing one of which theyapprove. Any difference is judged negatively and is co nsidered to bechanging or distorting the text of the Bible. But differences are bound toarise in new translations because Greek words often can mean severaldifferent things in English and, besides that, the good news is that withevery passing generation we are learning to read Kaine Greek better as welearn more about it.

So the first question you shou ld ask anyone who claims to havethe credentials to speak about the translation of the New Testament is: Doyou know how to read Kaine Greek? f not, then you have no basis torender an opinion , other than to rely on other people who do read KoineGreek. If we Greek readers disagree among ourselves, then you mustexamine our arguments and evidence and decide who has the better case.

When it comes to using literary context to assess the accuracyof a translation , anyone who has spent a lot of time reading the NewTestament has made a beginning on mastering this credential. It involvesrecognizing the different types of writing contained in scripture. Paul'sletters are a very different sort of literature than a narrative such as theGospel according to Mark, which again is quite distinct from a visionaryaccount like the Book of Revelation. These discrete forms of writingshape the meaning of the passages they contain . The distinctive


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xviii TRUTH IN TRANSLATIONvocabularies, metaphors, and emphases o the individual authors alsosupply the context for understanding individual passages they wrote.

But knowing the New Testament inside and out is only thebeginning. The books o the New Testament belong to a larger literarycontext that includes early Jewish and Christian traditions o writing. TheJewish scriptures (the Christian Old Testament), for example, form anessential context for understanding the expression o the New Testament.Other Jewish and Christian writings produced at the same time as the NewTestament, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Christian apostolic fathers,help us to grasp the literary conventions followed in the New Testament,as well as the characteristics that set the New Testament apart. The NewTestament was not written in isolati on, but emerged from a larger literaryworld by which, and against which, it was shaped. So familiarity withliterary context in both the narrow and broad sense is an important skill toapply to assessing Bible translations.

Knowing the dictionary definition o isolated Greek words, orhaving a sense o literary conventions are good stmiing points, but theyare not sufficient to make someone able to make or assess Bibletranslations. Words change their mea nin g over time, and one has to befamiliar with how particular words and phrases were understood inparticular times and pl aces by reading writings other than the biblicalones . Moreover, when we write or talk, the full meaning is not in thedictionary meaning o the words alone, but in the references and allusionso our imagery, metaphors, and figures o speech. Some terms have veryspecialized meaning for particular groups o people. Some statementsassume familiarity on the part o their hearers about the topic beingspoken of. For example, a great deal o what Jesus had to say refers to andbuilds upon the ideas and images o lst century Judaism. Withouteducation in how Ist century Judaism operated and what it valued, it iseasy to misunderstand what Jesus is talking about, or to be downrightbaffled by it

This kind o background knowledge is available to hi storiansfrom the literature and archaeology o the period. The exact nuance o aphrase or argument in the New Testament may depend on this backgroundknowledge. So it is important to have some credentials in this area. If youhaven t had the opportunity to receive this sort o education, it is ne vertoo late. You can easily fill your home library with books on the subject,o which dozens are published every yea r. In this area, too, we arelearning more all the time. But if someone ignores the historical context o


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INTRODUCTION XIXthe Bible, and has no background in the subject, they are in a poorposition to assess a translation of the Bible. ll they can do is argue thedictionary meaning of a term, or the normative understanding of a conceptfound in their church, against a translation th t takes cognizance of thelanguage in its own time and place, as it was known to the actual authorsofthe Bible.Thousands of biblical researchers in America have these threecredentials, not to mention the many more in other English-speakingcountries, and I am one of them. That is why I feel somewhat justified inwriting this book. But just as importantly, I have an attitude that puts meat a distinct advantage to write a book such as this. I am a committedhistorian dedicated to discovering what Christians said and did twothousand years ago. I have no stake in proving that those Christians aremost like a particular modern denomination of Christianity, or that theyadhered to particular doctrines that match those of modern Christians. Ifit turns out that they did, fine; if not, then I certainly am not going to faultthem for that. If you are looking for my bias, I guess you could say thatI have a bias in favor of historical truth, the accurate reconstruction andcomprehension of the past. If the Bible as it was written two thousandyears ago presents obstacles and challenges to modern Christians, if itdoes not so simply conform to what modern Christians want or expect itto say, I consider that a problem for modern Christians , not for the Bible.

That said, I m not asking you to just take my word for things . Iwould be a pretty poor educator if I expected you to adhere to the cult ofthe expert. fn fact , I encourage distrust. I don t want you to trust me; Iwant you to be persu ded by the information I provide. Check my claims;scrutinize my arguments. I haven t studied all of this material for so manyyears for you to trust me without proof. Proof is the coin of the academictrade. If I don t have evidence --lingui stic, literary, and historical facts-to back up what I say, I would be uttering nothing but idle opinion. I haveset out for you the necessary tools of the work we have before us . Walkwith me awhile in the pages that follow as we put these tools to use, soyou can see how they help us to determine accuracy and bias in Bibletranslation. When we are finished , f hope you wi be motivated tocontinue your exploration and to develop your ability to use these toolsto pursue further questions of your own .


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ONTENTSPrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroductionThe Origins ofModern English BiblesThe Work of TranslationMajor English TranslationsBowing to BiasGrasping at AccuracyWhen is a Man not a Man?Probing the Implicit MeaningWords Together and ApartAn Uncertain ThroneTampering with TensesAnd the Word was . What?The Spirit Writ LargeA Final WordAppendix: The Use of Jehovah in the NWBibliographyIndex

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