Original URL Wednesday, March 30, 2022
Transcript
good evening everyoneuh so tonight i thought we would take a look rather than
looking at
the bible uh rather we're gonna look at our bibles and uh talk a little bit about translations and different bible translations that we all might have and there are three main questions that really we're going to try and answer tonight one is going to be what is being translated what has been translated
second question is going to be about how that is being translated and finally
why it's being translated and the importance of
the bible being translated as many times it has been
so to start
i thought we would begin
excuse me by taking a look at uh the
time before the bible was even in english
now by the time that the bible was first translated into english it was before uh before that it was translated into latin and it was something called the latin vulgates
and this was a translation that was used by the roman catholic church and they held a certain level of authority over the known world
and even over the word of god at the time um
in particular they prohibited the translation of the bible into common english and instead they insisted that the common people would simply hear the word of god read and expounded from from latin from again this latin vulgate translation
and it was this
prohibition this uh this ban on translating the bible that actually naturally you know as as
humans are naturally rebellious led them to the controversial and dangerous task of translating the bible into english
and
thankfully they did
and the first one to undertake the duty of translating the bible into english was a man by the name of john wycliffe
and it was in the late 1300s and this is just a brief little history class that i'm sure
rich would do a much better job with but in the late 1300s uh wycliffe created the first english translation of the bible however it was translated not from the original greek and hebrew that we might think about but rather this was translated out of the latin and again this was wycliffe's bible and
his work inspired
future bible translations into the common english
william tyndale is uh the next person of note here who was no doubt inspired by uh the first english bible by john uh john wycliffe but he continued this very dangerous task of translating the bible into english
uh and this time he actually did translate it from the greek and the hebrew texts
and as a result he was labeled a heretic and actually executed and murdered for his work in the early 1500s
and then shortly after that and and
with tyndale's bible that you know inspired a multitude of other english bibles and finally we get to
uh the king james version and
its revision the new king james
uh version and these are
i skipped ahead uh
so this does bring us to the king james version not the new king james and ahead of myself uh but
um it brings us to what's likely the most
widely used translation within our community here at the very least in the top three uh and it is the king james version and it was inspired by uh this man william tyndale's work to first translate the bible from the original greek and hebrew into english
and
it shares a lot of similarities the king james shares a lot of similarities with this with the tyndale bible and most notably
are the greek
manuscripts that are used to translate the new testament
when
like translation scholars will will sort of
talk about you know the different different texts and manuscripts used usually the old testament is pretty cut and dry but it's the new testament manuscripts that have a bit more
uh
a bit more of an argument one way or another and the king james version and its revision the new king james version are the only two bible versions today i think i'm as far as i know uh that use
and base its translation of the new testament on a set of greek manuscript greek manuscripts that are known as the textus receptus
now that's latin for the received text and this is the same greek manuscripts that william tyndale was was uh
basing his translation on his original english translation
now the textus receptus
is
uh again the greek manuscripts at the time uh and it contained only six just six greek manuscripts that dated back only to the 10th century uh so quite a bit of diff of distance between
the
textus receptus these greek manuscripts and the original uh original texts when they were first first written these were copies of copies of copies
however however many many times
and of these six texts in this collection only one of them contained the gospels and another one uh was the only one that contained most of the book of revelation the final six verses were missing completely and were translated
what is called back translated from the latin into greek
and so there is a lot of sort of
variances and discrepancies uh there then manuscripts that are found later in uh
in history and so while the textus receptus appears to have quite a few drawbacks
uh we have to remember that these manuscripts were
well they were the best available at the time and as more and more of these manuscripts began to be discovered uh
it turned out that the majority of these manuscripts that were discovered they did agree with the textus receptus in most places
albeit the mo the most sort of the majority of all of these manuscripts also dated around the same time period as the textus receptus so still quite a long time between
when these manuscripts were written and when the originals were written you know a good several hundred years
and so the question remains
if the majority of greek manuscripts agree with the textus receptus
why then do only two bible translations base the new testament off of it right so it's only the king james and only the new king james based their new testaments off of this set of greek manuscripts which again uh agree with the majority of
manuscripts discovered today
and this question is actually the source of quite a bit of controversy among you know bible scholars and translation scholars and uh unfortunately it's i think it's quite needless um
you know i recently saw a post shared on facebook and this i think was sort of the the thing that kind of implanted this idea for a class in my head and it was it was a post on facebook essentially criticizing modern translations of the bible particularly the niv and the esv
for quote unquote removing verses from the bible
and
on one hand this post was not totally incorrect because there in fact are verses in the king james version that appear to be missing from any modern version with the exception of the new king james
but the truth of the matter is that these verses
well they weren't so much
removed
as they were added and this leads us to the answer of our question a question being why would only two bible translations base their new testaments off of the majority of these greek manuscripts that have been found
because there exists another set of greek manuscripts of greek texts
of the new testament that date much earlier than the textus receptus the received text and the majority of manuscripts so they're much closer to the time that the original would have actually been written
in this set of greek texts is referred to as the critical text so we have on one hand we have the textus receptus or the received text in this again as the king james and the new king james and then we have the critical text on the other hand and this is
everything else um
and so
still we we asked why would translations use different greek texts if the textus receptus agrees with the majority of manuscripts
and so the argument then for for the textus receptus the argument for the greek manuscripts for the king james and for the new king james is
to put it simply that that more is better you know majority rules kind of thing the majority of texts agree with us and that's a fair argument um and i think my point with this is is not to
make you lean one way or another but it's just to present you both both arguments here one is that more is better
than the argument for the critical text which is you know the esv the niv the nasb
the whatever else translation you can think of
the argument here then is the older the better
right so the critical text includes greek manuscripts dating as early as the 2nd century as opposed to the 10th like with the textus receptus
admittedly there are fewer surviving manuscripts of this age but many bible translation scholars and experts although not all but many of them prefer the critical text this older being better um
sort of argument and the ultimate reason for this
is that there are no originals in existence
but rather there are copies of the text there are copies of copies of comments and obviously this was all well before the invention of the printing press there was no you know there was no command to see command v copy and paste uh and rather these manuscripts would have been copied out by hand
and
well these copyists
made mistakes
and so the argument goes that majority of these texts which again date much later than the early manuscripts of the critical texts
that these
texts the majority of them actually reflect the accumulation of these copying errors over the years
now it's similar to a game
that we might remember from like elementary school
and that's the game telephone it's when you have a group of children sitting in a big circle and one of them whispers a phrase into the ear of the person next to them then that person whispers it to the next person and so on and so forth all around this big circle and then what began as
my dog likes to fetch eventually turns into my birdhouses from the beach and it just there's a lot of change and in this
to a much lesser degree uh you know than that example uh is what we see
with these copies of
uh the greek new testament and thankfully you know thanks be to god for this that that most of these variations and these uh
copying errors are insignificant and they don't affect any major doctrines
most of them
perhaps the biggest i think glaring example of this
sort of this copy error that was added later to the original text perhaps this biggest example could be found in 1st john chapter 5. so let's all actually take a look there now at first john chapter 5 and
it's verse
verses 5 through nine i'm going to read them from the king james the king james reads
who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that jesus is the son of god this is he that came by water and blood even jesus christ not by water only but by water and blood and it is the spirit that beareth witness because the spirit is truth
and now this verse in the king james for there are three that bear record in heaven the father
the word and the holy ghost and these three are one
it continues and there are three that bear witness in earth the spirit and the water and the blood and these three agree in one if we receive the witness of men the witness of god is greater for this is the witness of god which he had testified in his son
so there's a pretty i think concerning verse in the middle there for us is christadelphians there are three that their record in heaven the father the word and the holy ghost and these three are one
it kind of
you know is is a a bit of a head scratcher um
and it's brother ron abel in rested scriptures in his book he writes of he writes about this verse
and here's what he says he refers to it as uh
being extremely unlikely that it was included in the original text he says but it turned out that the discovered manuscript
which is called the uh the manfort manuscripts now in trinity college library dublin
this was the document submitted to erasmus the the publisher of the textus receptus
the manuscript that was submitted to him is but a 15th century production of no critical value and the disputed words are taken from some corrupt latin manuscripts now that is what uh brother ron abel has to say regarding that verse and that's not just a christadelphian uh
take but that's that's something that's regarded pretty universally among a lot of uh a lot of translation experts
um is that the this particular verse was something that was added later
and if we were to take a look at the same set of verses from a more modern version such as the esb
we would see
that
it skipped right over and it's just missing
so the problem verse that we saw in the king james is completely removed
and thankfully this verse stands alone as being one that's really kind of contrary to sound doctrine that that kind of opposes what we know the bible to teach uh and
thankfully that again it stands alone
because a lot of these other additions are insignificant less significance and
another example of one of these less significance
changes the more common kind of changes that we're going to see
is found in 1 thessalonians chapter 1. first thessalonians chapter one reads from the king james paul and silvanus and timothy atmotheus unto the church of the thessalonians which is in god the father and in the lord jesus christ grace be unto you and peace from god our father and the lord jesus christ
however when we read the same verse from the esv
we simply read grace to you and peace
and it skips it removes
from god our father and the lord jesus christ
now this sort of error or addition as we can think of it
seen in the king james is referred to as a harmonization
it's kind of a nice music teacher word so i like it harmonization and it's where
it's where the copyists likely added a phrase that's found elsewhere to harmonize uh the one passage with the other and in this case it's the beginning of most paul's letters where he says grace to you and peace from god our father in the lord jesus christ this is how second thessalonians starts in the king james and in the esv
this is how many of paul's letters starts
it's most commonly seen ever in the gospels as the copyists
somewhat often likely added certain phrases to let's say the gospel of matthew
since it was in a parallel account of the same
same
uh
you know the same passage essentially in luke and so they added a phrase from the one to the other passage
and once again you know i i can't stress this enough
thanks be to god that that all of these changes and these variations with the one glaring exception we talked about they're only minor and insignificant uh and they don't stand
you know opposed they don't butt heads with with any major doctrinal points um
and so we we can rest assured with that and again this is just to provide an overview of sort of the two camps that we have with bible translations again we have the textus receptus
which has the majority of texts that are later and the critical text which are fewer manuscripts but date earlier and closer to the time of the original writings
and so that's sort of i know that's a lot of information um
and that's really getting down to the what of what is being translated uh so we'll pause here if anyone has any questions because i know i i threw a lot at you uh
so i want to know if rich dineen agrees with peter actually so
so pete thanks for the for this um so did you say in the beginning texas receptus and the critical text are limited to the greek they're limited to the new testament that's what this is all about so this is strictly about the uh new testament the old testament is is much more cut and dry regardless of which translation is going to be much more similar regarding the uh
the what's called the textual basis okay all right and it seems like there's a lot of um
uh a lot of stress in our community on using the king james as a matter of fact it's in our constitution that we're supposed to read in boston from from the king james from the platform um and i i wonder i mean you you've highlighted uh one
difference uh between the two sets um are there others that um
are there others that what are the other ones that are that are driving chris adelphians to use uh the texas receptus
and away from the critical text if they if i mean your appreciation is that these are all kind of ho-hum why well what do you why are you arguing so
do you know what
yeah just a historical community argument about about right version now there are some um you know that that are larger again not not tackling any major uh like
not introducing any anything contrary to major doctrine but an example that comes to my mind is the lord's prayer
where the ending of the lord's prayer
for thine is the kingdom in the heaven and the kingdom and the power and glory forever amen uh is missing
from uh the
uh
the critical text yeah so so that is called the the doxology the ending of the lord's prayer that would be an example of one that uh
you know some people might certainly prefer we text this receptus over and uh and we're gonna talk more about
the use of different translations in our community and looking more at so we've talked about what was being translated in the the basis of a lot of these translations and then we're gonna dive into in a moment uh the how things are being translated and so i think we'll we'll clear up some things that you uh
are uh wondering about um so let's let's actually move on just for the sake of time
so so now that we've tackled the question of what is being translated
we can start to shift our focus now to how it's being translated
see every bible translation
seeks a balance between two goals
right there's accuracy and there's readability
and this balance is what's referred to as a translation philosophy
and it looks different for each translation
so what we're going to see then is that each bible translation philosophy
it falls somewhere on a spectrum
now i'm going to share my screen here
uh and i have a
image here
here we go see that already has word for word thought for thought yep and all that
great so now that we've uh we can we can start to take a look at this translation spectrum so on one side
uh we have word for word and you'll see there it says formal equivalence
um and formal equivalence also known as word for word or a quote-unquote literal translation it seeks to
keep the form and the sentence structure the same as the original greek and hebrew
so for individual words these translations are going to try to use the same english word for a hebrew or greek word as often as they can as well as maintaining the same dramatic structure as the original texts
now there are advantages and disadvantages to to any of these uh any of these translation philosophies so with this word for word formal equivalence literal translation
the advantages and strengths are uh found in its accuracy to the biblical language found in the original manuscripts
with a formal equivalent translation
you're going to have a clearer you're going to have clearer bible callbacks clear bible echoes and illusions with certain keywords and key phrases
there's a lot of depth and a lot of benefit in looking
more deeply into the original language and
formal equivalent translations do a great job at maintaining the structure and the form of the original greek and hebrew
but perhaps the biggest disadvantage
of this approach
to this approach is that the adherence to the form and the structure of the original language
is achieved at the expense of readability of readability excuse me um
achieve at the expense of readability so formal equivalent translations often are more difficult to understand
especially if you aren't used to a translation like that
and you can think of people who read at a lower level people who perhaps have english as a second language uh
they're going to struggle more with a formal equivalent translation they're going to struggle to to understand and really grasp the meaning of
god's message
so that is formal equivalent word for word translations uh i'm not going to tackle each subset of this spectrum here
but
on the other side we have functional equivalent translations
or thought for thought as they're sometimes referred to
as opposed to word for word
sometimes you might hear the phrase idiomatic translation as well now these kinds of translations these are translations such as the niv
the new living translation the new english translation
and these translations are going to alter the form and the sentence structure of the original languages in order to present the main idea of a verse phrase
or sentence
more clearly in english
now this approach offers a lot of strengths
first of all it's going to have a very readable translation
translators of this kind of philosophy this thought for thought um
well they have a unified goal
which is to be faithful to the original meaning of the text while using language that is clear and natural to modern readers
to put it another way
the goal is that today's readers of the bible will understand it in english in the same way that the original readers understood it in greek or in hebrew
so as well as simply being readable a thought for thought translation is going to provide you with a different perspective in regards to connections and uh illusions and callbacks and echoes
see with the word for word translation you might read something and think well this word or this phrase reminds me of another passage
which is great and that's a wonderful connection we can make
whereas a thought for thought translation it might make you think well the main idea here reminds me of the main idea of a different passage
and so it's a similar
you know as we're as we're seeing the connections and the intricacies of god's word it just provides you with an another perspective that i think uh can be very beneficial
but then for the disadvantages the clear disadvantage here is that with the thought for thought approach there is a greater room for error on the translators part
now while the naturalness of the language that that's clarity and uh
the the fact that it kind of sounds the way that we might say it that naturalness of the language while it does provide great readability it sometimes is done at the expense of accuracy sometimes now this translation philosophy requires
that the translators determine and interpret the meaning first
so that there's greater margin for error
in addition this approach can also lose some of the nuance of the meaning in pursuit of simplicity and clarity of language
so that is the
thought for thought the functional equivalence translation so as opposed to the king james esv nasv that we have with the word for word translations here we have the niv the new living translation um [Music] that the net bible
however it's important to note here
that
we
see exceptionally it's important to note here that
even translations like the king james like the esv like the nasb
they also have to alter the original text so that the translation is comprehensible so that
it makes sense right and as well as to fit what the translators decide is appropriate based on the context
so even the more literal translations have some margin for error in regards to translators interpretation
now if you have a bible that falls under this category if you take a look at the preface of your bible you'll likely find the phrase
essentially literal translation
now that word literal that we read there is sometimes
equated with
better um
and
even these literal translations have the margin for error and so it's a shame i think that we make that connection between literal and automatically better than say a thought for thought translation because
well do we really know what we mean when we say the word literal
let's take for instance the word key
in english the word key k-e-y
if i asked what the literal meaning of the word key is i'm sure that many of you were thinking what you used to unlock the door
but perhaps some of you were thinking about
the key on your computer's keyboard
or
maybe you were thinking about the key of c major or the florida keys or an answer key or the key point
see words can have many different meanings
and often they don't just have one literal meaning
and so to further complicate this then when we add in and we factor in the idea of translation
it gets even trickier so let's pretend that we wanted to try and translate the word key from english into spanish
now the issue here is that there are five different words in spanish for the same english word ki
so when translating the bible
the same goes for translating greek and hebrew into english and there's a whole lot of of difficulty in this and
what we get at what we ultimately see is that all translators
whether it's the translators for the king james version or for the niv
they first had to look at the context of the word the context of the phrase the sentence the verse to determine for themselves what the text is saying
and at its core what we will understand is that
all translation
is interpretation
now that might be an idea that makes us a little uncomfortable at first
after all you know each translation is going to have its own biases and sometimes those biases can lead to interpretations that are wrong and incorrect but
god reassures us
that his people can learn the truth of the gospel
through the use of translations that are not in the original greek and hebrew
even with its errors
let's consider
the septuagint now this is the
greek translation of the old testament
so it was taken out of the hebrew and translated into greek and when we read the new testament
and we read paul's letters or we read the letter to the hebrews or even when jesus himself is quoting the old testament
they're often quoting from the septuagint from this greek translation of the old testament out of the original language
and so clearly it's
what we see is that
reading god's word through a translation into our own language
clearly it's an acceptable way to read god's word
but don't get me wrong i i am not saying that every translation is
ultimately correct i mean we we looked at that
verse in in first john
that that sort of trinity heavy verse that we we talked about as being an addition uh to to the the original text
and
what we see is that sometimes the translators do get it wrong
and this is something that
i think our community has has recognized at least on paper uh in our statement of faith there is a section talking about inspiration of the bible and it reads like this
that the book currently known as the bible
is the only source of knowledge concerning god and his purposes of the present extant and the present time are available in the earth and that the same
the bible was wholly given by inspiration of god in the writers and are consequently without error in all parts of them
then there's a little clause here that says accept such as maybe due to errors of transcription or translation
there is no perfect bible translation
every single translation is going to have something whether it's a small minor thing
or
something a little bit more major like what we saw in the first john there's gonna be
biases in the translators parts there's going to be
some errors some alterations of
god's word
and i think that this is one reason why i believe it's so important for us to read from multiple translations
you read from a bible that falls on one side of that spectrum we looked at if the king james is your bible
that's great
but i think it's important that we read from across the spectrum that we try and read from the niv or from the net bible and on the flip side if we are
uh uh
the proud owner and reader of an niv
there's benefit in reading from something like the esv or the king james the new king james that has that more word-for-word approach we're going to
we're going to get different things out of it
if we
are reading from the king james or the esv and that's what we've known
we're going to
we're going to kind of fall into a routine when it comes to certain bible passages that we know really well and with any routine sometimes
that meaning behind it can lose a little bit of its power for us and
when there are passages in the bible that we're so used to reading when we read it in a new word when we read it from a new translation that can actually help to kind of reignite that fire within us that that
shines that verse that passage in a new light that really opens our eyes in a spiritual way to to be encouraged and uplifted
and on the flip side if
you read the niv or the nlt you can benefit from reading one of these word for word translations you're going to get different callbacks you're going to get a
different understanding of
the biblical language and
the the use
of certain words of certain phrases
and there's a great great benefit and new perspectives that we can gain from reading different translations
so we've tackled
the
what of translation we've tackled the how and we've just a little bit tackled the why
and i believe that
something to be said here that paul mentions in first corinthians
so in first corinthians chapter 14 we're going to read from verses 1 through 4. pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts especially that you may prophesy
for the one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to god for no one understands him but he utters mysteries in the spirit on the other hand the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation the one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself but the one who prophesies builds up the church
now this passage
when we look at the context is clearly talking about the spiritual gifts of speaking in tongues and of prophesying and and
i think and i actually i believe that we can take the principle behind these passages
and apply it to our community today
that god's message is meant to be understood
and whether you understand god's message
in the king james or if you understand god's message with the niv or with the nlt
god's message is meant to be understood
by his people
the bible is more accessible today
than it has ever been
into english alone there's more than a hundred different bible translations
we should see this as a blessing
god's word is inspired
and it is preserved for his creation to read and to learn from
so whether you're reading
the niv or the
esv
the new living translation of the new or the new king james
you can not only learn the truth of the gospel
but you can grow in christ
so let's view the different translations that are available to us as a blessing
that we can do as paul exhorts in first corinthians so that we all might be able to understand
so that the body of christ is built up