An Orthodox View of Bibilical Translations

Revised 7-17-2010 NOTE: This is currently a working draft

An Orthodox Look at English Translations of the Bible

By Fr. John Whiteford

If one wishes to study the Scriptures, one of the most important things that he must do is to acquire a good translation of the text… unless he just happens to know Biblical Hebrew, and Koine Greek. Especially nowadays, when it seems there is a new translation or study Bible that is published each year, it is not a simple choice to make.

There are several factors that must be taken into consideration:

1) How accurate is the translation?

2) What text is the translation based upon?

3) What is the theological perspective that underlies the translation?

4) How well done and how liturgically useful is the translation?

5) More recently, you must also add to the above considerations, how politically correct is the translation?

1. Formal Equivalence, Dynamic Equivalence, Paraphrase

Translations range from the woodenly literal, to the fantastically paraphrased. Somewhere between those extremes is the optimal level of literal accuracy. An example of a woodenly literal translation that has come onto the Orthodox scene in recent years is the edition of the “Orthodox New Testament” published by the Holy Apostles Convent in Buena Vista, Colorado. Instead of the familiar, “Do this in remembrance of me” we find the “improved” “Be doing this in remembrance of Me." Instead of the book of James, you find the far more “accurate” book of “Iakovos.” Thus, you could call this the “King Iakovos Version”.

On the opposite extreme, you have paraphrases, such as the Living Bible. Which has readings such as “"God even protects him from accidents,” rather than the more familiar (and more accurate) "He keepeth all His bones: not one of them is broken" (34:20 KJV). Another popular translation that is a more of a paraphrase (though not as bad as the Living Bible) is the Good News Translation.

The New International Version (NIV), is an example of a “dynamic equivalence” translation. The theory is that instead of translating the text word for word, you translate it “thought for thought”, the problem is that when a translator does this, he has moved beyond translating the text, and into the realm of commentary on the text, because when you translate the thought, you are assuming the interpretation. Many points seem very clear in the NIV that simply are not based on what the text actually says, but rather on what the translators think it means. An example of how this distorts the text is to be found in how the NIV translates 2nd Thessalonians 2:15:

“So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you,

whether by word of mouth or by letter.”

Compare that with the more accurate reading found in the King James Version:

“Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been

taught, whether by word, or our epistle.”

As Clark Carlton notes:

“The NIV translators, however, have effected what amounts to a literary sleight of

hand. One would be tempted to call it a rather nifty move were it not for the fact

that they have tampered with the written Word of God. Hold the traditions which

ye have been taught. Traditions (paradoseis) is a noun in the objective case. It is

derived from the verb to hand over (paradidomi). The phrase, which ye have

been taught (edidachthate), is a form of to teach (didasko). The NIV turns the

verb into the noun – hold to the teachings – and turns the noun into the verb – we

passed on to you. If we were to translate the NIV translation back into Greek,

instead of paradoseis, we would have didaskalias, and instead of edidachthate we

would have paredothate.” ¹

Another example is the way the NIV translates the Greek word sarx as “sinful nature” sometimes, and simply as “body” other times. The problem is that the word means “flesh” and it only implies a sinful nature at times, but the problem is that it is not always clear whether or not this is in fact implied, but if you are reading the NIV, you wouldn’t know that there was any ambiguity, because the translators have misled you into thinking that text clearly says things that are not so clear.

Other examples of “Dynamic Equivalence” translations are the New American Bible (NAB), the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB), Today’s NIV (TNIV), the New English Bible (NEB), and the Revised English Bible (REB).

The most accurate translations available in English are the King James (or Authorized) Version (KJV or AV), the New King James Version (NKJV), and The English Standard Version (ESV); and to a lesser extent the Revised Standard Version (RSV), and the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) – though all but the first two have problems that will be discussed under the other factors that we must consider. The King James is in fact generally so accurate that one could reconstruct the original text with a high degree of accuracy by translating the text back into Hebrew and Greek, though unlike many translations that are so woodenly literal they actually distort the meaning of the text, it is also a beautiful translation.

2. The Text Behind the Text

I will address the question of the original text of the Greek New Testament in more detail in a subsequent article, but will touch upon the subject here briefly, as well as the question of the original text of the Old Testament. In short, there are the two versions of the Old Testament text that the Orthodox Church considers authoritative, and one of the New Testament.

A. The Old Testament Text

For the Old Testament, the two textual traditions that the Church has preserved are that of the Greek Septuagint and the Syriac Peshitta. The Latin Vulgate played an important role in the pre-schism western Church, and so it too is a translation is worthy of consultation. The Orthodox Church is of course well aware of the fact that most of the Old Testament books were written in Hebrew and Aramaic (the Deuterocanonical books having mostly been written in Greek), however, the Hebrew text that we have today is not the same text that existed during the Old Testament period or at the time of Christ. This is seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as in the Septuagint, Peshitta, and Latin Vulgate -- which were all translated from the Hebrew, and yet reflect a Hebrew original that often differs from that which we have today.

The Hebrew Text that has served as the basis for most translations of the Old Testament into English is based almost entirely on the Leningrad Codex, which dates from 1008 A.D. In comparison to the textual evidence that we have for the New Testament Greek text, this is a very late manuscript. It is an example of the Masoretic recension, which is usually dated to have been shaped between the 6th and 10th centuries A.D. This is well after the Septuagint was translated (3rd century before Christ), the Peshitta (1st and 2nd Centuries A.D.), or the Vulgate (4th Century A.D.). According to Christian tradition, the non-Christian Jews began making changes in the Old Testament text to undercut the Christian use of Old Testament prophecies concerning the coming of Christ. In any case, the Hebrew Text that we now have was preserved outside the Church. The Septuagint and Peshitta texts were preserved within the Church, and so the Church believes that the text of the Old Testament was been authoritatively preserved in these textual traditions.

Furthermore, it is clear that the text that Christ and the Apostles used matches the Septuagint rather than the Masoretic text. For example, in Acts 7:43, the Protomartyr Stephen quotes from the book of Amos as follows:

“Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan,

figures which ye made to worship them” (KJV).

But when you look this quote up in Amos 5:26 in most translations, you will find that the quotation doesn’t match:

“You also carried Sikkuth your king and Chiun, your idols, the star of your gods,

which you made for yourselves.” (NKJV).

Compare the above with the Latin Vulgate:

“But you carried a tabernacle for your Moloch, and the image of your idols, the

star of your god, which you made to yourselves” (Douay-Rheims translation of

the Vulgate).

And then with the Septuagint:

“Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Raephan, the

images of them which ye made for yourselves” (Sir Lancelot Brenton translation

of the Septuagint).

Also, there are several sections of the Hebrew text that are simply unreadable without keeping one eye on the Hebrew text and one eye on the Septuagint. For example, if you look at the footnotes for the book of Habakkuk in the NRSV there are 5 places in which it states that the Hebrew text is uncertain, and 3 times in which they state that they are simply translating from the Septuagint, Peshitta, and/or the Vulgate, because the Hebrew text is so unclear.

Another example of a clearly corrupt reading in the Masoretic text is 1st Samuel 14:41, which reads as follows:

“Therefore Saul said unto the LORD God of Israel, "Give Thummim". And Saul

and Jonathan were taken: but the people escaped.”

Several modern translations correct this clearly erroneous text based on the Septuagint and Vulgate to read:

“Therefore Saul said, "O LORD God of Israel, why have you not answered your

servant this day? If this guilt is in me or in Jonathan my son, O LORD, God of

Israel, give Urim. But if this guilt is in your people Israel, give Thummim." And

Jonathan and Saul were taken, but the people escaped.”

The Masoretic text simply makes no sense, and obviously at some point a scribe skipped an entire line or two of the text. This is obvious because of the reference to the Urim and Thummim, which were two objects used by the priest of the Old Testament for discerning the will of God on matters such as that described in 1st Samuel 14.

Another example is the text quoted in Hebrews 1:6 (“And let all the angels of God worship him”) which is nowhere to be found in the Masoretic text, but is found in both the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls Hebrew text in Deuteronomy 32:43.

It should be pointed out that the Hebrew text should not be ignored entirely. Particularly when the Septuagint and the Hebrew text are in agreement, we will better understand the Septuagint as a translation if we compare it with the Hebrew text that it is clearly a translation of. It is extremely helpful to understand the range of meaning of the original Hebrew text (when we clearly have it). For example, it is helpful to know that Hebrew does not have a past or future tense, but only a perfect and imperfect tense… and so just because an English translation is clearly in either the past, present, or future tense, it does not necessarily mean that this is what is implied by the Hebrew original. One often encounters the use of the “prophetic perfect”, where a prophecy of something that has not yet come to pass is in the perfect tense, and so is often translated with the English past tense, e.g. “…with His stripes, we were healed” (Isaiah 53:5), when from the perspective of the prophet, he was speaking of something in the future.

There are at present only limited options available in terms of English translations of the Septuagint. There is the translation of Sir Lancelot Brenton, which is often awkward and wooden. There is also a very well done revision of the KJV by Michael Asser, which corrected the KJV based on the Septuagint, but while the complete text is available online, only the Psalter is actually in print. For the Psalms there is the Psalter According to the Seventy, published by Holy Transfiguration Monastery; and the Psalter of the Prophet and King David, published by the Center for Traditionalists Orthodox Studies – this text is based on the edition by Michael Asser, but it differs in some respects. There are also various editions of the Old Testament readings that are used liturgically.

The New English Translation of the Septuagint is a “scholarly” translation that I think is worth having on hand for reference, but the translation is seriously flawed – both in terms of style and substance. Stylistically, the use of mostly unfamiliar transliterations for the names of people and places from the Greek make this text very awkward and practically unusable by an average laymen. For example, you will search in vain in a Bible dictionary for Heua, Kain, Habel, Saoul, Dauid, or Nabouchodonosor – while the names of Eve, Cain, Abel, Saul, David, and even Nebuchadnezzar are generally familiar. The argument that using the standard forms of these names would be less than a faithful translation of the Greek is belied by the fact that translations of the New Testament are also from Greek, and yet we do not generally find the names “Iesous Christos”, “Petros”, “Paulos”, or “Iakobos”… but we do generally see the standard forms of the names found in the King James Version, which have been the standard in English for 4 centuries. And in terms of substance, the text is far worse. For example, contrary to 2,000 years of reading this text in the context of the Christian Tradition, they translation Genesis 1:2 as saying that “a divine wind was being carried along over the water.” That is a plainly heretical translation of the text. You also find a tendency towards gender neutral language to the point that significant distortions of the meaning of the text take place… such as Genesis 3:15, in which the seed of the woman becomes simply the “offspring”, despite the fact that the Greek reads “spermatos”, and one does not have to be a Greek scholar to understand that this does not simply mean offspring.

The complete Orthodox Study Bible has been released, and it is still in the process of being assessed. My impressions thus far is that it is a generally accurate (albeit imperfect) translation of the Septuagint. Criticisms have generally focused on instances in which they left some texts essentially unchanged from the rendering in the New King James Version, when the Septuagint differs. There certainly are some examples of this, however, we can hope that some things will be corrected over time, and in any case, when it comes to a translation of the whole Septuagint, it is a better option than anything else that is available at present in English. What I like least about the OSB is that the order of the books of the Old Testament is complete rearranged based on the order found in the current Greek Bibles, and also that they have adopted names for certain books that are not the standard names used in the 400+ years history of English Bibles. I understand why they did it, but I don’t think anything of substance was gained by these moves, and now the users of the Orthodox Study Bible will have to get used to this new arrangement, and will have to learn, for example that if they are looking for a text in the book of Ezra, they will just have to learn that this will be found in 2^nd Ezra, rather than 1^st Ezra. There are also many criticism of the notes and the study helps in the Orthodox Study Bible, but I do not believe these criticisms weigh heavily enough to argue against recommending this text, in the absence of a better alternative.

There are also some translations based on the Latin Vulgate that are closer to the Septuagint text than are text based on the Masoretic Hebrew Text. The Douay-Rheims version is a translation of the complete text of the Vulgate, and the Coverdale Psalter, which is found in the older editions of the Book of Common Prayer is also translated from the Vulgate.

B. The New Testament Text

I will address this issue in far greater detail in “New Testament Textual Criticism and the Ending of Mark,” but suffice it to say here that there are essentially two versions of the Greek New Testament that form the basis of the various translations we have in English. There is the traditional text, which is variously referred to as the “Received Text,” the “Textus Receptus,” the “Byzantine Text,” and the “Majority Text”. Then there is the revised text, which is based on the textual theory of Wescott-Hort

, and is currently to be found in either the Nestle-Aland edition, or the United Bible Societies edition.

The traditional text of the Greek New Testament is the text that the Church has actually used and preserved for the past 2,000 years, and is to be found in the vast majority of Greek manuscripts, and is reflected in the vast majority of ancient translations of the New Testament—which in some cases originate from the time of the Apostles. The critical editions are based primarily a small number of manuscripts from Egypt, the earliest of which date from the mid 4th and century, as well as some of the papyri that likewise come from Egypt, some of which are dated as early as the 2nd or 3rd century.

The supporting premises of the theory that is behind the critical editions of the Greek New Testament have largely been shot to pieces by subsequent scholarship, but nevertheless, the theory remains the dominate approach to New Testament textual criticism because nothing has come along to replace it that has satisfied the majority of Protestant scholars.² Consequently, almost all modern translations of the New Testament are based on the critical editions of the Greek New Testament, rather than the traditional text. The exceptions are of course the King James Version (along with various revised editions of the King James which are not really new translations but simply attempts to update the English of the KJV), the New King James Version (which really is a new Translation, although it makes an attempt to maintain some continuity with the original King James Version, the Douay-Rheims, and a few other minor translations that are not in common use.

But are the differences between these two versions of the Greek New Testament significant? I have often answered this question by asking the proud owner of a translation based on the revised Greek text to look up John 5:4 and read it to me. It is always fun to watch as they discover that their Bible skips from verse 3 to verse 5. If you read this passage in context, removing verse 4 makes it entirely unclear what the paralytic is doing by the pool of Bethesda to begin with. Had the editors of the revised versions the guts to do it, you would also not find “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:43), or the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:11), but since they dared not remove those texts, you simply find them in brackets, with footnotes that tell you that “the earliest and most reliable manuscripts” do not contain them. In fact, if we accepted the assumptions of the revised Greek text, when the 3rd Matins Gospel Mark 16:9-20 is appointed, the priest would just have to whistle Dixie, because there would be no 3rd Matins Gospel.

3. The Theological Perspective of the Translators

Every translator has a theological point of view that influences their translation either for good or for ill. Ideally, we would be using translations done by Orthodox scholars whose work had the sanction of the Church, but unfortunately no such translation has yet been produced. Consequently, until we have such a text in hand, we have to find the best options among Protestant and Roman Catholic translations. Even when dealing with the best examples of these translations, we need to be aware of the theological views of the translators, and keep an eye out for when their erroneous views may have negatively influenced the accuracy of their translation.

One of the worst examples of a heretical translation of the Scriptures is the New World Translation, which is published by the Jehovah’s witnesses. It would take a book much longer than the text of the Bible itself to lay out all the dishonest twisting of Scripture that takes place in this translation. It is the work of a group of anonymous “scholars” who ostensibly wished to remain anonymous out of humility, but those who have researched the question have determined that this was more likely a means of cloaking the complete lack of scholarly credentials and linguistic abilities of those who crafted this text.³ To touch upon one of the low points of this translation, it translates the Greek word “kyrios” (“Lord”) as “Jehovah” throughout the New Testament, except where the text clearly refers to Jesus Christ, because they deny both the doctrine of the Trinity, and that Jesus Christ is God. This is a completely arbitrary move designed to promote their heretical theological agenda, and there is absolutely no textual basis for translating the text in this manner to be found in any Greek manuscript of the New Testament. The outright dishonesty of their translation particularly demonstrated by the fact that in Hebrews 1:10, they do not translate “kyrios” as “Jehovah” (or the more proper “Yahweh”) because the quote is applied to Christ… despite the fact that this is a quote from Psalm 102 (101 in the LXX), and the LORD in that Psalm is Yahweh in Hebrew.