Why are there so many Bible translations?

Ishmael LaBiosa: Welcome to the You Ask Podcast, where the goal is to answer common questions about Christianity. Let's listen in as Pastor Rusty answers today's question. Today's question is why are there so many Bible translations? Well, I guess the basic answer to this is because there are people who want to give a fresh translation. That would be a simple answer. But let's try to give a little more in-depth answer for this. Let's talk about the word translation. So why are there so many Bible translations? Well, it would seem that writing translation would be straightforward, but it isn't as straightforward as you might think it to be. I'm not waving this flag around, but maybe I am waving the flag around. I took quite a bit. of New Testament Greek and quite a bit of Biblical Hebrew, multiple semesters of both. And so I had the precarious task of trying to take an ancient language and give its English equivalent. And I can just tell you that's not easy. And every translation is based upon a translation philosophy. So let me Give you some of those philosophies. Some translations would say we are word for word. We are more literal translations. And at first glance, that sounds really good. Some examples of word for word translations would be the King James Version, which would say it's a word for word translation. The New American Standard Bible, which I used to use, would say it's a word-for-word literal, and that even the New English Standard Version would also kind of say it's more of a word-for-word translation. Now, I remember I was taking a class, it was one of my last classes in Greek, and the my responsibility in this class was was to offer a fresh translation of the entire gospel of Mark. It was so I had my Greek New Testament in hand and I had to translate the entire Gospel of Mark. I mean that was the class. And it was only six or seven of us in the class and a very astute Greek teacher was my teacher. He had actually written the Greek grammar that I used and I had worked, felt like all day and night to give a translation of a particular chapter in Mark and with great enthusiasm and we'd have to like read our translations out in class. And so ⁓ it was my time in class that day. And so I gave my word-for-word translation. And I'll never forget what he said, because he actually had served on translation committees that had translated the Bible. And he said, you know, Rusty, that's a good translation. He says the Problem is, it sounds like translated Greek. He said, Could you translate it again and make it sound like English? And for the first time ever, it dawned on me that being overly literal could sometimes actually obscure the meaning of the biblical text, not illuminated. And I thought, Man, I have gone through all these classes so that I could give a literal interpretation of the Bible only to overly quote unquote literally translate the Bible for it to be less clear than to do something more like thought for thought. So other translations say I still think there's much to commend, by the way, for a word for word, a more literal translation, but it reads clunky in places because of that. Now Other folks say, no, we need translations that are more thought-for-thought. And most people go, no, no, no, we couldn't do that. Don't do that. Well, I'm not saying that all thought-for-thought translations are in any way superior to word for word, but sometimes giving a thought-for-thought versus a word for word might actually bring about the meaning more than a clunky literal translation. So Translations like the New International Version, the NIV, the New Living Translation, they can't be thought about as overly literal. Their goal was thought for thought. And sometimes people demean that, but the only thing I would say is that sometimes thought for thought can actually help you grasp what the words mean, then word for word. And One of the most recent translations, it was the Holman Christian Standard Bible, but it's now called the Christian Standard Bible, tries to go in between the two. It tries to be more balanced, literal when possible, but when literal word for word becomes too clunky that it operates thought for thought. There are other translations that I would say aren't really translations. They're not translations, they're paraphrases. I think about the message with Eugene Peterson, the Living Bible, the Amplified Bible. Now, these are truly paraphrases. They're not even an attempt at translation. It's just an attempt to paraphrase. So a lot of people ask me, well, what do you think is best? Well, at the present time, I'm using the Christian Standard Bible. I grew up and memorized the King James Bible. I preach for about a decade from the New American Standard Bible. I have read through the English Standard Version. I've dabbled here and there in the NIV, it's it's fine. It's just never been my favorite. So I've moved around. So actually, if you want to see the difficulty of translation, one of the easiest ways to do it is to take some real quality translations, like take a New American Standard, take an ESV, take a King James or New King James and a CSV. And you can even put an NIV. Take those if you had like five columns. Now with all their Bibles being on computer, you can do this easily. Put five columns up and put really quality translations on the screen and see where they struggle. And usually what you're seeing there is the translators. Cause usually you could read ⁓ you could take a particular verse and you could read it in New American Standard, you could read it in King James, you could read it in NIV, you could read it in ESV, you could read it in CSV. Virtually the same. Okay. So you're thinking, well, the translators didn't have any problem. And then in other places you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, there's trouble on the horizon. And you can see that they're having to make decisions, not because they're trying to there might be some places where they're Trying to have an agenda. I I do realize that is part of translation sometime, unfortunately. But a lot sometimes they're just honest people trying to trying to work out a translation. I do want to let you know that for these major ones, for example, the newer ones, New American Standard, ESV, even the NIV and the CSB, you should not think this. And I I hear this in some circles, so I just want to make sure you know this. That they are not looking at an English translation and updating it. Okay. What is happening in solid translations, like the ones I've mentioned, they are going back to the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts and they are offering a fresh translation from the sources. Okay. And the reason that people would write new translations is because language changes over time. Again, I've I grew up on the King James Version. But I remember when I read the King James, I mean some of the words were just very old and and I had to use a dictionary sometimes to figure out what the old English word meant to understand how I could translate not the Greek word into English or the Hebrew word in English, but the English word into English because language changes over time. And it is important as language changes that translations keep up with how language is being used. I mean, every year we add words to the dictionary and we change the way we speak. If you keep going back even with English language, there's a point at which English speakers can't even understand English because it's changed so much. Now there's another area that that I don't want to get overly complex with, but one thing I would like to say as an evangelical is that we can be highly confident that the Greek New Testament that we have and the Hebrew Bible that we have has been preserved well. And here's the reason why. Okay? The Old Testament and New Testament are a little different. The Old Testament, we have fewer copies than we do of the New Testament. But what we see is remarkable, remarkable continuity between older, Old Testament. Text and newer Old Testament text. One of the things that happened in the 1940s and 1950s is we discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls. And one of the things that we found was the entire scroll of the book of Isaiah in the 1940s, 1950s. Now, clearly there's some other translations that have already been written during that time, and there was a little bit of fear and intrepidation among biblical scholars. That what was discovered in the 1940s, 1950s, the scroll that we have of Isaiah was older than anything we had by like hundreds of years. It was unbelievable. And so we were concerned that we, when we compared the Isaiah text that we had with the Isaiah text that we just found that happened to be much older, that we were kind of concerned. ⁓ no, maybe, maybe we're gonna have to come out and say, oops, we had some problems with Isaiah. And actually, unbelievably, like the two were almost identical. It was really staggering. Even to non-evangelicals, they were rather staggered that that this level of preservation was there. Now, the New Testament, there's a little, there's a different animal here. The New Testament, we have 5,000 Greek manuscripts. That's that's huge. So we we have more New Testament manuscripts, and what ends up happening. Is you compare copies of copies of copies, and there's a process kind of of elimination that you can kind of get to what the original text is. It's called text criticism. And it's not just used for the New Testament, it's used for any ancient document where you got multiple, multiple copies. So one thing is the case is since some of the older translations, for example, again, I know this can be an area of debate. But a very important English translation was the King James Version, 1611, although there were other good English versions even prior to that, that since that time we have just simply found more biblical manuscripts. And some scholars say we ought to incorporate those. Now here's the deal: it doesn't make a lot of difference in the text. I'll give you one case in point that it does make some difference. Just give you one example, because there aren't very many, and this is One of the most famous ones is that at the end of the Gospel of Mark, okay, some of our later Greek manuscripts have what we call the longer ending of Mark. And if you have like a newer translation of the Gospel of Mark, just open my Bible there to it right this moment, Mark chapter 16, and you go to verse 8, it kind of abruptly cuts off. And then there are some some translations that add Mark 9 through 20. Okay? And and actually now, so all of this is now accessible to the public, like here in the Christian Standard Bible, it actually says some of the earliest manuscripts conclude with Mark 16, verse 8. Now there is a kind of a rule of translation that the shorter reading is to be preferred. Okay, that's a that's something 'cause usually over time you don't take stuff out, you add stuff in if you're copying. And in this particular area, it looks like that what happened, they took the ending of Matthew and the ending of Luke. And since they felt like Mark didn't have a good ending, they wrote an ending. Now, nothing is said there that's wrong or theologically incorrect, but when we got earlier manuscripts. The earlier manuscripts didn't have that the longer ending of Mark's. It's kind of a point of debate. What this conversation should not do, so that would be one of the few areas where new discoveries in text have changed quote unquote the translation. Here's what you should hear, because there's so many people going the other direction, is that we are very confident. I mean, I I have listened to really good Hebrew scholars and Greek scholars. And and I've done my own translations. I've looked at the text myself. You should be very confident that the text that you hold in your hand is the text that is consistent with the original text that was written. And anybody who wants to say, ⁓ how can you know? Well, we know through text criticism, copies of copies can be analyzed to figure out what the original copy said. And listen carefully, any area, listen carefully to this. Any area where scholars have any level of disagreement over should it be this or that, which are very minimal and now noted in your English translations, especially the newer ones, none of those areas affect any major theological concept. So I I want you to say if you have a good English translation, and I've listed some good ones, King James, New King James, NASB, ESV, CSB, you can be confident. That you are being given straight communication about what the original text is trying to say. And, you know, here's here's my deal. Rather than worrying about what translation to use, just pick a good one and read it. And if you want to see the struggle of translation, which it is a real struggle, especially if you tried to do it, then read across a few very reputable. Translations and you can see where the translators are struggling, not with the text, the Greek or Hebrew text, but you can see where they're struggling to bring into English what the Greek or Hebrew text is trying to say. So what's my takeaway from this? Just get a good translation and read it, and you will be well on your way to understanding the scriptures. Thank you for listening to the You Ask Podcast. This is a ministry of Liberty Baptist Church, and we pray this podcast enables you to more faithfully live out your Christian life.

Mark 16 · chapter mention Mark 16:8