BenTrigg.co.uk

Of the making of many Bible translations…

…there is no end. To misquote Solomon. Anyone who has been a Christian for any amount of time, really, will have realised that today the Bible doesn’t just come in one convenient translation for us. There was a time when almost everyone in the country read the King James Version, that being the first major English translation to be widely distributed. That translation has remained in the background of much of church and even societal culture as having provided the guideline by which to conduct life. But as the reader may be aware, its language is decidedly out of date in the best of cases, and simply unreadable in some! So naturally over the last century or so, other translation projects have proliferated to a large extent, so that now we are left with quite a plethora of versions at our disposal – and the average Christian, or perhaps especially the new Christian, might not always be sure what they’re all about, which one to read, or why there are so many in the first place.

So, as one who has taken a slightly obsessive interest in the variations between different modern translations, I hope I can share something vaguely helpful as to the reasons behind these, and offer the reader some guidance as to which translation might be a good one. There are loads of issues, I might not cover them all very well…but I’m just going to have to try!

One Holy Version…? What the churches are reading

Some churches today of course often have the version that they strongly recommend to their members. Perhaps most pervasive across the churches in the nation and indeed internationally, is the New International Version, used in lots of pioneering Anglican churches, New Frontiers, other charismatic and evangelical churches, and maybe your local ‘____ Community Church’ (insert town name). It is favoured I think because it stands out as being easy to read and understand, and usually on the affordable side of things too. More below.

A lot of Pentecostal and some charismatic churches these days tend to use the New King James Version. This is, as the name suggests, a revamp of the King James, updating the language where it has gone out of use, but otherwise keeping to the sentence structure, general use of language (where it is still used), and most importantly, the same manuscripts as the King James. This is important to realise, but more on the New King James below.

In other Anglican churches you will find the New Revised Standard Version being favoured – and this too crosses into the realm of academia, particularly with godly academics such as NT Wright as well as many other Christian theologians here and across the pond. They like this translation I think for its more ‘contextual’ approach to translation. The Old Testament sounds a little more archaic than the New, precisely because that’s how the first century Christians would have read it: the language of the Hebrew Bible was beginning to age; the New Testament, on the contrary, was colloquial, everyday language written for the average Joe. More, as I have said, below.

Finally, other common translations include the New Living Translation – an intentionally easy-to-read and interpretative translation, and often aimed at youth and young adults; the New Century Version, perhaps even further along the line of interpretation and colloquialism, aimed almost solely at youth in its marketing; and quite popular is the Message – again, a very colloquial and intentionally modern-day re-reading of the Bible which puts a beautiful spin on the language of the Bible to bring out its colours and dynamics.

But as far as what the churches generally seem to be recommending to their readers, as I see it, I think those I have listed above tend to be the major ones, and as you can see it often depends which stream you come into as a Christian. There are definitely reasons for this.

I must note, because I can and because I want to, the group of people who you find every now and then, who think that the King James Version is the one and only Authorised BY GOD version in English, and will spread news all over the internet that the other translations are from the devil to deceive Christians everywhere and get people to believe him.

Hmm.

Actually, I can say more. I’ve even heard some of their arguments behind this case. I remember one protagonist arguing that where other translations have Jesus saying “My little children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom…” and such things, that it would be sad to give that to children to read! Apparently the King James gets that verse right. But can you imagine trying to get a child to read the King James, full stop?? That I’d like to see them try!

They often also argue that some modern translations leave certain phrases out that are not included in the King James. This is a misrepresentation of what has actually happened. Because those translations came after it is assumed that they have omitted from the original. But in fact the King James uses LATER texts in its translation, and the modern ones almost always use earlier texts than those used for the translation of the King James, because of what has become available since that time.

Allow me to explain.

The King James

Around the time of the KJV (also known as the Authorised Version – AV), there were various complete manuscripts for the Bible available. But unfortunately for the Old Testament, nothing older than the 9th century AD was available – that’s 1300 years after the Old Testament was completed! And so while we could rely on the Jewish copyists at least being pious and reliable, these were nevertheless very late manuscripts to be going on. The New Testament did a little better, but much of the translation work for that had also to rely on the Latin Vulgate – as suggested, a Latin translation of since-lost earlier manuscripts – and other later translations and texts. The complete text used came to be known as the Textus Receptus. I think you could almost abbreviate it T-Rex…with a spot of spoonerism…

This is a very bad and inadequate summary of what happened, but that’s what happened. They weren’t negligent in the job, they were just doing the best with what they got.

But since then, archaeological and scholarly work has since turned up older manuscripts, all of which is a very exciting story, some of which take us right back almost to New Testament times. The oldest manuscript without controversy is a fragment of the Gospel of John from 125 AD; there is a decidedly more debatable suggestion that a fragment of Mark, dating almost to the time it might have been written (52 AD?) is located among the many fragments and scrolls found at the Dead Sea Caves in the 1940s and 50s. But I think the argument for this, made (as I’m aware) by one scholar, is rather doubtful.

The Dead Sea discoveries were among the most exciting ever made in the last century. It was uniquely helpful in providing Old Testament manuscripts almost a millennium older than those we previously had – those used for the King James. The scrolls date from around the first century AD – around the time, in fact, of Jesus and the early church. They were the property of a Jewish separatist community called the Qum’ran sect, and their texts were obviously very carefully preserved as a matter of religious as well as social importance. Among the many manuscripts there was even discovered a complete scroll of the book of Isaiah, perfectly intact. Other scrolls were not so lucky, but nonetheless many of them contained much of the Old Testament Scripture, providing us with older and, therefore, more reliable manuscripts by which to translate our Bible.

Which is why we had another go. Aside from needing, by the twentieth century, to update the language of the Bible, scholars were also keen to make use of the new discoveries, and to compile a new collection of sources by which to translate the Bible. They didn’t just need to use T-Rex any more (Textus Receptus…) – they could now rely on much earlier manuscripts. Earlier manuscripts are deemed more reliable because, logically, the earlier and therefore closer you get to the original penning of the writings, the more likely you are to have preserved what the original authors wrote. True, the many manuscripts of both Old and New Testament are surprisingly synchronous throughout, but the later ones do obviously diverge from the earlier ones. Hence meaning, facts had, that the King James is just a little less reliable. Or if we don’t want to be negative, that the newer translations (based on older manuscripts) are more reliable. Some of the additions found in the King James (and therefore the New King James also) are therefore likely to be derived from annotations or supposed inclusions into the text inserted at some point by a copyist somewhere, whose text made it into the T-Re…Receptus. Some would complain, for example, at an apparent omission in Colossians 1:14. In the Receptus it reads “in [Christ] we have redemption THROUGH HIS BLOOD, the forgiveness of sins.” The three words I have highlighted in capitals are not present in later translations, fundamentally it must be understood, because they are not in the earliest manuscripts. The nearer we get to the time it was written, we lose those words.

Why? Those three words look good there. Well certainly – we do have redemption through His blood. No normal Christian would argue that! But many of the loud KJV advocators complain at this omission, stating that it’s part of the work of the devil in the new translations to deceive…etc. Silly argument really (I make no apologies for saying so). They don’t realise or don’t say it’s because it’s absent in the earliest manuscripts. But if we ask WHY it made it into some texts – those which made up the Textus Receptus – the answer isn’t too difficult to come by. The full phrase is also found in Ephesians – and it’s in all the manuscripts! In Ephesians 1:7 we read: “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.”

Now you can see how similar this is to the phrase in Colossians, which as a reminder, includes “through His blood” in the later manuscripts, not in the earlier ones. Is it not entirely possible that a thoughtful editor/copyist/commentator somewhere along the line (or perhaps several of them) saw the similarity of the phrases and thought it worth putting a note on the verse in Colossians – “through His blood” – to remind them of the link between this and the themes in Ephesians? Paleography and manuscriptology will tell us that this kind of thing could often and easily happen in the passing down of manuscripts through the centuries.

So the offense taken that this phrase does not appear in the modern translations of Colossians is unfounded. The assertion that it removes the theology of forgiveness through Jesus’ blood is silly – it’s right there in Ephesians. Our newer translations are in fact generally relying on older manuscripts.

Newer (Older) Translations

And so we come to the spectrum of new translations. Indeed a ‘spectrum’ is a very apt description for what we have today. In line with the direction of Western culture the English-speaking world has amassed for itself quite a smorgasbord of translations to choose from which, as I said above, can appear overwhelming.

Essentially at one end of the spectrum you have translations which are very literal (for example the New American Standard Bible – my personal favourite, but a little hard on some), and at the other you have translations which are much more focussed on thought-flow and on ease of understanding, dispensing with word-for-word accuracy in favour of sometimes more helpful sentence structure and phrasings. This is not to say that they change the essence of what Scripture says; more that they take larger chunks at a time and translate the chunks as a whole.

There are benefits to both worlds, though I have confessed to my personal favourite sitting right at one end of the spectrum. The benefits of literal translations are that there is very little imposed on the text for the reader. What you see is what you have. Sometimes you have to grapple with it a little bit. Read it over several times to get what it is saying! This is good for you because it helps you to meditate on what it means, and ask the Lord what it is all about! I’m not meaning that you should box yourself into a corner by getting a translation you can’t understand. I mean that sometimes more interpretative translations can cause us to miss alternative renderings or meanings of phrases, which can often be so important in understanding Scripture and what God is saying.

On the other hand, colloquial, interpretative translations can often be extremely enlightening, because they involve you in the reality of God’s story, and can restore some of the drama where perhaps it is lacking in the word-for-word translations. They can often also present alternative perspectives on passages, which you may not have considered. However you may be able to tell that I have only read these as secondary translations, and I would say this to be advisable, due to the reasons hinted at above: if a non-literal translation is your only translation, you may be missing out on many of the things within the Scripture because of the level of interpretation imposed on the text.

Some translations sit on the fence – somewhere in the middle. I would put the NIV here for example. They want to strike a helpful balance, between rendering faithfully exactly what was written, while also extracting some of the essence behind the words with interpretation. This is a good idea, although I have objections to some of the moves that the NIV makes (see below).

Below I have attempted to give a summary of what each of the modern translations we’re familiar with are about -  their ethos, what they try to achieve, and their usage. This is of course just according to my knowledge, and my knowledge is more hazy with some than others. There are one or two that I have not read at all, such as the ESV (which has its advocates too of course especially among conservative evangelicals – for example see http://www.evangelicalbible.com/why.htm) – a largely literal version – or the recent Holman Christian Standard Bible, about which I know zero! Except that it exists. And apart from these there are still more, some of which are less familiar and less used, or just less used in our part of the world (England), such as the Outer Mongolian Translation. Ahem.

I have begun at the literal end of the spectrum, and move toward the more colloquial and interpretative end as we go. As a preamble, it is important to note that I have not included in my assessments two revisions of the King James: the Revised Version, and the Revised Standard Version. This is because these are still relatively ‘old’ and are not in common usage any more because of their deliberate successor, the New Revised Standard Version (see below). But even these were able to rely on some older manuscripts than those used by the King James translators.

NASB

The New American Standard Bible sprang from the American Standard Version, which was an American counterpart of the Revised Standard Version mentioned above. Translation work was begun in 1959, and the complete Bible eventually emerged 1971. Since then revisions have been made, and the latest edition was published in 1995, and has remained since then. The NASB originally retained the ‘Thee’s and ‘Thou’s when men spoke with God, which made it feel unnecessarily archaic, and thankfully these were dispensed with for the 1995 version.

It is, as I have indicated, a very literal version. Some find it hard to read because of this, and that is understandable. However it is important to realise that it does reorder words slightly so as to be understandable to the modern reader! Galatians 2:20 would literally be translated: “With Christ I have been co-crucified; and live no more I, but lives in me Christ; and what now I live in flesh, by faith(fulness) I live of the Son of God – loving me and giving up Himself on behalf of me.” Not a very easy way to read this lovely verse! But the NASB says: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” It is understandable! They have retained all of the words, and the general structure of the sentence. But where the order was just a bit confusing they have rearranged it, and changed a couple of things that would be unusual to us – for example, “what now I live in flesh” has become “and the life which I now live in the flesh…”

I like this translation just because of the way it phrases some things, and I think because it just matches nicely with the way I think! People all have their favourites – this is mine!

NJKV

The New King James puts itself fairly decisively still in the literal camp, but I think adds a layer that is sometimes helpful, in its phrasing and structure, which aid the reader’s understanding of a passage. We noted above that it actually follows the manuscripts used to translate the King James, in line with its general ethos (the name gives it away – it is in some ways simply a version of the King James that doesn’t include all the words we are now unfamiliar with). But most editions do keep extensive footnotes, commenting on the alterations and variations that are found in the other manuscripts. It is notable that, as the preface indeed makes clear, the differences are often of minor importance and do nothing to alter the message of Scripture in any way. I enjoy this translation especially when its choice of words and phrasing seems particularly geared towards increasing the reader’s faith in God. I don’t know what it is quite, but there seems to be something of definite faith behind this translation. This stands, it has to be said, against some of the more academic approaches of other translations, which can lose something of that aspect in their clinical approach. I think the New King James wonderfully retains this, perhaps in line with the visions and aims of its namesake ancestor. Just a couple of my favourite renditions are: “Dwell in the land and feed on His faithfulness” (Psalm 37:3 – different from other versions’ “cultivate faithfulness”); “Your name is like ointment poured forth” (Song of Solomon 1:3 – more expressive and applicable than the NASB’s “like purified oil”).

Amplified Bible

This Bible is an unusual one and very different from anything else you’ll read, and certainly an interesting one to browse from time to time. Though there are those who use it as their main Bible – this I can’t quite grasp, myself, but if they like it then that’s ok! The idea is that, certainly many Greek words and phrases are more pregnant with meaning than is communicable in the use of just one equivalent word or phrase, which of course most translations (especially the literal) set out to do. So the Amplified Bible included extensive bracketed and parenthetical alternatives and additions to the text which are meant to expand the ideas behind the Greek words and phrases. This can be very helpful, but also extremely dense to read, and requires a lot of concentration and perseverance! So it might be enlightening to the reader to read “Therefore, since we are justified (acquitted, declared righteous, and given a right standing with God) through faith, let us [grasp the fact that we] have [the peace of reconciliation to hold and to enjoy] peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One).” (Romans 5:1) All the bracketed comments remind us what those words mean with which we have perhaps become familiar. But try reading a whole passage this way, and asked what the passage was on about, you might not have any idea!

I think it a great idea then for study of short texts and verses, but for longer passage reading I definitely don’t get along with it. Some do, others don’t. That’s often the way it is!

NRSV

Not having entirely escaped the realm of the literal translations yet, but coming to its borders, I have recently discovered the New Revised Standard Version. No guesses where this one came from. In one sense it is almost in the direct line of the King James (though they all say that they are in some way!). This is in the sense that it obviously comes in name and largely by ethos from that line, which followed the KJV with the Revised and then the Revised Standard Versions.

Again it is a text that wants to be very faithful to the original languages and so a good deal of its emphasis is on good translation of words and phrases in quite a literal way. However it also begins to be faithful to the Greek and Hebrew in a more socially-linguistic way; ie. it seeks to present the text as much as possible in a way that represents the way the original hearers might have heard it. I have mentioned this above. This makes it a favourite of many scholars and others who are rightly interested in the cultural context of the Scriptures. The argument is sometimes overbalanced, but there is a fair case to be made for knowing what the original hearers would have understood, in order to build our own understanding of Scripture. This translation is helpful in this and a number of other ways. It does reorder some of the sentence structure in a more apparent way than something like the NASB, to really help the flow of passages.

It also seeks to be gender neutral, which doctrinally in my books is very good, but in reading can prove a little funny if you’re used to the ‘brothers’ and the ‘men’ where it is obviously implied that these words mean ‘brothers and sisters’ and ‘men and women’ respectively. It becomes a bit laborious to read it time and again, but you know what is intended by the translation. Even more unusual is reading God’s addressing Ezekiel time and again as ‘mortal’. True, this is more gender neutral than the usual ‘son of man’, but you get this feeling that Ezekiel is at any point going to die! What is meant is simply ‘human being’ but this would be way too clunky, and so the best solution it seemed was ‘mortal’. Bit funny, but you can live with it.

This leads me to comment on one of the unfortunate losses of the NRSV. ‘Son of man’ is also an intended phrase in Daniel 7, and theologically I believe is an extremely important one. But the NRSV just reads ‘human being’ in saying that one like a ‘son of man’ approached the throne of God.

In interpretation of this passage it is always clear that this figure is the Messiah who is Jesus. When He walked the earth Jesus called Himself the ‘Son of Man’ all the time, and interestingly this is retained in the Gospels in the NRSV. But I think having it there in the Daniel 7 passage is so important to understanding what He meant by that. It is in the footnotes, but I think it is most helpful in the text itself.

Still this is a good translation, and well worth a read as it presents again some alternatives that you may not have considered.

NIV

Here we perhaps start to reach the middle ground of Bible translations. And while the NIV is generally lauded for its readability and faithfulness, I am going to be decidedly less favourable in my assessment. This is not because I think it is a WHOLLY bad translation, because indeed it is readable, and many people I know who read it, know and love God and find out more about Him by reading it.

But as a translation it does make some errors – or at least some serious assumptions – which if not carefully read can seep into the theology of the reader without their assessing whether it is good or not.

One issues I take is with their translation of the Greek word for ‘flesh’ as ‘sinful nature’ in the New Testament. The Greek word simply means ‘flesh’ and – this is where literal translations come in handy – it should be up to us to decide exactly what that means. The NIV translators, however, have decided for us, that the sinfulness about the flesh is a nature, in other words, it is something inherent about us that we cannot shake.

The whole doctrine of the flesh and spirit, though, in the New Testament, I think slightly defies this. True, many people live day to day ‘in the flesh’ because that’s all they know. This means that they are simply guided by earthly desire, by their stomachs, their eyes. But for the Christian this does not have to be inevitably the way, and we can live in and by the spirit, so that we don’t gratify the desire of the flesh (Galatians 5:16). It’s perhaps subtle, but I think that ‘sinful nature’ is too interpretative, and could perhaps just get the reader stuck in the idea that there is something in them that they will never be able to shake, which always wants to sin. I’m just not sure that’s there. I know we live in a fallen world, that sin still happens, even amongst Christians. But I don’t think you need to interpret that word like that.

It also imposes a theology based very much on the Augustinian idea of original sin, which again is not an idea that every Christian needs to automatically subscribe to without some prayer and meditation on the Scripture.

The NIV further perpetrates this doctrine in another interpretative translation, this time specifically in Psalm 51. It takes the verse that Augustine used in developing this doctrine, and interprets it fully in this way. In verse 5, my literal NASB reads, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” David wrote this Psalm, and when I read this I can see quite what he was talking about. When Samuel came to Jesse’s house looking for one of his sons to anoint him ruler, David wasn’t initially part of the roster. After Samuel had been through all of Jesse’s sons, and still not found the man, he was informed of another, different son. This and the verse quoted above quite evidently suggest that an affair or harlotry might have been involved in his conception. It doesn’t remove from the Psalm overall, in that David is mourning the presence of sin around him even since birth, indeed, conception.

But the somewhat over-interpretative NIV boldly ‘translates’ this verse: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” I hope that most NIV readers at this point are in consultation with other translations, because this is a far cry from the original language, and strips the text of its original meaning, imposing another one. There is nothing in the Eden story to imply that sin is internally hereditary. It is indeed ‘crouching at the door’, hissing in your ear, but it is not internally inescapable. “You must master it,” God told Cain (Genesis 4:7). Therefore it must be possible.

This is not the full extent of issues but represents some of the fundamental problems with the NIV as a translation. In a way I am sorry to be scathing but it must be recognised by every reader, whether they agree that it is a bad thing or not, that the NIV definitely takes a doctrinal standpoint in some of its translations, and in some cases as with those above, much more makes interpretations than translations of the text.

NLT

We reach a realm of translations about which, unfortunately, I know less. But I know a couple of things. I will happily be corrected.

We begin to enter the realm of the more readable, perhaps more interpretative translations, whose aim is more centered on conveying to the reader the general theme and feel behind the text of what the writer was saying, than literally word-for-word what they wrote. The scale is sometimes measured by the polar paradigms of word-for-word, versus thought-for-thought, and these translations definitely prefer the thought-for-thought approach. This has obvious value: when we get bogged down in funny transliteration of Greek phrases straight into the English, it is refreshing to see the words reordered, the picture repainted so that we can understand what it was the writer was actually trying to say, rather than just literally what they said.

But as hinted at above, these interpretations too have to be taken with a pinch of salt, perhaps because they swing the emphasis of the passage toward one particular doctrinal position when another might equally be possible. We already saw this going on with the middle-of-the-road NIV, and unfortunately you do find it also with all of these other translations. I take issue with just a couple of things in the NLT because they make assumptions about doctrinal positions which aren’t there in the original texts. Readers of this blog may have discovered before that I take issue with the doctrine of eternal conscious torment of sufferers in hell. Not to imagine that I don’t believe in hell, I certainly do, but to categorically state that those who go there suffer eternally without any final extinction is a misfit in almost innumerable ways. I have yet to write about that specifically in full, I will do soon hopefully. But for now let me mention that I therefore take issue when the NLT takes the phrase in Romans 6:21 which says that the things we were ashamed of ended in death – and translates that as ‘eternal doom’ – not death.

Now some interpretations of this word could include the concept of judgment in the afterlife which hell would certainly fit into, though when I looked into it, the most common use of this word in Romans (and it is there a lot) is simply to talk about death as we observe it, even physical death. Paul uses it of Christ’s own death! And we know that Christ didn’t suffer eternal doom, so this ISN’T necessarily what this word means!

So you would need to assume that the reader already had a settled opinion on the doctrine, and that they could see your good reasons for translating this word here in this way, neither of which I think it is safe to assume when you are clearly aiming at a younger readership, as the NLT expressly does.

This is one example and I remember spotting a couple of others when reading it on odd occasions. It’s a shame because in many ways I enjoy it when I get to read it – it is of course refreshing and often very cogent in its reading of whole passages. But I would appreciate translators of less literal translations – difficult though it may be – being a little more careful to not impose so quickly any radical doctrinal interpretations which may not be clearly seen in the original text.

NCV

Again aimed at a younger readership (being for many years now the favoured translation of the popluar “Youth Bible”), this translation I think has a fair bit to commend it. Briefly: it has a real sense of flow and of ‘story’ as you read through it, making it quite firmly a ‘dynamic’, thought-for-thought translation. But where some translations at this end of the spectrum seek to lose all “Christianese” lingo altogether (which is no bad idea) – this retains a healthy amount of familiar “doctrinal” words in the text where you would expect to find them – helpfully, I think, so that readers who are following along don’t feel alienated when the pastor is using these sorts of words out of their Bible which might tend towards the more middle-ground or literal translation.

So “faith” still “comes from hearing the Good News” (Romans 10:17) – familiar enough with the more usual phrase “faith comes by hearing” (e.g. NASB). The word for “Good News” isn’t found in the original Greek text for this bit so we see how they do some contextual interpretation and adjustment of meaning – but then “Good News” is a better translation of the Greek euangelion than “gospel”, to which they would have been referring (verse 16).

Without being able to say much more personally about some of the intricacies of this translation (though I did use it for a number of years as a “yoof”), I can in general say that it is a great translation which helps the reader get into the flow of Scripture whilst not removing them so far from familiar language that they end up bewildered.

The Message

But compare this fairly normal NCV rendition of “faith comes by hearing the Good News,” with the Message version’s “Before you trust, you have to listen.” Same concept, very different way of putting it. More than just involving some contextual interpretation and adjustment of word order to help it flow, Eugene Peterson’s highly commended translation steers further from the usual Christian jargon which has, inevitably, acquired a great deal of (sometimes erroneous) meaning over the two millennia that have ensued since the penning of the original words. So translators like Peterson see it as very important to try to convey the original meaning by ditching over-familiar “churchy” words and bringing fresh definitions to them which do not betray the original writers’ intended meaning but do help us rethink how we view certain familiar passages and ideas.

Examples could be given from virtually any passage of Scripture; this version is markedly different from page 1.

Where the NASB reads: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters…”

The Message reads: “First this: God created the Heavens and Earth—all you see, all you don’t see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.”

Wow! Poetic or what! That can give you but the faintest taste of what Peterson magnificently achieved: the whole Bible, dramatically re-thought and re-interpreted in this extremely dynamic translation. I can’t say I’m so familiar with this as with some of the others in the above list, but I know that many across the church have found it extremely helpful in bringing the language of the Bible to life, and often when I have heard it read I have been struck by the nearness of the language, and how readily it is there to be applied to life now.

Conclusion – of the making of many Bible translations…

…there is no end. You probably thought there would be no end to this article, which there very nearly wasn’t. But then I found it, it’s here. There are a great many translations in our language alone, and as I have said, I didn’t cover even very many of them. I simply tried to go for some of the main ones found in our churches today, with which I am slightly (or very) familiar.

In line with this point, as readers may have discovered for themselves, many Christians find themselves comfortable with one or another translation, and this isn’t wrong. Neither is there a correct answer as to which one they should be comfortable with. We all read and learn in different ways, and for this reason it is a massive blessing that we have so many translations available. I, and again many Christians, have found it helpful to have a number of different translations to hand, from across the spectrum, in order to have a broader understanding of what a particular passage might be about. Sometimes, for this reason, ardently sticking to one translation and eschewing all others can be unhelpful – especially if it’s the King James Version with its language, much of which is unavoidably redundant in the modern West; but you will always find folk who adamantly maintain that the King James is the one and only correct translation. I fail to see how this is even vaguely tenable, but those who make this cause rarely do it on scholarly grounds, and only out of misspent religious zeal. We live and learn.

I don’t want that to be the way I finish. There is a final route which I’ve not covered which, at the time of writing, I am daring to undertake: investigate the original languages themselves! There is yet a greater wealth of treasure to be mined from these sources (the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek manuscripts) which, if you have the mind and energy and resources to put towards it, can be very fruitful. I have done one term of Greek so far and find it tremendously interesting – and very challenging! But this of course is for the linguistically minded, which not everyone is. Those who are often share the great wealth of their discoveries in our modern translations, and while the field of Bible versions has been accused of slipping into the realm of consumeristic appeal, it can be beneficial to know what kinds of genuine treasures you will find brought out in our different, modern translations. I hope this has slightly helped.