Which Bible translation is the best?
Someone asked me a good question in the forums. Which Bible translation is the best? This issue creates more polemics than you would believe. People become impassioned for or against certain Bible translations. I think we need to take a very balanced approach to this, understanding the “whats” and the “whys” of Bible translations.
All translations have their particular characteristic that makes them unique. Bible translations will distinguish themselves in two primary ways:
1. What underlying Greek text do the translation use? Is it the “Majority” or “Received” text (a group of late Greek text that primarily comes from the Byzantine area) or the Eclectic text (mixture of different types of manuscripts, primarily using the earliest text). The KJV, NKJV, ASV and many older translations used the former, while the newer and more up-to-date Bible’s such as the NAS, NIV, ESV, NLT, NET, etc. use the latter. We should also use the latter since they represent the better manuscripts.
2. Bible’s also differ in purpose, all of which have their place. Was it written for study or reading? Was it written for the seminary or the church? When available, you should have a variety of translations for different purposes, but you must understand the differences. Here are the three translation methods:
- Formal Equivalence: Translations that seek to translate word for word (although this is really impossible). Examples: NAS, KJV, ASV, ESV. Less readable, but better for study in contemporary languages. Why? Because they will usually attempt to make fewer interpretive decisions on any text that can be understood in many ways. This allows the reader to struggle through the options.
- Dynamic Equivalence: Translations that seek to translate thought for thought. Examples: NIV, TNIV, NRSV, etc. Not quite as good for deep study, but usually better for reading and memorization. Dynamic equivalence translations make good pulpit or teaching Bibles.
- Paraphrase: Translations that seek to use common language and idioms to get the basic point across in a very readable way. Examples: Message, Philip’s Translation, NLT, GNB, etc. While paraphrases are not good for study or memorization, they are very readable and cause you to read the text differently than you normally would. In this respect, they have great value.
Most of the translations can be found here at BibleGateway.
My suggestion is to have some of each. I recommend the NIV, ESV, NET, NAS, and the Message. The NET, in some ways, is the best of all worlds as it contains many study notes that explain when a passage should be translated differently. I guess the NET translation methodology could be called an eclectic (that is why I could not place it on the above chart–it may need its own category!). While I believe the NET is the best study Bible available on the market today, because of its unconventional translation philosophy, it is not very smooth in its reading and, therefore, does not make a good memorization or pulpit Bible.
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centuri0n on 23 Aug 2007 at 2:51 pm #
Michael — I realize this is an old post, but I am having a discussion with some friends (believe it or not, it’s not on a blog, which I know shocks some people) about how much “Bible” there has to be present in order for there to be the authority and power of God’s word in the text.
As a point of reference for this discussion, all of us in that discussion would affirm the basic principles of formal translation advanced in Leland Ryken’s the Word of God in English and have strong biases toward formal translation method.
However, because I am the house trouble-maker, I have been considering the passage in Luke 4 where Jesus reads from Isaiah and we see that Jesus is not reading the Hebrew OT but more likely the LXX because of the divergent rendering of the passage we find there. Yet Jesus reads the passage and tells the Nazarene Jews who are listening that the Scripture is there fulfilled — plainly calling the, um, variant form of the text “Scripture”.
And in Romans 3, Paul says that the oracles of God have been “entrusted” to the Jews — even though most Jews outside of Palestine were probably “entrusted” with the LXX and not the Hebrew Torah and Tanach.
So my question is this: if we can agree to your statement, above, that formal and dynamic equivalent methodologies have their place, and even some use can be found for paraphrase, how are we to assess whether or not a particular rendering of some passage yields, as your site says elsewhere, “authorial intent”? How can we know that some translation is a valid rendering or an invalid rendering? Should we even care?
C Michael Patton on 23 Aug 2007 at 3:12 pm #
Hey Frank,
You bring us some difficult issues that I am not settled on myself.
With regards to Christ’s use of the LXX, or any selective use of versions by NT writers, I would venture to say that their paraphrase of the text is often in concert with their understanding of the text, not so much their attempts selectively use the version that agrees with their argument. In other words, when people paraphrase or use a different version, it often evidences a deeper understanding of the message. We do this with Scripture from the pulpit all the time. I think Christ and the Apostles would often do this (such as the case with Matthew’s liberal use of the text) precisely because they understood the message.
This CAN be the case with modern paraphrases. Often, they will help us to understand the text much in the same way a commentary does (or footnotes in the NET Bible). Yet while the COULD give us a better understanding, they, unlike the Apostles and Christ, cannot confirm that this understanding is indeed correct. They are not inspired versions.
For this reason, I encourage people who do not study in the original languages to study FIRST from a formal translation and refer to the dynamic translations more like commentaries.
Does that make sense or did I miss the intent of your question?
Hope you are doing well Frank.
centuri0n on 24 Aug 2007 at 11:29 am #
As far as being well goes, I am usually far better than I deserve, so I count it all joy.
I like your point about the interpretive context we often miss when Paul or Jesus or Peter or whoever is citing the OT — that often they are actually -teaching- by restating the text in a useful way. But this is why the Rom 3 and the Luke 4 examples are so telling — these are not places where the writer of Scripture is -interpreting- the passage but merely -citing it as authoritative-.
Honestly: I share your bias about formal translation vis a vis those of us who are not educated in the ancient languages. But I think this is why the NET bible specifically has so much value — it is because it renders a -sensible- and -literate- translation from the source to the English receptor, but it makes -clear notes- regarding dynamic equivalences and why certain choices have been made. Most of our favorite formal texts — like the ESV and NASB — often have inadequate notes from the translators, and we simply miss some of the dynamic choices they have made.
All that translation wonkery aside, here’s why I’m asking that question and thinking about this topic. I am concerened that we are participating in a kind of KJVO error when we start to call things “not the Bible” which are, in the worst case, simply lacking sufficient methodological consistency. You have not done this, so when I say “we” I mean “me and my friends”. And I was really sort of scouting out alternate thoughts so that I’m not hermetically sealed inside my own flawed brain-case.
Thanks! Hope you and yours are well.