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Loading...About two or three times a month I get asked about translations of the Bible. Usually the questions are about which one I prefer (answer: The New Revised Standard Version, i.e. the NRSV, and also an annotated edition, such as the Harper Collins Study Bible, which gives brief introductions to each of the biblical books and notes at the bottom of the page for difficulty passages, a kind of mini-commentary). But sometimes a questioner wants to know about the process of biblical translation and what it entails.
I’ve been interested in this question for, well, roughly 50 years, but my interest reached a peak in the early 1980s when, as a lowly graduate student, I got invited to be a secretarial assistant for the committee producing the NRSV. Years ago on the blog I talked about that over a series of posts, both what the translation entailed, what problems it (and every other translation committee or individual scholar) had to confront, what I did for the committee over the years, etc. (For the first post in that thread, see Metzger and Me. The NRSV Bible Translation Committee). I thought I’d revisit the issue here, especially since a new updated version has now come out (NRSVue = NRSV Updated Edition; not exactly a catchy title, but accurate). At the end of this series I’ll say a few words about the new edition. First, the original topic: my (rather minor) involvement with the NRSV itself.
The New Revised Standard Version Committee was appointed by the U.S. National Council of Churches to produce a revision of the famous Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the Bible, which had come out in 1952. Since the time
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Cognates are very useful but can be tricky. Languages as similar as Spanish and Italian have many false cognates. MATITA means bush in Spanish but pencil in Italian. BURRO is a donkey in Spanish and butter in Italian. Having said this, a typical Spanish speaker can understand an Italian speaker with about 80% or 90% comprehension. Thanks for your articles on translating the Bible.
Interesting !
I’m sure this work could address several challenges, not only to find the literal understanding of what the text said.
The more I read, and at least try to understand, the more curious I become about the origins, its “how” and “whys” and purposes of the books in the Bible, and also some of those often respected texts that didn’t make it into the “canon”. One example, is the ‘Book of Jubilees.’ which many biblical scholars say has been written by Jewish religious scholars and in Jewish religious circles and seems to head on address “gaps” in the Pentateuch or write it as it “should have been written. I’ve read this book several times and really appreciate its writing style as a well written literature but not at all as a historical book. However, I don’t believe its purpose was to deceive or mislead concerning the Jewish holy scriptures, claiming Moses as the author and altering the creation story of Yahweh himself, would, or at the very least “could”, be perceived as a risky attempt.
In my non-scholarly head, as an example, this approach of the ‘Book of Jubilees’ authors gives me a window, and seems to me as an example (which could be extrapolating to other canonized biblical texts) into the possible complexity and layers within biblical texts. I would think such a view could/would add dimensions in the revision work scholars might need to consider in their analysis/ interpretation and search for its original meaning. For me and from my perspective, it raises questions about the balance between propositional and non-propositional elements (truths, wisdoms, etc) within scripture and how best to convey/translate the possible richness of the original texts to modern readers, and if this revision got it, or even could get it, right
Quote from the post:
“For another thing, a major movement had transpired in the use of inclusive language, where the words “man” and “men” and the pronoun “he” were now taken to refer to males, not to females as well, so that if one wanted to refer to both men and women, other terms had to be used.”
Does this mean that the translators changed a male pronoun to a gender-neutral pronoun where they thought it was the actual intent of the author for the word to be understood as such? Or was it done to make the text more consistent with modern thinking regarding gender equality? Or am I missing the point here?
Male pronouns don’t exactly work in Greek and Hebrew the way they do in English. In Greek for example, EVERY noun is masculine, feminine, or neuter, independently of whether it is referring to something that is masculine, feminine, or neuter. “Army” (a group of male soldiers) for example is feminine! What the translators are doing is trying to represent words/concepts that are necessarily masculine as masculline, feminine as feminine, and neither as either both or neither. This was done so if a text says “Man does not live by bread alone” it is not taken toe mean that Woman does….
The same applies to Modern Greek
Dr. Ehrman, on December 14, you wrote that John 1:18, “originally spoke of the MONOGENHS UIOS (the unique son) who was in the bosom of the father, but… came to be changed by scribes in Alexandria to read MONOGENHS THEOS (the unique God) who was in the bosom of the father.” I notice that the RSV has the original, and the NRSV has the change. Why did the English translators adopt this change in the second half of the 20th Century? What was the justification in the NRSV committee?
It’s long been a matter of debate, and the change was made became some of the manuscxripts that have MONOGENHS THEOS are ones that are *usually* considered superior in quality. One problem is that they are also all connected with the city of Alexandria in some way, where this teaching came to be very important at precisely the time the manuscripts were being produced.
Thank you Dr Ehrman. I find this particular subject absolutely fascinating. Inclusive language is a very hot topic in one of the Bible study groups I belong to. Some members believe inclusive language should always take precedence, even when the original meaning was probably more gender specific. Do you have any views on this?
If I was a committed Christian interested in the theological and social importance of the Bible in today’s world, I would agree. As a historian interested in placing it in its own world, these are not my ultimate concerns. That world wsa patriarchal, and like it or not, so is the Bible.
Do you have a favorite ENGLISH version of the Septuagint?
YOu might try the one by Albert Pietersma and Benjamin Wright.
It continually is so amazing that you are in the center of interpreting maybe the most important texts in the world, which are the subtle basis for the rules of Western gov, and that is a template for a lot of gov.
Last night I found out that ADONAI is Lords plural but interpreters just switch in Lord.
Though it’s taken to be just a royal we, it starts out just fine as ADONI Lord in the Levant. This adds weight to my hypothesis that the Tetragrammaton is a syncretic deity, an Aramean + Midianite merging. So, like Serapis, a Greek + Egyptian merging (with Serapis coins struck in Judaea), and the Shepherd Kings’ Seth-Baal STBL (Egyptian-Canaanite merging). And Seth-Ha, Amun-Re, and so many others. I also think Osarseph means Osiris-Reseph (Kushite-Canaanite merging) It’s exactly what’s popular to do with “mixed multitudes.”
When you wrestled with the problem of evil (ie, enormous undeserved suffering by sentient beings that is pointless) in relation to whether (a perfectly good and omnipotent) God exists, did you ever consider what I call (accurately or inaccurately) the Calvinist solution, ie, that whatever God does is (by definition, perfectly) good? At least today, after a lifetime of rumination, that seems to me to be the only solution that is simple and straightforward enough to conceivably be rock solid. You either believe it or you don’t. It’s simply a matter of faith, a Kierkegaardian choice of whether or not to (arbitrarily) believe. Everything else is like looking for excuses that are ultimately contingent on something else in order to be true.
I’ve always thought that this was the ultimate message of Job, ie, that there’s nowhere else to go.
I know that Plato’s Euthyphro is a very strong argument against the moral contention that whatever God commands is good simply because God commands it. My Calvinist solution is very similar to that.
I haven’t made that choice but remain suspended between belief and unbelief. It seems like belief ultimately necessitates the Calvinist solution.
Oh yes. I was a pretty hard core Calvinist for yours. There are huge problems with it, and the Euthyphro (I was reading it in Greek this morning, as it turns out. It’s a bit tricky!) makes the strong argument: Is something holy (or in this case good) because God (the gods) embrace it? Or does God (the gods) embrace it becuase it is holy (or good)? Surely the latter.
The other big issue is that people who take that line almost always argue that the reason we ourselves have moral values is because they have been handed down to us by God. Why else would morality be universal, they say. But if that’s the case, then why would actions of God (the slaughter of all the inhabitants of Jericho, e.g.) be immoral by our standards, which were given us by God? And if we are to be Godlike, does that mean we too are supposed to slaughter innocent people when they stand in our way? Are we to imitate God or not?
In short, I don’t find it a useful answer, personally.
I just realized that Ba‘al + Zebub is a syncretic deity too! Of course, people want to take the position that Ba‘al becomes a generic word for Lord, but that doesn’t change that it 100% starts out as its own deity. Imo the names of two entities becoming one entity = syncretic entity.
With STBL, adding Ba‘al wouldn’t even be needed in Egypt to identify the pre-established and well-known Seth. A better explanation is that its the spirit of mixed multitudes, Egypt plus Asiatic.
My sticking point for a syncretic Tetragrammation was “Could the H for the Desert Protector god Ha lose the diacritical dot and intensifier?”, but I’m seeing diacritical marking loss in syncretic deities. I just started looking at it.
You mentioned Ugaritic and various other Semetic languages, does the awesome NRSV committee use hieroglyphics translators too ? I had nooo ideaaaa how much Egyptian influence there was — even though every major figure since Abraham has that “Come to Egypt” moment.
I think that may be why there’s no Isaacites or Mosheites or Josephites but there’s Israelites and Reubenites, because it’s the Shepherd King Hyksos Jacob who becomes that one ethnographic empire ruler (of Lower Egypt through some towns in Canaan) and it is through that authority that it happens.
I also think that there may be Abrahamites through the word Abiru, ABR plus the Akkadian plural -U for tribe.
Question for Bart … regarding what we know as The Lord’s Prayer … 2 questions: It mentions “heaven” twice (father in heaven & on earth as it is in heaven), but I thought Jews did not have a concept of Heaven or Hell. Is this just a mistranslation?
I heard decades ago, that this was not a unique prayer, but is based on a prayer in Hebrew scriptures. But I can’t find such a prayer in the Old Testament. If it is there, where is it?
Thanks.
“Heaven” in this context refers simply to the place wehre God and his attendants reside (not to the place where human souls go at death).
And no, this prayer (or something close to it) can’t be found in the Hebrew Bible.
What an amazing experience that must have been! I am a little thrown off by this part:
“ (Part of the trick of the entire translation was making sure that some books were not revised radically while others were revised scarcely at all. There needed to be a balanced level of change from one book to the next.)”
Was that stated as an explicit goal beforehand? Wouldn’t or shouldn’t going with the best translation, whether it revised a large portion of each book or not, be the only goal?
Yup, the goal was absolutely the best translation possible. Some translators in charge of a book, say, Deuteronomy, were convinced that the RSV was way off all over the map and so tried to make radical changes left, right, and center. Others doing, say, Exodus, thought the RSV was basically on target and needed tweaking. For each book a person proposed changes, and the subcommittee then discussed, debated, and resolved the issues, accepting a change, altering it, or rejecting it altogeher. The result was that Deuteronomy may have been seriously changed than Exodus, and somoene had to even it all out.
There’s gotta be a slight whiff of omnipotence here!? I know I’d pretend to feel it: (solemnly announced) “The inerrant word of the Almighty (as tweaked by Bart)!” Luvvit – unintended things like this make us SO human! 🙂
The books of the Old Testament were written over a period of centuries. I’ve often wondered, as a non-reader of Biblical Hebrew, and as someone who is dependent on translations made by others, is that time scale apparent in the texts that we have?
I mean, if I were to read texts by, say, Chaucer and Shakespeare and Charles Dickens and Bart Ehrman, I would know, from their very different ‘English’, that they were written at entirely different times. That would give me a historical context and it might influence how I read those texts and what I end up believing about them.
Is something like this visible in the different texts of the Hebrew Bible and if so, is there any way that translators can reflect this in their translations?
Yes, there are some linguisitic indicators of different periods of composition, but not as extreme as say Chaucer to Dickens. It’s difficult to render these kinds of differences into English.
Dr Ehrman,
Was the committee independent or beholden to the benefactors (the church council). Did the council have veto power over some new proposed changes? I am asking because some changes can stir quite a controversy like in previous editions the change to John 3:16 (from his only begotten son to his unique/only son).
Did the committees, especially concerning the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament if you will, rely on Jewish scholars to better understand some passages and accurately translate them?
“Only begotten” is simply a mistranslation (mistaking the meaning of the Greek term) and so was not the sort of thing that could be overturned. For the NRSV the Council could make suggestsions but they let the experts do their work. Apparently that was not hte case with the “updated edition” where the scholars’ decisions could be overturned. And yes, the Hebrew Bible committee had Jewish scholars (well, one? two?) on them, but they didn’t know Hebrew any better than the non-Jewish scholars. Some on that committee were flippin’ unbelievalbly good semitic linguists (knowing the relevant cognate languages: Akkadian, Ugaritic, etc)