Loading...In my last post I began to talk about my involvement with the translation committee for the New Revised Standard Version. My Doktorvater, Bruce Metzger, was the chair of the committee and he asked me, during my graduate studies, to be one of the scribes for the Old Testament subcommittee. In that capacity I recorded all the votes that were taken by the translators for revisions of the text of the Revised Standard Version, in whichever subsection of the committee I was assigned to. Normally the subsection would have, maybe, five scholars on it. They would debate how to modify the text of the RSV, verse by verse, word by word; they would then take a vote by show of hands; and I would record their decision.
This was an eye-opening experience for me. Bible translation (or the translation of any foreign-language work, for that matter) is an inordinately complicated procedure. It is impossible to replicate the exact meaning of one language in another, since the nuances of words vary from one language to another. Let me give an example from the Greek of the New Testament. In English we have different terms that mean something like “love” – for example, “adoration,” “passion,” “lust,” “like,” and, lots of others. Each has its own connotations. Greek too has a variety of words, and they all, in principle, could be translated with the word love.
One Greek word used in the New Testament, PHILIA, typically refers to the kind of love you have
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You write here that ‘They would debate how to modify the text of the RSV, verse by verse, word by word.’ Do you recall if there were ever discussions about how to punctuate a certain passage?
Oh yes. Some places are notoriously tricky: the punctuation changes everything. As a common example, did Jesus say to the thief on the cross, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” or “Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in paradise”? (Almost certainly the former for techincal reasons, but the comma makes a big difference.
Or as one old joke goes, did Paul say to the Philippians, “I would not have you ignorant, brethren” or “I would not have you, ignorant brethren.” 🙂
I’m making my way through Esther Hamori’s God’s Monsters and see that on p.38 she notes,
“… translators often render these phases differently to reflect their theological interpretations. The NRSV mentions the ‘great and terrible wilderness’ but ‘a great and awesome God’ (Deuteronomy 8:15; 7:21). [But] Moses makes no such distinction. The God he speaks of is as great and terrible as the wilderness itself.”
This particular example is from the Hebrew Bible, so you may not have had to deal with it on the committee, but did you witness instances where questions of translation hinged on theological questions and viewpoints?
Oh yes. Every translator of the Bible (at least every one who is honest) realizes that translation is not and cannot be an “objective” matter; you have to understand what an author says and means in order to make the text say and mean the same (or as close as the same as possible) in English. That requires interpretatoin. There is simply no way around it. And interpretation involves understanding the theological perspectives of the author. And different people understand, say, the theology of Hosea, or Job, or Paul very differently from other people.
Did Paul write his letters to the various churches in Greek?
Absolutively.
I have a New American Standard Bible that I like because it has good cross-references and usually footnotes showing alternative translations as well as questionable passages like the end of Mark. I wish translations would be more literal in translating Elohim and YHWH in the OT, it would help clarify certain aspects of those stories. I wish all translations would be more literal with footnotes to explain idioms. I mean, if God dictated it that way wouldn’t He want it translated that way?!
Right! The NASB is very literal, which is why we all used it at Moody. That certainly has its advantages. But it’s a mistake, as well, to think that “more literal” means “more accurate”
Yes, I experienced this in the one year of Classic Greek that I took. The professor gave us a line from the Iliad, and each of three words could be translated into several different words in English. This created about nine different permutations, none of which made any sense to us. Even when the class decided on the best translation, we still didn’t understand it, and the professor had to explain it to us. And that’s from a work about people stabbing each other with spears. (OK, there’s a lot more to it than that…)
There often is no simple one-to-one correspondence of words. An example is “kosmos,” which can mean beginning, order (in the sense of command), order (in the sense of structure), world/universe, even adornment. Adornment? The central concept is order – the world began when it was set into order. Adornments, such as ear rings, give order to the face. (It’s the source of the modern word “cosmetics.”)
And that’s without getting into different social institutions, such as the slavery that Bart talks about.
Yeah, I was reading Plato’s Euthyphro this morning in Greek, and whoa, there’s a six-worder in there that took me a half-hour (knowing the words!). And I’m still not sure I have it….
That is terrifically helpful, Dr Ehrman. ‘As literal as possible and as free as necessary’ is an excellent maxim.
For many months now I have been attempting to improve my Latin by translating from the Vulgate. Currently I am working on the Epistle of James (prompted by your scholarship) because I wanted to understand his point of view cf that of Paul.
Twice a week over Zoom I discuss my translations with my Latin buddy, Father Peter (a Marist priest) who is, unsurprisingly, much more interested in my Vulgate translations than in my attempts to render Ovid’s Amores into poems in idiomatic English. Sometimes he dashes off to grab his New Jerusalem Bible to elucidate something tricky. (I never look at a Bible text as I work. Instead, I use dictionaries: mostly Lewis – the School edition – and Traupman.)
But which Bible would you recommend I use, and why?
The Greek one. 🙂 Barring that, my preferred translation is the NRSVue, that I’ve been referring to here.
Please convince me I’m wrong, but I take issue with the editors of the Updated Edition’s decision to translate “doulos” as “servant” in those instances in which Mary (mother of Jesus) and Paul refer to themselves using that term. My understanding is that, while the academy was happy with using “slave” whenever the term “doulos” appeared, there was pushback from the pulpit; pastors, ministers and priests were concerned that their congregants might be offended by the use of the term “slave” in those contexts. I don’t pretend to be a Biblican scholar, but isn’t the use of the term “slave” a more accurate translation of “doulos” than the term “servant”?
Oh boy, I couldn’t agree more. The word is “slave” and “servant” gives precisely the wrong idea The committee apparently decided on “slave” but they got overturned by the committee (not scholars) at hte National Council of Churches, on the grounds that “slave” would give the wrong impression in the our post-bellum America. But the reality is that the term is referring to people who were absolutely owned by others, not to paid servants who could quit if they wanted.
“As literal as possible and as free as necessary.”
Beautiful
Hello Bart,
Thanks for this helpful information about translating Greek words. I have a related question about how to translate (and interpret) Greek tenses. I’ve heard this many times and I wonder if it is legitimate. Let’s say a verb is in the perfect tense and it’s translated “The Pharisees said…”. I’ve heard evangelical preachers say that since this verb is in the perfect tense, it could be understood to mean that the Pharisees were continually saying, or they said something repeatedly – not just once.
Is that a legitimate understanding of the perfect tense? I wonder if people with some training in Greek, sometimes make too much of it or derive meanings that weren’t really meant to be there.
Thank you so much!
I think you mean the “imperfect” tense. The perfect tense refers to a past event (I have done this…); the imperfect is … tricky. It can mean a range of things depending on the context. I was doing this. I continued doing this. I tried to this. I began doing this. Etc. To say it definitely means one or the other requires a lot of contextual exegesis, and in my experience, that don’t happen a lot with most evangelical preachers….
Dr. Ehrman,
Yes, I meant the “imperfect.” As always, things are not as simple as some like to make them. Thanks for that information!
There’s a paper on pre-Islamic Arabia slave ownership — what seems to be Aramean-adjacent like the Elephantine Papyri slave girl with a Jewish husband and *also* an Aramean Lord who gave her a child.
And to be a slave to those of Eastern wealth, especially if you provided a child as an um walad, could be better than being a chore servant to the poor.
Its like a salary contract vs wage in the modern day.
The ancient contracts can specify freedom after the contract is fulfilled. There’s also sorts of amenities and protections, types of freedoms during the time period could be gained or initially specified.
Maybe if there was a better name for that.
I dont know if i mentioned,but I found in the Babylonian Talmud, on the Jewish side, where the Rabbi explains why short-term contracts with the outcome of pregnancy are ok. It’s because they are only contracted by notable men, and so avoid unintential family tree becoming less branchy stuff.
Dr. Ehrman,
Of Paul’s authentic letters is Galatians most linked with Romans?
They are the most closely related in theme and argument, yes.
Last year I edited a novel with theological implications written by a lay person who began a “later-in-life” search for spiritual meaning and was told by various Christian “professionals,” who didn’t like his probing questions, that to really understand the New Testament he had to read it in the original Greek. An engineer by trade, he took up their challenge and for several years studied New Testament Greek. This led him to question translation of a key portion of John 1:6, which he read as saying the man “sent from God” was Jesus, not John. John had only named him—that is, introduced him to the world. His translation was, “There was a man sent from God whose name was given by John.” This change fit his desired understanding of what follows, making Jesus a prophet sent by God rather than God’s uniquely divine son. When he complained that the traditional translation is too awkward to be accurate, his Greek teachers said the original is idiom. Does this seem possible?
Are you asking is it a grammatically possible translation of John 1:6? I”m not sure I see how it could be translated that way.
I know I’m getting into the weeds, but here goes: A main pillar of this lay Greek translator/novelist’s argument rests on rendering the translation of the name John in the genitive case. He cites a principle of biblical Greek grammar, “Nominative of Appellation,” (Dana and Mantey, A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament, 1955, 1927, pages 69-70)—a tendency to standardize the spelling of proper names in English even though they vary by case in Greek. When the grammatically correct spelling is lost due to a proper name being written in the standardized form, he says, it can result in an awkward grammatical structure like that in John 1:6b. Once the name John is returned to genitive case, he argues, the possibility emerges of “reverse dittography,” (Kurt and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament, page 278) because the last two letters of John in genitive case are exactly the same as the first two of the next word. Changing John to nominative fixes this problem for the translator. It’s a round-a-bout, but he believes seeing Jesus as a prophet, not God, cures a lot of ills.
Well, I can understand wanting to cure a lot of ills, but I can’t imagine it’s a viable solution. He wants to posit not just one but two textual variants for which there is not a single piece of manuscript evidence (the genitive of “John” ending in -ou and then the confusion of that with the -ou that follows as part of the next word leading to its omission). On top of that, I don’t see how the grammar (before the omission of the -ou) makes any sense. Literally “The name to him was of John”? (It’s perfectly common to say “the name to him was John” — it’s a way in Greek of saying “his name was John”; but you wouldn’t say “his name was of John”) Maybe I’m misunderanding him. And who is the “translator” who fixed the problem. Translator of what?
Very interesting post, Bart. I now see how thorough this exercise has to be.
I started imagining what disciples gifted with glossolalia may have experienced when they switched to another langage and found out that it had all sorts of different nuances to speak of the new kingdom. There could have been a language that sold less because of that.
A longstanding practice at my Episcopal church in San Francisco is to make slight modifications to the usual liturgy. For instance, we start the Lord’s Prayer with “Our Father and Mother” rather than just Father. We also say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord” rather than “Blessed is he…” I won’t bother listing all the changes to a regular Sunday Eucharist. We have been doing it for so long that it seemed perfectly normal, but I find in my interactions with people in other Christian practices that we are considered “politically correct” and therefore not to be taken seriously. Professor, do you think gender-inclusive language will catch on in the general population within our lifetimes?
I think it’s catching on in lots and lots of ways; but there are some specific forms of exclusive language that will die hard. (Including I think calling God Father and Mother; then again, saying “Our Parent who is in heaven” probably ain’t gonna fly either…)
Dr. Ehrman,
Crossan has said that one of the very best ways to discover the authentic Paul is when he becomes defensive. Are these 3 examples strong samples of Paul’s Defensiveness?
Galatians:
“I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother. I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie.”
1 Corinthians:
“Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not the result of my work in the Lord? Even though I may not be an apostle to others, surely I am to you!”
“… if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead.”
I’m not sure what he means (I don’t recall where he says this). What would it mean for Paul to be “inauthentic” in a letter that he himself wrote?
Were there no atheist scholars in the committee?
There was one that I know of (on the NT committee). Most were church people. As, well, one would expect of New Testament scholars!
How about when an idiom is from the original language, then needs to be translated?
Rob Bell in What is The Bible states that in the Old Testament the idiom that ‘god has a long nose’ is used to indicate that god is patient, i.e. long suffering. The logic being that when a person gets mad their nose capillaries fill, looking red, from the face out to the nose.
I don’t know if this is accurate Hebrew or if Rob Bell is accurate citing it. But, the scenario presents some interesting translation quandaries. No contemporary would describe having a long nose for any human emotion.
Thoughts?
This is the kind of thing that divides translators: do you translate it literally and hope someone explains the idiom? Or do you try to find something comparable in English. Ain’t easy or good either way….
It’s said the Inuit language has literally dozens of words of varying nuance that all translate into English simply as “snow.”
Words that are more particularizing in another language — whether Inuit or Koine Greek — than their counterparts in English, necessarily compel translators to strike a balance between accuracy and readability.
It could, for instance, be perilous to translate “philia” or “eros” into English as simply “love,” disregarding the distinction the Greek words make between the platonic and erotic kinds. (😳) Thus, some interpolation by the translator is unavoidable.
Even more fraught are instances in which a word is ambiguous in the original language!
An excellent example of the danger here (that I learned from you BTW 🙂) is the gaffe made by the author of John in fabricating an exchange between Jesus and Nicodemus (Jn 3:1-8) to exploit the ambiguity of the Greek word ἄνωθεν as meaning either “again” or “from above.” By employing this equivocacy to devise a misunderstanding, the author was too clever by half since in Aramaic the double entendre is the apotheosis of “lost in translation.”
But there is another instance of an ambiguity in Koine Greek that is especially consequential for NT translators.
[cont.]
The author of Luke used the word ἐντὸς in the answer he quotes Jesus as giving to some Pharisees who asked about the imminence of the Kingdom of God (Lk 17:20-21.)
My (amateur) understanding is that this word usually means “within” or “Inside.” Indeed, that is how ἐντὸς is always translated the only other time the word appears in the canonical gospels (Mt 23:27.) But it seems context can suggest the secondary meaning of “among” or “amidst.”
Unlike in Matthew, however, there is nothing in Luke’s pericope to suggest which meaning that author intended. This ambiguity is especially problematic since whether Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is to be found “within you” or standing “among you” could hardly be more crucial!
Unfortunately, this exchange comes from L material, so we have no version of it in Mark, Matthew or Q for comparison. Talk about gaps that believers need God to fill! 😏
Is there any pericope in the canon more desperately in need of independent attestation than Lk 17:20-21? Corroboration aside, a second source might provide clarification for a very provocative — and vexingly ambiguous — saying.
If only… (Hey, wait a minute… 🤔)