Which Bible translation is the most accurate?

[cataway]

Since "Jehovah" is a mushing together of two versions of the Tetragrammaton -- not from the Hebrew, but from German -- I'd have to say that the appearance of "Jehovah" in the NRSV would represent a gross departure from its accuracy.

does that mean you're also not going to use the name Jesus ?

 

[cataway]

I actually have one of those, but the biggest problem I have with it is I want to know exactly which manuscript each verse was translated from. It doesn't tell me, nor does it tell me why they translated each verse the way they did.
Instead I understand I get the vague answer that "Oh we just used a bunch of the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts and made our decisions based off of those." Real specific let me tell you. For all I know they just decided "Genesis 1:1 lets use the Masoreic Text to translate this one, and ene meni miny moe, lets do 1:2 using the Septuigaint.

do you claim to be a judge ? and by what authority placed upon would you carry out your judgment ?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I happen to be a student of one of the scholars who did the translation

I see... [laughs maniacally and adds a name to a list]

My prof feels that most of the gospel stories were originally transmitted orally, and in whole (Rhoads agrees with him on this).

Orality studies in the NT have come a long way, certainly. We've gone from Bultmann's use of then-current German theories of orally transmitted das Volksmärchen, initially skipped over Gerhardsson's model thanks to (a later very apologetic) Neusner, entered into a flurry of activity which included the adoption of the oral-formulaic model (from Homeric studies) by esp. Kelber, and thanks to Wright's inclusion of the barely noticed study by Bailey we entered into the battle between "informal controlled" and "formal controlled" (and, of course, those that still think the game of telephone is the best analogy).

While it is certainly true that oral transmission in modern peasant villages even in the most remote middle eastern areas cannot be said to accurately reflect first century palestine, neither can it be dismissed. A central method in anthropology (especially back when it was called ethnology) for understanding prehistory is comparing how various modern non-agricultural social groups function. Such studies provide parameters, as do studies of modern primarily oral cultures. If we find, for example, that across the board history quickly turns to myth, then that is significant. If instead we find (as we do) that while the variability between cultures is vast, certain trends and commonalities exist, these can be used. To understand how orality functioned first in Galilee and then in the earliest "Christian" circles, looking at Rabbinic traditions (per Gerhardsson) and middle eastern illiterate communities (per Bailey) and examining points of commonality (both between these two and between them and studies of other oral cultures) is a great methodology.
We know that Jesus had a reputation for being a teach/prophet. Even if Gerhardsson's comparison is overly ambitious, the fact that the same tendencies (repetition, using various forms such that they can be easily memorized, etc.) are found to hold true in areas/cultures/times as diverse as ancient Greece and 20th century Africa and the Middle east is suggestive.
Finally, cognitive psychology and its collaboration with anthropology has produced a comprehensive set of studies looking at orality from the framework of cognitive psychology and memory. Memory in Oral Traditions: The Cognitive Psychology of Epic, Ballads, and Counting-out Rhymes was an earlier example of such work, and the volume Memory in Mind and Culture (in particular the paper on oral traditions by Rubin, who authored the aforementioned book) represents a interdisciplinary effort spanning well over a decade. I think we can leave the century old approaches from German studies Bultmann adopted (as well as the Homeric models, which don't apply here except loosely) behind.

It wasn't an exact rendition word-for-word, so really, "gist" is far more important to the ancient mind than word-for-word accuracy.

That depends on the oral genre. For example, Carawan's analysis of the mnemones at Halikarnasoss places heavy emphasis on their role as "master of an extensive oral record", not dissimilar to the nordic "lawyers" who memorized legal codes.

Also, keep in mind that while it is lagging behind, biblical studies is increasingly adopting tools and incorporating research from not only anthropology (that's nothing new, although the extent to which e.g., Bauckham relies on Vansina's Oral Tradition as History is pretty new), but also cognitive psychology and even the blending of anthropology, cognitive linguistics/psychology, and poetics/narrative.
Park's study Mark's Memory Resources and the Controversy Stories (Mark 2:1-3:6): An Application of the Frame Theory of Cognitive Science to the Markan Oral-aural Narrative is an excellent example work done incorporating important developments made elsewhere into NT studies. However, it still hasn't reached the level of e.g., Stockwell's Cognitive Poetics or Dancygier's The Language of Stories, but given time...

The result of a vast amount of research in anthropology, cognitive linguistics, memory research, orality, etc., has given us some interesting results. First, teacher's like Jesus use oral genres and mnemonics in particular ways (while Riesner has plenty of competition with his emphasis of Jesus' role in Jesus als Lehrer, from Jesus the Magician to Crossan's idiotic Galilean egalitarian cynic Jewish 60s radical, one of the central aspects of Jesus' activity was teaching/preaching). The use of parables, for example, might be repeated with a certain amount of variation just the way modern jokes are today (not quite to that extent). Other sayings (short exhortions or injunctions, for example) would have little to no variation during repeated performances, and likely little in the tradition itself.

But events are different. They can't be repeated. So even if stories of Jesus' miracles/healings/etc. became fairly "fixed" while Jesus was living, there is still the universal problem of eyewitness' divergence accounts and the problems with the cross-culturally univeral genre of "rumor".

Finally, the gospels are narrative biographies. While certain contexts like the sermon on the mount may be in some sense historical (e.g., perhaps certain combinations of teachings were combined by Jesus), it's really impossible to say. What is quite likely, however, is that the various disparate oral material, some already combined (e.g., the passion narrative) into fairly fixed accounts, others simply a list of sayings with little or no context (e.g., whatever most of Q is), were all manipulated by the gospel authors. If certain parables actually had some remembered setting (location, time, etc.), which is doubtful, that still doesn't mean the gospel authors would use this. It wasn't important in that kind of writing, which was designed to focus on the central character's features, methods, characteristics, etc. It was also about setting down in a permanent form what had been transmitted orally, even though that wasn't the preferred method of transmission in antiquity. So the content of sayings/teachings/parables/etc. were of far greater importance than narrative context. To a lesser extent, the same is true of miracle stories. Finally, the use of particular shared schemata (in the cog. ling. sense), discourse worlds, etc., as well as each authors' particular adaption of these and addition of her or his own use of deixis, mental spaces, etc., seperates the oral narrative from the literary, as the former is designed (in this case) to pass on particular material in a particular way for and by a collective, while the latter is an individual's creation and fixed in form in a way that oral traditions (even those memorized verbatim) cannot be, as oral traditions use collective memory as a medium for transmission, while literary works necessarily involve the author's individual "touch".

It was this position that led the team to go for something that makes more sense and has more emotional impact for us, rather than something that attempts a picayune transliteration that's boring and holds little meaning.

As I said, I applaud the effort. I simply don't think it is possible to do adequately enough without distorting the content of the text more than translations do normally.

 

[sojourner]

I see... [laughs maniacally and adds a name to a list]

I'm sorry you find that disturbing -- but -- your problem.

As I said, I applaud the effort. I simply don't think it is possible to do adequately enough
without distorting the content of the text more than translations do normally.

Not sure I agree entirely. I"ve studied and used the SV, and I don't find that it differs dramatically in content. It does display a more dramatic departure in terms of contextual appeal, IMO than it does in its christological, soteriological or theological impact.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I'm sorry you find that disturbing -- but -- your problem.

I thought the laughing maniacally part made that clear (i.e., that it was my problem, and problem in the sense of mental instability).

Not sure I agree entirely.

That'll happen.

I"ve studied and used the SV, and I don't find that it differs dramatically in content. It does display a more dramatic departure in terms of contextual appeal, IMO than it does in its christological, soteriological or theological impact.

Biblical Studies and its various subfields or related disciplines have had an advantage over many other fields when it comes to things like translation for two reasons:
1) They started it. Not just translation, but critical analysis of languages, texts, history, etc. The many of the early work in philology came not from the comparative linguists linguists (e.g., Jones, Bopp, all the way to Brugmann) but from classical and biblical scholaras (Reisig, Haase, Heerdegen, Hey, and Hecht).
2) The polysemous nature of classical/biblical languages (in particular Greek) relative to modern languages (especially English) forced the early philologists/lexicologists to really search through texts trying to get a sense for the range of word meanging. When Bloomfield and then Chomsky arrived on scene, linguistics as the study of the nature of language (rather than historical linguistics or comparative linguistics) became a science seperated from the philosophy of language and more aligned with psychology in a way it never had. But linguists lacked the tools, or were just developing them, to really approach language as language rather than as the study of words or from a philosophical perspective. Thus for a while, classical philologists and biblical scholars had a better grasp of the nature of lexicography than did linguists (IMO).


However, what used to be an advantage has become a downside. Because linguistis have come a long way since the 40s and 50s. Most importantly, the majority of linguists and psychologists of language (cognitive psychologists) have increasingly recognized that langauge isn't seperated into lexicon, grammar, and phonology (a distinction which has dominated the various incarnations of generative linguists for half a century). The single most important development (from a translation/lexicography point of view) has been the study of idioms. Linguists spent so much time trying to develop all the rules (syntax) need to manipulate (transform, hence transformationalism) lexemes, but every rule had too many exceptions. The idea (or ideal) was that language had words (the meaning part) and then the rules which seperated correct combinations from incorrect. Naturally, there were links between the two (e.g., the fact that a transitive verb takes an object is a rule, but whether a verb is transitive is part of the lexical entry in the brain where that "word" is represented). It didn't work.

Fillmore, Lakoff, and Langacker (among others) independently developed a new approach to language, but it was Fillmore's 1988 paper (co-authored with Kay & O'Connor) which not only provided a connection between work done independently but also turned the approach to language upside down. Instead of viewing idioms as, well, idiomatic, Fillmore (with help) developed Construction Grammar. Instead of a lexicon distinct from syntax (a mental dictionary, as it were) they treated the basic unit of language as a "construction", which could be a word, or several, or even a sort of pseudo-grammatical rule (a schematic construction). For example, Fillmore & Kay later published their study "Grammatical Constructions and Linguistic Generalizations: The What's X Doing Y?" which showed there are not only plenty of "prefabs" (by and large, so-and-so,), verbs which had different meanings depending upon which preposition they were paired with ("take in" vs. "take up"), but also schematic constructions such as WXDY where there were not only idiomatic rules, but these rules weren't restricted to a very limited set of word combinations. "What's a girl life you doing in a place like this?"/"What's this fly doing in my soop?" or my favorite example of a schematic construction, the X-er, the Y-er: "the more money you invest, the more your return will be"/ "the higher you climb, the harder you fall"/"the greater the divide between two languages, the more difficult it is to translate them".

Constructions like WXDY or the X-er, the Y-er cannot be relegated to some lexicon, even if it is "enlarged" so that mental entries can include phrases (e.g., once upon a time, kith and kin, etc.). The X-er, the Y-er doesn't have any limit on the different words that can be governed by the "idiomatic" use of two comparative clauses + the definite article. However, it isn't a general enough "rule" to be part of the mental syntax (the comparative doesn't usually get connected to "the", and in fact the "the" that is in this construction is etymologically distinct from the definite article).

After various people realized that Langacker's schemas, Fillmore & Kay's constructions, not to mention Lakoff's work, all had this lexico-grammatical continuum, constructions became the basic form of approaching language for an ever increasing group of linguists (eventually, the framework they used, which isn't limited to constructions, became known as cognitive linguistics).

The reason this is problematic in classical and in biblical studies is because we are dictionary cultures and these two fields have been constructing lexicons for a few centuries. They are almost (maybe more) rooted in the idea of "words" being seperate from grammar thanks to centuries of practice than were the original generative linguists.

Of course, the SV is not unique in adopting a traditional approach to translation. But it is unique in the attempt to modernize. And therein lies the rub. Because once it is understood that translations are not mappings between lexicons but between constructions, and constructions within constructions (and constructions inheriting from constructions, and so on, as it is network or taxonomy), and that these constructions are context dependent in numerous ways (which gets into other aspects of cognitive linguistics), the idea that one can modernize and simplify by supplying an artificial context becomes far more implausible.

The other problem is that the very people who make the translations are perhaps among the most immune in some ways to the effect, as they don't rely on the translations at all. For them, the translation is already connected to the underlying constructions in the original texts, and because they can access and connect both, they cannot see what it is like from the point of view of someone who cannot. That is, they cannot approach their own translation as their only point of access to the text, and then compare this to being able to access it directly, nor can they disconnect the associations they've already made between the source and target langauges (which gets again into other aspects of cog. ling. as well as cognitive psychology, such as priming effects).

You would probably know offhand, as this is your field, but I can't recall the name of the scholar who said that whatever historical Jesus is uncovered/recovered/reconstructed using historical methods should be alien to us (rather than the numerous 19th century self-portraits). An 1st century individual from galilee should be alien to us because it is an alien culture and an alien time. This is at least as true when it comes to language. If a historical figure from antiquity should appear alien because they are indeed as foreign as one can get (not only being from a different "country" but from a different era), then should not a text? The more "native" (i.e., modernized and rendered into idiomatic English) a translation of a text like those of the NT become, the more they are ripped from the ways in which construction taxonomies were implemented which convey meaning in ways which depend not only on lexical semantics, or even on lexemes plus grammar, but upon the context in which the constructions are situated.

The point is that biblical scholars are good at a particular type of translation, as they have been doing it longer than anybody in the modern era. However, they are only now becoming more and more familiar with cognitive linguistics, cognitive anthropology, cognitive sociolinguistics, etc. Scholars like Louw, Christo van der Merwe, Ellen J. van Wolde, and a few others (and their students) are in the minority, and they aren't represented in the SV's translation panel.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Case in point:

A 2008 paper published in Currents in Biblical Research was on the issue of the NT and linguistics: "New Testament Greek Language and Linguistics in Recent Research"

In that paper, the authors write "In 1968, Fillmore published his landmark article ‘The Case for Case’. His research fit solidly within the generative tradition of linguistics, but proposed a ‘non-transformational’ version that went against the current Chomskyan trend. The work initiated a movement now commonly referred to as case grammar or, more recently, construction grammar (though there are subtle differences between the two)". They then go on to survey how case grammar has failed in various ways, but that is unimportant. What is important is that this study is from 2008. The journal Cognitive Linguistics came out in 1990. In the first years of the 21st century, the next generation of cognitive linguists had already done novel work in the field (e.g., Croft's incorporation of typology and creation of radical construction grammar, Fauconnier's work on compression, Sweester & Danycgier's extension of Fauconnier's creation and work in "mental spaces" in language into conditionals, Bybee's work the effects of frequency on grammar, the embodied cognition movement within psychology was in full swing, and yet in a 2008 study two scholars differentiate Fillmore's 1968 model of language (case grammar) with that which began to develop about 2 decades later and didn't really become defined until the 1990s with the phrase "there are subtle differences between the two". Only two types of people could make this statement. One consists of those who are thoroughly familiar with the trends within psychology, the "linguistic wars" when Chomsky's students disagreed with him, the connection between generative semantics and cognitive linguistics, and finally who are talking about the historical context of the cognitive linguistic framework.

The other type is composed of those who don't know what they are talking about. Saying there are "sublte differences" between Fillmore's case grammar and his Construction Grammar models is like saying there are "subtle differences" between Freudian psychoanalysis and neuroscience.

Somehow, there is a relative paucity of work within NT/Greek scholarship relative to OT/Hebrew scholarship when it comes to incorporating modern linguistics into translations. The volume Job 28: Cognition in Context featured a paper by Dirk Geeraerts, the founder of the journal Cognitive Linguistics, editor of the Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, and one of the central current figures in cognitive linguistic research. Unfortunately, for some reason the main names in biblical scholarship who are up to date with current work in interdisciplinary approaches to texts are concentrated in Hebrew textual studies. Current work by relatively new NT scholars is done under the advisement not of NT professors but linguists, because there are apparently not enough Greek specialists within biblical studies who are aware of current trends in translation & linguistics.

 

[Brickjectivity]

Because once it is understood that translations are not mappings between lexicons but between constructions, and constructions within constructions (and constructions inheriting from constructions, and so on, as it is network or taxonomy), and that these constructions are context dependent in numerous ways (which gets into other aspects of cognitive linguistics), the idea that one can modernize and simplify by supplying an artificial context becomes far more implausible.

True. It sounds like a translation makes a source language pay tribute to a target language, not the other way around.

The other problem is that the very people who make the translations are perhaps among the most immune in some ways to the effect, as they don't rely on the translations at all. For them, the translation is already connected to the underlying constructions in the original texts, and because they can access and connect both, they cannot see what it is like from the point of view of someone who cannot.

It reminds me of learning visual basic programming from a microsoft help file in excel 2003. The circular references would have been very helpful if I'd already known what I was doing.

The point is that biblical scholars are good at a particular type of translation, as they have been doing it longer than anybody in the modern era. However, they are only now becoming more and more familiar with cognitive linguistics, cognitive anthropology, cognitive sociolinguistics, etc. Scholars like Louw, Christo van der Merwe, Ellen J. van Wolde, and a few others (and their students) are in the minority, and they aren't represented in the SV's translation panel.

I have been trying to find an 'SV' and have only come up with the ESV. What translation are you talking about?

 

[cataway]

Jason BeDuhn, associate professor of religious studies at Northern Arizona University, in Flagstaff, Arizona, U.S.A., examined and compared for accuracy eight major translations, including the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, published by Jehovah’s Witnesses. The result?

While critical of some of its translation choices, BeDuhn called the New World Translation a “remarkably good” translation, “better by far” and “consistently better” than some of the others considered. Overall, concluded BeDuhn, the New World Translation “is one of the most accurate English translations of the New Testament currently available” and “the most accurate of the translations compared.”—Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament.
BeDuhn noted, too, that many translators were subject to pressure “to paraphrase or expand on what the Bible does say in the direction of what modern readers want and need it to say.” On the other hand, the New World Translation is different, observed BeDuhn, because of “the greater accuracy of the NW as a literal, conservative translation of the original expressions of the New Testament writers.”​

 

[Brickjectivity]

On the other hand, the New World Translation is different, observed BeDuhn, because of “the greater accuracy of the NW as a literal, conservative translation of the original expressions of the New Testament writers.”

Yet Christians everywhere do not seem to benefit from the things described by the NT authors. It only underscores the inherit weaknesses of translation into English, an amalgam of Latin and Germanic languages which has very little in common with Hebrew or Greek, save for the adoption of some prefixes. The word 'Translation' is mauled by combining it with the word 'Accurate'.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

It reminds me of learning visual basic programming from a microsoft help file in excel 2003. The circular references would have been very helpful if I'd already known what I was doing.

I had a similar issue with programming, only I was the "help file" problem. As I learned on my own and my programs or scripts were for me, I never bothered much with comments, which are extremely important (as every working programmer, whether one is writing macros in VBA or unix-based operating systems in C/C++ or statistical models in R). So when I started writing MATLAB scripts for experiments, and had to have others actually look at my code, I received some gentle but clear instructions on the need for comments and that they have their own syntax/lexicon. Additionally, the way one names variables (including using nouns rather than verbs) is far more important than I had ever thought.

I have been trying to find an 'SV' and have only come up with the ESV. What translation are you talking about?

Scholar's Version. It is available in The Complete Gospels and The Five Gospels.

 

[cataway]

Yet Christians everywhere do not seem to benefit from the things described by the NT authors. It only underscores the inherit weaknesses of translation into English, an amalgam of Latin and Germanic languages which has very little in common with Hebrew or Greek, save for the adoption of some prefixes. The word 'Translation' is mauled by combining it with the word 'Accurate'.

seams to me if it were as you say a''an amalgam of Latin and Germanic languages '' then the NWTHS would be a version. the NWTHS in not a version .

 

[sojourner]

does that mean you're also not going to use the name Jesus ?

I recognize that the name "Jesus" is an anglicanization of the biblical name. Its derivation was a different process than that of "Jehovah" -- and I don't claim that it's the "proper name found in the bible," as you asserted with "Jehovah."

My use of "Jesus" is a conscious convenience on my part -- not an attempt at "biblical correctness."

 

[cataway]

I recognize that the name "Jesus" is an anglicanization of the biblical name. Its derivation was a different process than that of "Jehovah" -- and I don't claim that it's the "proper name found in the bible," as you asserted with "Jehovah."

My use of "Jesus" is a conscious convenience on my part -- not an attempt at "biblical correctness."

you just said "biblical correctness." is not important

 

[Flat Earth Kyle]

You are talking about the same Hebrew words being translated in two different ways, not differences between manuscripts.

No, I am talking about 2 different manuscripts.

 

[Flat Earth Kyle]

do you claim to be a judge ? and by what authority placed upon would you carry out your judgment ?

I am just saying you are not answering any of my questions.
I just want to know which manuscript the New World Tranlsation translated each Biblical verse from. If you can't tell me then why should I trust anything the New World Translation says.
"Oh The New World Translation is more accurate."
"So which manuscript did you Translate it from so I can go and see it for myself?"
"Ummm.... Oh we just used a bunch of manuscripts for our translation."
"Okay so which manuscript did you use to translate this verse?"
"Shrug..."
"So how then can you tell me it is more accurate?"

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

here ...

 

[Flat Earth Kyle]

"Textual basis
The master text used for translating the Old Testament into English was Kittel's Biblia Hebraica. The Hebrew text, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (1977), was used for updating the footnotes in the 1984 version of the New World Translation. Other works consulted in preparing the translation include Aramaic Targums, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Samaritan Torah, the Greek Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate, the Masoretic Text, the Cairo Codex, the Codex Petropolitanus[disambiguation needed], the Aleppo Codex, Christian David Ginsburg's Hebrew Text, and the Leningrad Codex.[30]

Diagrammatic representation of textual basis

Hebrew (click to expand)


Greek (click to expand)
The Greek master text by the Cambridge University scholars B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort (1881) was used as the basis for translating the New Testament into English. The committee also referred to the Novum Testamentum Graece (18th edition, 1948) and to works by Catholic Jesuit scholars José M. Bover (1943) and Augustinus Merk (1948). The United Bible Societies' text (1975) and the Nestle-Aland text (1979) were used to update the footnotes in the 1984 version. Additional works consulted in preparing the New World Translation include the Armenian Version, Coptic Versions, the Latin Vulgate, Sixtine and Clementine Revised Latin Texts, Textus Receptus, the Johann Jakob Griesbach's Greek text, the Emphatic Diaglott, and various papyri.[30]"

Okay, that is nice those are manuscripts that they used in translating the Bible.
Not the answer to my question though.
Which manuscript was Genesis 1:1 translated from?

 

[sojourner]

you just said "biblical correctness." is not important

Then why did you challenge my statement with regard to the accuracy of the NRSV with a question about finding "Jehovah -- God's 'proper name'" therein?

 

[cataway]

Then why did you challenge my statement with regard to the accuracy of the NRSV with a question about finding "Jehovah -- God's 'proper name'" therein?

you're the one that said ''accuracy is not important'' i say that it is and that is why i use the NWTHS over the NRSV. it seams to me if any one does not care for correctness
then any thing like the NRSV would be great .

 

[gnostic]

If I have to choose a translation for just the Hebrew Scriptures (Tanakh or the Old Testament Bible), than I would favour the 1985 Jewish Publication Society (or NJPS).

If I must choose translation that contained both old and new testaments in one book, then I would prefer to use NRSV (New Revised Standard Version).