WARNING: Extremely long post. Sorry!
Falcrack wrote: ↑Tue, 30. Dec 25, 00:46
Which Bible translation, in your opinion, comes closest to the original meaning? Do you have some examples where the KJV provides a less than optimal translation, which another translation does better?
Also, do you feel that some translations are biased to better support the preexisting beliefs of the translator?
These are incredibly interesting (and fun!) questions.
1) Which translation is most accurate?
I would have had very different ideas about things before I started doing my own translation. Assuming someone is fairly intelligent and thoughtful about translational issues, they're likely to start with a basic assumption that there's some kind of theoretical "perfect" translation, which we'll represent in percentage terms, as 100%. Mostly people are fairly comfortable with the idea that this is something you can approach but never actually reach, which means they think you might have (say) the NIV on 85%, the NRSV on 97% and the Message on 34%.
The reality is that that's not how it works. There's a whole range of issues.
One issue is that there are two things you're actually aiming at - translating the WORDS correctly (which we call Semantic accuracy) and translating the MEANING accurately (Idiomatic accuracy). It's actually possible to get the words almost exactly right without getting the meaning across; for example, one phrase from my own work is as follows:
Μετὰ δὲ πέντε ἡμέρας κατέβη ὁ ἀρχιερεὺς Ἁνανίας μετὰ πρεσβυτέρων
If I'm to be 100% literal, that would be:
With but five days, moved in a downward direction the chief priest Ananias, with old men.
Obviously that's a pig's breakfast of a translation. So if we're being accurate in English, we'd usually translate that:
"Then after five days, Ananias the chief priest came down, with old men."
But if we're being more idiomatic, we might say:
"Five days later, Ananias the High Priest brought some Elders down [from Jerusalem][1]."
In practice a translation always involves some semantic features and some idiomatic features. But you must prioritise one over the other at certain points of your translation. So for example, the NRSV tends to put most of its effort into semantic accuracy, but can be a bit rough with idiomatic accuracy. On the other hand, the Message has a surprisingly good level of idiomatic accuracy whilst basically being semantically inaccurate.
For this reason when I'm working on the Bible I mostly use translations like the NIV, which take a balanced approach to both, and don't slavishly focus on either. But the thing is, most of them aren't WRONG as such, it's just that they have different approaches[2]. If asked to choose between semantic and idiomatic accuracy, I tend to prioritise idiomatic (which is why I quite like the Message). But generally speaking I have a lot of sympathy for translators. The job is HARD. Every Tuesday I meet online with a Greek Translation club (!) and there are times when the group (who each have pretty good translation chops) simply can't manage a particular phrase.
2) What is wrong with the KJV?
The KJV is a balanced translation. The translators involved did a fantastic job considering they were working in the 17th Century. However, the knowledge of Greek vocabulary and grammar weren't as great as that available today, and they also had a limited range of manuscripts to work from. A few examples:
* In Phil 3:20, the KJV translates the word "πολίτευμα" (politeuma) as "conversation." This was based on a relatively small (and in retrospect unusual) range of translations in other works; that word we now understand in more of a political sense, so a better translation (and a more usual one in modern translations) is "citizenship."
* The KJV was translated from a specific Greek text, called the "Textus Receptus," which was the most complete and well-known Greek text of the NT in 1611. However, since that time we've had an embarrasment of riches in archaeology, which has flooded us with new evidence, and from this we've found a fair number of places where the Textus Receptus preserves odd readings[3] - for example, the book of Mark usually ends at 16:8, but the Textus Receptus contains a 7 verse addendum[4].
* There are a few places (e.g. Luke 1:35) where the KJV translation is grammatically awkward, where tenses are translated incorrectly (and could be better represented in other ways). This is simply because Greek scholars of the day didn't know what we know today. The study advances.
* There are some phrases which are affected by liturgical and theological conventions. The KJV translation of 1 Tim 2:12 translates the word "ἡσυχίᾳ" as "Silence," implying that women are to remain completely silent in the church (conventional at the time), but a better translation would be "quietness" (i.e. it is an instruction on appropriate behaviour in a church setting, not a prohibition on participation in the church's activities). Similarly, the KJV rendering of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew includes the liturgical addition "For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, both now and forever, amen," which is simply not present in the original text (but would have been assumed as part of the Lord's prayer by most educated churchmen of the day).
This is even before we talk about the other issue - even if you were to create a completely accurate translation in 1611, the drift of the English language since then creates problems. For example, the second person pronoun used to vary by person and case in English (thee and thou, you and ye) but all are now combined into "you," making the KJV's use of all these different variants obsolete (and sometimes it doesn't correctly represent the Greek pronouns anyway!).
3) Are some translations biased?
I would say that there is always a degree of bias in any translation. It's an inherent part of human thinking; we aren't computers, and all translation involves human thought (which is, by nature, sometimes biased).
Translators make a lot of effort to avoid bias, but it does turn up from time to time. An example that comes readily to mind for me is the ESV - in most respects an excellent translation, but it falls down badly in its translation of some phrases which affect theological approaches to women in the church (the most egregious one in my opinion being Romans 16, where not only does it translate Phoebe's title "διάκονον" [deacon] as "Servant of the church", in earlier versions it also translates "Junia" [a feminine name] as "Junias" [masculine], in order to cope with the fact that this person is unambiguously identified as an apostle!)[5].
So I guess the answer I'd give would be "Yes, but with asterisks."
[1] The phrase "moved down" relates to the geographical idea held by Jews that Jerusalem is the highest point of the land of Judah, and "moving down," "coming down" or "going down" implies movement away from Jerusalem, whilst "moving up" means towards Jerusalem.
[2] There are a few translations which contain a few intentionally misleading translations (e.g. the New World translation and the Passion translation). These are rare however.
[3] This isn't uncommon in ancient texts - remember this is before movable type printing, so all books were handwritten. You always get a few variations here and there.
[4] I am in the process of reading a book by a scholar, a friend of mine, who discusses this, and his thesis is that the abrupt ending of the book in verse 8 (which has angels tell the women that Jesus has risen but does not record any encounters with him) is entirely deliberate, and that the narrative makes more sense without the additional ending (which appears to be mostly taken from other gospels and includes some . . oddities.
).
[5] This has since been corrected. It is important to acknowledge that those who are doing the translation work are normal humans, but they do their utmost to get things right, and I acknowledge that.
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