A Question of Language

  A QUESTION OF LANGUAGE

 

It’s a question that crops up every so often: “Why are there so many Bible translations, and why do they sometimes differ so much from one another?”

A good question.

The basic answer is simple enough: Because language never stands still, so it’s necessary to produce fresh translations of any documents, including the Bible, whose meanings have become clouded by the passing of time.

Here are three examples of how difficult Bible translation can be, whether it’s a matter of bringing things up to date, or of making the translation more accurate.

First… God forbid!

We all have verbal mannerisms, expressions we tend to use almost without thinking. The apostle Paul was no different. Ten times in his  Letter to the Romans he uses an expression which I first learned as “God forbid” (chapters 3, 6, 7, 9, 11). I learned it that way because that was how the King James Version (or the “Authorised Version”) translated it, and when I was a new Christian in my teens that was pretty much the Bible, the one and only Bible.

So it came as a surprise to me later to discover that, in fact, the word “God” doesn’t appear at all in the original Greek Paul wrote. No: a literal translation would be “Let it not be so”, or “May it not be”. Either of those would be correct, strictly speaking – but they would also be extremely bad translations, for the simple reason that, well, we just don’t talk like that, do we?

It’s interesting to see how modern translations tackle that phrase in Romans 3. In the New International Version (NIV), for example, it’s “Not at all!” (3:4 and 3:31) and “Certainly not!” (3:6). The Good News Bible (GNB) varies between “Certainly not!”, “By no means!” and “No, not at all”. The English Standard Version (ESV) and the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) both have “By no means!” all three times (so at least they’re consistent!). The Message has “Not on your life!” in 3:4.

So… which is the “right” translation? Answer: there isn’t one. The fact is that there is never such a thing as a one-off, all-time “correct” translation: the various translators have to use their own best judgment, majoring on three main criteria: first, is it accurate; second, is it meaningful; and third, is it good English?

What applies to a little snippet of Paul applies to the whole Bible; translation is not a simple, mechanical matter of substituting a word in English for a word in Greek or Hebrew. Translation just doesn’t work that way.

A second example… Woman…

In John 2:4 Jesus addresses his mother as “Woman…” Strictly, that’s correct, exactly what the Greek says (literally “What to me and to you, woman?”)

But what sort of English is that! Answer: clumsy, awkward and pretty well meaningless. Even more, in England today a man addressing his mother as “woman” sounds downright rude. Surely Jesus wouldn’t intend that! Of course not! (or should I say, God forbid?). (The NIV kindly gives us a footnote: “The Greek for Woman does not denote any disrespect”. Well, thanks for letting us know, NIV!)

So what might be better? “Mother”? “Dear mother”? “Dear lady”? (Not, I think, “Mum”!) The GNB goes for broke and simply omits the word altogether. Can that be right? What do you think!

The third example is really quite tricky… temptation.

In the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13), most Christians are familiar with this wording for verse 13: “Lead us not into temptation”.

But that raises the question: Why would God lead us, his children, into temptation? Why would we ever need to pray such a prayer? Surely a holy God who is also our loving Father would never do such a thing! James 1:13 explicitly rules out such a possibility: “God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone”. What possible need can there be to ask God not to do something he has already promised he will never do?

This where we depend on the learning of the language experts. And what they tell us is that temptation is a word with more than one shade of meaning. Yes, it can mean temptation in a bad sense, ie, being enticed to do wrong, to fall into sin. But it can also have a neutral meaning: of being tested by trials and difficulties.

And so NRSV translates “Do not bring us to the time of trial”, and GNB “Do not bring us to hard testing” – where the reference seems to be to persecution, and Jesus then would be encouraging us to pray in the spirit of Matthew 24:20: “Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the sabbath. For there will be great distress…”. In short, “Lord, please spare us severe persecution”.

Sorry this has got a bit technical. But if we are serious about getting to grips with God’s word, we need to grapple with questions like these. Just sticking with what’s familiar for no other reason than because it’s familiar can’t be right.

And who knows? Perhaps coming at the Bible with fresh eyes and new insights might enrich our understanding in ways we never imagined!

Father, thank you for your word in the Bible, and thank you for those who take on the very difficult task of translating it for us. Please help me to value it, to read it, to apply it, and to live by it. Amen.