Bibliotheca Sacra 150
(October-December 1993): 397-414
Copyright © 1993 Dallas
Theological Seminary; cited with permission.
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF
THE BIBLE, TODAY AND
TOMORROW*
Bruce M.
Metzger
The rapid multiplication of English translations
of the
Scriptures
throughout the second half of the 20th century might
well
prompt more than one bewildered reader to rephrase the
Preacher's
melancholy observation so as to read, "Of the making
of
many translations of the Bible there is no end!" (Eccles. 12:12).
During
the past 40 years (to go no farther than that), beginning
with
the publication in 1952 of the Revised Standard Version until
the
publication in 1990 of the New Revised Standard Version, 27
renderings
in English of the entire Bible were issued, as well as
28 additional renderings of the New Testament.
Such a proliferation provokes a number of
questions. Why
were
so many versions produced? Is there really a need for such a
variety
of translations? Is it not uneconomical of time and hu-
man
resources to undertake what, in many cases, are largely du-
plicated
efforts? What is the best Bible? Before such questions can
be
answered, it is necessary to survey, however briefly, the mak-
ing
of several of the English versions that are widely used today.
Because
of the limitation of space, consideration will be given to
the
following, in chronological order: the Revised Standard Ver-
sion
(1952), the Jerusalem Bible (1966), the New American Bible
(1970),
the New English Bible (1970), the Good News Bible (1976),
and
the New International Version (1978). Several of these have
subsequently
appeared in revised form.
Bruce
M. Metzger is Professor of New Testament Language and Literature, Emeri-
tus, Princeton Theological Seminary,
* This is article four in the four-part
series, "Translating the Bible: An Ongoing
Task,"
delivered by the author as the W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectures at
ological Seminary,
398
BIBLIOETHECA SACRA / October-December
1993
THE REVISED STANDARD
VERSION (1952)1
Steps to produce a suitable revision of the
excessively literal-
istic
American Standard Version of 1901 were undertaken in
1928
when the copyright of that version was acquired by the Inter-
national
Council of Religious Education. In the same year the
Standard
Bible Committee was appointed, with an original mem-
bership
of 15 scholars, to have charge of the text of the American
Standard
Version, and to make further revision of the text should
that
be deemed necessary.
For two years the committee wrestled with the
question of
whether
a revision should be undertaken, and if so, what should
be
its nature and extent. Finally, after revisions of representative
chapters
of the Bible had been made and discussed, a majority of
the
committee decided that there should be a thorough revision of
the
American Standard Version, which would stay as close to the
King
James tradition as it could in the light of present knowledge
of
the Greek text and its meaning on the one hand, and present
usage
of English on the other.
In 1930 the nation was undergoing a serious
economic de-
pression,
and it was not until 1936 that funds could be secured and
the
work of revision could begin in earnest. The contract was ne-
gotiated
with Thomas Nelson and Sons, publishers of the Ameri-
can
Standard Version, to finance the work of revision by advance
royalties,
in return for which the Nelsons were granted the exclu-
sive
right to publish the Revised Standard Version for a period of
10
years. Thereafter it was to be opened to other publishers under
specific
conditions.
With the financial undergirding thus provided,
it was possi-
ble
to schedule regular sessions of both the Old Testament and
New
Testament Sections. Expenses for travel, lodging, and
meals
were provided for the members. No stipends or honoraria,
however,
were given to RSV Committee members, who con-
tributed
their time and expertise for the good of the cause.
After serious work had begun a hope was
expressed that coop-
eration
of British scholars might be obtained, thus making the
version
an international translation. The war years of 1939-
1945,
however, made such collaboration impossible. In the sum-
mer
of 1946, after the war was over, an effort was made to secure at
least
a token of international collaboration in the work on the Old
1 See
Members of the Revision Committee, Luther A. Weigle, Chairman, An In-
troduction to the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament (
ternational Council of Religious Education, 1946),
and idem, Introduction to the
Revised Standard Version
of the Old Testament
(New York: Nelson, 1952).
English Translations of
the Bible, Today and Tomorrow 399
Testament,
the RSV New Testament having been published in
February
1946. Such partial collaboration was not to be forthcom-
ing,
for in that same year delegates of several Protestant
churches
in
wholly
new translation, one that made no attempt to stand within
the
tradition of the 1611 King James Bible. The outcome of this ef-
fort
was the New English Bible, published in 1970.
Meanwhile, work continued on the RSV Old
Testament. After
81
separate meetings, totaling 450 days of work, the complete Bible
was
published
enough,
of
unprecedented
publicity campaign. On the evening of the day of
publication,
in the
places,
3,418 community observances were held with over one and
a
half million persons attending.
The
fanfare, however, did not protect the new version from
adverse
criticism. Unfounded and malicious accusations were
brought
against several members of the committee, alleging that
they
were either Communists or Communist sympathizers-alle-
gations
that, at the insistence of Senator Joseph McCarthy of
consin,
were eventually printed in the official United States Air
Force
Training Manual! Finally, after a thorough investigation
conducted
by nonpartisan authorities, this entirely unsupported
charge
was rebutted as "venomous nonsense" on the floor of the
House
of Representatives in Washington and the edition of the
manual in question was withdrawn.2
Meanwhile
a pastor of a church in
olina,
publicly burned with a blow-torch a copy of what he termed
"a
heretical, communist-inspired Bible." The ashes were put in a
tin
box and sent to Luther Weigle, dean of
who
had served as convener of the Standard Bible Committee.
That
box, with its contents, is in the Bible Committee's collection
of
books and archives, a reminder that, though in previous cen-
turies
Bible translators were sometimes burned, today it happily
is
only a copy of the translation that meets such a fate.
In 1971 the second edition of the RSV New
Testament was is-
sued.
This incorporated a number of changes that reflect the
Greek
text as adopted for the third edition of the United Bible So-
cieties'
Greek New Testament, which serves
throughout the world
as
a standard text for translations and revisions made by
Protestants
and Roman Catholics alike. Among such changes
2 The Congressional Record, vol. 106, Part 3 (
(
400
BIBLIOETHECA SACRA / October-December
1993
was
the transfer of the ending of the Gospel according to Mark
and
the pericope de adultera (John
notes
into the text, though the passages continue to be separated
from
the context by a blank space to show that they were not part of
the
original text.
Soon afterward a significant step was taken by
scholars of the
Catholic
Biblical Association of
ship
of Dom Bernard Orchard, O.S.B., and Reginald C. Fuller, a
proposal
was made to divide the books of the Apocrypha into two
sections,
those books the Catholic Church regards as deutero-
canonical
and those that are not so regarded. In an edition issued
by
Collins Press of Glasgow in 1973, these two sections were bound
separately
between the Old and New Testaments. The volume
therefore
had four sections: the 39 books of the Old Testament, the
12
deuterocanonical books or parts of books, the First and Second
Books
of Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh (three books that are
part
of the traditional Apocrypha but are not included among the
deuterocanonical
books); and the 27 books of the New Testament.
No
Catholic notes were included, since this Bible was to be
"common,"
for use by Roman Catholics and Protestants alike.
It should be noted that in such an arrangement
Roman
Catholics
made a significant departure from the accepted practice
through
the long history of their church. The separation of the
deuterocanonical
books from their places throughout the Old
Testament
is essentially an accommodation to the Protestant ar-
rangement
of the books of the Bible.
In May 1973 a specially bound copy of the
Collins RSV "Com-
mon"
Bible was presented to Pope Paul VI. In a private audience
granted
to a small group, comprising the Greek Orthodox Arch-
bishop
Athenagoras of London, Lady Priscilla Collins, Sir
William
Collins, Herbert G. May, and the present writer, the
Pope
accepted the copy as a significant step in furthering ecu-
menical
relations among the churches.
Worthy as the "Common" Bible is,
however, it fails to live up
to
its name, for it lacks the full canon of books recognized as au-
thoritative
by Eastern Orthodox Churches. The Greek, Russian,
Ukrainian,
Bulgarian, Serbian, Armenian, and other Eastern
churches
accept not only the traditional deuterocanonical books
received
by the Roman Catholic Church, but also the Third Book of
Maccabees.
Furthermore in Greek Bibles Psalm 151 stands at the
close
of the Psalter, and the Fourth Book of Maccabees is printed
as
an appendix to the Old Testament. Since these texts were lack-
ing
in the "Common" Bible presented to Pope Paul, on that occa-
sion Archbishop Athenagoras expressed to the present
writer the
English Translations of the Bible,
Today and Tomorrow 401
hope
that steps might be taken to produce a truly ecumenical edi-
tion
of the Holy Scriptures.
In 1972 a subcommittee of the RSV Bible
Committee had al-
ready
been commissioned to prepare a translation of 3 and 4 Mac-
cabees
and Psalm 151. In 1975 the translation of the three addi-
tional
texts was made available to the five publishers licensed to
issue
the RSV Bible. The Oxford University Press took steps im-
mediately
to produce an expanded form of The New
tated Bible, with the Apocrypha,
the edition of the RSV that had ear-
lier
received the imprimatur of Cardinal Cushing of
This expanded edition was published by the
Oxford Univer-
sity
Press on
sented
by the present writer to His All Holiness Dimitrios I, the
Ecumenical
Patriarch of Constantinople and titular head of the
several
Orthodox churches. In accepting the gift, the Ecumenical
Patriarch
expressed satisfaction at the availability of an edition
of
the sacred Scriptures that English readers belonging to all
branches
of the Christian church could use.
Thus the story of the making of the Revised
Standard Version
of
the Bible with the expanded Apocrypha is an account of the tri-
umph
of ecumenical concern over more limited sectarian inter-
ests.
At last (and for the first time since the Reformation) one
edition
of the Bible had received the blessing of leaders of Protes-
tant,
Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox churches alike.
THE
The name, The Jerusalem Bible, indicates
something of the
origin
of this edition. Beginning in 1948 a group of French Do-
minicans
and others at the Ecole Biblique de Jerusalem produced
a
series of commentaries, each containing one or more books of
the
Bible translated into the vernacular, with introductions of
moderate
length and with copious notes. In 1956, two years after
the
completion of the series (which ran to 43 fascicles), a one-vol-
ume
edition was issued, in which the notes were greatly com-
pressed
and the introductions sharply abbreviated. This compen-
dious
edition, entitled La Sainte Bible
traduite en francais sous la
direction de l'Ecole
Biblique de Jerusalem,
contains, therefore,
the
quintessence of a great amount of solid and responsible schol-
arship
contributed by about 40 collaborators. The English edition
was
prepared under the direction of Alexander Jones of Christ's
College,
Liverpool; it embodies the introductions and notes of the
one-volume
French edition. The translation of the scriptural text
of
most of the books was made from the original languages, and,
in the case of a few books where the initial draft
was made from
402
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA /
October-December 993
the
French, it was later "compared word for word with the Hebrew
or
Aramaic by the General Editor and amended where necessary
to
ensure complete conformity with the ancient text" (p. v). It was
perhaps
inevitable that the names of the original scholars who
produced
the Bible de
of
the nearly 30 British collaborators in the work of translation
and
literary revision.
The resulting volume is an impressive piece of
bookmaking.
About
twice as thick as the French edition, it measures 6 1/2 by 9
1/2
inches and weighs five pounds. The scriptural text is printed
in
one column per page, with generous margins (especially when
poetry
is involved) and with running heads indicating the
contents
of sections and paragraphs. The commentary at the foot
of
the page, however, is set in a type size that is almost painfully
small.
So much by the way of describing the background
and produc-
tion
of The Jerusalem Bible; something should be said now about
the
scholarship reflected in both translation and comments. Let it
be
said at the outset that during the past generation the differences
between
the results of Protestant and Roman Catholic biblical
scholarship
have been reduced almost to the vanishing point, and
a
great expanse of common ground now exists in matters pertain-
ing
to discussion of date, authorship, literary composition, and
similar
matters of biblical studies.
The wording of The Jerusalem Bible has a
contemporary
ring
about it. The archaic forms of the second person pronouns
("thee,"
"thy," etc.) are dispensed with. The editor acknowledges
that
the decision, reached after some hesitation, to represent the
divine
name by "Yahweh" will probably seem to many readers to
be
unacceptable, but "those who may care to use this translation of
the
Psalms can substitute the traditional `the Lord"' (p. vi). Isaiah
7:14
is rendered, "The maiden is with child and will soon give
birth
to a son," to which the following comment is attached: "The
Greek
version reads `the virgin,' being more explicit than the
Hebr.
which uses almah, meaning either a
young girl or a young,
recently
married woman." In the annunciation (Luke 1:28) the
words
of the angel Gabriel to Mary are rendered, "Rejoice, so
highly
favored! The Lord is with you," with the added comment,
"The
translation `Rejoice' may be preferred to `Hail' and re-
garded
as containing a messianic reference, cf. Zc 9:9; `so highly
favored,'
i.e. as to become the mother of the Messiah." The New
Testament
references to the a]delfoi<
of Jesus
are rendered in a
straightforward
manner, "the brothers of Jesus," with the added
comment, "Not Mary's children but near relations,
cousins per-
English Translations of the Bible,
Today and Tomorrow 403
haps,
which both Hebr. and Aramaic style `brothers,' cf. Gn 13:8;
Occasionally the translators have ventured to
paraphrase,
sometimes
not altogether happily. Thus 1 Corinthians 7:1-2 is
rendered,
"Now for the questions about which you wrote. Yes, it is
a
good thing for a man not to touch a woman; but since sex is al-
ways
a danger, let each man have his own wife and each woman
her
own husband." Here the opening of verse 2 is given an unfor-
tunate
twist ("but since sex is always a danger"); literally the
Greek
reads, "but because of fornications," which probably
means,
"but because there is so much immorality." This was
certainly
true in
Since in various passages the manuscripts of the
Bible differ
from
one another, translators must make choices between vari-
ant
readings. In the textual criticism of the New Testament, The
Jerusalem
Bible usually reflects current judgments widely held
among
Protestant and most Roman Catholic scholars. Thus the
ending
of Mark's Gospel (16:9-20), which is lacking in the earli-
est
witnesses, is declared to be probably non-Marcan, and the
pericope de adultera (John
part
of the original Fourth Gospel, for "it is omitted by the oldest
witnesses
(MSS, versions, Fathers) and found elsewhere in oth-
ers;
moreover, its style is that of the Synoptics and the author was
possibly
Luke. Nevertheless, the passage was accepted in the
canon
and there are no grounds for regarding it as unhistorical."
The
comment on John 5:3b-4 states that "the best witnesses omit
`waiting
for the water to move' and the whole of v. 4."
In these three cases the passage is retained in
the text; in 1
John
5:7b-8, however, the spurious passage is given only in the
comments,
where it is recognized that the reference to the Trinity
is
a gloss that crept into inferior manuscripts of the Latin Vul-
gate.
In these cases The Jerusalem Bible is in the mainstream of
textual
scholarship. On the other hand the text-critical judgment
expressed
at John 1:13, though previously advocated by a few
scholars,
is scarcely correct. Here the translators abandoned the
evidence
of all Greek manuscripts and, on the basis of several
Old
Latin and Syriac manuscripts, with limited patristic support,
they
adopted the singular number, "who was born," thus making
the
Fourth Gospel testify to the virgin birth of Christ.
THE NEW AMERICAN BIBLE
(1970)
In
1944 the Bishops' Committee of the Confraternity of Chris-
tian Doctrine invited a group of Catholic biblical
scholars to un-
404
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / October-December
1993
dertake the first Roman Catholic translation of the
Scriptures in
inherited
the work that had been begun in the preceding decade,
when
many of the same group of scholars began translating the
Bible
from the Latin Vulgate (the New Testament of this version
had
been published in 1941).
During the following years several portions of
the transla-
tion
appeared, each containing one or more biblical books of the
new
rendering. The reissuing of these earlier materials permit-
ted
the introduction of certain modifications. For example the
Book
of Genesis, first published in 1952, was completely retrans-
lated
and is now provided with new and expanded exegetical
notes
that take into account the various sources or literary tradi-
tions.
Finally, in 1970, a quarter of a century after work first be-
gan,
the New American Bible was published. This work repre-
sents
capable and dedicated scholarship and provides a render-
ing
of the Scriptures in modern American idiom, along with brief
introductions
to each biblical book as well as many literary and
theological
annotations.
In the Old Testament the translators have
departed more than
a
few times from the Masoretic Hebrew text. According to infor-
mation
in the preface, the Masoretic Hebrew text of 1 and 2
Samuel
was in numerous instances corrected by the more ancient
Hebrew
manuscripts from Cave 4 of Qumran. In the case of the
Psalms
the basic text is not the Masoretic text but, as the preface
states,
"one which the editors considered [to be] closer to the origi-
nal
inspired form, namely, the Hebrew text underlying the new
Latin
Psalter of the Church" (the reference is to the Liber Psalmo-
rum cum Canticis Breviarii Romani, 2d ed., 1945).
Here and there in the Old Testament and
particularly in the
Minor
Prophets the sequence of verses and sections of material
have
been rearranged where scholars have reason to think that
the
lines were accidentally disordered in the transmission of the
text.
With regard to the Tetragrammaton, happily the translators
have
used "LORD" rather than the utterly un-English "Yahweh."
As
is true of most translations of the Bible prepared by a com-
mittee,
the several books of the Scriptures are the work of different
translators.
Therefore it is not surprising to find differences
among
the books as to the technique of translating and the style or
"color"
of the rendering. To some extent the reader of the New
American
Bible is forewarned of such diversity by the statement
in
the preface that "the editors did not commit themselves in the
synoptic
gospels to rendering repeated words or phrases identi-
cally." Such freedom in rendering can be
justified and is in ac-
English Translations of the Bible,
Today and Tomorrow 405
cord
with the policy adopted by the New English Bible as well as
several
other modern speech renderings.
On
the other hand it is difficult to justify the many apparently
arbitrary
divergences in the rendering of several technical or
quasi-technical
words and phrases. The word maka<rioi
is trans-
lated
"blest" in the Matthean and Lucan beatitudes, whereas in
the
seven beatitudes of the Book of Revelation it is rendered
"happy." The expression h[
basilei<a tou? qeou? occurs 46 times in
Mark
and Luke. Sixteen times it is rendered "the kingdom of
God,"
once "God's kingdom," once "kingdom of heaven"(!), and
the
remaining instances "the reign of
God." Within a single
chapter
(Luke 18) and even in adjacent verses one finds the fol-
lowing
disparate renderings (italicized here): "Let the little chil-
dren
come to me. Do not shut them off. The
reign of God belongs to
such
as these" (v. 16). "Trust me when I tell you that whoever does
not
accept the
17).
"It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a
rich
man to enter the kingdom of heaven"
(v. 25). "There is no
one
who has left home or wife or brothers, parents or children, for
the
sake of the
A similar type of arbitrary divergence occurs in
Matthew 3:2
and
"Reform
your lives! The reign of God is at hand," and in the lat-
ter
Jesus preached, "Reform your lives! The kingdom of heaven
is at hand." In both cases the Greek has h[ basilei<a
tw?n ou]ranw?n.
It
is difficult to believe that the committee of translators (who are
technically
trained scholars) would have been guilty of perpetrat-
ing
such slipshod work. One may hazard the guess that, after the
scholars
had finished their painstaking work, having utilized a
concordance
and a harmony of the Gospels to make certain that
parallels
are treated as parallels, the subcommittee on English
"style"
made arbitrary alterations here and there, which, perhaps
because
of the press of time in meeting the publisher's deadline,
were
not submitted to the scholars for their approval.
With regard to fitness of language, the Book of
Psalms gives
the
impression that meticulous care was taken to provide a ren-
dering
with a certain liturgical and literary timbre. In general
the
language is dignified without being archaic, and expressions
are
used that evoke a sense of grandeur and the numinous. Only
rarely
have the translators nodded, as when, for example, in
Psalm
24:1 what is meaningful to the eye will almost certainly be
confusing
to the ear: "The Loan's are the earth and its fullness."
In
other parts of the Bible the reader is struck by a certain typ-
ically American quality of English idiom-plain, flat,
and mat-
406
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / October-December
1993
ter
of fact. The long and involved Greek sentences in Ephesians
(e.g.,
one sentence extends from 1:3 to
are
properly broken into smaller units. At the same time one can
point
out a number of rather uninspired, pedestrian renderings.
For
example it is difficult to regard the following as idiomatic or
felicitous
English: "Be on the lookout against the yeast of the
Pharisees
and Sadduces" (Matt. 16:6); "For fear of disedifying
them
[the kings of the world]" (
your
eyes" (Rev. 3:18).
The introductions and annotations to the books
of the Bible
display
a happy combination of information concerning sources,
authorship,
date of composition or redaction, and outline of con-
tents,
along with attention to the religious and theological dimen-
sions
inherent in the material. The amount of theological inter-
pretation
varies from book to book, but in general it is adequate.
For
example the comment on the final words of Luke
to
God in high heaven, peace on earth to those on whom his favor
rests")
is as follows: "An allusion to the mystery of divine elec-
tion
that bestows the gift of faith upon people of divine choice. To
these,
the messianic mission of Jesus also brings a special gift of
peace,
the restored friendship between God and man."
The messianic interpretation of various Old
Testament pas-
sages
is suggested both by annotations and by section headings.
The
lengthy annotation on Genesis 3:15 concludes with the state-
ment
that "the passage can be understood as the first promise of a
Redeemer
for fallen mankind. The woman's offspring then is
primarily
Jesus Christ." At Genesis 49:10, which by a slight
change
in the Hebrew text is translated, "while tribute is brought
to
him [Judah]," one is told that "a somewhat different reading of
the
Hebrew text would be `until he comes to whom it belongs.' This
last
has been traditionally understood in a Messianic sense. In
any
case, the passage foretells the supremacy of the tribe of
which
found its fulfillment in the Davidic dynasty and ulti-
mately
in the Messianic Son of David, Jesus Christ." Of Bal-
aam's
prophecy that "a star shall advance from Jacob" (Num.
24:17)
the reader learns that "many of the Fathers have under-
stood
this as a Messianic prophecy, although it is not referred to
anywhere
in the New Testament; in this sense the star is Christ
himself."
Psalm 45 is described as a "Nuptual Ode for the Mes-
sianic
King," and the annotation declares that "Catholic tradi-
tion,
in keeping with the inspired interpretation given in He-
brews
1, 8f., has always understood this psalm as referring, at
least
in a typical sense, to Christ and his bride, the Church."
Psalm
72 is given the heading, "The Kingdom of the Messiah."
English Translations of the Bible, Today and
Tomorrow 407
Both
Isaiah 52:13-53:12 and Psalm 22 are applied to the Passion of
Christ.
The words, "the LORD begot me, the firstborn of his ways"
(Prov.
the
early church, is furnished with an annotation that concludes
with
the statement, "Here that plurality of divine Persons is fore-
shadowed
which was afterward to be fully revealed when
dom
in the Person of Jesus Christ became incarnate."
The controversial passage of Isaiah 7:14, which
is translated,
"The
virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name
him
Immanuel," has, as one would expect, a lengthy annotation,
part
of which may be quoted here:
The church has always followed St. Matthew in
seeing the tran-
scendent fulfillment of this
verse in Christ and his Virgin
Mother. The Prophet need not
have known the full force latent
in his own words; and some
Catholic writers have sought a prelim-
inary and partial fulfillment
in the conception and birth of the fu-
ture King Hezekiah, whose
mother, at the time Isaiah spoke,
would have been a young,
unmarried woman (Hebrew, almah).
The Holy Spirit was preparing, however, for
another Nativity
which alone could fulfill the
divinely given terms of Immanuel's
mission, and in which the
perpetual virginity of the Mother of
God was to fulfill also the words of this
prophecy in the integral
sense intended by the divine
Wisdom.
THE NEW ENGLISH BIBLE (1970)3
In May 1946 the General Assembly of the Church
of Scotland
received
an overture from the Presbytery of Stirling and Dun-
blane
recommending that a translation of the Bible be made in
the
language of the present day. After several months of negotiat-
ing
with representatives of other major Protestant denominations
of
actual
work of translation to four panels of scholars, dealing re-
spectively
with the Old Testament, the Apocrypha, the New Tes-
tament,
and the literary revision of the whole. The convener of
the
panel of Old Testament scholars was G. R. Driver of
University;
the convener of the Apocrypha panel was G. D. Kil-
patrick,
also of
panel
and as general director of the entire project.
The procedure adopted for the work of the panels
was as fol-
lows.
Each book or group of books was assigned to an individual
3 See Geoffrey Hunt,
comp., About the New English Bible (
versity Press, 1970).
408
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / October-December
1993
translator,
who need not be a member of one of the four panels.
The
first draft of the translation was circulated in typescript to
members
of the appropriate panel, who worked through it individ-
ually
and jointly in committee sessions along with the transla-
tor.
When the draft had been thoroughly discussed and revised,
perhaps
several times, it went to the literary panel for suggestions
on
improving the English style. The final form of the version
was
reached by agreement between the two panels.
The New English Bible is a totally fresh
translation; it is not
a
revision of earlier versions. The aim of the translators was to
cut
loose from all previous renderings and to "render the Greek,
as
we understood it, into the English of the present day, that is,
into
the natural vocabulary, constructions, and rhythms of con-
temporary
speech. We have sought to avoid archaism, jargon,
and all that is either stilted or slipshod."4
The result is a version
that
is marked by a vigorous and colorful English style, tending
at
places to be periphrastic with interpretive additions.
The following are examples of the insertion of
words for
which
there is no express warrant in the text (for convenience of
explanation
the inserted words are italicized here; they are not
italicized in the
"in the province of
blood" (Col. 1:22);
"guardian angel" (Matt.
"human body" (Rom. 12:4); "his life's blood" (Rev. 1:5);
"tongues
of ecstasy" (1 Cor. 13:8). In other cases the literal rendering
is
supplanted
altogether by a periphrasis. Thus "scribes" becomes
"doctors
of the law" (Mark
now
the parable of the bags of gold (Matthew 25:14-30); the word
traditionally
translated "saints" is rendered "God's people" (Col.
1:2,
etc.); "beloved" as a term of address becomes "dear
friends"
(1
John 4:7, etc.); and the verb "it is written" (Rom.
"there
is a text which reads." Instances of this kind of paraphrase
could
be multiplied. Because of such freedom in rendering the
text
the principal reviewer of the New Testament of the New En-
glish
Bible in The (
24,
1961, p. 178) concluded his review with the words, "If one's sole
concern
is with what the New Testament writers mean, it [the new
version]
is excellent. It is otherwise if one wants to find out what
the
documents actually say."
With regard to the style of the New English
Bible, one finds a
mixture.
To give their rendering contemporary flavor the trans-
lators
include an occasional colloquialism, such as, "They has-
4 Introduction to the
English Translations of
the Bible, Today and Tomorrow 409
ten
hot-foot into crime" (Prov.
can
stomach" (John 6:60). On the other hand one notices also a
tendency
to use pedantically precise words, as well as rare and
difficult
ones. Examples include asphodel, batten, bustard, dis-
train,
felloe, hoopoes, keen (as a verb), lapis lazuli, panniers,
reck,
ruffed bustard, runnels of water, and stook. Even educated
readers
need a dictionary for some of these.
THE GOOD NEWS BIBLE
(1976)5
The New Testament of the Good News Bible was
issued in
1966
by the American Bible Society under the title Good News for
Modern
ing
way. For a number of years the American Bible Society had
received
requests from
specially
designed for those who speak English as an acquired
language.
Late in 1961 a secretary of a denominational Board of
Home
Missions in
there
was available a rendering that would be suitable for use
among
new literates and among foreign language groups in the
As a result of such requests the Bible Society
decided that the
time had come to prepare a common language
translation of the
scriptures in English. Robert G. Bratcher was
invited to draw up
initial drafts of the books of the New
Testament. These were sent
to translation consultants of the American Bible
Society and to the
Translations Department of the British and
Foreign Bible Soci-
ety.
On the basis of comments and suggestions, Bratcher intro-
duced
a variety of modifications in the rendering. After its publi-
cation
on
from
readers started coming in. On the basis of these, on October
1,
1967 a second edition was published, incorporating many
changes
in both style and substance. As a result of its subsequent
use
in many parts of the world, and of further comments received
since
then, a third edition was issued in 1973. Meanwhile work
had
already begun on the preparation of the Old Testament, and
with
the assistance of several other scholars this was issued in
1976;
the Apocryphal or deuterocanonical books appeared in 1979.
The
Good News Bible is not a word-for-word translation. In-
stead
it adopts the principles of what Eugene A. Nida of the Amer-
ican
Bible Society calls "dynamic equivalence" or, more re-
5 See Eugene A. Nida, Good News for Everyone; How to Use the Good
News Bible
(Waco, TX: Word Books, 1977).
410
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / October-December
1993
cently, "functional equivalence."
Customs not known today are
reworded;
thus, "anointed my head with oil" (Ps. 23:5) becomes
"welcomed
me as an honored guest." The rendering avoids slang
but
uses colloquialisms of contemporary American speech, such
as,
"She nagged him" (Judg.
(1
Sam. 17:28).
The version has won wide acceptance because of
its ready
intelligibility-even
if there is some truth in the contention that it
has
made clear some passages that are unclear in the original.
THE NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION (1978)6
As mentioned earlier, when the Revised Standard
Version
appeared
in 1952, it received severe criticism from many who re-
garded
themselves as conservative in theology and politics. Sub-
sequently
several Bibles were published under conservative aus-
pices
(e.g., the Amplified Bible in 1965, the Modern Language
Bible
in 1969, and the New American Standard Version in 1971),
but
none of them succeeded in becoming the standard Bible for
conservative
Protestants.
The effort that finally culminated in producing
such a ver-
sion
began in the 1950s when committees were appointed by the
Synod
of the Christian Reformed Church (in 1956) and by the Na-
tional
Association of Evangelicals (in 1957) to study the feasibil-
ity
of preparing a new translation. In 1961 the two committees met
together
and merged as a joint committee. Over the next few
years
additional scholars became interested and were added to
the
committee, and in 1968 Edwin H. Palmer became the full-
time
executive secretary of the project. Work began in 1968, and
the
Gospel of John was published in 1969; in 1973 the New Testa-
ment
was issued. Finally, after several Old Testament books ap-
peared
separately, the entire Bible was finished in 1978.
The New International Version is so named
because more
than
one hundred translators from 34 religious groups, working
in
20 teams in the
tralia,
and
was
composed of five persons: two cotranslators, two consultants,
and
one English stylist. Each team's work went to an intermedi-
ate
editorial committee (either of the Old Testament or the New
6 See Kenneth L. Barker,
ed., The NIV: The Making of a Contemporary Transla-
tion (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1986); also issued as The
Making of a Contempo-
rary Translation; New
International Version (
1987).
English Translations of the
Bible, Today and Tomorrow 411
Testament),
then to the General Editorial Committee, and finally
to
the 15-member Committee on Bible Translation.
Early in the development of plans for the
project, financial
backing
for the work was promised by the New York Bible Soci-
ety.
It is understandable that the hourly wages for more than a
hundred
translators, the cost of their transportation as well as ac-
commodation
of room and board for the many months they met in
committee,
the many incidental expenses for secretarial labor,
duplicating
equipment, and other items eventually surpassed the
budget
the New York Bible Society was able to provide. Another
source
of revenue became available when the Zondervan Bible
Publishers,
having contracted with the New York Bible Society to
be
the sole commercial publisher in
translation,
advanced funds to help defray the costs. Eventually,
according
to James Powell, then president of the newly renamed
International
Bible Society, the total editorial cost reached ap-
proximately eight million dollars.7
At the publication of the completed version the
reception ac-
corded
the new rendering was remarkable. Within the first year
of
its appearance the publisher, Zondervan Publishing House of
able
to assume that in time this translation may replace the King
James
Version as the Bible of conservative Protestants.
Five years after the publication of the New
International Ver-
sion
the translation committee reviewed its work on the basis of
criticisms
that had been received. In the summer of 1983 the
translators
made approximately 930 changes which they labeled
"limited
revisions." In November 1985, 16 additional changes
were
made, and in November 1986 nine more revisions were
added.8
The revisions are of different kinds. Some are
revisions of
footnotes,
sectional headings, punctuation, and verse division. A
large
group of revisions substitute word equivalents, such as
changing
"dumb" to "mute" in Matthew 9:33 and "house-tops"
to
"roofs"
in Luke 12:3. All in all, the revisions, though rather nu-
merous,
do not reflect a major change in translation philosophy.
The New International Version is more colloquial
than the
Revised
Standard Version, less free than the New English Bible,
and
more literary than the Good News Bible. Occasionally the
7
Version (New York: Vantage,
1989), 100.
8 For more information
about these changes, see Robert P. Martin, Accuracy
of
Translation and the New
International Version (
1989), 711-72.
412
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / October-December
1993
translators
have taken liberties with the text, sometimes by omit-
ting
words and sometimes by adding words. In Matthew 5:2, for
example,
contrary to all the Greek manuscripts, the NIV simply
omits
the words "he [Jesus] opened his mouth" and provides no
English
equivalent for the phrase. On the other hand, for what ap-
pears
to be doctrinal reasons, the translators have inserted the
word
"your" in Matthew 13:32 ("it [a mustard seed] is the smallest
of
all your seeds") and the word "now" in 1 Peter 4:6 ("the
gospel
was
preached even to those who are now dead"), neither of which
is
in the Greek text.
REVISION AFTER REVISION
Several of the versions mentioned above have
undergone
further
revision. Additional work by Dominican scholars in
edition
of La Sainte Bible (1973), which, in
turn, was translated
into
English by Henry Wansbrough and other monks at Ample-
forth
Abbey in
the
title The New Jerusalem Bible. Besides correcting defects of
the
1966 edition, attention was given to the reduction of mascu-
line-oriented
language in passages that involve both men and
women.
The translators state in the preface, "Considerable ef-
forts
have been made, though not all costs, to soften or avoid the
inbuilt
preference of the English language, a preference now
found
offensive by some people, for the masculine; the word of the
Lord
concerns women and men equally."
In 1978, only eight years after the publication
of The New
American
Bible, plans were drawn up for a thorough revision.
The
preface to the revised edition of the New Testament (1986)
reads as follows.
Although the scriptures themselves are timeless,
translations and
explanations of them quickly become
dated in an era marked by
rapid cultural change to a
degree never previously experienced.
The explosion of biblical studies that has taken
place in our cen-
tury and the changing nature
of our language itself require peri-
odic adjustments both in
translations and in the accompanying
explanatory materials.
In the new edition a particular effort was made
to increase
consistency
of vocabulary. With regard to the Synoptic Gospels
where,
as mentioned earlier, the first edition was lax, special
care
was taken to reveal both the similarities and the differences
of
the Greek. Furthermore where the meaning of the original is
inclusive of both sexes, the translation seeks
"to reproduce such
English Translations of the Bible, Today and
Tomorrow 413
inclusivity insofar as this is
possible in normal English usage
without
resort to inelegant circumlocations or neologisms that
would
offend against the dignity of the language." In general the
generic
use of "man" is avoided, though it is retained where the
committee
could find no satisfactory equivalent.
Nineteen years after the publication of The New
English
Bible
a revision appeared under the title Revised English Bible
(1989).9 The
changes in wording are in the direction of a more
conservative
and less adventuresome rendering. For example,
in
speaking of Achsah, instead of "she broke wind" (Josh.
the
rendering is, "she dismounted." Instead of "all men's knees
run
with urine" (Ezek. 21:7), the text now reads "all knees will
turn
to water." Paul's advice, "Have nothing to do with loose liv-
ers"
(1 Cor. 5:9) now becomes, "Have nothing to do with those who
are
sexually immoral." On the other hand no change was made
in
Proverbs 14:29, "There is a rod in pickle for the arrogant," or
in
Song of Solomon 1:7, "That I [the bride] may not be left picking
lice
as I sit among my companions."
Attention was also paid to the inherent bias of
the English
language
toward masculine nouns and pronouns. The transla-
tors
state in their preface that in passages "of the Bible which evi-
dently
apply to both genders ... the revisers have preferred more
inclusive
gender reference where that has been possible without
compromising
scholarly integrity or English style."
In 1974 the Policies Committee of the Revised
Standard Ver-
sion,
which is a standing committee of the National Council of
Churches,
authorized and charged the Standard Bible Committee
to
make necessary changes in the RSV in the following respects:
(1)
paragraph structure and punctuation; (2) the elimination of
remaining
archaisms, while retaining the flavor of the Tyndale-
King
James tradition; (3) changes in the interest of accuracy,
clarity,
and euphony; and (4) the elimination of masculine-ori-
ented
language relating to people so far as this can be done with-
out
distorting passages that reflect the historical situation of an-
cient patriarchal culture.10
Working in accord with these four mandates, the
translators
followed
the maxim, "As literal as possible, as free as neces-
sary."
As a consequence the NRSV, published in 1990, remains es-
sentially
a literal translation, expressed in reverent, dignified
9 See Roger Coleman, New
Light and Truth: The Making of the
Revised English
Bible (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1989).
10
Bruce
M. Metzger, Robert C. Denton, and Walter Harrelson, The Making of the
New Revised Standard
Version of the Bible
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991).
414
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / October-December
1993
language.
Paraphrastic renderings have been adopted only spar-
ingly,
and then chiefly to compensate for a deficiency in the En-
glish language--the lack of a gender-inclusive pronoun
in the
third
person singular number.
The NRSV is the most ecumenical of all English
versions of
the
Bible. It contains not only the 66 books of the Protestant canon,
but
also the books of the Apocrypha, books that were included in the
King
James Version. To these apocryphal books, designated
deuterocanonical
by Roman Catholics, are added three other texts
accepted
by Eastern Orthodox churches, namely, 3 Maccabees, 4
Maccabees,
and Psalm 151. The NRSV Bible is thus the only En-
glish
Bible that contains all the books accepted as authoritative by
Christians
of all major denominations in the world.
CONCLUSION
Obviously English translations of the Bible
differ for a vari-
ety
of reasons. Not only do translators understand differently the
meanings
of various rare Hebrew and Greek words, but also the
theory
of the translation process may vary from formal equiva-
lence
to dynamic or functional equivalence. Furthermore the
level
of English and the style of syntax have been adapted to the
reading
public for which the revision is intended.
Throughout the last decade increasingly more
attention has
been
directed to the problem raised by the traditional use of "man"
and
"men" where these words restrict or obscure the meaning of
the
original text. Besides the steps taken in correcting such mat-
ters
in the latest revisions of the Jerusalem Bible, the New Ameri-
can
Bible, the New English Bible, and the Revised Standard Ver-
sion,
the translators of several other modern English versions
have
also begun to pay attention to such matters. In 1992 the Good
News
Bible of the American Bible Society incorporated necessary
changes
in the elimination of many masculine-biased render-
ings
concerning humankind. It has also been reported that by
about
1995 the translation committee of the New International
Version
will decide whether to eliminate masculine-biased lan-
guage
pertaining to humankind. It also appears that Kenneth N.
Taylor,
translator of The Living Bible, is at work on what he
calls
The New Translation, of which the first section, entitled
The
Letters of the New Testament, has now appeared (1990). Ac-
cording
to the preface of this edition, one of the outstanding fea-
tures
of The New Translation is "its correct translation of such
statements
as `He who has the Son has life' so as to become
`Whoever
has the Son has life.' Since God's grace is for men and
English Translations of the Bible, Today and
Tomorrow 415
women
alike, a valid translation must reflect this. It may be an
unimportant
point for many readers, but to others, both in and out-
side
the church, it is important and helpful."
In the future, no doubt other translations of
the Bible will be
made
into English, if for no other reason than the continuing
modification
of English usage and style. There will also be ex-
perimental
renderings of audiovisual projects (such as those now
being
sponsored by the American Bible Society), with interactive
multimedia
software. A pilot project, involving the account of the
Gerasene
demoniac (Mark 5:1-20), is to be produced in modern
video
format, along with a computer-video interactive Bible
learning resource.11
The question is often asked, Which is the best
version of the
Bible
to use? It is impossible to give a simple answer to this ques-
tion.
It is rather like asking, Which is the best place to go for a
cation?
The answer depends on what the individual wants. So too
with
versions of the Scriptures; different translations are in-
tended
for different purposes. For detailed and intensive study,
especially
in preparation for teaching, a word-for-word transla-
tion
would probably be best. In working with children and those
for
whom English is a second language, a dynamic equivalence
translation
probably would be preferable. In other contexts,-
whether
personal devotions, family devotions, meditation, or ex-
tended
reading-readers today have available a rich variety of
versions,
and individuals can make their own judgments as to
the
most useful version. But in the last analysis, whichever ver-
sion
one prefers, the important thing is to read it and to respond to
its
message. As Johannes Albrecht Bengel put it succinctly in the
preface
to his 1734 edition of the Greek New Testament, "Te totum
applica ad textum: rem
totam applica ad te"
("Apply yourself
wholly
to the text: apply the whole matter to yourself').
11 See the several
articles on "The Scriptures in Audio Visual Format" in the Bul-
letinn of the United Bible Societies, 160/161 (1991).
This
material is cited with gracious permission from:
www.dts.edu
Please
report any errors to Ted Hildebrandt at: