Why should I study scripture if the translations are deficient? Why should I study scripture if it is ultimately written by an imperfect being?
From recent
discussions with family, I have a few questions that I will be writing on to try
and give answers to the questions that were brought up. One of the first
questions that I had on my list was in regard to the multitude of Biblical
translations from Hebrew/Greek into English. The question basically set up as
follows, we have multiple translations, such as the KJV, NIV, NLT, etc. that
have variations in how the scripture is read. Why should we bother with
scripture because we have these imperfect copies? What I want to do here is
talk about why we have different translations, and show how that even though we
have variations in our English Bibles, that the core message of each scripture
is not lost, and that many complaints against Biblical inerrancy are resolved
if we use proper cultural understanding, supplemented with looking at the
original Hebrew and Greek wording. Fair warning, I am no linguist, so I will be
relying on my research, so I will be posting sources.
As far as the
number of translations, we have to talk about the types of translations we see.
We see literal, word for word translations, thought for thought translations,
and any where in between. Probably the extremes I could think of are that the
KJV uses a word for word translation, and versions like the NIV or NLT go for a
thought for thought translation. So we need to think about this for a minute,
surely either a word for word or thought for thought translation is sufficient,
so why do we see a spectrum of translations? I think this comes as a blessing
from God, because we see different translations have a different reading level,
and are read in different ways. I think we also must understand the deficiency
of the English language. Compared to other languages, English is very
versatile, in that the same word is used in multiple scenarios to mean
different things. For example, I would hope that I do not love pizza the same
way that I love my wife. Hebrew and Greek have very specific words that are used
in specific situations. For example, I recently talked about the verses in
Deuteronomy and Exodus that talk about a woman having to marry her rapist. The
problem comes from the translation of Hebrew to English. There are two words
used in scripture to describe this forceful sexual encounter. The one used in
the verses in question, and when Potiphar’s wife was trying to have Joseph,
means to take hold of, but implies a wearing down of resistance, not force. The
other word for sexual assault that does imply force was used when Tamar was
raped by Amnon, for example. Another example that I found when I first started
writing was talking about forbidden animals to eat. In the English
translations, bats are described as birds, but the Hebrew word used here is
describing things of the air, so God was describing where these unclean animals
could be found. I do not have the time here to go through each one of these
oddly translated verses, but if I hear enough interest in it I might go through
and study each of the more popular verses.
Now, these
variations could be a problem if the doctrine of Christianity was compromised,
but what we see when we compare the multiple translations, we see that the differences
are superficial, and that we can see that the core messages of scripture are
preserved in the many translations of the Bible. We can have members of the
same church that have different translations of the Bible that still agree on
core doctrine, they just have a preference in how scripture is read (short of
the few KJV only people that I have come across). In fact, I think the multiple
ways that scripture is written are useful in helping to capture the full scope
of the message of each verse of scripture. However, I think we do still need to
understand the Hebrew/Greek that the Bible was originally written in, as well
as the culture of the time, because we need to understand what the people of
the time were going through. I think this helps to understand why God decided
to communicate the way he did. For example, we always hear about the apparent
sexism of the Bible with laws like the testimony of women only applying half
that of a man. This was a part of Jewish culture, and the majority of the
ancient world, but this law comes from the Talmud, which was the extra laws
that the pharisees created as a means of being more religious than everyone
else. This was not canon with what God intended for the interactions of man and
woman in society. There are plenty of laws in Deuteronomy that I think need
addressing in light of the modern lens, but that will be my next post to try
and research and understand the original intent. May God bless you and have a
good rest of your day!
References:
https://www.biblica.com/resources/bible-faqs/why-are-there-so-many-versions-of-the-bible-in-english/
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