Divinity United

I sat in on Ruth Heeg's paper at the Native American Institute of Indigenous Theological Studies Symposium 2013 Friday afternoon. The paper was quite interesting, especially for someone who teaches Greek and challenges students to think about translation. Some sitting near me were less than enthused about the discussion of transitive and intransitive verbs and abstract nouns in Greek, English, and Algonquian languages. At some level, (μεν) I agree with them, but (δε) on the other hand, all of these grammatical details are important for translation, especially when it involves translating a text that means a lot to many people. In her paper, Heeg focused on the translation of Greek abstract nouns in First Nations languages, particularly Algonquian languages such as James Bay Cree, Ojibwe, and Plains Cree, in New Testament doxologies. One passage she used as an example was Rev 4:11: “Worthy art thou, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for thou didst create a...

There is a great article from Saturday's Globe and Mail on the 400 year anniversary of the King James Version. The article rightly highlights the work of William Tyndale as a significant part of the translation. And it notes via comments by Ephraim Radner that biblical literacy is fast disappearing.

The NIV2011 which is to replace the 1984 NIV and the TNIV is now available at www.BibleGateway.com . This change was announced in September 2009 . It seems that Zondervan felt that there had been too much backlash against the TNIV, but they still wanted to have a gender inclusive version of the NIV. The NIV2011 is an attempt at a compromise. We shall see how it turns out. The initial discussion on the text at Evangelical Textual Criticism implies that the NIV2011 is closer to the TNIV that the NIV 1984. I will have to do my own checking, but I am aware that compared to the more recent translations, such as the NLT2004 and ESV, the NIV 1984 is the least gender inclusive. This should come as no surprise since it was translated before there was much of a gender inclusive discussion.

Until just yesterday, I did not know that the New Living Translation (NLT) has been revised. I was under the impression that the NLT was a free translation that was closer to its roots in the Living Bible paraphrase than to a formal equivalence or even a dynamic equivalence. Well, it turns out that on closer inspection, the NLT has been revised, and the revised version can be placed in the dynamic/functional equivalence category. The NLT was originally published in 1996 by Tyndale House Publishers. After the publication, an eight year review process of the translation was begun, which ended with the publication of the revision in 2004. The new version is still called the NLT and not the RNLT. Thus, you wouldn't know there was a revision unless you read the prefaces to NLT 2004 edition or for some odd reason ended up comparing the NLT 1996 with the NLT 2004 (as I did yesterday). The move from a free translation to a dynamic or functional equivalence translation can be seen in 1...

Tommy Wasserman has posted some information at Evangelical Textual Criticism about events taking place next year around the 400th anniversary of the completion of the King James Bible (1611-2011). There is no doubt that the King James Bible has profoundly shaped the English language. What should also not be forgotten is the debt that the King James translators owe to the earlier translation work of William Tyndale. David Daniell states in the opening paragraph of his biography of William Tyndale ( William Tyndale: A Biography (Yale Nota Bene) : "William Tyndale gave us our English Bible. The sages assembled by King James to prepare the Authorised Version of 1611, so often praised for unlikely corporate inspiration, took over Tyndale's work. Nine-tenths of the Authorised Version's New Testament is Tyndale's. The same is true of the first half of the Old Testament, which is as far as he was able to get before he was executed in Brussels in 1536."

1 John 3:19–20 reveals some translations differences between the NIV, NASB, and ESV. Greek: ‘And by this we know that we are from the truth, and we reassure our heart before him hoti if our heart condemns us for [hoti] God is greater than our heart and he knows all things.’ NIV: ‘This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.’ ESV: ‘By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is great than our heart, and he knows everything.’ NASB: ‘We shall know by this that we are of the truth, and shall assure our heart before him, in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.’ The word hoti (‘for’, ‘because’) is used twice here. I have left the first one untranslated in the Greek translation. The NIV, ESV, and NASB translate...