Translation Issues
Over at Theology for the Masses, myself and Henry Michael and I have been continuing a discussion that began on Christmas day. He and his wife Merridith have been looking for a new Bible for her. Henry, like myself, uses the ESV because it does the best job–at least I think so–of bridging the gap between readable English and being a literal, word-for-word translation of the Greek and Hebrew. I mean, one of the guys who worked on the translation of the New Testament is Bill Mounce who also wrote my Greek text book. So the team is a very highly skilled translation team.
Henry asked me which type of translation is best to use. I personally favor the word-for-word so that I am confident that I am reading the original words of Paul or whoever. Mark Driscoll, in his blog, and John Piper, in an article and sermon, spell out the reasons why I prefer ESV and word-for-word translations over thought for thought. However, I am not naive, blind, nor am I so stupid to think that even a literal translation is perfectly literal. It still makes interpretive decisions when the original language does not translate into English very well. So my answer to Henry was that people should really start to learn the original languages. He agreed that the theory was good and the best possible solution but too impractical to have any effect.
I want to propose the following: is it possible for all Christians to learn the biblical languages?
Well, I do agree with Henry and almost everyone else if we are going to talk about a mastery of Greek and Hebrew. That would take more time than the average church-goer will ever have with children to rear and homes to run. They would not have the time to go to a Bible college or seminary to achieve this high level of mastery over the biblical languages. That is very true.
However, what if the churches over the country began to teach a basic understand of Greek and Hebrew and could point people in the direction of some free resources that can help the readers get into the original language? This is possible but it requires first that each and every church have a person on hand with a working and teachable knowledge of the languages, which is hard. But I have preached some revivals at churches where the pastor did not have an education in a Bible college or seminary. These pastors are untrained theologians. If these pastors, and they might have since then or were at the time attending classes for this, were to learn these languages, their own preaching would improve and each church would have in place someone who could teach the local congregations Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic.
Now the only question, how could you get everyone in the church together to learn the languages? My solution is Sunday School. Sunday School was originally a school that little children attended to learn to read, write, and to learn math. It has lost that emphasis over time to either its benefit or detriment–you decide.* But this is a perfect place to offer that kind of basic knowledge for maybe the length of a school semester, from August to December or from February to May. That’s all it would take. It need not be an in depth study of the languages but just enough so that the people can look at the language and pick out what kinds of verbs there are, how words decline and parse. Then, the church could make a good concordance available to be purchased by the people or give links to websites that have free lexicons and concordances. I use www.studylight.org to help with my verbs because I learn those this spring.
If the people could learn the original languages, the whole fuss over dynamic vs. formal equivalent would go away because the people would have the ability to look up exactly what the word means and how the word was used. People could then make the decision over which translation is best in that particular verse, phrase, or word. Does this seem like a more satisfactory answer or does it seem way to out of reach and impractical still? But, hey, it’s like Peter Griffin said about a particular joke in the Family Guy movie, “At least its something.”
*I personally feel that the Sunday Schools have gotten away from educating people about what the Bible teaches for cheese devotional lessons. Sunday School is a perfect place to inform people about life in the 1st century and how it impacted the New Testament and how life in the Old Testament period impacted the writing of the Hebrew Canon.
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Should Churches Teach Greek?…
Hank at Think Wink proposes that churches should teach their members Greek in Sunday School:
However, what if the churches over the country began to teach a basic understand of Greek and Hebrew and could point people in the direction of some free res…
There are some great online resources for learning Greek as well…
Biblical Training has some lessons from Dr. Bill Mounce…
http://www.biblicaltraining.org/class.php?class=NT201
Here is another good online tool for learning NT Greek…
http://www.ntgreek.net/index.htm
This seems like a good idea, but here are some questions people would ask:
Why should I learn any amount of Greek and Hebrew?
How will it help me be a better Christian?
How will it bring me closer to God?
Why should I invest time in learning these languages, when I could use the same time to read the Bible in a language I already know?
There are probably good answers to these questions, but I can’t answer them myself.
Those are excellent questions. I think this would be part of the learning process in those courses. Many people in the church don’t realize that their English Bibles, no matter they be dynamic or formal equivalent, are not the fully inspired, inerrant, infallible word of God. That is why I propose something like this so that they can realize this and study the Bible with greater depth. But I would work those questions into the curriculum of the Sunday School classes.
[...] Read the whole post - Think Wink. » Translation Issues [...]
Not in Sunday School as I know it.
Back 30ish years ago I had 3 semesters of Koine Greek. To get a working, halting reading skill with Greek took 2 hours a week of classroom work, much study and relentless vocabulary work with flashcards.
(To my great regret now I let that skill slide then.)
Sunday School as I know it now is an hour each week, half of which in our case gets used for prayer requests. It’s very hard to get any traction in the material.
Chuck,
Perhaps not in Sunday school as we know it, but that does not exclude the general idea. Perhaps you set aside another time for it, like Wednesday night. I know in a lot of churches this would be hard to introduce and implement. However, the hardship does not take away from the need.
While I might disagree with this idea solving the translation issues, I think that it is very needed. I have said for a long time that churches need to be educators of the congregations and this is an excellent topic.
Chuck,
You have seen why I don’t like Sunday School in the church today: it is just an hour long devotion. Originally Sunday School was a school. It is time that it gets back to being a place of learning, not cheezy devotions that really do not challenge the mind and soul of believers.
Yes Greek is very hard to learn, I am finding out right now. But before I sat in a class room and was trying to memorize different paradigms of the different declensions and verbs, I was using online resources to get a better understanding of the original texts. That is what I am proposing, using Sunday School to maybe teach the different concepts behind a perfect tense verb or an aorist tense verb. Teach them how to recognize the tenses or a declension. I’m not talking about memorizing vocabulary but just an understanding of how the language works. Wednesday night would be another good place to teach the languages as well.
There are some excellent textbooks to teach biblical Greek and Hebrew. Bill Mounce has a book out that doesn’t have you learn paradigms but rather shows how the endings and stems work so that a person can pick out a verb or a noun or an adjective. I am really enjoying the book.
This probably would not end permanently the debate between which is the better translation. But this would drastically reduce all about dynamic vs. formal because people will be equipped to check out the background behind the English or whatever their language is. This debate would lose its prime-time spot because now it boils down to personal preference, not who is getting it right. People can decipher for themselves what is the idea behind words.
This, to me, is about the priesthood of the believer. Let the people read the original languages. Let them discern for themselves whether their translation was right or not. The translators should just worry about getting the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic into English with as much precision as possible and let the readers discern its meaning. Let us empower the people to read the whole Bible for all its worth.
[...] Then I came across this blog: …What if the churches over the country began to teach a basic understand [sic] of Greek and Hebrew and could point people in the direction of some free resources that can help the readers get into the original language? This is possible but it requires first that each and every church have a person on hand with a working and teachable knowledge of the languages, which is hard. [...]
[...] Degree #6: The ESV blog picks up Midwestern MDiv student Hank Imler’s blog entry about bible translation issues. [...]
“Many people in the church don’t realize that their English Bibles, no matter they be dynamic or formal equivalent, are not the fully inspired, inerrant, infallible word of God.”
We are not Muslims. The Bible is translatable and remains the Word of God when translated. If the Septuagint was good enough for Paul and for many (most?) of the other early believers, why shouldn’t the ESV or NIV or NRSV or whatever be good enough for us?
You know, that is a good point. Along those same lines, The original sayings and teachings of Jesus were in Aramaic and at some point were translated into Greek.
I think it is important to read up on the various translations and realize the issues that surround each one. Armed with that knowledge and using multiple translations will reduce those issues.
Jonathan,
I am a pastor. There are some people in my church who don’t know that the Bible was written in languages that are no longer used today. They had no clue. When I was in high school, many people–both in the youth and older–didn’t know about the Greek and Hebrew. They just had no clue. Others think that the translations are just as inspired as Paul or James or Moses or David were. They aren’t. So people will assume bad translations, found in all translation philosophies, are what God had inspired. Teaching the people about the original languages and to acquaint the people with them will help them learn where the Bible came from and to actually study up on a passage and ask questions that go deeper than just what the English conveys.
Reading multiple translations will always be of great benefit. But there are some terms in the original languages that are too hard to translate, even in a dynamic translation. The best known example of this is the Greek term “love.” We all know that there are multiple Greek words for this English word. Only by on original language study can one fully understand all the forms of love and the type of love in a given context. Pretty much every translation I have read never really distinguishes between philadelphos agape.
I am seeking to connect the people to a deeper knowledge of the Scriptures. A knowledge of the original languages will only aid that further and take one deeper than just reading all available translations on the market.
God inspired Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to write them down in Greek. So while that is a good point, I don’t think it has much weight in this. God inspired the Gospel writers to write Jesus’ words in Greek, not Aramaic.
There is a lot we don’t know about the formation of the Gospels. There are references to a Aramaic version of Matthew by some early church fathers like Irenaeus who was very adamant about the divine inspiration of the scriptures.
I think just about everyone here is in agreement in that with you.