This article is part of a series that looks at various English translations of the Bible.
WHICH CONTEMPORARY English Bible translation is best to use? Various faith communities answer that question differently.
In the United States, for example, many mainline Protestant churches use the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), while evangelical Protestant churches often prefer either the New International Version (NIV) or the New American Standard Bible (NASB). The New American Bible (NAB) shows up in Catholic liturgies, and the New Jewish Publication Society Translation (NJPS) of the Hebrew Bible is the one most Reform and Conservative synagogues use. These late 20th-century translations all strive to translate each ancient word into its current English equivalent, just as the King James Version (KJV) did at the start of the 17th century.
Dynamic equivalence translations, however, such as the Good News Bible and The Revised English Bible, translate each phrase of the ancient text rather than each word. And Eugene Peterson's The Message strays even further from literal translation, producing what many would not call a translation at all, but a paraphrase.
While I tend to trust a word-for-word translation done by a group of scholars more than a paraphrase by one person, Peterson's playful approach can lead to fresh perspectives on familiar passages. Peterson translates Matthew 5:13 as, "You're here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth." Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson, 1993, 1994, 1995. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group .
My preference is to compare several translations, because doing so can reveal the variety of ways in which a passage can often be legitimately translated. For example, because the consonants of the Hebrew words for yoke and infant are similar, the KJV interprets Hosea 11:4 as God removing the yoke from an animal so that it can eat, while the more gender-inclusive NRSV implies that God is a Mother who nurses infant Israel. Similarly, words for and in both Hebrew and Greek can also be translated as but, putting an entirely different spin on some Biblical passages. So, the interpretive choices of the translator naturally play an important role in each translation.
This is why it can be helpful to compare several translations side by side; using a variety of translations can lead to illuminating insights. Free websites like www.biblegateway.com and http://bible.crosswalk.com or reasonably priced computer programs at www.online-bible.com and www.powerbible.com can be helpful in this regard. These resources usually include many questionable translations along with several solid ones. Some also allow you to search Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible.
Additional meanings of words that get lost in translation can often be uncovered through the help of the dictionaries in Strong's Concordance and through more comprehensive lexicons. For example, the Hebrew verb translated as "to show mercy" shares its root with a noun that means "womb." So the verb can also be translated, "to show motherly-compassion," as in Jeremiah 31:20, where God declares, "Is Ephraim my dear son? . . . I will truly show motherly-compassion upon him." Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), p. 45 .
Similarly, a whole new view of God emerges when, through the help of such a concordance, one learns that the Hebrew name for the God of Israel, Yhwh, is likely a form of the verb meaning "to be." There's nothing more provocative than considering the idea that God is a verb.
