This Week's Great Bible Translation Contoversy

Tim Challies had a thought provoking post on Bible Translations earlier this week entitled Every Word of God. After providing several examples of the importance of exact wording in everyday speech, as well as Bible translation, he came to his main thesis as follows:

What I mean to show in these examples is that anything other than an essentially literal translation of the Bible may work to subtly undermine the Christian’s confidence in the Scriptures. This is a topic that I cannot adequately cover in only a small article and I do realize there are complexities I have not considered. But on the basis of these examples I would urge you to consider this matter on your own. As Christians, people of the Book, we need to have confidence in our text. What basis do we have for our faith if we cannot have confidence in the Bible? We cannot overestimate the importance of ensuring that what we study is the clearest, best, most accurate translation of God’s Words that we can possibly find.

Michael Spencer responded with this post, including this comment:

My own views on translations were deeply influenced by the experience of teaching a semester of Greek several years ago. I immediately realized that every translation- including the ESV- used some examples of dynamic equivalence. Some translations use more and others less, but all translations participate in the various less-than-perfect processes of word and idiom translation.

Tim Chailles usually has good things to say and I enjoy his blog. On this one, however, I'm torn. I think I'll have to disagree with Tim and come out in favor of both (all) kinds of translations.

I read and study from the ESV, one of the more "literal" translations. At our church our pastor often preaches from the NLT for ease of understanding. The NLT is a scholarly translation, unlike the 1970's Living Bible paraphrase, but is considered one of the more idiomatic and less literal translations. I think that there is room for both kinds.

Spencer pointed out that the list of translators of the NLT reads like a "Who's Who" of conservative Biblical scholarship, including D.A. Carson and F.F. Bruce . So how can users of the NLT be branded as harming confidence in the text of the Bible?

He concluded his thoughts with these words - "Stop labeling Christians by their translation." Good advice.