Bible Translations
There are many translations of the Bible available to people today. How do we know which translation is the correct one? The answer is actually remarkably simple:
None of them are.
Every single translation of the Bible has some error in it. The vast, vast majority of errors are copyist mistakes and are do not change the essence of the passage. Since copying was done by hand for the majority of the “Christian era”, this is not too surprising. Also, most early Christian churches didn’t have the same trained, dedicated scribes that were available to mainstream Judaism.
Of course, some translation are better than others and that is because of new linguistic, archeological, and anthropological findings. The field of Textual Critisicm certainly helps with sorting and identifying the many thousands of manuscripts that have passed through the ages.
It should be noted that many Tanakh (“Old Testament”) translations are far more accurate than the B’rit Chadashah (“New Testament”) translations. The reason for this is because the Israelites have had a scribal class that was completely dedicated and fully trained. They did nothing else except copy the Tanakh. The methods they used for verifying a “pure” copy are exacting and virtually flawless. I won’t go into details, you can find enough of those on the web, but lets just say that it is the most accurate handcopying method ever found on the planet.
There is also another aspect which, I believe, many translators overlook: The B’rit Chadashah is every bit as “Jewish” as the Tanakh. It was even “written” in Hebrew before being written in Greek. When someone thinks a thought it is, except in extremely rare cases, in their original language. In this case, that is Hebrew. Then the author must translate the thought into the language they are recording in. Then they put pen to paper and write out the thought. But the point to consider is that before the Greek words of the B’rit Chadashah were written (put on paper), the author(s) of the B’rit Chadashah first “wrote” (in their minds) the thought in Hebrew.
The authors were Hebrew. Their thoughts were Hebrew. The content of what they were writting about was even Hebrew. The only part of the B’rit Chadashah that isn’t Hebrew is the words themselves. And today, even those aren’t often Greek, they’re usually in English!
Removing the Hebraic flavor (if you will) of the Scriptures has led to numerous misunderstandings and false teachings. But I’m not going to go into those here. That’s not what this page is for.
For myself, I love the Olde English of the King James Version. It’s a beautiful and poetic tongue and I wish more people comprehended it. But I have not found it to be my favorite translation. My favored translation is the Complete Jewish Bible (CJB) which was translated by Dr. David Stern. Most of the time, when I quote Scripture, I use the CJB.
Pick the translation that suits you best. Just remember to look at it from the Hebrew perspective and, I believe, you’ll see things make more sense to you.
Sha’alu Shalom,
Jason
Tags: Bible, Messianic, Study, Tools, Translation
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