It is impossible to avoid translation problems. The Old Testament is written largely in ancient Hebrew (with some Aramaic) and the New Testament in Koine Greek. Although both languages are well known, neither have a large body of literature using their exact language. This means they both use words and idioms unknown outside the Bible, and they refer to customs and sayings that were well known to the first readers but are now lost. This means that translation is sometimes conjectural, and different possibilities exist.
New translations have usually provoked confusion and suspicion. The Greek Septuagint was the first official translation of the Hebrew and the church Fathers came to regard it as almost inspired. So, when Jerome decided to translate into Latin from the Hebrew Old Testament instead of the Greek one, he was criticized by Augustine for deviating from the true word of God.[1]
In time, Jerome’s translation became the official Bible of the church, so when translators such as Tyndale chose to translate into English, they were criticized for deviating from the Vulgate. Henry VIII who had Tyndale executed paradoxically authorized the publication of Tyndale’s translation under the pseudonym of the Matthew’s Bible. This new translation became an almost verbatim basis of the King James version.[2] The King James version became, in turn, the traditional version against which all new translations are compared, and they are often criticized when they deviate from it. History repeats itself.
Translators have different sytles and philosophies. Some attempt a word-by-word equivalence by trying to find a modern word that has the same range of meaning as each original word. Some attempt a phrase-by-phrase equivalence by looking for the modern expression that conveys the same message as the original. All translations use a mixture of the two in varying degrees.[3]
This module attempts to express all the plausible meanings of the original. It does not attempt to list every possible translation, which would involve a long list of synonyms for almost every word, but concentrates on options which convey a different meaning.
For example, the Greek word “biblos” can be translated as “scroll”, but there are also other possibilities, which could be recorded as follows:
book – Or: record will be shown as: Or: record (alternate translation)
– Lit.: bark will be shown as: Or: bark (a more verbatim translation)
– Means: scroll will be shown as: Or: scroll (a more idiomatic translation)
– KJV: roll will be shown as: Or: roll (an archaic translation)
– Like: Bible will be shown as: Or: Bible (translation of a similar-sounding word)
The verbatim meaning (or more correctly in this case, the etymological meaning) relates to a tree “bark”, presumably because this was the first material Greeks wrote on. However, by the time of the NT, writing was done on “scrolls” of papyrus so this would be the more idiomatic translation. Actually “book” itself is even more idiomatic and indeed anachronistic because papyrus sheets weren’t bound together as pages at this time, but it conveys the meaning to a modern reader. A “record” is suitable alternative rendering because it indicates that the writing is referred to rather than the material it is written on. The King James translation is often worth noting because this may help to explain some more traditional translations. Our word "Bible" comes from this Greek word.
Most of this is obvious or irrelevant, and it would be distracting to present all these options for every word. Therefore only details which are likely to be useful for understanding the text are actually recorded.
These options summarize the conclusions of the scholarly disciplines of philology, semantics and semiotics. In other words, they present the different ways in which the underlying Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek can be translated and understood.
These factors can produce a confusing array of different translations. The options indicate different possible meanings and, when necessary, the reasons for these differences. Often we need to consider a range of different meanings in order to understand the full nuance of the underlying text.
All the meanings found in the following commercial translations were consulted and incorporated, though not necessarily using the identical vocabulary.
[1] Augustine. De Doctrina Christiana Bk.2.56-57: “[the Septuagint was] translated in a way that the Holy Spirit, who was leading them and creating unanimity, judged appropriate…So… Latin manuscripts of the Old Testament should be corrected if necessary by authoritative Greek ones.”. Translation by R.P.H. Green, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), p. 83.
[2] Tyndale’s translation of NT & Pentateuch was completed by Coverdale and published under the pseudonym of Thomas Matthews with permission from Henry VIII. King James later authorized the translation and publication of a Bible which was a slight revision of this version – the King James Bible includes 80% of Tyndale’s actual wording including most of his memorable phrases.
[3] The most successful attempt at strict word-for-word translation is Young’s Literal Translation, but even this translates with equivalent phrases to avoid meaningless Engligh. For example, the Hebrew of Gen.15.4 says, word-by-word: “he who comes out of your bowels” (Gen.15.4) but Young translates this as “your very own son”, and he translates the repeated phrase “the nose of the Lord was hot” (e.g. Exod. 4:14) as “the anger of the Lord was kindled”.