There are a few questions that come my way on a regular basis. The most common (by far) is, "Wow! How tall are you?" to which I answer, "One inch taller than the average doorway." The second question that typically follows is, "Did you play basketball?" to which I answer, "Haven't you seen me play for the Mav's?" After the answer, "REALLY!" I say, "No. Not really!" Okay...back to the point.
Given my vocation, the third most common question I get is, "Which translation of the Bible do you recommend?" I was not surprised to read that Plummer is asked the same question as well. He writes, "During the birth of my oldest daughter, the attending physician even asked me this question in the midst of my wife's labor!"
The Original Languages of the Bible. Plummer begins with a brief history of Biblical translation. The Bible was originally written in three different languages over a period of nearly 1500 years (1400 B.C. - A.D. 90). As we have stated before, the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, with a few portions written in Aramaic. The New Testament was written in Greek.
While sections of the OT were translated into a few other languages (mainly Greek), as soon as the gospel began to spread into other cultures, the entire Bible was translated into many other languages - Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Latin, etc.
History of the English Bible. This section was perhaps my favorite of the chapter. Plummer writes about the dawn of the reformation in the 14th century: "In 1382, the famous reforming church leader John Wycliffe (1330-1384) translated the entire Bible into the English of his day (Middle English; from Latin)...Followers of Wycliffe continued to call for reform of the church and the monarchy based on the biblical truth they were reading (for more on this era see my post Getting the Reformation Wrong). Very quickly, church officials and the king judged the availability of the Bible in English as a threat to the status quo. In 1414, reading the Bible in English became a capital offense (that is, punishable by death). In 1428, Wycliffe's body was exhumed and symbolically burned at the stake."
Following in Wycliffe's footsteps was William Tyndale (1494-1536), who published the first printed English New Testament; translated from the Greek original. The first complete printed English Bible appeared in 1535, called the Coverdale Bible (Coverdale was Tyndale's assistant). In 1536, however, Tyndale was captured by followers of King Henry VIII, and was strangled and burned at the stake.
Plummer continues, "As he was dying, Tyndale reportedly prayed, 'Lord, open the eyes of the King of England.' Only one year later, Tyndale's request was granted, as the king officially licensed the distribution of an English translation of the Bible...During the next hundred years, a spate of English Bible translations were produced, most of them heavily dependent on Tyndale's seminal work."
Approaches to Translation. Unlike those who have preceded us, we have the privilege of choosing between many different Modern English translations. Rather than asking which translation is "best", Plummer says we should recognize that all translations have strengths and weaknesses (exceptions would include those translations produced by cultic/sectarian groups like Jehovah's Witnesses' NWT and others).
On the spectrum of translations most fall within the spectrum of two extremes. On one side is the functionally equivalent translation, which seeks to accurately convey the same meaning in a new language. The New Living Translation (NLT) is a good example of this type of translation.
On the other side is the formally equivalent translation, which is concerned to preserve, as much as possible, the number of words and grammatical constructions from the original. These translations are almost inevitably written in a stilted English style. The New American Standard Bible (NASB) and the English Standard Version (ESV) are examples of formally equivalent translations.
Plummer adds, "For reading larger portions of Scripture (reading through the Bible in one year, for example), a person might choose a functionally equivalent translation. For careful verse-by-verse study, one might prefer a more formally equivalent translation." There is another class of Bible that Plummer talks about called the paraphrase, which is not really a translation but an "attempt to freely word the meaning of the Biblical text."
In my personal study and reading, I use the ESV (English Standard Version). I tend to like the formally equivalent translations. While the ESV preserves the number of words and grammatical constructions [as much as possible], it communicates in a style that resembles functionally equivalent translations. In short, I find in the ESV the best of both worlds.
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