A three-legged survey of Bible translations

There are a number of particularly insightful posts on Ancient Hebrew Poetry at the moment that are well worth investigating. John has made several comments that I wanted to tie together into a new thought.

In his article, “Is Blogging about the Bible a Waste of Time?“, John advances the position that “interpretation of the Bible is strongest if built on three supports.” To grossly summarize, this three-legged stool is made up of [1] the original context or intent of the authors, [2] the history or tradition of interpretation, and [3] an awareness of one’s own culture. Any shortcoming in any of these legs leads to a wobbly stool and “the interpreter will risk tipping over into the muck below.”

In the comments to the article, “How do you render jilted love in language strong as an arm with its veins popping out?“, John notes that, with respect to the language used in formal equivalence Bible translations:

I think the use of KJV, NKJV, NASB, and ESV, has to do, not with intelligibility or non-intelligibility, but an attempt to stay attached to a tradition in a world that washes away all tradition in the bat of an eye. [...] The way to preserve tradition is to wrap it in an envelope which itself may be quite irrelevant. It may be funny clothes (like more orthodox Jews, or the Amish) or it may be a funny Bible (like the the 16th century translation of the Bible, the Diodati, that Italian pentecostals use). The envelope is protecting something else. That’s my point.

I can accept that there is strong desire to protect the tradition of Bible language, though I still feel there is a risk in some circles that the tradition can/has become more important than the message of the Bible.

With those thoughts in mind and the general position that all translation is interpretation to some degree, I was curious to survey the Bible translation landscape and see which legs of the interpretation stool are emphasized by which translations:

• Original context or intent: N/RSV, NET, CEV, TEV/GNT. Essentially my thought is here is to identify those translations that typically do not read messianic interpretation into the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible.

• Tradition of interpretation: N/KJV, NASB, ESV, N/RSV, HCSB. Like it or not, the theological and academic language of “Biblish” has become ingrained as a Biblical tradition. These translations explicitly retain formal Biblish. Most also stay away from “modern” gender-neutral translation, the NRSV being the primary exception.

• Current cultural awareness: NRSV, HCSB, TNIV, NLT, CEV, NCV, NJB, NAB, REB, TEV/GNT. This list is highlighted by gender-neutral and/or accurate renderings, though it must be noted that the scope of implementation does vary widely. I also include idiomatic language and modern grammar as a point here, which draws the HCSB into the fringe of the discussion, despite its explicit rejection of gender-neutral culture.

Disclaimer: I am not hands-on familiar with all of the translations listed above and have made a gross categorization based on high-level information. If you disagree about a translation or have another to add, please post a comment!

Interestingly, there is one translation that appears in all three categories: the NRSV. It should be no surprise then that the NRSV is also the most ecumenical translation available, used in all three major Christian traditions: Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant, as well as in academic and scholarly environments.