Do you consider concordance to be a part of “formal equivalency” (or vise versa), or a related but separate issue?

I liked your Nida quote that “Not only must we avoid going behind the writer; we must also avoid going ahead of the writer….” It seems that concordant ambiguity is often held up as a desirable outcome when a particular passage can seemingly be interpreted in multiple ways. Yet if we “assume the writers of the Bible were expected to be understood” and that “they intended only one meaning [...] and not several”, then the ambiguity is being added to the text where it did not originally exist. A “dynamic” translation may get the wrong meaning of a passage, but at least they have tried to fulfill the responsibility of translation.

This chapter in this book shows clearly that dynamic translators must reproduce, as clearly and accurately as possible the meaning and message of the writers of the Scripture–not more and not less. In this sense all dynamic translation is “tight.” All other so-called dynamic translation is really exegetical commentary. As far as I know (and I have been around this now for decades) only the New World Translation in selected passages (most of John’s Gospel, et al) SEEKS to distort God’s Word. Occasionally, some other versions do so occasionally as well, to their peril (cf. NEB “once upon a time” in Gen 11:1 for Hebrew’s wayahi, is egregious. But I RARELY find such examples in my decades as a full time Bible researcher and lexicon maker.

But for the most part one must assume that the translator is doing his very best to rendering the meaning, whether trying to give priority to the form of the source language, with less focus on the readers understanding of the source forms (popularly called “literal rendering”), or giving priority to the contextual meaning and thought (and more focus on the readers understanding of the source meanings)

as an aside,
Persons that often advocate “literal” translations often cannot define what it means. In fact a particular critic, at an Evangelical scholars conference, thought it was a “trick” question, when I asked it. But it is not a trick question. A person should be able to quantify and limit what a literal translation is, or continue his investigation until he/she has found a working definition. Allow me to offer this working definition.

“A literal translation is the attempt to render in a concordant manner a word or a limted number of words in a target language (e.g. English) for any given word or words in the source language (e.g. Greek). Usually single-word to single-word is preferred. An example would be Greek “sarx” and English “flesh.” In an interlinear (cf. the Brown/Comfort interlinear) there would be a very high correspondance between the use a the single greek word to the concordant gloss “flesh.” In the NASB, ASV 1901 I would guess would the two with less one-to-one correspondence. And so translations are on some relative dot on a line of least-to-most “literal.”

But aside from my definition above, “literal” often is defined as “pertaining to that rendering which is most accurate to the “meaning” of the source (e.g. Greek) language. (my definition). But this kind of talk becomes quite circular. For example the “literal” (formally-based) meaning of protokotos, can be glossed in English as “first-born, firstborn.” Yet in Colossians only translations that render it as “supreme” (et. al.) are giving the actual contextally-based meaningful translation. This at times is not crucial, yet Colossian 1:15 (CEV, GNT, NLT (with “literal” note) gets it right as a dynamic rendering “supreme” and (so-called) literal (“concordant”) renderings limit the Son of God to being primary, yet “born” (created?); cf. NRSV, RSV, ASV, ESV, God’s Word, KJV, NKJV, NET (with extended note), NASB, NAS, NIV, NJV.

Those concerned more with the form of the word in the original language may render the (mis-leading?, [but not because of malware motives]) notion that Jesus is “first” in some temporal sense, and other less “literal” renderings (such as CEV, GNT, NLT) are giving the actual literal meaning, and some noting its form in the footnote. Let’s find a new word for a “literal” translation; how about “a concordant method” translation ?

@Iris: Thank you for your comments. I’ve chosen to sit most of this current ESV debate out for the “line in the sand” reason that you mentioned. However, I do enjoy discussing translation *philosophies* and hope that there can be fruitful discussion there beyond the product of individual translations.

You give very wise advice to your students…

The statement “actual words” bothers me in that it’s just simply not true. With this falsity believed, enter Tim Challies. His views seem similar to King James Bible adherents.

Views from the “essentially literal” crowd divide believers and they create a straw man (dynamic equivalence) to beat up on that waste the energies of those having to respond.

Luv your blog ElShaddai.

Yes, both the ESV and the NLT follow different translation philosophies. Mr. Challies failed to point this out to begin with. And because of this, he missed his target, the NLT and the verses he aimed at.

There’s definitely a place for the NLT. As I’ve argued on my blog, it should be a person’s third Bible, but some have made it their second and even first (the guy at the NLT blog).

I still think the ESV is a fine translation, but some of its advocates are engaging is some battles that they’re not prepared to handle.