Best Bible translations according to biblical scholars and popular authors (and theologians): Telford Work

Telford Work is Assistant Professor of Theology at Westmont College and a well-known American Pentecostal theologian. At his website he answers a question about Bible translations from one of his students:

Should I trust my translation of the Bible? When there are so many competing translations, how can we trust one over another, and why should we believe your opinion over theirs? What is the best Bible translation?

Telford prefers that students in his class use either the New Revised Standard Version or Revised Standard Version. The New American Standard Bible and English Standard Version are also acceptable for his classes. He recommends his students generally use translations to the centre-left of this spectrum as their main translation. In contrast, to Thomas Cahill, Telford has some appreciative words about the value of the King James Version:

I think evangelicals have been too quick to reject the KJV, which has a poise and grace that no subsequent translation has been able to capture. I have been coming back to this version (and lately the KJV has even become rather hip in secular and literary circles!).

Telford’s opinions of various translations are very interesting:

“The New International Version (NIV) is a very good translation, though sometimes it holds our hands a bit theologically, removing ambiguities and smoothing out problems.”

“The Revised Standard Version (RSV) is a very good translation. It is sometimes outdone by the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), but the NRSV is more often outdone by the RSV. The NRSV’s well-intentioned and generally successful commitment to gender-inclusive language sometimes makes for awkward and misleading translations.”

“The New American Standard (NAS) is a lot like the RSV” (I guess he would say this about the English Standard Version too?).

Telford highlights the main problem with dynamic equivalent translations (e.g. the New Living Translation) and paraphrases (e.g. The Message) really well, in my opinion:

These have the advantage of narrowing much of the cultural distance that separates the original Biblical languages’ vocabularies, imagery, and thought structures. This gives them a much more “living” voice to many readers. They also have the disadvantage of hiding ambiguities, “solving” problems in translation, and clearly favoring certain ways to read these texts at the expense of others. (Some would consider these things advantages, but they become disadvantages in contexts of close scholarly study and theological interpretation of the Bible).

Best Bible translations according to biblical scholars and popular authors: Thomas Cahill

Today I feature popular author Thomas Cahill, best known for the Hinges of History series that includes titles such as The Gift of the Jews, Desire of the Everlasting Hills and How the Irish Saved Civilisation. Cahill studied scripture at New York’s Union Theological Seminary, and spent two years as a Visiting Scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he studied Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible in preparation for writing The Gift of the Jews. Cahill was Director of Religious Publishing at Doubleday for six years.

At his Random House author website, Cahill has an essay on how to read the Bible . First, he starts by pointing out that the Bible is not “a single book but a collection of scrolls which could be read in whatever sequence you liked. More than this, the sequence of texts changes from one Bible to another.”

Jews divide the Hebrew Bible into three sections: Torah (the Five Books of Moses), Prophets, and Writings, ending with the Book of Chronicles, which gives a summary of Jewish salvation history from Adam to the return of the Babylonian exiles to Jerusalem in the sixth century B.C. Christian Bibles, which designate the same collection of Hebrew texts as the “Old” Testament, put the Prophets last, because these are seen as prophesying the coming of the Messiah (who for Christians is Jesus). The Prophets then serve as an introduction to the last part of the Christian Bible, the New Testament–the first century A.D. writings about Jesus and his followers. Eastern Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics admit several books to their Old Testament that are not acknowledged as inspired scripture by Jews and most Protestants.

“Given such variety,” Cahill goes on to say, “it is better to think of the Bible as a library of books, written and collected over many centuries–a collection in which not all the books are of equal importance. Don’t expect to be able to master this library in a few months or even a year. Nor should you turn to a classic translation–like the King James Version–for the best understanding of the texts.”

The King James Version belongs to the seventeenth century. To our ears, it sounds like seventeenth century England, not like ancient Israel. Just as you wouldn’t choose a seventeenth-century translation of Homer if you wanted to understand the mythology of ancient Greece, you should not choose an antiquated translation of the Bible, however beautiful, if you want to understand the religion of Israel.

Like Marc Zvi Brettler, Cahill recommends Everett Fox’s The Five Books of Moses as the best translation of the Torah available. For the rest of the Hebrew and Christian Bible and Apocrypha, he recommends the New Jerusalem Bible. However, what is important is that if new Bible readers want to begin to understand the Bible they should choose reputable modern translations rather than the King James Version.

Interestingly, in Desire of the Everlasting Hills, Cahill describes the New International Version as a “mildly literal” translation of the New Testament. On the other hand, he describes the New Jersualem as “assidiously idiomatic” in its translation of the New Testament, “almost to the point of paraphrase.” In Desire of the Everlasting Hills, Cahill used the New International Version and New Jerusalem Bible as his comparison translations.

Best Bible translations according to biblical scholars and popular authors: Marc Zvi Brettler

Today’s featured scholar is Marc Zvi Brettler, Dora Golding Professor of Biblical Studies at Brandeis University. He is one of the editors of Oxford University Press’s Jewish Study Bible, and one of the editors of the third edition of the New Oxford Annotated Bible. He is also the author of How to Read the Jewish Bible and The Creation of History in Ancient Israel.

Marc recommends the Jewish Publication Society Tanakh as the best overall translation of the Hebrew Bible available. He recommends Everett Fox’s The Five Books of Moses as the best translation of the Torah, giving an “honorable mention” to Robert Alter’s translation of the Torah as well.

Interestingly, Marc does not consider the New Revised Standard Version to be “always very reliable.” I wonder if he means predominately in relation to the Hebrew Bible, Apocrypha and New Testament or just the Hebrew Bible?

Best Bible translations according to biblical scholars and popular authors: John Goldingay

This is a series I’ve wanted to develop for a long time. Too often opinions about Bible translations on the Internet come from opinionated hacks rather than real scholars. This series features the best Bible translations recommended by biblical scholars and theologians.

Today’s featured scholar is John Goldingay. John is David Allan Hubbard Professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary.

John recommends the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and Today’s New International Version (TNIV) for study and preaching “because they are fairly word-for-word and because they use gender-inclusive language—that is, they do not use ‘men’ when the biblical writers would have meant ‘men and women’.  NRSV does correct MT [Masoretic Text] more often than TNIV.  It usually tells you in the marginal notes that it is doing that.”

John also recommends the Jewish Publication Society Tanakh “because it sounds different and has the Hebrew text facing the English.” Further, he recommends the New Jerusalem Bible, “which also sounds different and uses the name Yahweh instead of the LORD.”  He concludes “using several translations safeguards you from basing your sermon on the peculiarity of one translation!”

For Sabbath School We’ll Be Doing…Numbers

How many churches do you know that spend twelve weeks teaching their members from the Old Testament book of Numbers? Not many. But this is what the Seventh-Day Adventist Church plans to do in its next Sabbath School Quarterly lesson.

I am looking forward to the opportunity. Too often I spend my time in John’s Gospel, Paul’s letter to the Romans, the easier narrative parts of the Old Testament (e.g. Genesis) and ignore books like Numbers.

I’ve looked at John Goldingay’s website and he recommends three commentaries on Numbers for his students: Denis T. Olson’s commentary in the Interpretation Series; Gordon J. Wenham’s classic Tyndale Commentary on Numbers; and Timothy R. Ashley’s contribution in the New International Commentary on the Old Testament series.

BestCommentaries.com recommends Jacob Milgrom’s commentary on Numbers in the Jewish Publication Society Torah Commentary series in addition to Wenham.

I am blessed to have a cribbed version of Olson’s commentary in my Access Bible: New Revised Standard Version. And I luckily picked up Wenham’s commentary on Numbers a few weeks ago for $10. I think I am well setup read through Numbers for the next quarter!

Brief Commentary on 2 John

Steve Thompson, the Senior Lecturer in New Testament in the Faculty of Theology at Avondale College, Australia, has published an excellent commentary on 2 John for this Sabbath’s coming lesson. It’s very good on the Graeco-Roman background of the letter. However, I cringed a little when I read this about Roman roads:

The rapid spread of Christianity through the Roman Empire was aided by extensive road networks …

Rodney Stark argues in Cities of God that this claim “of magnificent Roman roads originated with classicists who never actually inspected many of the surviving examples, or were so lacking in practical experience that they failed to notice such obvious shortcomings as the fact that Roman roads were too large for large carts.”

New History of Christianity from Diarmaid MacCulloch

This is good news. Diarmaid MacCulloch, the author of Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490–1700 and Thomas Cranmer: A Life, is about to put out a new book on the history of Christianity: Christianity: the first 3000 years. In the weekend, it was reviewed by John Cornwell in the Financial Times.

Loch-Ness Monster Found on Google Earth

A picture doesn’t lie. I have proof…finally!

Tom Wright, Justifaction: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision

On the train to and from work each day, I’m reading through Tom Wright’s Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision. I really am enjoying it. It is full of fascinating detail and compelling readings of many of Paul’s epistles.

Reading this book comes after a fresh rereading of Ed Sanders‘ Paul in July. Talk of the “New Perspective” can be misleading because the two thinkers are contrasting. They disagree about the meaning of ‘righteous’ (dikaios) in Paul. I’m not sure who’s right as their arguments are equally good. Sanders thinks Paul’s method of Scriptural exegesis is proof-texting based on word associations. Wright is convinced Paul is a sophiscated user of Scripture, and that echoes of it can be found in all of Paul’s writings. Wright has the better argument here. Sanders burns his bridges to Reformational readings of Paul. Wright tries to build them (taking up this point, reading Wright’s Justification has moved me to read John Piper’s The Future of Justification, to which Wright’s book is a response).

So far the biggest concern I have with Justification is that Wright doesn’t appear to take his critics very seriously. For example, he doesn’t interact in any depth with the literature that challenges the whole post-Sandars picture of Second Temple Judaism (I’m thinking of Simon Gathercole’s Where is Boasting?, Mark Elliot’s The Survivors of Israel and the collection edited by D. A. Carson, Mark Seifrid and Peter T. O’Brien, Justification and Variegated Nomism, Vol. 1.). Although Wright is correct in pointing out how tendentious Carson’s introduction to Justification and Variegated Nomism  Vol. 1 is, he goes after easy wins rather than good criticism. This is something that I hope will be rectified in Wright’s promise BIG-book on Paul in his “Christian Origins and the Question of God” series!

More on atheism

Coincidentally, the Internet Monk links to this very funny clip from Ricky Gervais on atheism and offers his own reflection on why people are atheists. Apologetics in the style of William Lane Craig and Ravi Zacharias doesn’t get it. Point well taken. Camassia responds to this post with her own reflection on “What drives away the heathens.” Christians too often flagellate themselves for not doing better or being good enough to attract them. My last post was in this vein somewhat. Better, improved arguments don’t make much of a difference.