English Bible Translation

The Bible has become the most ubiquitous book on earth. It has been translated into more languages than any other book and has been translated into English over 400 times. In the past regal or ecclesiastical sponsorship was required to undertake the task of translating the scriptures. This often resulted in the translated text containing notes or biases which would shine a favorable light on the leadership which commissioned it. Now every denomination can find, or retranslate, a text to fit their doctrinal bias. Many of the controversies which surrounded the first English translations of the Bible were based in the readability of the texts by the general church-going public. These controversies ended with many Bibles being burned along with an alarming number of their translators. The majority of modern English translations are not met with as passionate response, although many Christians hold onto the translation which they grew up with, with great fervor. Differences between currently available English translations can be grouped into categories by their literary genealogy and/or their hermeneutic. There is no one, single Bible translation which encapsulates the whole meaning of the Scriptures, just as there is no one, single sermon that exhausts the entirety of a passage. Even so, a new translation of the Bible for its own sake is not necessarily a positive endeavor.
The first English translations of the Scriptures arose from the desire for a vernacular translation which the Roman Catholic Church was vehemently opposed to. This made the translation of the Bible into an illicit endeavor and one that could be very dangerous. John Wycliffe was the impetus for the first full English translation, although he may have not done any of the translating himself. The printing press was still eighty years in the future, so the Wycliffe Bible was hand copied. It was translated from the Latin Vulgate which was Roman Catholic Church’s authorized Version, but translation of any kind was strictly forbidden. Although Wycliffe avoided a death sentence for his heresy against the Roman Catholic Church by living in exile, his body was exhumed and burned and scattered as a warning to other heretics.
The Tyndale Bible was the first English Bible to use the new technology of the moveable type printing press. One of the features of many of the early translations of the Bible in English, which may be foreign to an English speaker of the late 20th Century are the inclusions of notes in the margins and interspersed throughout the text. These notes often were of a political or ecclesial nature and had a tendency toward propaganda. Unlike the Wycliffe Bible, the Tyndale Bible was translated from the Septuagint, unauthorized by Rome. To make matters worse the translation was heavily influenced by Martin Luther. Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake in 1536. His work lived on in that approximately 80% of the King James Version can be traced to his work.
The Coverdale Bible was the first English Bible translation with the support of the King of England. Henry VIII broke from the Roman Catholic Church in the Anglican Reformation and paved the way for, among many other things, an authorized English version of the Bible. Ignominiously, Coverdale was the first to separate the Apocrypha from the rest of the Old Testament. He worked from the Tyndale Bible as well as Martin Luther’s Bible, the Zurich Bible the Latin Vulgate and other texts.
Other English Bibles of note that preceded the King James Version were the Matthew Bible, which closely followed the Tyndale, the Great Bible, which was so named for the large format of the pages and was edited by Miles Coverdale, the Geneva Bible which, although it was a good work of scholarship contained many derogatory notes which were extremely anti-Catholic, and the Bishop’s Bible which was sanctioned by Queen Elizabeth.
From the Wycliffe Bible to the Bishop’s Bible, all of the English translations were completed outside the sanction of the Roman Catholic Church since the Latin Vulgate was the only acceptable form of the Scriptures. Using the Vulgate alone assured the Roman Church that only classically (and mostly ecclesiastically) educated people would be able to read and interpret them. This form of control allowed growth of spurious doctrines within the church which were not easily corrected. As the Protestant reformation wore on, and translation after translation of the Bible was published in the vernacular full of anti-Catholic notes, the English Catholics started work on their own translation. If it were possible the notes in the Douai-Rheims Bible were even more venomous towards the Protestants than the Geneva Bible was towards the Catholics.
The King James Version, named for King James I who pushed for its publication, was a point of reconciliation between the warring factions of Catholics and Protestants in England. It was essentially a revision of the Bishop’s Bible with some corrections when it varied from ancient texts. “For the idiom and vocabulary, Tyndale deserves the greatest credit; for the melody and harmony, Coverdale; for scholarship and accuracy, the Geneva version.” There were no political notes included in this version except to clarify difficult Greek or Hebrew words or phrases. The King James Version stood as the most popular English version of the Bible for many years mostly because of the good scholarship involved in its translation and editing. Its translation used the talents of 50 scholars and multiple editors one of whose goals was to produce a text that was suitable for public reading. It was the end of the 19th Century before a translation was produced which began to usurp the KJV’s popularity.
After the KJV’s publication, before 1900 there were very few successful attempts at English Bible Translations. Since 1900 there have been well over 400. The explosion of translations may be due to the rise in archaeological finds of fragments and other ancient texts as well as the rise in denominationalism in the American religious landscape. There is little to keep a denomination or sect (or even an individual) from rewriting the Bible to suit their own theology. This is most poignantly seen in the translations produced by the groups on the fringes of Christianity. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, who deny the divinity of Christ, translate John 1:1, “In [the] beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god. (emphasis added)” A British self-styled Biblical scholar in the late 19th Century, Ferrar Fenton, published his own translation of the Bible which is laughable at many points; take his note on Jonah in the “hold of the Great Fish”.
1.Note.--Ch. 2:1. "Great Fish" was the name of the ship mistranslated "Whale" in the version of the Greek translators, whose blunder has been repeated by all subsequent translators, in all languages, to the perplexity of their readers, until I decided to go back to the original statement of the prophet in his own Hebrew.--F.F.
These are, of course, extreme examples of the damage that can be done to the texts of the Scriptures when the hermeneutic of the Orthodox Church is disregarded.
Modern Biblical translation falls generally into two categories with some exceptions: word for word translation or dynamic equivalence. Word for word translations attempt to translate the meaning of each word individually and accurately, which often sacrifices readability in the English. Dynamic equivalence does the opposite; translating the meanings of sentences or thoughts together into modern language and idioms that readers will find easier to understand. A problem with dynamic equivalence may be the loss of nuance and deeper meaning in the text. Some translators try to balance these two styles. The psalms and other parts of the Scriptures are poetry and need to be translated poetically, while passages which the church hangs doctrines on may need more literal translation. Which of these is the more important task? We must each decide as we pick up a Bible to read from.
An Orthodox view of the Scriptures must be two-fold. First, the Scriptures must be read with the “mind of the Fathers”, not discounting new critiques of the Scriptures, but with the Tradition of the Church always in mind. “The plumb-line of Tradition is to be hung against new work: only such as is consistent with Tradition is be accepted.” Second, Scripture needs to be read in conjunction with our prayer life. “Humility is the pre-condition for everything in the Christian life, especially in our reading of the Scriptures”
The King James Version, produced as it was with the input of 50 Biblical scholars who were seeking a middle way between protestant precision and catholic truth, and succeeding in the goal of a readable test in English, remains my personal favorite. With whatever faults it has, the poetry of the psalms is beautiful and the Gospel texts demand deep study and contemplation. I am glad to see that the Orthodox Study Bible uses at least the NKJV translation.