ESV – God Didn't Say That

Translating Mistakes in the Text

From time to time, we have what seem to be mistakes in the traditional text of the Bible, frequently the results of apparent errors on the part of a scribe. How should these be translated? Here are three examples. Leviticus 20:10 (dittography) In Leviticus 20:10, we find the phrase “a man who commits adultery with…
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JoelMHoffman June 22, 2011 14

What Goes Wrong when we Translate the Words

It makes intuitive sense that a translation should preserve the meaning of each word. But in this case, our intuition leads us astray, which is why I’m not a fan of so-called “literal,” “essentially literal,” or “formal equivalence” translations. Here’s an example that will make clear what goes wrong. There’s a German verb blaumachen. Though…
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JoelMHoffman April 22, 2011 13

The Ten Commandments Don’t Forbid Killing

The Pope’s latest comments about condoms have again brought up the Ten Commandments, and, in particular, “thou shalt not kill,” which Catholics and some others number as the fifth commandment, while Jews and most Protestants call it the sixth. Unfortunately, “kill” is a mistranslation of the original Hebrew, which does not say, “you shall not…
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JoelMHoffman November 24, 2010 13

Q&A: The Original Baptism

From the About page comes a question about baptism, the essence of which is the observation that the words we now translate “baptize,” “baptism,” “[John the] Baptist,” etc. were actually ordinary words in Greek, like our “wash” in English. They were not technical religious terms like the English “baptize,” and the Greek words did not…
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JoelMHoffman August 24, 2010 28

The Microcosm of Bible Translation: Amos 5:15

[This is the first in what I hope will become an occasional series about the details of actual translation: methods, decisions that have to be made, compromises, etc.] Amos 15:5 The first part of Amos 15:5 reads (NRSV), “Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate;” What goes in to that translation?…
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JoelMHoffman July 1, 2010 7

On James 2:23-24: Why Faith Without Works is Dead

James 2:23-24 uses the same root twice to highlight the point that Faith requires Works. But that important rhetorical device — duplication of the root — is lost in most translations. For example (NRSV): (23) …”Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” [Genesis 15:6] … (24) You see that a person…
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JoelMHoffman June 10, 2010 25

The Ten Commandments Aren’t Commandments

The Ten Commandments — listed in Exodus 20 and again in Deuteronomy 5 — aren’t called commandments in the original Hebrew or in the Greek LXX. In Hebrew, they are d’varim in Exodus 20, either “things” or “words.” (This dual use of d’varim is a bit like “things” in English — I can own ten…
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JoelMHoffman May 18, 2010 23

Growing Old and Fat in God’s Courtyard

Psalm 92:12 begins a series of verses that compare the righteous to trees: the people, like Palm trees, will blossom and flourish. They will be planted in God’s courtyard. And they will grow old and fat. What’s going on is this: In antiquity, most people didn’t get enough calories to live. Today (in the U.S.…
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JoelMHoffman May 7, 2010 8

Clear, Cogent, and Wrong

I frequently hear support for a translation philosophy that is in favor of only changing the original “as much as necessary” or of keeping the formal structure of the original “as far as possible” (to quote the introduction to the ESV). But I think that approach is fundamentally misguided. The first three words of the…
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JoelMHoffman April 29, 2010 7

The Problem with Forever

Ancient Hebrew divided “forever” into two parts: forever in the past, and forever in the future. Hebrew used the preposition “from” (mi-) to indicate the former, and “to” (l’-) for the latter. So Hebrew has three words. “Eternity” is olam. “From the beginning of time up to now” is mei-olam. And “from now to the…
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JoelMHoffman April 23, 2010 4

Tag: ESV