Do You Speak KJV?
Thanks to A. Admin for pointing out an interview with Dr. Benjamin Shaw.
I do want to credit the interviewer for asking for input both from those who agree and who disagree with Dr. Shaw.
But I’m always skeptical of people like Dr. Shaw who recommend the KJV for accuracy.
Even ignoring the flawed translation strategy of the KJV authors and the advances we’ve made regarding ancient manuscripts in the past 400 years, I think we have to recognize that English has changed in four centuries. So even where the KJV used to be accurate, sometimes now it is not.
Here’s a short quiz of KJV English. How many can you get right? (The answers are right at the end. Don’t peek.)
1. The “turtle” (Song of Solomon 2:12, Jeremiah 8:7) is:
A. An animal that crawls on the land.
B. An animal that swims in the sea.
C. An animal that flies in the sky.
2. “Prevent” (E.g., Psalms 59:10, “The God of mercy shall prevent me”) means:
A. Allow.
B. Disallow.
C. Precede.
3. God “So loved….” (John 3:16) means:
A. Loved a lot.
B. Loved a little.
C. Loved in this way.
4. “Suffered” (E.g., Matthew 3:15, “then he suffered….”) has to do with:
A. Pain and agony.
B. Patience.
C. Consent.
5. “Who shall let it?” (Isaiah 43:13) means:
A. Who shall allow it?
B. Who shall reverse it?
C. Who shall prevent it?
So, What? John 3:16 and the Lord’s Prayer
Scripture Zealot reminds us that the usual translation of John 3:16 is wrong. The Greek there doesn’t mean, “for God so loved the world…,” so the line shouldn’t read (NRSV) “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Watch my “Exporing the Bible” video about John 3:16.
The translation used to be right, though, when “so” between a subject and a verb meant “in this manner.” The word “so” is meant to translate the Greek outos, and the point of John 3:16 is that “God loved the world like this….” or “God loved the world in this way….” or “This is how God loved the world.” (Don’t confuse “outos,” meaning “so,” with autos, which means something else.)
The word outos appears hundreds of times in the NT, including in the introduction to what has become known as the Lord’s prayer. Most translations get the word right in Matthew 6:9, as for example, “after this manner” (KJV), which is needlessly awkward but still generally accurate; “in this way” (NRSV); “like this” (ESV); variations on “this is how” (NAB, NIV); etc. (Outos doesn’t appear in the introduction to the “short Lord’s prayer” in Luke.)
So John 3:16 should read along the lines of, “for this is how God loved the world…”
The meaning of John 3:16 is not generally a disputed point.
The authors of the KJV knew what outos meant, but in their 400-year-old dialect (it wasn’t 400 years old then — but it is now), “God so loved…” meant “God loved in this way….”
The translators of the ESV knew it, too, and they even added a footnote to John 3:16: “Or For this is how God loved the world.” I can only guess that they didn’t change the KJV because in this case they valued tradition over accuracy.
The current translations are as wrong as it would be to render Matthew 6:9 as “you should pray this much….” instead of “you should pray this way….”
Other versions also seem to prefer tradition over accuracy when it comes to John 3:16, even when they do not adhere to the KJV translation tradition. The NLT rewrites the line, but their rendition, “For God loved the world so much that….” is a rewrite of the wrong meaning. The Message gets it wrong, too, with “This is how much God loved the world….” So does the CEV: “God loved the people of this world so much….” In other words, these three translations rewrote the wrong meaning to make the wrong meaning more accessible.
This pattern is interesting, and, I think, important for understanding the field of Bible translation. We see that in practice Bible translation is not simply translation applied to the Bible (though many people think that it should be).
Cases like these — where the Greek is easy to understand and generally undisputed — show us that even the most knowledgeable Bible translators can have trouble breaking free from their familiar, if wrong, translations.
What do you call water you can drink?
Exodus 15:22-26 deals with drinking water. The People of Israel come to Marah (the name of a place, but the word also means “bitter”) and when they find that the water there is undrinkable, Moses throws a log into the water and it becomes drinkable. It’s a fairly simple concept (thought a complex trick), yet the KJV, ESV, NIV, NJB, NRSV, and JPS translations all translate “drinkable water” here as “sweet water.”
That’s because the Hebrew word here is matok. In Hebrew — as in English — “sweet” and “salty” are generally opposites, and in Hebrew the paradigm extends to water. But unlike Hebrew, in (most dialects of) English the opposite of “salt water” is not “sweet water” but rather “fresh water,” or perhaps “drinkable water” or even “potable water.”
The same contrast in James 3:11 is variously rendered “sweet/bitter” (KJV), “fresh/salt” (ESV), “fresh/bitter” (NLT), “fresh/brackish” (NRSV) or “pure/brackish” (NAB). (I’ve never used the word “brackish” in my life, though I remember hearing the word when I took a boat tour of the Everglades. Apparently it’s a mixture of seawater and fresh lake water.)
All of this complexity is introduced for what is essentially a very simple contrast, with common English words to describe it: fresh water and salt water.
It seems to me that the only reason to prefer “sweet” in Exodus is to maintain the literary contrast between the name of the place (“Marah,” which means “bitter”) and the water, which becomes sweet.
Do you think it’s worth it? Is “sweet” acceptible for “fresh”/”potable”/”drinkable”?
What about in James 3:11. Is “brackish” called for? I don’t see what’s wrong with “fresh/salt.”
Thoughts?
Haiti and Jeremiah 25:7
Dr. Jim West’s comment that Jeremiah 25 is a good litmus test for translation — and his claim that the NLT doesn’t do badly — directed my attention to the NLT’s translation of Jeremiah 25. In light of some resent claims about the disaster in Haiti, Jeremiah 25:7 in the NLT jumped off the page at me:
“But you would not listen to me,” says the LORD. “You made me furious by worshiping your idols, bringing on yourselves all the disasters you now suffer.
I’ve bolded the part that struck me. The problem is that the Hebrew doesn’t say that. Here’s the original:
| “You didn’t listen to me,” | v’lo sh’matem eilai |
| says Adonai, | n’um adonai |
| “so that you angered me” | l’ma’an hach’isuni |
| with the works of your hands | b’ma’asei y’deichem |
| to harm you.” | l’ra lachem |
The verse follows up on the previous one, in which God warns, “do not pursue other gods and serve them and bow down to them, and do not anger me with the works of your hands, and I will not harm you.” The repetition in verses 25:6 and 25:7 of “anger,” “works of your hands” and “harm” tie the two together.
Verse 25:6 is classic Hebrew parallelism, in which “other gods” from the first part is like “works of your hands” in the second part. These are idols. More interestingly, Jeremiah juxtaposes “pursuing/serving/bowing down to [other gods]” with “angering [God].” So one message of verse 25:6 is that “serving other gods” is like “angering God,” just as “other gods” are like “works of [human] hands.”
It seems to me that at the very least a translation of these two verses should (a) convey the point of the passage, and only the point of the passage; and (b) preserve the connection between the two verses.
The NLT fails (a), because the original verses do not say “bringing on yourselves.” Does the original text imply that the false-god worshippers have brought about their own punishment? Maybe, if you think that failing to heed a warning is the same as bringing something on yourself. But even so, turning an implication of the text into the text is a mistake.
The NLT also misses the connection with the previous verse: “Do not make me angry by worshiping the idols you have made. Then I will not harm you” (Jer 25:6, NLT). The switch from “angry” to “furious” for the same Hebrew word is misleading. The NLT rewrite of 25:6 lacks the parellism of the original, but I think it still conveys the similarity of angering God and worshipping idols.
Other translations do a better with (a), generally sticking to the text and not editorializing, and most stick essentially with the KJV: “[Jer 25:6] And go not after other gods to serve them, and to worship them, and provoke me not to anger with the works of your hands; and I will do you no hurt. [25:7] Yet ye have not hearkened unto me, saith the LORD; that ye might provoke me to anger with the works of your hands to your own hurt.” The parallelism in 25:6 is preserved, as is the connection between the two verses, because both have “provoke me to anger,” “works of your hands,” and “hurt.”
On the other hand, “do you no hurt” and “to your own hurt” are barely English.
The ESV changes “hurt” to “harm,” updating the English a bit. The NRSV does the same.
The NAB fixes verse 25:6 with “bring evil upon you,” but then keeps “to your own harm” in the following verse, breaking the connection between the two.
The NIV fixes verse 25:6 with “then I will not harm you” and follows up with “and you have brought harm to yourselves,” again shifting the focus a little.
The CEV correctly preserves the neutrality of the Hebrew in 25:7: “you are the ones who were hurt by what you did,” but in 25:6 that version invents a new premise: “I don’t want to harm you.”
Though there are some interesting translation issues in Jeremiah 25:6-7, it’s among the more straightforward passages, and I’m a little surprised how far some versions stray in translating it.
Top Translation Traps: Slavery to Parts of Speech
Perhaps because understanding parts of speech is so central to learning a foreign language, translators often try to preserve parts of speech when they translate.
But I think this is a mistake.
We know from modern languages that parts of speech often have to change in translation, and I think we see cases where more flexibility would benefit Bible translations, too.
As usual, we use modern languages to help us understand how translation works, and then apply the lessons to translating ancient languages.
Modern Languages
The French for “I’m hungry” is j’ai faim, or, perhaps more to the point, the English for j’ai faim is “I’m hungry.” This generally undisputed point is relevant because j’ai faim starts off with “I have” (j’ai) followed by a noun which we can roughly translate as “hunger.” Certainly this pronoun-verb-noun combination has to become a pronoun-verb-adjective one in English. Anything else is simply to misunderstand the French or to misrepresent it in English.
Specifically, the awkward “I have hunger” is an inaccurate translation. Even though it makes (a little) sense in English, the French is a common expression while “I have hunger” in English is certainly not.
Other examples don’t work at all in English.
For instance, the French j’ai sommeil means “I’m tired” or “I’m sleepy,” but preserving the parts of speech results in the absurd “I have sleepiness.”
The Modern Hebrew kar li means “I’m cold,” even though the Hebrew is an adjective followed by a prepositional phrase. “Cold to me” and “there is cold to me” are clearly the wrong translations.
The German wie geht’s Ihnen? means “how are you?” It’s an interrogative-verb-pronoun-pronoun combination. The literal “how goes it to you?” is wrong. English demands interrogative-verb-pronoun.
Another common misunderstanding is that the grammar of a different language — say, French — reflects a fundamentally different way of thinking about the world. So some people naively think that because the literal equivalent of “I have sleepiness” is grammatical in French, the French notion of being tired differs from the English one.
But we can see that this approach is flawed because alongside the French j’ai sommeil we find je suis fatige, literally, “I am tired.” In other words, both expressions — the English-grammar variety and the French-grammar variety — exist side by side in French.
What we see instead is that parts of speech can change within a language without changing the meaning, and that parts of speech sometimes have to change as part of a successful translation.
Another Modern Example
Modern Hebrew has few adverbs, so aderverbiness (if you’ll pardon the word) is often expressed through a combination of b’ofen (“in a manner”) or b’derech (“in a way”) followed by an adjective. For example, “I explained it clearly” in Hebrew becomes …b’ofen barur, “…in a clear manner.” “Superficially” is b’ofen shitchi, “in a superficial manner.”
Here we find a greater temptation to mimic the Hebrew parts of speech, because “in a clear manner” and “in a superficial manner” sound like English. But even though they are grammatical, they are still the wrong English to translate the Hebrew.
Two Biblical Examples
Kata
A perfect example of the need to think beyond parts of speech comes from the Greek kata, commonly glossed as “according to” or “as.”
In Mark 4:10 and Luke 9:18 we find the phrase kata monas, literally “as alone,” but every translation I know of renders that phrase with the adverb “alone.”
The very similar Greek kata idian (usually kat’ idian) highlights the issue. The word idian is pretty close to the English “self.” So kata idian could be “by himself,” and this is how the ESV translates the phrase in Matthew 14:13. The KJV gives us “apart” and the NIV translates “privately.” As it happens, “by himself” is grammatical English, but — as we’ve seen — the fact that it so closely matches the Greek doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the best translation.
In Romans 2:2 we find kata alitheian, which the KJV translates literally as “according to truth”: “But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things.” Some other translations recognize that “according to truth” is not English, and offer instead “rightly” (ESV), “is true” (NAB), “is based on truth” (NIV), “justly,” (NJB), etc.
In Romans 11:21, kata fusin — “according to nature” — is almost always translated “natural,” as in the NRSV: “For if God did not spare the natural branches, perhaps he will not spare you.” Yet three verses later, most translations go with “by nature” for the same phrase.
These issues are particularly important when it comes to kata sarka, “according to sarx.” I’m not going to revisit the complex issue of sarx here. My point is more simply that even if the NIV translators are right that the word means “sinful nature,” they still may be wrong in translating, “according to the sinful nature.” Perhaps “in sin” is better, or “sinful,” etc.
Katergazomai
The verb katergazomai means “do,” but that doesn’t mean that we need to translate it as a verb every time.
Philippians 2:12 gives us: sotirian katergazomai, “work out salvation,” (KJV, ESV, NAB, NRSV, NIV, etc.). But maybe a verb is called for here. What about katergazomeni thanaton in Romans 7:13? It’s usually translated along the lines of “working/producing/causing death.” Again, a verb seems the better choice (though there are other considerations, like the word play with egeneto thanatos earlier in the verse).
Lessons
What we see is that the slavish preservation of parts of speech tends to create awkward, inaccurate translations.
What other examples can you think of?
Did God Sit on a Chair or a Throne?
In my last post I asked whether we should use modern terms like “womb” and “stomach” to translate the ancient beten, which was used for both.
Similarly, what about “chair” and “throne”? It seems that, at least in the OT, one word was used for both different modern concepts.
The Hebrew for both is kisei. It’s a common word, so it’s not hard to find examples of a kisei for commoners (I Samuel 1:9, e.g.), for kings (II Samuel 3:10, e.g., where it’s used metonymically for “kingdom”), and for God (Psalm 11:4).
Though the Greek thronos is used consistently in the LXX for kisei, in the NT thronos seems more narrowly reserved for kings and other dignitaries (Luke 1:32, Revelation 4:4) and God (Matthew 5:34), though Satan (Revelation 2:13) gets one, too.
The Greek kathedra is used in the NT for ordinary chairs (Matthew 21:12), and in the LXX for the Hebrew moshav “seat” and more generally shevet “sitting.” (The Hebrew moshav seems to include seats of any kind, both “chairs” and “thrones.”)
Another way of looking kisei in the OT is to compare it to the modern English word “shoe.” Even though kings and ordinary folk wear different kinds of them (I think), there’s only one word for them (I think).
The translation issue is forced in I Kings 2:19, where King Solomon sits on his kisei and also orders a kisei brought for his mom (which, at the risk of editorializing, is really sweet). The KJV, ESV, and NJB use two different words here, first “throne” (for the king) then “seat” (for mom). The LXX (in Greek), NAB, NIV, NLT, and NRSV use the same word twice. (I’m a little surprised to find the “essentially literal” ESV using two words here, and the generally more idiomatic NLT sticking with one.)
The original Hebrew of I Kings 2:19 emphasizes the equality of Solomon and his mother. The KJV emphasizes the inequality of the two. The NRSV preserves the equality, but does so by giving Bathsheba a throne.
Elsewhere, the translator has to decide between “chair” and “throne” for God. By choosing “throne,” God is necessarily like royalty; and while that’s certainly a common metaphor for God in the OT, how do we know it’s always what the Hebrew meant? In the famous vision of Isaiah 6, for example, the only clue to a kingship metaphor is the word “throne” in English.
Should a translation preserve the OT way of looking at things that are sat upon (if you’ll pardon my grammar), the NT way, or go straight for the modern English way?
How do You Say Hosanna in English?
The Greek word hosanna appears six times in the NT: three times in Matthew, twice in Mark, and twice in John. The context is each case includes the quotation, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” from Psalm 118:26. Because Psalm 118:25 contains the Hebrew words hoshi’a na, the Greek hosanna is widely (and I think correctly) assumed to be a Greek spelling of those Hebrew words, or perhaps an Aramaic equivalent.
In Psalm 118, hoshi’a means “save,” presumably, “save us.” (The direct object is optional in Hebrew, and can be inferred from context.) And na is a word that’s hard to translate — it may indicate politeness (“please”) or, more likely, formality or elegance.
There’s a persistent rumor that hosanna literally means “save now,” as in the NLT footnote that explains the word this way. But even the NLT translates hoshi’a na as “please save us,” not “save now.” The NAB says hosanna means “(O Lord) grant salvation,” and the NIV’s footnote explains the phrase as “A Hebrew expression meaning ‘Save!’ which became an exclamation of praise.” The rumor about “save now” probably comes from the KJV rendering of Psalm 118, “Save now, I beseech thee…”
In English, hosanna becomes “hosanna,” because the English spelling is taken directly from the Greek, (h)osanna. But the Greek is — again, widely and probably accurately — assumed to be a simplification of the Hebrew. The word should be hoshana, with the “sh” that is consistently lacking from Greek transliterations of Hebrew.
So should we put the “sh” back in to the English? By comparison, what if a French publication took the English “North Carolina” and turned it into norskarolina. Should a transliteration of that transliteration perpetuate the mistake?
For that matter, is transliterating the word the best way to go? And if it is, should “hosanna” be italicized?
Compounding the confusion, in Matthew and Mark “hosanna” appears in a phrase that gets translated as the barely intelligable “hosanna in the highest.” It apparently is supposed to mean “praise God on high.”
I think the case of hosanna is interesting not just in its own right, but also because it highlights the question of how much a translation into English has to be written in English. If we allow the word “hosanna,” and assume that it means “praise God” (but only here) can we use “in the highest” for “(God) on high” (but only here)? Or “man” for “people” (but only here)? Or allow any of the other seemingly wrong translations to be “one time exceptions”?
What do you think?
Who is the Most High?
Adjectives without nouns are quirky and idiosyncratic, and understanding them is important for translation.
As an example, in English we have “the Americans” (American people) but not (*)”the Swisses,” or (*)”the Frenches.” We have “the Swiss” (Swiss people) and “the French” (French people), but “the American” can only mean one person.
Other languages work differently. In French, “la suisse” is a Swiss girl or woman, and “les suisses” is more than one of them. In French, “une suisse” (literally, “a swiss”) makes sense, but (*)”a swiss is here” doesn’t work in English.
Moving away from nationalities, we find in biblical Hebrew that plural adjectives are people when they’re masculine, events when they’re feminine. By themselves, the rishonim (literally, “the first [m,pl]”) are “people from long ago” and the rishonot (literally, “the first [f,pl]”) are “events from long ago”; Isaiah 43:9 is an example of the latter.
This range of variation is relevant for understanding upsistos in Greek. As a singular superlative masculine adjective, it works like any other Greek adjective, and it means “the one who is highest.” In Mark 5:7 we see upsistos with a noun, and in Acts 7:48 without one.
But as a plural neuter adjective, it means “heights,” a usage we see in Luke 2:14, for example: doxa en upsistois theo, “glory to God on high.”
I don’t know of any English translation that renders rishonot as “the firsts” in Isaiah 43:9. It just wouldn’t make any sense in English. Translators generally add the noun “things.”
Yet en (tois) upsistois ends up in English as “in the highest” in the KJV, ESV, and NAB. It seems to me that that translation is just wrong. To me, “in the highest” — if it means anything at all in English — is adverbial and it signifies “greatly.” Other translations preserve the superlative degree, giving us “highest heaven” or “highest heavens,” which may or may not be right. On one hand, there was a hierarchy of heavens in Greek thought, so there was a lowest one, middle ones, and a highest one. On the other hand, the phrase seems to be a Hebraicism, but the original Hebrew m’romim is not superlative (or adjectival — it’s a plural noun).
As for upsistos, “the Most High” is multiply problematic as a translation. First — and it’s hard to know what to do with this — being “high” in English doesn’t usually mean what we want it to here. (An old anecdote tells of a teenager who decided to get religious when he was taught that we should strive to be like God and that God is the most high.) Secondly, we don’t use adjectives that way in English. The closest we have is “high one.” Unlike in Greek and Hebrew, “the high” doesn’t make sense in English. Also, the superlative of “high” is “highest,” not “most high.”
And we end up with capitalization problems. Most versions give us “the Most High God” in Mark 5:7 (and Luke 8:28 etc.), which is not how capitalization works in English.
So all in all, translations of en upsistois and upsistos are a mess.
About
God Didn’t Say That (@GodDidntSayThat) is an online forum for discussing the Bible and its translations, mistranslations, interpretations, and misinterpretations.
Dr. Joel M. Hoffman is the chief translator for the ten-volume series My People’s Prayer Book, author of And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible’s Original Meaning, and editor of The Unabridged Bible. Writing under “J.M. Hoffman,” he is author of the thriller series The Warwick Files. He holds a PhD in theoretical linguistics and has taught at Brandeis University and HUC-JIR in New York City. He presents widely to churches, synagogues, and other groups. more…
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