NLT – Page 2 – God Didn't Say That

Q&A: How Mistranslation Created Divorce in the Bible

From the About page comes this response to something I wrote in And God Said: On p. 155 of And God Said you claim that “there is no divorce in the Bible.” Yes. Two great questions follow. I’ll take them in reverse order: The Case of Two Husbands Also, you speculate that perhaps the Bible…
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JoelMHoffman April 9, 2010 27

All in All Not Much of a Conversation

All in All Dannii at BBB has a post about “all in all” as a translation for panta en pasin in 1 Corinthians 15:28. The full verse is (NRSV): When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him,…
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JoelMHoffman April 7, 2010 9

Gazelles, Stags, and Other Romantic Images

This final line of Song of Solomon, reprising a phrase that appears twice earlier, references two animals which the female heroine tells her male hero to be like as he leaves. The most common translation of these animals is “gazelle” and “young stag,” as in the NRSV “Make haste, my beloved, and be like a…
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JoelMHoffman March 31, 2010 5

Who Says Homosexuality is a Sin?

Who says homosexuality is a sin? The NLT does, right there in its “translation” to Leviticus 18:22: “Do not practice homosexuality; it is a detestable sin.” But that’s not what the Hebrew says, and I’ve put the word “translation” in scare quotes because I think that what the NLT has here is an interpretation, not…
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JoelMHoffman March 17, 2010 75

Here’s the Story of Toldot

From the about page comes a question about the Hebrew word toldot: I ran across Genesis 6:9 in the TNIV, which says “this is the account of Noah and his family.” Ive checked the KJV, NIV, NASB, ESV, Message, Luthers translation (1545), the Amplified Bible, the NLT, and the Leningrad Codex for good measure. Only…
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JoelMHoffman March 2, 2010 14

John 3:17 and a Translation That Might Work

I think John 3:17 (like John 3:16) shows us three things: potential traps in translation, typical patterns of some of the common Bible translations, and the importance of paying attention to detail. The point of John 3:17 is pretty simple (even if the theology is deep): God didn’t send Jesus into the world in order…
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JoelMHoffman February 25, 2010 15

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…
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JoelMHoffman February 4, 2010 40

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…
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JoelMHoffman January 31, 2010 6

The NLT has its own God and its own Jesus

I saw the following on the NLT website (my emphasis): I found out that I had a lot to learn from the God of my New Living Translation Study Bible […] Why didn’t I discover this about him earlier? I had allowed my pride and prejudice to cloud my judgment. The kind of pride that…
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JoelMHoffman January 18, 2010 18

Translate But Don’t Editorialize

We just saw a case of an attempt to translate the pragmatics of a text instead of the text itself. In general, a text will have a variety of implications, morals, allusions, etc. I think that a good translation of the text will match the original with a translation that has similar implications, morals, allusions,…
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JoelMHoffman December 18, 2009 13

Tag: NLT