It seems that if you’re a Christian, say, and want to translate the bible, there’s a bias built right in since you know what you want the text to say, and you know what everyone else has said the text says.
Has there ever been a translation of either the OT or NT that was done by someone who wasn’t a part of any religious traditions that use the bible?
I believe there are direct word for word literal translations. One such problem however is the old Hebrew language:
1 Uses the same word for many things.
2 Uses no vowels so that confuses the text even more, meaning more words can be taken for the real word.
3 Uses no puncination, so it’s hard to tell where one sentence ends and the next begins.
When translating such text it could be argued that you need to come to it from the side of belief because that’s how it was written, and it’s the only way it can be ‘decoded’ due to the multiple meanings. Someone without faith would not have the understanding of the writer and more subject to errors of meaning.
The Greek text is in general much clearer. I’ve heard it said that a person who understands modern Greek can read the NT directly, with some difficulty however.
A couple years ago, the Dutch atheists Hans Warren and Mario Molegraaf translated the four gospels (Mark, Luke etc) into contemporary Dutch.
I heard about that translation through an enthusiastic review by Dutch writer Maarten ‘t Hart. "t Hart was raised in the fifties in the Netherlands’ most severe and joyless brand of protestantism, the Reformed Church. "t Hart is incredible well read in the religious culture of his youth, and hates that same culture with a vengeance.
He has combined both passions in two series of essays, in Dutch, outlining just a few of the Bibles more glaring inconsistencies. One of the essays is precesely about the difference is Bible-translations between reverent believers and atheists who aren’t afraid to give literal translations.
Not to mention that, with an ancient language, or even with a living one, it’s not always possible to know for sure what meaning a particular word (or idiomatic phrase) had at the time and place it was originally written.
I don’t get this. An atheist doesn’t lack understanding, he/she just disagrees with that understanding. Does one need to believe in the theories of Marx or Freud to translate their works properly?
I think this gets at the OPs point, someone coming in with an “understanding of the writer” seems more likely to make errors because they already have assumptions built in.
There are too many double meanings to make it totally accurate. People will always tilt the translation to what they “believe” it should mean. Like when Jesus speaks of “the apostle that he loved”. Might as well be “I know what I am and I’m glad I’m a man and so Lola. La la la Lola!”
The Hebrew language is sort of like a lossy compression algorithm, much like jpg photo files. Lets assume that the jpg file is of a painted picture. To recreate the photo to it’s original it would help to employ a artist with a style of painting as close to the style of the original artist. You would not want to use a modern style artist to recreate a classical style picture.
That suggests you would only need someone acquainted with the historical context - who potentially could be as soulless as can be. Any decent Hebrew scholar could then make a decent job of it couldn’t they? How many atheist or religiously indifferent Hebrew scholars are there though?
I think this analogy begs the question. “You need to more or less agree with what the Bible says in order to translate it” is kind of how I interpret what you are saying. But of course, translating a dead language involves to a large extent figuring out what is being said. If you are saying something more general and less committal–e.g., “You have to have theistic commitments to appropriately interpret the Bible”–I don’t see how this avoids begging the question, either.
It could just be a page… or a sentence: “All of this stuff is bullshit.”
I think it is a process of refining, like taking it as simple text, anyone at this point can translate it. Then you find out it is about X, and using that find someone with that expertise re-refine it, rinse and repeat.
Also it depends on if you want to take the Jewish Scriptures or the Christian, which has much more modern text and is much easier for anyone to translate, which then can be used as a guide to translate the older Hebrew text.
Let me get this straight, you are suggesting using a newer translation to help you translate and older document? That is a novel approach.
Not a newer translation, but using the end of the book to help translate the beginning because the end is in a easier to translate language but the subject it the same.
OK I can understand this another way also. Again not taking the newer translation, but calling in experts in the subject to help out the difficult translations - which would be people of faith.
The bible is actually made up of many books by many authors so again you are suggesting using the newer to translate the older. There are many people who speak and read Aramaic and Greek and Hebrew which is all that is required to translate the text. The dead sea scrolls can be helpfull. But the actual text is not some riddle that only believers can interpret. Believers may disagree with a non religious translation but that is another issue.
If they already are people of faith then they already have preconceived notions of what it should say. Not really a recipe for an unbiased translation.
But wouldn’t atheists also have preconceived notions of what the Bible should say? Nobody is going to come to the Bible without some kind of bias; it’s impossible. No one’s mind is a blank slate.
To kind of fill out askeptic’s point: the problem with what I read as the question in the OP, and the reason I submit the GQ answer is* No, there has never been a translation of either the OT or NT that was done by someone who wasn’t a part of any religious traditions that use the bible* because all the “original” bible translations were made by (what an atheist would see) as pretty fanatical theists.
As an example the best that an atheist would be able to do is look at a translation from the “New” testament ~1,600 years ago (to avoid debate), a translation made by someone whose views would be sure to make any atheist flip his wig, and take that translation and pop it into modern English (or whatever). He still would be translating a Christian (or Jewish as the case may be) scribe who had translated a Christian (or Jewish as the case may be) scribe etc.
The is no “original text” for an atheist to sit down and begin translating. No such things exists
Well, you could put the original text through Babel Fish 
. That would give you an unbiased translation, which is not the same as a good one.
Now here’s a biased translation…
Aren’t The Dead Sea Scrolls pretty close? At least for the OT.