Obviously, we have multiple translations of the Bible in every language, but I’ll limit this to English… since these translations aren’t identical, it follows they are, well, different.
My question is are they contradictory? That is, are there histories/parables/commandments that have completely different meanings in one translation than another?
I’ve never been a Jehovah’s Witness, and I’ve never much read their preferred translation (The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures), but I seem to recall that one “standard” Evangelical objection to The New World Translation is that the translators massaged the translation to conform to the peculiarities of JW doctrine.
That suggests, at least to me, that some persons perceive such contradictions. YMMV as to whether they really are contradictions.
Unfortunately, the inconsiderate bastard that I work for thinks that what I do for him is more important than researching interesting questions like this.
A quick Google search on “New World Translation” brings up at least a few hits on webpages by evangelicals which list a few books, chapters and verses they have problems with.
Is the New World Translation a valid version of the Bible?
Do a Google search for “KJV vs NIV”. There are some fundamentalist/evangelical type churches out there who feel that NIV is intentionally slighting Jesus. Here’s one link with lots of specific verses: http://www.searchthescriptures.com/newsletters/foundations.htm Note that I think these NIV “conspiracy theorists” are pretty much crackpots in their overall conclusions and arguments, but they are addressing the OP.
I think the lesson to take away from the differences in translations is that you can’t base your understanding on nuances of single words or phrases in English without checking to see whether those nuances are supported by the original language. Lacking the skills to understand the original languages, I tend to settle for seeing whether other translations agree on those nuances.
This is trivially disprovable. If you take it as a given that a statement and its negation cannot both be true, then we can find an error in none other than the King James Bible, one edition of which contained the commandment “Thou shalt commit adultery” (i.e., the word “not” was omitted) among the famous list of ten.
I suppose Blaster Master might argue that the above is a special case, since it was likely a printing error rather than a translation error, but then, why would God grant infallibility to translators but not typesetters? Aren’t both just as important for the dissemination of his holy word?
Other examples abound. As someone else pointed out, the Bible favoured by the Jehovah’s Witnesses is notorious for the liberties it takes with its translations. Of particular interest is its claim that Jesus was not nailed to a cross, but rather bound to a vertical “torture stake”. A cross is not a mere stake; it’s a stake with a crossbeam. Thus, if one Bible says “cross” and the other says “torture stake”, they can’t both be right.
Neither. Different philosophies have different intentions. There are three major philosophies of translation: Formal Correspondence, Dynamic Equivalence, and Paraphrastic.
With Formal Correspondence the text is translated as close as possible to the best texts we have. However, this at times makes the word order and word choice difficult for the reader. The sentences can be complex or formatted in ways not typical of modern English. It also has a higher reading level. The King James Version (New and Old) and the New American Bible are two examples of this. These are the kind of translations best suited for study (best of course is no translating at all).
With Dynamic Equivalence the translators try to keep the meaning, but will use more modern language and word order. They’ll keep the sense the same, but some precision can be lost in order to make the text easier to read. Examples of this are the New Jerusalem bible and the New English Bible. These are less suited to study than Formal Correspondence, but they are still pretty good. They are well suited for more casual reading.
Then we come to the Paraphrastics. With these it is ease of reading over all else. These are a poor choice for study as precise meaning can be lost in the effort to make the text easy to read. A text version of this is the Living Bible. However works such as The Passion of the Christ and Children’s bibles also fall into this category.
Well, I know that the King James Version translation tends translate passages so as to reinforce the “divine right of kings” and a general submission to authority.
This was on specific orders from King James, who was having a bit of a dispute with Parliament at the time, and wanted some Bible verser to back up his position. (His son Charles I had an even more serious dispute, and lost it, along with his head.)
That version also tends to have some of the most elegant language of any of the translations, even if it’s getting a bit archaic now.
The KJV and its modern variations, plus one or two more modern translations, depended on the Textus Receptus, a Latin version of the Bible put together by Erasmus based on the best Biblical scholarship of his day, and hence giving weight to the testimony of the minuscules. the manuscripts using lowercase and derived directly or indirectly from exactly one of the uppercase-only uncial codices (singular codex).
The five uncial manuscripts are (a) significantly older than the minuscules, hence far less likely to have had copying errors creep in, and (b) significantly different from each other, and from the Textus Receptus. There are also older fragments, including parts of several books in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In contrast to the older translations, most modern translations give heavy weight to the testimony of the uncial codices, and far less to the minuscules, based on three centuries of textual criticism between Erasmus and today, along with the discovery of manuscripts during that period.
The “Johannine Comma,” the longer reading of I John 5:7-8, is one of those issues. Erasmus accepted it as part of the original; most modern translators feel it was a fairly early insertion into the text, based on scholarship since Erasmus. There are a number of other such instances, such as the “Emmanuel” passage in Isaiah, where “A virgin shall conceive and bear a child” is not the Hebrew for virgin, bethulah, but the Hebrew for maiden, young unmarried woman, almah. Pointing out a girl in the court who was betrothed but not yet married and predicting that she would have a son (in the near future) and before that child has learned to tell right from wrong, the kings threatening Judah will be in their graves, is a far cry from the prophecy of the virgin birth that the KJV, following Matthew, renders it as.
I can’t speak to the Bible - I haven’t read any New Testament since my intro class - but as someone who translates ancient Greek on a regular basis, I can tell you that the meaning isn’t always clear. It’s not exactly that we can’t translate it, but even in English a sentence can have two different meanings depending on context, implication of the word, how you interpret the syntax, etc.
I sincerely doubt anyone is trying to change the Bible when they translate it. But there is room for interpretation in reading anything, particularly (I’d argue) ancient languages.
