In this episode Trent explores the different philosophies behind Bible translations and how faulty translations can lead believers astray.
Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host Catholic Answers apologist and speaker Trent Horn, and today we’re talking about what is the best translation of the Bible. Before we do that though, a big thanks to our supporters at trenthornpodcast.com. Because of you, I’ve got the chance to upgrade my gear. I’m using my new Canon DSLR camera, new teleprompter, so things are looking up. Though, I don’t necessarily like seeing myself in high definition. I don’t know many people who do, but if you can make the quality of the video better to help people, these videos and our content reach more people, I’m grateful for that. If you want to help us to keep reaching more people, definitely consider supporting us at trenthornpodcast.com. Now, onto the subject of today’s episode. So today we’re asking, what is the best translation of the Bible? But, the problem of a question like that is this sort of like, what is the best car? You naturally ask, best for what?
Trent Horn:
The best car for going at top speeds is going to be different than the best car for moving a large family across town to run errands. Now you might be thinking, well, cars have lots of different purposes, but the Bible has only one purpose, so we can really say there is a best translation for that single purpose. Now, it’s true the Bible has one general purpose in being divine revelation, but people often have different purposes in reading the Bible. For example, reading the Bible allowed at a funeral is a different purpose than reading the Bible in a library to discover facts about the biblical world. So, in order to answer this question, though we also have to understand a basic concept in translating any work, two translation philosophies, formal equivalence, which would be word to word translation and dynamic equivalence, which would be idea to idea translation.
Trent Horn:
So in formal equivalence, the translator tries to bring out the literal meaning of the original words of the text as much as possible. Now you might think, well, all we should do is just take the original Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic of the biblical manuscripts, and just take those words and turn those words into English and you’ve got the best formal translation, right? The problem is though, if you do that, the Bible becomes really hard to read and you sort of sound like Yoda from Star Wars. Consider John 3:16. A lot of people know John 3:16 by heart, “For God to love the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” But, if you read a common Greek interlinear Bible in John 3:16, this is what it literally says if you swap the Greek for English, “Thus indeed loved God the world that the son, the only begotten he gave, that everyone believing in him, not should perish, but might have life.”
Trent Horn:
So, translator has to get the words to conform to modern English rules of grammar in order to preserve their meaning. Sometimes he has to add articles, for example, a or one that are not in the original Greek text to make the meaning be clear, but this also… Even if we do this, so it doesn’t mean we should only use the original words in the Bible. Sometimes the biblical authors, they’ll use expressions whose literal meaning would mislead a modern person, just like how there are modern expressions, like lady killer or it’s raining cats and dogs that if we translated them into Greek and Hebrew and gave them to a first century person, they wouldn’t know what we were talking about. I’ll give you an example, in Exodus 36:6 it says, “The Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”
Trent Horn:
If you read an interlinear Bible, it might show the Hebrew word [foreign language 00:04:04] for slow and [foreign language 00:04:05] for anger, but that’s not what these words exactly mean, [foreign language 00:04:10], it means long. It’s used in Ezekiel 17:3 to talk about long feathers and [foreign language 00:04:17] means face or nose. So, when the text says God has slowed to anger, it literally says in Hebrew he’s long of nose. This may be an expression to how older people have a patient wisdom and that when you get older, the cartilage in your nose, it weakens and it droops, so it makes your nose seem longer. It’s a sign of old age, which is another sign of wisdom and patience you’ve accrued in a long life, but if we just wrote God is long of nose, a modern reader might not know what we’re talking about, or he might think that we’re saying that God is a liar because we associate long noses with the story of Pinocchio.
Trent Horn:
When he told a lie, his nose would grow. So even formal translations, they’ll have to use idea for idea in order to preserve the original meaning, but you can go too far though, with the idea for idea in these dynamic translations. This is true in paraphrases of the Bible like Eugene Peterson’s The Message, the Bible in contemporary language. So in a paraphrase, the author doesn’t really translate the original biblical text. He gives you the gist of what it says, his summary of it. For example, here’s how the message translates, in quotation marks, the Lord’s prayer, this is their paraphrase, “Our father in heaven, reveal who you are are, set the world right. Do what’s best as above so below. Keep us alive with three square meals, keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others, keep us safe from ourselves and the devil. You’re in charge, you can do anything you want. You’re a blazing beauty. Yes, yes, yes.”
Trent Horn:
So between these extremes, there’s a lot of different translations that take the words and ideas the biblical authors composed and translate them to make them accessible to a modern audience. So, formal translations try to keep the original wording as much as possible and dynamic translations try to communicate the ideas more in things like modern language. So, keeping that in mind that so formal, it tries to be really word to word and dynamic is idea to idea. It doesn’t mean that one philosophy is better or worse than the other. You’re going to find principles of both in any translation, but in understanding those two principles, now we can look at a lot of the different translations and we can ask the question, what is the best translation of the Bible? Now at this point though, some people might say, well, why not just use the Latin Vulgate that was first translated by Saint Jerome and has been used in the church for centuries?
Trent Horn:
Now, the church does say the Vulgate has a pride of place in the Latin right of the church. It’s not the official Bible of the Catholic church because Eastern Catholics have used other translations for centuries in Greek and Syriac, and other Eastern languages. The second Vatican council said the church, “Has always given a place of honor to other Eastern translations and Latin ones, especially the Latin translation known as the Vulgate, but since the word of God should be accessible at all times the church by her authority and with material concern seized to it that suitable and correct translations are made into different languages, especially from the original texts of the sacred books and should the opportunity arise and the church authorities approve, if these translations are produced in cooperation with the separated brethren as well, all Christians will be able to use them.”
Trent Horn:
So, the church does have a pride of place for certain translations like the Vulgate, but the most important source are going to be the original biblical texts themselves. In the 2001 address from the Congregation of the Doctrine of Worship, they said that new translations of the liturgy, they must be made directly from the original text, namely the Latin as regards the text of ecclesiastical composition or church documents or the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek as the case may be, as regards the text of sacred scripture. Furthermore, in the preparation of these translations for liturgical use, the Nova Volgata [foreign language 00:08:42], the newest Latin Vulgate, promulgated by the apostolic see is normally to be consulted as an auxiliary tool. So, the Latin Vulgate is considered an important translation in the Western church’s history, but it’s not the church’s official Bible or anything like that, but if you like translations that are based on the Vulgate, that’s great.
Trent Horn:
One example of this kind of translation would be the Douay-Rheims Bible. The Douay-Rheims was published in its final form in France, two towns in France, Douay and Rheims, completed in 1609. It was a Catholic alternative to popular vernacular Protestant translations like the Tyndale Bible, and later the King James version that came out in 1611. So, one of the strengths of the Douay-Rheims Bible is that it captures… It sounds like the King James version, but it’s Catholic, so it has that kind of majesty of older English in it. To give you an example, in the Douay-Rheims the first commandment is rendered this way, “I am the Lord thy God who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me.” And whereas though modern translations, not just in the commandments, in other places, modern translations don’t have the older pronouns like thy or thee or thou, but the problem is there’s drawbacks to older English.
Trent Horn:
Sometimes it’s hard to understand. Matthew 19:14 in the Douay-Rheims Jesus says, “Suffer the little children and forbid them not to come to me.” Most people are like, “Suffer the children, what does that mean?” That’s why modern Bibles usually put allow or permit the children to come to me. But in any case, you should pick a translation that is approved by the holy see or by your local conference of Catholic bishops because even if you just did a word for word interlinear translation, a translator could still show his non-Catholic bias in the text. That’s because Greek and Hebrew words can have more than one meaning in English, so your choice of that word based on its valid meaning can color what the text says based on what you choose. I’ll give you an example, consider the Greek word [foreign language 00:10:58]. It’s a compound word, [foreign language 00:11:01] means beside and [foreign language 00:11:04] means to give, [foreign language 00:11:05] literally means to give over what is close beside, to hand over.
Trent Horn:
And, to communicate this idea with a single word, you might use the English words tradition or teaching, but when you read some Protestant bibles, you’ll notice a funny thing happens with the Greek word [foreign language 00:11:23]. So, in Mark 7:13 Jesus says, “You nullify the word of God by your tradition [foreign language 00:11:31], that you have handed down and you do many things like that.” So, if you only read this verse you might think religious traditions are bad, and so we should only rely on the written word of God, but that can’t be right because second 2 Thessalonians 2:15 uses a variant of [foreign language 00:11:51], and in that verse, Saint Paul says, “Stand firm and hold to the traditions, which you were taught by us either by word of mouth or by letter.”
Trent Horn:
Now however, the Protestant translation of the Bible, the New International Version, the NIV, it takes [foreign language 00:12:07] or [foreign language 00:12:08] in that verse, and it renders it teaching rather than tradition. Stand firm and hold fast to the teachings you were given, so that ends up making it look like Jesus condemns religious tradition, and Paul affirms religious teaching, but it’s the same word. Teaching and tradition are the same, [foreign language 00:12:28], what is handed on and that can be handed on in a written form or in an unwritten form, sacred scripture and sacred tradition. Now, sometimes the issues are blatant, far more blatant than this, such as in the Jehovah’s Witness’ New World translation of the Bible.
Trent Horn:
This Bible mistranslates several passages to affirm Jehovah’s Witness theology. For Jehovah’s Witnesses say that Jesus is not God, only the father is God and the father created Jesus, but we have a problem here because in Colossians chapter one Paul says that in Christ, “In Christ all things were created, in heaven, on earth, visible, and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together.”
Trent Horn:
So here’s the problem, if Jesus is not God, if he’s just a creation, how could Jesus create everything if he’s a part of the father’s creation? He can’t, that’s why the New World translation, the Witnesses use renders the passage this way because by means of him all other things were created in the heavens and on the earth, all other things have been created through him and for him, also he is before all other things, and by means of him all other things were made to exist, except the Greek word for other [foreign language 00:13:57] is not in the text and this is a mistranslation to support their theology.
Trent Horn:
So, that’s why it’s important to get a really solid Catholic Bible to make sure you have a good translation and to make sure your Bible has all the books in it because Protestant Bibles lack the deuterocanonical books of scripture, books and passages that Protestants rejected, things like Sirach, Tobit, First and Second Maccabees, portions of Daniel and Esther. For more on the deuterocanonicals, check out a few of the other videos on my channel on that subject. So, examples of the formal equivalence in Catholic bibles like word for word, would be like the Douay-Rheims would be an example of word to word formal. The Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, RSVCE is an another example. I prefer the RSVCE both for personal reading and for study, but what’s interesting is that my favorite Bible verse that’s ingrained into my mind comes from a dynamic translation of the Bible, idea for idea.
Trent Horn:
So in the RSV, Sirach two, four through six, my favorite verse in the Bible goes like this, “Except whatever is brought upon you, and in changes that humble you be patient. For gold is tested in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation, trust in him and he will help you. Make your way straight and hope in him.” So, that’s my favorite Bible verse in the RSV, but the way I learned it was I liked the wording in the New American Bible, which like the New Jerusalem Bible is more of a dynamic Catholic translation, idea for idea. This is how the NAB renders Sirach two, verses four through six, “Accept whatever befalls you, in crushing misfortune be patient. For in fire gold is tested and worthy men in the crucible of humiliation. Trust God and he will help you. Make straight your ways and hope in him.” Since dynamic translations, idea for idea, they can be easier for people to listen to, they’re usually preferred for use in the liturgy, at least in the Western church, which is why the USCCB authorizes the New American Bible to be read at mass.
Trent Horn:
And, we can see the differences here. For example, in the RSV, Genesis chapter one uses the word firmament to describe the big blue thing over our heads, whereas the NAB will call it the sky. That’s a looser translation, but it might be helpful for the average person in mass who doesn’t know what a firmament is. So, now I do have some concerns about the New American Bible. Some of the things in the study in notes of the New American Bible are really problematic, so if you’re going to use the NAB, you need to watch out for them. For example, recently a Catholic priest, he posted online saying that the church teaches or affirms that the Gospels were written later in the first century after AD 70 because the study notes in the New American Bible say so. The problem is though, those study notes in the New American Bible, they have qualifiers like scholars say this is when the Gospels are written.
Trent Horn:
That doesn’t mean the church teaches this, it’s just saying here’s what the scholars say. Also, even if it did make this claim, some of the study notes in the NAB are really questionable or just outright bad. Jimmy Akin actually pointed one out to me in Matthew 16, a note explaining Jesus’s prediction of his passion and death. It says this, “Neither this nor the two later passion predictions can be taken as sayings that as they stand go back to Jesus himself. However, it is probable that he, Jesus, foresaw that his mission would entail suffering and perhaps death, but was confident that he would ultimately be vindicated by God.” Wait a minute, Jesus, it’s possible, perhaps he would die? The catechism says, “By its union to the divine wisdom in the person of the word incarnate, Christ enjoyed in his human knowledge the fullness of understanding of the eternal plans he had come to reveal.”
Trent Horn:
That means for Jesus, it wasn’t just probable, or maybe he would die, he knew it was God’s eternal plan that he would die for the sins of the world. So, this study note seems to deny Jesus’s prophetic nature or his divinity. I’d be really careful there, but when it comes to the text of the New American Bible, the actual translation, it’s a fine translation, and some people prefer how it sounds in liturgy, some people don’t prefer it. Others prefer the RSV, but just because the RSV is a formal translation, by the way, it doesn’t mean that it’s hard to listen to. Father Mike Schmitz, for example, uses the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, the RSVCE, for his Bible in a Year Podcast, and a lot of people enjoy listening to that. And of course, there’s going to mixtures between the two. In 1949, Monsignor Ronald Knox published the Knox Bible, which if you read it, it’s an interesting synthesis of formal translation, word for word, while using a lot of modern sayings or expressions to help the modern reader understand.
Trent Horn:
So, it’s kind of in the middle, the Knox Bible is sort of in the middle between formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence. So just to summarize, there are a lot of different, good, or satisfactory Bible translations of Catholic bibles, and they’re going to go between two different philosophies, formal equivalence, getting the original words and sticking to that literal meaning as much as possible, which can be helpful, especially for personal study of the Bible, or dynamic equivalence, which tries to take the idea the biblical author was expressing and communicate that idea as clearly as possible in modern language. And as we showed with the God is long of nose, even formally equivalent translations will have to do that with original literal meanings that just don’t make sense today, but you’ll see, there’s a spectrum here, formal equivalence, you’re more like Douay-Rheims, RSV, dynamic equivalence, you’ll see that more like the New American Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible, Knox Bible, and a few other Bibles might be in the middle between the two.
Trent Horn:
So, what is the best of these translations? Well, it depends what you are choosing to use it for. So, I would say that that’s a very long answer to the question, what is the best translation? If I had to give a short answer, like a one sentence answer, I would borrow a line from Karl Keating, the founder of Catholic Answers, who said, “The best translation of the Bible is the one you will read.” So I would say, look, go and get a translation that is a solid Catholic translation of the Bible, the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible is an excellent one, I would definitely recommend that. Get a solid Catholic translation, just get one that you’re excited to read and jump into it.
Trent Horn:
If you’re not a big reader, check out Father Mike Schmitz Bible in a Year Podcast, super duper helpful. Also at trenthornpodcast.com, I have a New Testament study series for our silver level subscribers. If you subscribe at trenthornpodcast.com, if you subscribe there, you get access to an 18 hours video study series where I take you through the entire New Testament, so definitely go and check that out. Be sure to do that in this new year because as Saint Jerome says, “Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ”, and we don’t want to do that, right? So hey, thank you guys. I hope this is helpful for everybody and I hope have a very blessed day.
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