On Bibles that aren’t translations (Choosing a Bible, Part 2c)

Now that you understand formal vs functional equivalence, have heard my best argument for functional equivalence, and have discovered my personal bias for formal equivalence…

you’re ready for a bunny trail.

Right?

Of course right.

The categories that I’ve deliberately left out of my discussion of methods of translations are the one-man translation and the paraphrase.

The One-Man Translation

The most famous of one-man translations (perhaps the only one popularly available?) is Eugene Peterson’s The Message.

The Message is a translation, in that it was translated from the original languages (Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic) by a scholar in those languages (Peterson). But it differs from most other translations in two important ways.

First The Message goes a step further than functional equivalence in trying to make the “tone” of the text closer to the original. This is called “idiomatic” translation. When we take into account the fact that the New Testament was written in Koine (or common) Greek rather than the more formal classical Greek, this mode of translation makes sense. The New Testament (at least) was written in the vernacular, not in the language of the elite but in the language of the common man–street language. The Message approximates this effect. This is great in one respect and not-so-great in another. Remember that the further we get from a word-for-word translation, the more opportunity there is for interpretation to be included in the translation. So The Message can contain a lot of interpretation.

The other distinct way in which The Message differs from other translations is that it is a translation undertaken by one man. While most Bible translation is done by a relatively large group of scholars, The Message was translated by just one scholar. This means that unlike other translations, The Message is prone to reflect the linguistic and theological strengths and weaknesses of its one translator. Where other translations have a system of checks and balances to correct for linguistic weaknesses and theological slants, a one-man translation does not.

Due to the high probability that The Message and other one-man translations (if they exist) contain personal interpretation, I do not believe that they are a good choice for personal study. The Message can be a useful tool, and is definitely an interesting read, but it should not be one’s primary “Bible”.

The Paraphrase

The second category of Bible that I haven’t yet discussed is the paraphrase. Paraphrases are, well…

How exactly does one describe a paraphrase?

A paraphrase is what you get when someone puts the Bible into their own words. Unlike with translations, where scholars work from the original languages and translate the original language into a modern language, paraphrases generally take an English translation as their starting point.

As a result, the paraphrase is VERY prone to interpretation, and lacks the scholarship that goes into creating a functionally-equivalent translation. Translators of a functional-equivalence Bible go to great pains to ensure that the way they are translating reflects the best scholarship on what the original audience would have understood from individual words, phrases, and pericopes. Paraphrasers have no such scholarship underlining their word and phrase choices. They are simply rephrasing the English Bible as they understand it–not attempting to translate it as it should have been or would have been understood by its original audience.

The primary example of a paraphrase is The Living Bible (not to be confused with the New Living Translation, which is truly a translation in the functional-equivalence camp).

My opinion toward paraphrases is similar to my opinion on the one-man translation. They can be interesting to read, but they should never be used as your primary “Bible”.

When choosing a Bible, much better to read the words of God than the words of man. Choose a translation (not a one-man translation or a paraphrase.)