Against the Theory of Dynamic Equivalence

Among Bible scholars there is a school which is always inquiring into the genres or rhetorical forms of speech represented in any given passage of the Bible, and also the social settings which are supposed to be connected with these forms. This approach is called form criticism, and it was developed largely by German scholars in the early twentieth century. Among these scholars, whether they be German or English-speaking, one constantly hears German phrases. The social setting is called the Sitz im Leben. The "oracle of salvation" introduced by "Fear not" is the Heilszusage, and so on. When I was in the seminary learning about all this, I at first wondered why it should be necessary to use these German words; but then I learned that the German words are used because they are recognized as technical terms, and the English equivalents are not. Students were expected to learn the terminology of the field, just as in any other field of study.

Likewise, there were many Greek and Hebrew words to be learned. These were the "technical terms" of the Bible itself. The professors often warned us students about the important semantic differences between various Greek and Hebrew words and their closest English equivalents. The Hebrew word תורה (torah), for instance, was not always equivalent to the Greek νομος (nomos) or the English law, and the Hebrew נפש (nephesh) did not usually mean soul, etc. Anyone who has been to a theological school knows very well how often points like this are emphasized by scholars.

I mention this at the beginning of this essay on Bible translation because I want the reader who has not been exposed to this kind of study to know how much is made of words and their precise usage in theological schools. Ministers in training cannot go through three years of seminary without being impressed with the undeniable differences between Hebrew, Greek, and English, and with the delicate problems of translating many key words of the Bible into our language. It is not a simple and easy task. Indeed, it is not fully possible, and that is why ministers are taught the biblical languages in seminary. And in addition to this, in the more advanced studies, one must also learn a whole set of technical terms in German. The student in this case might well ask why these German terms are adopted rather than translated, but again, the scholarly culture of linguistic precision is such that the question would seem almost foolish. These are technical terms, and if they are adopted from another language, so much the better, because then they will not be confused with informal expressions used in our everyday language.

It is easy to get carried away with fine distinctions. Scholars are often accused of losing their common sense in a multitude of hair-splitting distinctions, and of using foreign words and difficult terminology merely to impress the unlearned. In some cases this undoubtedly happens. We also must be on guard against the elitist attitude taken by many in the Roman Catholic tradition, which in its extreme form caused the Roman Catholic Church to oppose the translation of the Bible into English in the first place. But I want to suggest here that those who are not used to careful study of the Bible may easily fall into an opposite error: the error of despising many distinctions which really do make an important difference in our understanding of the Bible, despising the role of trained teachers in the Church, and generally failing to recognize the bad effects that arise from vague and loose words on any important subject. The Bible is a very important book, and it deserves our utmost care. This is all the more true when we consider that the later portions of Scripture often dwell upon linguistic details in the earlier books. And if we believe that every word of the Bible is inspired by God, how can we be careless of these words?

I also mention form criticism, with its emphasis on the text's situation in life, for another reason: I believe that a translation of the Bible must take account of the "sociological setting" in which the Bible came to be, and in which it belongs: namely, the Church of Jesus Christ. The translator must remember that this book was given to the Church and it belongs to her. And this fact, this Sitz im Leben of the Bible as a whole, is not without some consequences for our methods of translation.

The Bible in the Church

This passage from Nehemiah gives an account of the day when Ezra and his fellow-ministers of the Word gathered the people together and began to teach them the contents of the "Book of the Law of Moses." It says that they read from it distinctly, and that they caused the people to understand the meaning of the words. Jewish tradition says that this was the beginning of those translations into Aramaic called Targums, free renderings of the Hebrew which were used by Jews in later times to explain the meaning of the archaic Hebrew text. But it is unlikely that such a translation is referred to here, because farther on in the book we read of Nehemiah's indignation when he discovered that some of the children of the Jews who had married foreign women could not understand "the language of the Jews." ⁽³⁾ Nehemiah was not inclined to provide a translation for such, but rather, turning to their fathers, he "contended with them, and cursed them, and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair, and made them swear by God ..." (13:25) Hebrew was not forgotten by the Jews so quickly during their short captivity in Babylon. At a later time they did forget their mother tongue, but in the days of Nehemiah this had not yet come to pass. This passage therefore describes a situation which is very familiar to us as Christians. The people come together. The Scripture is read to them in portions, followed by explanatory comments. We would call it "expository preaching." This is how most Christians in all ages have acquired a knowledge and an understanding of the Bible. But there are other ways:

Here is a situation which is also familiar to many of us. The man is alone and reading his Bible. Probably he is reading the Septuagint version. In any case, he is having a problem understanding the passage that he is reading. When Philip comes along he asks the man if he understands the passage, and the man readily admits that he is in need of help. It is for this purpose that the Lord has sent Philip to him, who explains the passage he is reading and several others besides.

What do these two situations have in common? Both of them involve a Bible, an audience or reader, and a teacher appointed for the purpose of explaining the Bible. It is taken for granted that the Bible is not self-explanatory, and that the common reader or hearer stands in need of a teacher. And in addition to this teaching ministry in the Church we encounter several statements in the Bible declaring that the Bible cannot be rightly understood by men who have not the Spirit of God. Jesus says to his questioners, "Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word." (John 8:43) And Paul declares, "these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit ... we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God ... connecting spiritual things with spiritual." (1 Cor. 2:10-13, a passage which we will have more to say about below). The relationship, then, between the Bible and its intended readers is not simple and direct. It is conditioned by the reader's relationship to Christ and to his Church. The Bible itself declares that it is not easy to be understood by all.

The Bible apart from the Church

Our observation that the Bible is a difficult book to those who are outside the church does not sit well with many people these days. "On the contrary," they say, "the Bible is really quite simple: it is all a matter of translation. The old literal method of translation, which makes for such hard reading, is to blame. But if we will only put the Bible in simpler and more idiomatic English it will need no explanation. People who are unfamiliar with 'church jargon' might then read and understand it with ease." This is the basic presupposition of the method of translation called "dynamic equivalence."

The name of Eugene Nida, an American linguist, is usually mentioned in connection with this method of translation, because it was he who coined the phrase "dynamic equivalence." He is generally regarded as the seminal theorist behind it. Nida was for more than thirty years (1946-1980) the Executive Secretary of the Translations Department of the American Bible Society, and during this time he published a number of books and articles explaining and promoting this approach. ⁽⁴⁾ But in fact there is little that can be called original in Nida's books. His contributions were more on the practical side than on the theoretical. He gathered up a number of ideas about language that were current among linguists in his time, he applied them to the task of Bible translation, and he presented these ideas in a very engaging and understandable way. He was essentially a popularizer of theoretical ideas and principles that might serve to bring some methodological discipline into "the pioneering efforts of missionaries translating the Scriptures for remote, primitive tribes." ⁽⁵⁾ His books are packed with examples of translation problems drawn from the experience of missionary translators who were trying to put the Bible into the local languages of South-American and African tribes (most of which lacked even a system of writing at the time), and his examples show very plainly that if people were to have the Bible in these languages, in versions that were to be immediately intelligible to the uneducated, the only practical approach to the task was to use a paraphrastic method. Reading his books, one gets a vivid impression of how difficult the task is, and how wrong it is to think that an essentially literal translation could be produced in these languages in their present state of development.

For our purposes, it is important to notice that Nida was not primarily concerned with English translations. He was preoccupied with the problems of translating the Bible into the tongues of primitive tribes who were at that time being reached for the first time by Christian missionaries, and with the need for new approaches to deal with the kind of linguistic constraints that made translations into these languages so difficult. This missionary orientation is conspicuous in Nida's writings on the subject. But it should also be noticed that in addition to the purely linguistic constraints that he discusses, Nida also imposes some constraints which are non-linguistic in nature. These come from his philosphy of ministry, in particular his conception of the task of the Christian missionary. Nida believed that a missionary should not be much concerned with the planting of churches, or with the perpetuation of any tradition of biblical interpretation.

From this and other similar statements we can see that Nida was concerned with producing versions of the Bible which might be useful outside the context of an established church—outside of or prior to any teaching ministry, that is. Obviously, such a version could not be one which required explanations or any introductory preparation of the readers; the versions would have to be made as simple and idiomatic as possible — not only because of the nature of the languages into which it is being translated, and not only because of the primitive cultural state of the people who spoke these languages, but because the teaching ministry of the Church was simply left out of the equation. The Bible is simply delivered into the midst of a society, in such a form that it may be immediately understood by the common people. Here Nida is making statements as a missiologist, not as a linguist; and he is using a particular philosophy of ministry as the basis for his philosophy of translation.

Although Nida's primary focus was on foreign missions, he observed that his principles of translation might also be applied in the making of English versions for people in civilized nations. We notice the phrase "whether in central Africa or central Kansas" in Nida's paragraph above. It was not only the primitive tribes who were to receive the new "indigenous" versions, but all peoples everywhere. Despite the fact that in civilized nations we have a fully-developed Christian ministry, in which a special vocabulary has always been used for theological subjects, the new versions would pretend that none of this existed. This is the attitude towards the Church and its ministry which underlies the "dynamic equivalence" approach.

The remainder of this essay will largely concern itself with the goals, effects, characteristics, and the presuppositions of this method, under whatever name it may be practiced. The Good News Bible (also called Today's English Version) of the American Bible Society may be taken as the best example of what Nida was proposing. The Contemporary English Version and the New Living Translation are other well-known examples.

We have already brought under discussion the first, and, I believe, the most fundamental presupposition of the method: the idea that the Bible precedes the Church. This is an alluring idea for us Protestants, because it agrees with our idea that the Church is founded on the Scriptures, not the other way around, as in Catholicism; but in fact Nida's idea represents an extreme position which does not comport with other elements of Protestant ecclesiology. Strictly speaking, the Bible as we have it did not precede the Church. The Church was founded by the oral ministry of the prophets and the apostles, which is incorporated in the Bible; but the writings which we have in the Bible in their present form are addressed to the Church as already founded. This is evident even on a superficial level, in the forms of address used throughout the Scriptures; and it is true at much deeper levels also, in the many things that go unspoken or unexplained in the Bible. There is much in the Scriptures which cannot be understood—not even in a "dynamic equivalence" version—without preparation of some kind.

Historically, at least, Protestants have recognized that the gospel must first be preached, and that people must be introduced to the Christian faith and the Bible by various summaries and explanations, whether they be written out in the form of catechisms, or conveyed from the pulpit, or included in editions of the Bible. The early Protestant translations of the Bible included a good deal of explanatory material in prefaces and marginal notes. Tyndale said he intended to cause "the boy who drives the plough" to know the Scripture better than his Popish adversaries did, but to this end he supplied the ploughboys with prefaces and footnotes. His preface to the Epistle to the Romans (which was for the most part a translation of Luther's) was longer than the epistle itself! The makers of the Geneva Bible included thousands of explanatory marginal notes. These early versions were in fact "study Bibles." Luther and Calvin gave much of their time to writing commentaries, catechisms, and theological treatises. The Protestant Reformation came about through much more than the mere circulation of copies of the Bible. No, the Church does not spring from the Scriptures in the simple manner that Nida envisions, and God did not intend for it to do so. The Bible is not a rack of cartoonish tracts, to be picked up willy-nilly by mildly interested individuals who are unwilling to give time and effort to understanding it.

Undoubtedly the reductionistic view of Scripture and the casual denigration of the Church that we see in Nida and other champions of "dynamic equivalence" has much to do with the extreme individualism which has been destroying all sense of community in Western societies for the past century. We are now assumed to be reading the Bible at home alone. And so of course the idea comes that the Bible must be made free of difficulties, easily understood throughout. It should be unambiguous, simple, and clear even to the "first-time reader" who has not so much as set his foot in a church. But however much these versions may smooth the way for such a lonely reader on the sentence level, they cannot solve the larger questions of interpretation which must press upon the mind of any thoughtful reader, such as question asked by the Ethiopian in Acts 8:34. After all the simplification that can be done by a translator is done, there is still the need of a teacher.

The Language of the Bible

So said the makers of the Geneva Bible in their preface. It is very interesting that the Puritans who gave us this version would find in Scripture itself their guidance for a method of translation. The Apostles themselves were translators, after all. They did not give us a complete translation of the Old Testament, choosing rather to use the familiar Septuagint in their ministry to the Greek-speaking nations; but in a number of places where they quote from the Old Testament they do not use the Septuagint, and give us their own rendering. From these examples we can see readily enough that the inspired authors of the New Testament favored literal translation, with Hebrew idioms and all carried straight over into Greek. And why? Undoubtedly they believed that there was something significant in every word of the Scripture, as do some of us today. In any case, the Bible was certainly not written in idiomatic and colloquial Greek, as some defenders of dynamic equivalence have claimed. A truer estimate is made by E.C. Hoskyns:

I do not think that the promoters of simple everyday language in Bible translation have any appreciation for the important conceptual differences which uncommon "biblical" phrases and words often serve to convey. In the Good News Bible at 2 Cor.12:2 we read, "I know a certain Christian man." The expression εν Χριστω "in Christ" is often rendered "Christian" in this version. But they are not really equivalent expressions. The phrase "in Christ" conveys a whole package of meaning. It implicitly teaches the relationship of the man to Christ, and emphasizes Christ himself over the man. It makes a metaphysical statement: the man is in Christ. They are in vital union with one another. ⁽⁹⁾ The man is not merely one of a category of people who go by the name of "Christian" as a descriptive adjective. This is important. It is not trivial. The language teaches us something that cannot be translated into banal newspaper language. This is the kind of thing that is always being discarded in "dynamic equivalence," and the cumulative effect of so many changes like this is that it prevents us from entering fully into the concepts that are unique to the Scriptures. We are allowed to remain in the newspaper-world of twenty-first century America, and this is not for our benefit.

The Scriptures say in several places that God spoke his words through or by means of the prophets. For example, in Matthew 1:22 we read that the Lord spoke δια του προφητου "through the prophet," and in Hebrews 1:1, εν τοις προφηταις "by means of the prophets." This manner of speaking is meaningful. It is not equivalent to the expression, "God's prophets spoke his message to our ancestors" as in the Contemporary English Version at Hebrews 1:1, or "the Lord's promise came true just as the prophet had said" at Matthew 1:22. These renderings do not convey to the reader the emphasis on God as the initiator and author of the prophetic message, and it does not convey the concept of mere instrumentality on the part of the prophets. The word "through" is a little preposition which carries a lot of meaning here.⁽¹⁰⁾ But the literal translation was avoided by the CEV translators because they thought it too difficult. Barclay M. Newman explains, "The use of through with persons or abstract nouns has been rejected by the CEV translators because doing something 'through someone' is an extremely difficult linguistic concept for many people to process." ⁽¹¹⁾ Indeed this manner of speaking may seem strange to someone who is unfamiliar with the concept of inspiration which it expresses, but in such a case would not this verse and several others like it, as literally translated, serve well as a means of explaining inspiration?

A similar case is in John 3:21, "But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God" (RSV). In his commentary on John's Gospel, Westcott explains that the phrase "wrought in God" (ἐν θεῷ ἐστιν εἰργασμένα) means that the works of a believer are produced "in union with him, and therefore by his power. The order [of the Greek words] lays the emphasis on God: 'that it is in God, and not by the man's own strength, they have been wrought.'" ⁽¹²⁾ Compare this with the New Living Translation: "But those who do what is right come to the light gladly, so everyone can see that they are doing what God wants." This is indeed simpler and more natural-sounding than any literal rendering could be; but the meaning of the Greek, as explained by Westcott, is completely hidden by it. Instead of the believer working with and through God (ἐν θεῷ) to bear the fruit of righteousness, he simply does "what God wants." Even worse is the rendering of Today's New International Version: "... so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God" — in which the words "sight of" have been inserted quite arbitrarily. In both versions the distortion of meaning is caused by forcing the statement into something that sounds more idiomatic in everyday English.

Now consider Acts 5:30, which in the New Living Translation is rendered, "The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead after you killed him by crucifying him." ⁽¹³⁾ Literally Peter's words are, "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree." This expression as literally translated ought to give some pause to the reader. Why does Peter say "hanging him on a tree" (επι ξυλου) instead of "crucifying him"? Anyone who has read Galatians will know where the unusual phrase comes from, and what it means. It is from Deuteronomy 21:22-23, quoted in Galatians 3:13-14, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree." See also 1 Peter 2:24 and Acts 13:29. And so by this phrase "hanging him on a tree" Peter evokes the whole theology of the cross! But apparently the translators missed it, or found this to be unimportant. By flattening out and simplifying the language they have caused the reader to miss this thought-provoking allusion.

In 1 Peter 1:13 the expression "girding up the loins of your mind" has been rendered "prepare your minds for action" in the New International Version. Peter's use of the peculiar "girding up the loins of your mind" may at first sight seem clumsy and even a little weird to many people. It certainly is not idiomatic in English. But neither was it idiomatic in Greek. Peter deliberately uses this odd Hebraic expression as a way of bringing to his readers' minds the words spoken to Israel concerning the Passover: "and thus you shall eat it, with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand" (Exodus 12:11). One commentary on the Greek text here states that the reference is "unmistakable." ⁽¹⁴⁾ But readers of the NIV (and most other modern versions as well) will miss it entirely. Instead of an accurately translated verbal allusion, they are given an "equivalent" expression.

Another allusion which will be missed by readers of some modern versions is in 1 Peter 4:12-19. Here the NIV renders the Greek word πυρωσει in verse 12 as "painful trial" instead of the more literal "fiery ordeal," and in verse 17 the word οικου is rendered "family" instead of "house." These renderings are defensible enough in the immediate context, and we grant that some readers may be helped by a translation which explains that "house" often means "family" in Scripture, but it may be doubted whether any considerable number of Bible-readers really need this explanation, and, as so often happens in paraphrastic renderings, the "helpful" interpretation here really hinders the reader's ability to discern the correct meaning. As Dennis Johnson points out, "a proper application of the principle of context in word studies must give attention not only to the word's immediate literary context but also to more distant literary contexts to which the author may be making conscious allusion," ⁽¹⁵⁾ and he convincingly shows that there is an allusion here to Malachi 3:2-6, "... he is like a refiner's fire ... and he shall purify the sons of Levi ... that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness." The reader who is familiar with this passage from Malachi will catch the allusion to it in 1 Peter 4 when the phrases "fiery ordeal" and "house of God" are in the translation before him, but who would perceive it in the NIV? The phrase "house of God" may refer to the "family" of God in some contexts, that is true, but here we see that it is probably an allusion to the Temple, with which the Church is being compared.

An extreme example of this erasure of allusions is found in Isaiah 31:5 in the Good News Bible. In the last clause of this verse, Isaiah uses the Hebrew verb פסח, lit. "pass over," which occurs elsewhere only in the Passover narrative of Exodus, chap. 12. The allusion may be seen in a literal rendering:

When Isaiah says that the Lord will cause Jerusalem to escape (that is the proper meaning of the hiphil of מלט) from destruction by "passing over" it, he is alluding to that great deliverance of the children of Israel, when he "passed over" their houses while slaying all the firstborn of the Egyptians, allowing them to escape from death. But apparently the translator of the Good News Bible regarded this last clause as a mere repetition, adding nothing meaningful to the preceding one, and, following Nida's counsel that "synonymous expressions" in adjacent lines may be deleted if they serve only to impart emphasis, ⁽¹⁶⁾ he left out the whole clause:

The translators of some other versions use the word "spare" instead of "pass over" for פסח here, and translate the hiphil form of מלט as "rescue" (RSV, NRSV, ESV), which is better than nothing, but still inadequate for the purpose of conveying the allusion. ⁽¹⁷⁾

In Isaiah 57:15 there is a striking expression in the Hebrew text: שכן עד (shokeyn ad), lit. "he who inhabits eternity," which theologians commonly point to as an expression of God's transcendence. God is not bound by time, nor does he live within time; rather, he transcends time and space. He "inhabits eternity." ⁽¹⁸⁾ D.A. Carson calls this memorable phrase one of Isaiah's "fine expressions that stretch the imagination" of readers, as they ponder the transcendence of God. ⁽¹⁹⁾ Unfortunately, the reader of the NIV will not encounter Isaiah's expression here. Instead of "he who inhabits eternity" the NIV has a rather unsatisfactory and prosaic rendering, "he who lives forever." This is certainly easier to understand, but it is not equivalent to the original.

In Mark 1:12 we find a typical example of the NIV's tendency to turn what is semantically sharp and colorful in the Greek text into something very bland in English: "the Spirit sent him out into the desert." Here the Greek αυτον εκβαλλει, lit. "pushed him out," is translated as "sent him out;" but this is unsatisfactory, because the Greek word carries a connotation of command and compulsion, which is why more literal versions try to express the meaning with "drove him out" (ESV), "impelled him to go out" (NASB), etc. One of the NIV translators later recalled that this expression was the subject of irreverent levity at the committee's meeting, with some of the editors "facetiously wondering what kind of a car the Spirit used" to "drive" Jesus into the wilderness. ⁽²⁰⁾ But Mark's word is no joke. Commentators have often observed that it is a strong word, descriptive of our Lord's "sense of urgency" (Meyer) his "intense preoccupation of mind" (A.B. Bruce), and the "dynamistic" working of the Spirit in Him (F.C. Grant). ⁽²¹⁾

Recently while giving a lesson on the topic of modesty I referred to 1 Timothy 2:9, where the Greek text has the phrase μετα αιδους και σωφροσυνης. These are words that ancient authors commonly used in their teachings about personal virtues, and they describe attitudes or states of mind, not merely (or even primarily) outward actions. The first noun here, αιδως, denotes a capacity to feel shame, in a good sense, as opposed to shamelessness or impudence. In modern English versions it is usually translated "modesty," but "bashfulness" may sometimes be a more adequate way of expressing its connotations. John Wyclif's "shamefastness" is nearly perfect, and would still be the best rendering if that word had not become obsolete. ⁽²²⁾ The second noun, σωφροσυνη, denotes an habitual self-regulation or moderation of desires and thoughts, as opposed to mania, self-indulgence and excess, and it is usually translated with "sobriety" or "self-control." My purpose in referring to these words was to emphasize that "modesty" in the Bible is not merely outward compliance with some dress code, but a state of mind characterized by a capacity for shame and self-inhibition, and that the biblical authors connect this cultivated "sense of shame" with virtue and honor, especially in the case of women. This is a commonplace of exegetical writings, and it needs to be emphasized, because it is so foreign to the modern liberal ethos that dominates our society. ⁽²³⁾ My students on that occasion had copies of the NIV translation, and so I asked them to turn to that place, expecting to find something close enough to build the lesson on. But to my surprise, I found that μετα αιδους και σωφροσυνης was translated "with decency and propriety." Evidently the translators felt that these prissy words would be in some manner equivalent to the original. ⁽²⁴⁾ I suppose they are the sort of words that a modern American would fall back on when recommending clothing that is suitable for Christians. But they do not begin to convey the meaning of Paul's words. People associate "decency" with conformity to minimum standards of social behavior, and "propriety" with things like proper etiquette, but Paul speaks of something much more personal — a virtuous sense of shame, coupled with self-control. The problem here is not just about an archaic word that needs to be updated, it has to do with an ancient moral concept that has no name in the modern idiom. I am not sure what should be done in this case. Even "modesty" seems very inadequate. Perhaps we need to reclaim the word "shamefastness." But there is no use pretending that "decency" will convey the meaning of αιδως. The inadequacy of colloquial modern English in this instance brings to mind an observation of J.D. Michaelis:

Many elements of the biblical text are so culturally specific that there is no possibility of producing an equivalent effect in modern language for readers who are not familiar with the ancient cultural setting. In an old version of Judges 12:14 we read that Abdon the son of Hillel judged Israel for eight years, "and he had forty sons and thirty sons' sons, that rode on threescore and ten ass colts." The Good News Bible modernizes this language by saying that he had "forty sons and thirty grandsons, who rode on seventy donkeys," but the meaning of this will not be any clearer to modern readers if they do not know that having many sons, and riding about on a donkey, were status symbols in Israel at that time. The forty sons could not have been possible without multiple wives, a sign of great wealth. Modern American readers who are unfamiliar with status symbols of the second millenium before Christ are likely to associate donkey-riding with poor hillbillies and other rural folk of low degree. Having many sons, by several wives, is not a sign of status in modern Western society. And not many readers who do know that these things were signs of high status in Abdon's days will be able to transport themselves back into that cultural setting, by an act of lively imagination, in such a way that the statement has an "equivalent effect." At best, modern readers can be sympathetic tourists in this ancient Near Eastern culture, and their ability to understand the text depends very much upon background knowledge gained through study or received from teachers.

Someone may object that a more literal translation leaves the reader in no better position, because the background information must be supplied in either case. But it is only the promoters of the "dynamic" approach who claim to remove the need for such a learning process, by making the text immediately understandable to people of widely different cultures. We grant that a smoother path is made for the reader when some awkward and foreign-sounding expression like "sons and sons' sons" is converted to something which flows better in our ears, "sons and grandsons;" but even trivial adjustments like this, which might seem to be only a matter of style to many, often inject interpretive bias and distort the meaning in subtle ways. A moment's reflection will find the difference here—not all "grandsons" are "sons' sons." The two expressions are not fully equivalent, and the difference between them does have some cultural significance. ⁽²⁶⁾

A less trivial example of the same thing is the treatment of the word αληθεια ("truth") in John's Gospel. This has been the subject of many discussions among scholars, and not all agree in their conclusions; but one thing agreed upon by all is that John's usage is anything but "modern" or even common in its day. When John quotes Christ saying Εγω ειμι ... η αληθεια "I am the truth" (14:6) he is not just using some idiomatic Greek expression meaning "I am truthful." Εγω ειμι η αληθεια is no more idiomatic in Greek than "I am the truth" is in English. And in two places we find αληθεια used as the object of ποιεω ("do the truth," in John 3:21 and 1 John 1:6), apparently after the pattern of the Hebrew expression עשה אמת, which means "keep faith," i.e., "act faithfully." ⁽²⁷⁾ It seems that John's αληθεια bears connotations, at least, derived from the Hebrew equivalent אמת. But the dualistic meaning attached to αληθεια in Hellenistic philosophical writings — eternal spiritual "reality" as opposed to the unsubstantial and temporary things of this world — is clearly intended in most places where the word is used.

The meaning of these pregnant words, concerning a spiritual kingdom, to which those who are "of the truth" belong, cannot be adequately conveyed by any English translation if the reader is not familiar with the background of Jewish-Hellenistic thought. We have no word or any stock phrases that could evoke the Hellenistic concept of αληθεια in modern colloquial English, because it is quite foreign to anything that might be expressed in an ordinary conversation. For most readers of the Bible, who lack this background, an explanation is neccessary. What we find in versions that try to make explanations unneccessary, by use of "equivalent" expressions that are easily understood by everyone, is something rather different from the true meaning. For example, in John 18:37 the New Living Translation has, "I came to bring truth to the world. All who love the truth recognize that what I say is true." This banality is the "closest natural equivalent" that the translator could find in the conceptual scheme of uneducated modern people—but it is not equivalent to the original, and it will only interfere with a teacher's efforts to convey what Jesus is really saying here. A true understanding requires some study or instruction, in which the English word "truth" receives a "biblical" sense borrowed from αληθεια in its Hellenistic milieu. Any English words used for this purpose must be adapted and bent to the meaning of the ancient Greek. There is no possibility of conveying the meaning in "Common English."

Many further examples could be given. Hundreds, in fact. But these few may be enough to illustrate the points made here. The reader of these versions has not been required or even invited to enter into the conceptual framework of the Bible as it is expressed over and over again in its phraseology; he has been deprived of the opportunity to perceive the network of allusions and verbal associations which give the Bible such richness of meaning; and he is protected from exposure to anything unusual. The reader is left in his own familiar and everyday world of thinking. And this is the whole purpose—and the explicitly stated purpose—of those who are promoting "dynamic equivalence" in Bible translations. The whole idea is to present nothing to the reader which is strange. Nothing foreign or "offensive." Nothing evocative. Nothing which requires a pause for reflection, orientation, and discovery. Nothing that stretches the imagination. ⁽²⁸⁾ I submit that this theory of translation is not only unscriptural, but self-defeating and perverse.

Literary Conventions

The impracticality of attempts at "dynamic equivalence" become even more obvious if we turn our attention to units of discourse larger than the sentence or paragraph. Readers of the Bible will find that in order to understand it one must give up any expectations that the narratives will be composed according to modern Western conventions. This is one of the common expectations of naive readers, and it generates many problems for them. Take, for example, the famous question about Cain's wife. In Genesis 4:17 we read "And Cain knew his wife," before the existence of any woman (other than Eve) has been mentioned, and so the skeptic captiously asks, "Where did Cain get his wife?" The answer is simple (he married a sister), but many are temporarily baffled by the question, because they would have expected at least some mention of the fact that daughters were born to Adam and Eve before one is abruptly brought on the scene as Cain's wife. The reader has to reckon not only with the fact that the sons of Adam would have only their own sisters to marry, but he must also get used to the fact that the narrators of the Bible tend to omit things that we would certainly not omit if we had composed the stories. The difficulty felt by readers here arises from false expectations about the Bible's literary form, and it disappears only when it is recognized that the biblical writers felt no need to explain the existence of Cain's wife. When these narratives were first written and compiled, they satisfied the expectations of an ancient Near Eastern audience; but nothing short of a re-writing of the Bible, after the manner of Sholem Asch's The Apostle or Walter Wangerin's The Book of God, could bring them into line with modern expectations. It is for this reason that works of biblical fiction like Asch's and Wangerin's have been written. They alone can satisfy the culturally-determined expectations of modern readers.

Unnecessary ‘Help’

In the example of 1 Peter 4:12-19 given above the NIV's paraphrastic translation of πυρωσει may also be put in a large of class of paraphrastic renderings which may be described as "unnecessary help." Obviously the NIV translator felt that he was helping the reader. But did he suppose that ordinary readers of the Bible are so dense that they are incapable of understanding that "fiery ordeal" here refers to painful trials? Many similar instances could be given. For example, in 1 Corinthians 2:11-13 Paul writes:

The last clause here, πνευματικοῖς πνευματικὰ συγκρίνοντες, lit. "matching spiritual things to spiritual," looks like a general maxim—the kind of pithy saying that Paul often uses to clinch his arguments. But many translators have felt the need to make the statement more specific. The New Living Translation, for example, has "using the Spirit's words to explain spiritual truths," and its marginal note reads, "Or, explaining spiritual truths in spiritual language, or explaining spiritual truths to spritual people." There are other interpretations which might just as well have been added to the note. But these different interpretations are not mutually exclusive, and it is likely that Paul would endorse them all as implications of his statement. Why are the translators not content with the general statement? Why not leave it at that, and let the reader discern the implications, the way Paul left his own readers? The urge to explain seems to get the better of them, when no explanation is needed.

On the other hand, it is true that an explanation is often needed. For example, when the phrase εκ πιστεως εις πιστιν in Romans 1:17 is literally translated "from faith to faith," the meaning is not obvious to many people, and an interpretive rendering like the NIV's "a righteousness that is by faith from first to last" can spare them the burden of figuring it out for themselves. But here, as often, the difficulty in the literal rendering is not created by the translators: it lies in the Greek text. Many scholars do favor the NIV's interpretation, but many do not. Some understand it quite differently, and others prefer to leave it an open question. In such cases the best solution is to give a literal rendering in the text and offer various explanations for it in the margin. Proponents of dynamic equivalence usually object to this idea because they believe that it bothers readers when they must look at footnotes, and when many questions of interpretation are left open. But this is the only honest and unbiased way of presenting the text when there is a long-standing disagreement between eminent scholars about the meaning. Ultimately, serious readers are ill-served when translators keep them in the dark about this, by making the text seem easier than it really is.

When interpretive translators fail to indicate viable alternatives in the margin, they sometimes cause serious difficulties for teachers, even for those who are well versed in Scripture. I once visited an adult Bible class being taught by a young seminary-trained pastor, in which one woman asked a question about Hebrews 11:26, which says that Moses counted "the reproach of Christ" (τὸν ὀνειδισμὸν τοῦ Χριστοῦ) greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. Unfortunately everyone there was using the NIV, which states that Moses "regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt," and she wanted to know how a determination to suffer "for the sake of Christ" could be attributed to Moses (even before the ministry of the prophets), and why the Old Testament failed to mention this motive in its account of Moses. The pastor was caught flat-footed by this excellent question, and began to stumble. He looked at me hopefully, but I could give no help, because I had never heard such a statement being quoted as Scripture, and I had no better version of the Bible with me to jog my memory of the verse. If Hebrews 11:26 had been quoted in a more literal form, I might have explained "the reproach of Christ" in the way that I have always understood it; but I could not explain the NIV's "disgrace for the sake of Christ." As happens far too often in modern versions, the NIV here imposes a very questionable interpretation on the text, currently favored in some circles, without providing readers with a note giving the more literal rendering, or in any way indicating the more likely traditional interpretation of the phrase. ⁽²⁹⁾ In its defense, one might argue that it is just possible to interpret the simple genitive construction in this way, if we suppose that the author was being somewhat lax in his style; but it cannot be said that the Greek genitive ever expresses "for the sake of." For that, a prepositional phrase is required, like δια with the accusative. The simple genitive construction τὸν ὀνειδισμὸν τοῦ Χριστοῦ is here more naturally understood as "the same reproach that fell upon Christ," and this meaning is not hard to discern from a literal rendering like "the reproach of Christ" in this context. The question raised by the woman in my friend's Bible class would not have been raised if it were not for the "helpful" NIV rendering, which made the true sense of the phrase virtually inaccessible to the class; and it would not have been hard to answer if a less interpretive rendering were given in the margin.

Sometimes we find in modern versions "dynamic" renderings that are exegetically impossible, without any alternative renderings given in the margin. An example of this is Matthew 12:33 in the NIV, "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit." The Greek verb translated "make" here is an imperative (ποιησατε), and it simply cannot be interpreted as if it were a subjunctive verb in a conditional clause, meaning "if you make ... then." The Greek imperative cannot function like that. It is difficult to imagine how a group of conscientious scholars could have decided to put this in the text without a marginal note. ⁽³⁰⁾ The rendering usually found in more literal versions — "Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad" — is indeed not very helpful, and likely to be misunderstood; but at least it allows a teacher to bring out the meaning clearly and deftly by explaining the word "make" in the sense of "consider." The NIV's very loose rendering, on the other hand, is so unlike the Greek that it cannot even be used as a starting point for the explanation of the verse. It is necessary to reject the whole sentence, and offer in its place a rendering quite unlike it in form. Again, this would not be so bad if the version had included a footnote that could be used as the basis for the explanation.

Needless Limitations of the Vocabulary

In one of the examples cited above, I used the word "reproach" to translate the Greek ονειδισμος. This English word, "reproach," is today rarely heard in conversation. In colloquial speech its use is practically confined to the phrase "above reproach," and the word has a distinctly literary if not biblical flavor to it. For some time now, many translators who adhere to principles of "dynamic equivalence" have been avoiding words like this, because they suppose that words rarely used in conversation are liable to be misunderstood. Therefore instead of "reproach," we see "disgrace" in several modern versions, in places like Hebrews 11:26 and 13:13. But the word "disgrace" does not have quite the same meaning as "reproach." The two words are very close in meaning, but "disgrace" implies some fault, giving sufficient cause for dishonor, whereas "reproach" does not. "Reproach" has reference to public reputation only. A righteous man might be said to suffer "reproach" (e.g. by public insults and ridicule for his unpopular views), but we do not speak of a man's "disgrace" without implying that his reputation is deserved. This illustrates one of the great advantages of the English language: its relatively large stock of words, which puts at our disposal many synonyms that enable us to make such fine distinctions. If, however, we choose to artificially limit this vocabulary, using only those words which are commonly used in conversation, our ability to express ourselves is greatly diminished. Translators who avoid words rarely used in conversation, though they are generally understood by English speakers, are limiting their own ability to convey shades of meaning in the original, and for no good reason.

In this connection, we are told that the use of archaic language in the older Bible versions presents problems for many people, and this is true to some extent. I once met a man who had been reading the KJV Bible nearly every day for more than 30 years, but he did not know that "meat" in that version means "food." We can do without confusion like that. And who today would want to keep the unfortunate "superfluity of naughtiness" in James 1:21? But in my experience as a teacher, archaic words and expressions are much less of a problem than some would have us believe. It is claimed, for instance, that people will have difficulty with the word "begat" in the genealogies, and so we must have "was the father of" instead. But it so happens that "begat" is a more accurate translation of εγεννησεν, and in twenty years of teaching I have never encountered anyone who did not understand the word. The same is true of "behold," and "thou," and many other old-fashioned words. If for any reason a translator or reader prefers these words, there is no harm in it.

Is the purpose of accurate translation met when Hebrew and Greek words for which the "dynamic" translator can find no modern-sounding equivalent are left untranslated? This has been the case with the Hebrew interjections הֵן and הִנֵּה ("behold, lo"), and the corresponding ιδου in the New Testament, in many recent versions. A translator who cannot bear to use any biblical-sounding word like "behold" sometimes ventures to use "see" or "look" as an equivalent, but with results that are even less natural to spoken English than "behold." For example, the NIV in Matthew 24:15 reads "See, I have told you," and in 26:45, "Look, the hour is near." Is Jesus pointing to a clock here? English-speaking people do not naturally use the words "look" and "see" as emphasizing interjections, in the same way that the biblical authors use הִנֵּה and ιδου, when there is nothing to look at or see with the eyes. The NIV translators evidently felt the oddity of using "see" and "look" like this in most places, but, refusing to employ the only English word that could concisely convey the meaning of the original, they despaired of conveying the meaning at all; and so they simply left the Greek and Hebrew words untranslated in hundreds of places (e.g., Luke 1:48). We grant that, all other things being equal, it is usually good to use words of the common sort, rather than needlessly archaic ones. But translators should not reject words that are understood by virtually everyone just because they are not currently popular in colloquial speech. A translator who needlessly hobbles himself with such a stylistic principle will often find that he simply cannot express the meaning. ⁽³¹⁾

Sometimes the advocates of "dynamic equivalence" exaggerate the supposed need for common language so much that it seems they think ordinary people are stupid. For instance, Nida in one of his books explained that in Psalm 23 the old-fashioned rendering, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," was unacceptable because "many persons understand this traditional rendering to mean: 'The Lord is my shepherd whom I shall not want.'" ⁽³²⁾ This is the kind of ridiculous misunderstanding that "many" people fall into when the language of colloquial speech is not used, we are told. But perhaps we are entitled to a higher opinion of people's intelligence. As for those few who really do have such problems, we wonder if it would be wise to encourage them to think they could understand much of anything in the Bible without constant help from teachers.

Dynamic Theology

In the first part of his poem Faust the German poet Goethe gives us a scene full of irony, as Faust sits down to translate a passage of the New Testament.

Our spirits yearn toward revelation
That nowhere glows more fair, more excellent,
Than here in the New Testament.
To open the fundamental text I'm moved,
With honest feeling, once for all,
To turn the sacred, blest original
Into my German well-beloved.
He opens a volume and applies himself to it.
'Tis written: "In the beginning was the Word!"
Here now I'm balked! Who'll put me in accord?
It is impossible, the Word so high to prize,
I must translate it otherwise
If I am rightly by the Spirit taught.
'Tis written: In the beginning was the Thought!
Consider well that line, the first you see,
That your pen may not write too hastily!
Is it then Thought that works, creative, hour by hour?
Thus should it stand: In the beginning was the Power!
Yet even while I write this word, I falter,
For something warns me, this too I shall alter.
The Spirit's helping me! I see now what I need
And write assured: In the beginning was the Deed! ⁽³³⁾

Scholars who have pondered John's use of the word λογος in the prologue of his Gospel will understand Faust's difficulties, because the term λογος here is so rich in meaning that it seems inadequate to translate it simply, "Word." What is the full meaning of this first sentence and how can it be conveyed in translation? J.B. Phillips felt that he was helping readers when he translated it, "At the beginning God expressed himself." But Faust's dissatisfaction with the literal translation leads him even further from the meaning of the verse, and in the end he sees in it a reflection of his own ruminations on the need to turn away from mere words to the essence of things, and to deeds. The irony is that he imagines the Spirit is helping him, but what spirit is really present? In the room with him is Mephistopheles, the demon to whom he will turn for help at the peril of his soul.

Weighty theological lessons sometimes depend upon having a strictly accurate translation of the Bible. A good example of this may be seen when we compare Bible versions at Genesis 50:20. Here as Joseph comforts his brethren he makes a statement full of theological implications. The ESV gives us a literal rendering of the verse: "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today." This is truly an interesting statement, often quoted by theologians in the context of explaining the sovereignty and providence of God behind even those events which seem to be evil. As John Calvin explains in his Genesis commentary here,

Yet what does the user of the New Living Translation read here? "As far as I am concerned, God turned into good what you meant for evil. He brought me to the high position I have today so I could save the lives of many people." Here there are several things that might be pointed out which vitiate the theology implicit in Joseph's words. We wonder how the phrase "As far as I am concerned" can be justified here, because it corresponds to nothing in the Hebrew text and it makes the statement merely an opinion rather than a statement of fact. This in itself is an important change in the meaning of the verse. We notice that the phrase "He brought me to the high position I have today" has been inserted. So instead of the bald statement that God planned the harmful action of the brothers for the good of many (this is even clearer in the Hebrew than in the literal English), a good thing is inserted, namely Joseph's prosperity, as the thing that God used as the means of saving people. We see that "so I could save the lives of many people" attributes the good outcome to the will of Joseph rather than attributing it to the will of God alone, as in the Hebrew. But we notice especially the paraphrastic rendering "God turned." Gone from the verse is the mysterious secret providence of God, expressed in the words "God meant it," which required Calvin's explanation, and in its place we see that the NLT has substituted the idea that God afterwards "turned" evil actions to his use. So in at least four ways in this one little verse the use of "dynamic equivalence" has obscured an important theological lesson which shines through in the literal rendering. Probably the NLT translator believed that he was helping the reader to understand the verse with these adjustments, but for all the good intentions we may attribute to the translator we perceive in this officious meddling with the text the hand of someone who is attempting to change not only the verbal form but the very teaching of the verse into something that is easier to understand and accept. ⁽³⁴⁾

Someone might object to this criticism by saying that the method of dynamic equivalence itself cannot be blamed for misinterpretations. It is the fault of the translator not the theory, because the translator must understand the original text before he can recast it in equivalent English expressions. Yet does it surprise anyone that when so much emphasis is placed upon the ease of the reader, we find not only easy language but also easy theology? Moreover, it is an impractical theory which requires the translator to interpret the text so thoroughly while avoiding interpretations that flow naturally from his own intellectual presuppositions. It expects something that we cannot reasonably expect from a human being. In his book The Text of the Old Testament, Ernst Würthwein emphasizes the importance of taking a psychologically realistic view of Bible versions:

Here Würthwein is speaking of ancient versions of the Old Testament, such as the Greek Septuagint, the Aramaic Targums, and the Latin Vulgate; but what he says concerning these ancient versions must also be said about modern English versions. And if it is “especially true of the versions of the Bible which were produced to meet the practical needs of a community” — i.e., versions like the Targums, which have their contemporary readers very much in mind, and which aim to make the text highly accessible and pertinent to them — then it is also especially true of modern English versions that are of this same character. This warning about the use of highly interpretive versions does not lose its relevance when the versions are modern, and it pertains just as much to simple questions about the meaning of the Greek and Hebrew words as it does to the specialized text-critical research of scholars like Würthwein.

Scholars never trust ‘dynamic’ translations, because they know from experience the strength of the tendencies which lead even learned men to accommodate any admired author to their own mentality. At one time the prestige of Aristotle was such that philosophers, at least, could hardly be trusted to quote him accurately! In 1813 one complained "how easy it is for a translator of Aristotle (in consequence of the unparalleled brevity which he sometimes effects) to accommodate the sense of the original, by the help of paraphrastical clauses, expressed in the phraseology of modern science, to every progressive step in the history of human knowledge. In truth, there is not one philosopher of antiquity, whose opinions, when they are stated in any terms but his own, are to be received with so great distrust." ⁽³⁶⁾ This is even more true of St. Paul, whose rapid style gives many occasions to interpreters.

We might as well notice here the role that Nida's theories have played in recent controversies about missionary "contextualization" of the Christian religion, reconceptualizations of biblical theology according to the worldview and thought-forms of various cultures. In the 1970's Charles Kraft of Fuller Theological Seminary even used the phrase "dynamic equivalence" in reference to this, urging the creation of "dynamic equivalence churches" in which principles of "dynamic theology" would allow the development of indigenous "ethnotheologies." ⁽³⁷⁾ Various things which are being done under the banner of contextualization and "ethnotheology" are clearly syncretistic. For example, missionaries may explain the efficacy of prayer in line with Voodoo concepts about magical utterances, or Jesus could be described as being the son of the most powerful deity already being worshiped by a tribe. "Contextualizations" like this are now common on the mission field, even among missionaries associated with reputedly conservative mission agencies such as the Wycliffe Bible Translators. ⁽³⁸⁾

This kind of thinking is not confined to missionary theorists and translators in primitive places. Recently one of Nida's disciples wrote:

It might be argued that this goes beyond what Nida himself had in mind for Bible versions, but there are many programmatic statements in favor of cultural contextualization in Nida's published works, with extensive discussion of examples, and it is difficult to say where he might draw the line between dynamic equivalence and contextualization. In his books he mixes these things together so much that it is sometimes hard to tell which of the two subjects is under discussion. In any case Nida himself clearly wished to convey the idea that dynamic equivalence and contextualization are intrinsically related, being two aspects of the same principle of immediate "equivalent effect" in communication, and so it is not unfair for us to connect these things also. At bottom they are related, and our attitude toward contextualization will have implications for our evaluation of dynamic equivalence. The root of both is the idea that everything important in the Bible can be so thoroughly naturalized that it does not seem to be foreign to the language and culture into which it is introduced, and that if there is anything that cannot be so naturalized, it must not be "essential" to the message or "pertinent" to modern readers of the Bible.

The Bible for Children

Much of the support for paraphrastic Bible versions has been due to the desire of some to provide a version which children might be able to understand. This is well-meant, but I think it should be obvious to anyone who is really familiar with the Bible that it was not written for children. Let us be realistic. We have always had catechisms and Bible story books for the children, and anyone who has been involved in teaching the children knows very well that these supply more than enough material for young minds; and they are far better suited for the education of children than any simplified version of the Bible can be. There is only so much one can do with the Bible to make it clear or interesting to children, and in the end a selection of passages is going to be made anyway—which, if it is a good selection, will differ little from the selection in the old Bible Story books. I remember that when I was a child in Sunday school we did have copies of the "Good News for Modern Man" New Testament on hand (I still have the copy that was presented to me one "promotion Sunday"), but I also remember that we did not use it. The catechism took up all of our time. The truth is, there is no good reason why the Bible should be adapted for this purpose. And there is a danger in it. The danger is, the Bible simplified for children will become the Bible of adults. I have seen "Good News" Bibles in the pews of mainline churches. The American Bible Society had removed the cartoons for this "pew bible" edition. And then there is the case of the Living Bible, which Ken Taylor originally meant for children, and yet Billy Graham quickly made it into one of the most popular versions for adults. This was bound to happen, given the mental laziness of so many people, both in the pew and in the pulpit.

The publishers of the "dynamic equivalence" versions have at any rate been very aggressive in promoting these versions as if they were suitable for everyone, young and old, Christian or non-Christian. The New Living Translation now is making much headway in our churches as a version for the whole congregation, being used in the pulpit and in Bible study classes. I wonder how superficial the preaching and teaching must be in such churches, where this simplified version is thought to be adequate or necessary. What if a man who has been under such a steady diet of pablum happens to open an exegetical commentary and read there the comments of a scholar, or visits a church where the Bible is explained in some detail? He will not be long in seeing what a false impression has been given by his easy-reading version. It is not at all as he was led to suppose. The main ideas of the Bible are indeed simple enough, in any version; but it is very far from being true that every verse of the Bible is simple. Moreover, if he reads any moderately detailed treatise of theology he will find that the great theologians of Protestantism habitually call attention to linguistic details that are simply absent from his Bible version. If a man knows the Bible only through such a version, and has been encouraged to think that it is just as accurate as any other, how well has he been served? He has been treated like a child or a simpleton. Is it any wonder that many educated people scoff at Christianity when even our Bibles have been so dumbed down that they offer nothing above the level of a ten-year-old child? Is it any wonder that we have such problems getting the interest of the men (who ought to be the spiritual leaders of their households) when everything is designed for children? In regards to this, perhaps the words of the old Scottish preacher, James Stalker, bear repeating.

Stalker's counsel here is to preachers, who in their sermons must engage the attention of grown men and educated people as well as the simple. He takes it for granted that the reader will agree with him that the Bible itself is not always simple, and is itself "meat for men."

The Bible for Everyone?

Mention was made above that the publishers of the dynamic equivalence versions have presented them as being for everyone. We have already questioned this claim from one direction, but there is another angle to be considered which is perhaps even more important. Everyone who has had some experience of actually using the Bible in ministry is surely aware of the problems which arise from different people having different versions in front of them. Someone reads a passage out loud, and others follow along in their own Bibles, in whatever version they may be, and the differences between the versions sometimes give rise to difficult questions. This problem is not severe when the different versions are all essentially literal, having only minor differences which are easily taken in stride. I have been involved for many years in group Bible studies, at which various versions were being used, among them the King James, the New American Standard, the New International, the Revised Standard Version, and others, all of which can be read together without much trouble. But when such a version as the New Living Translation is read, it is quite impossible for people to follow along in other versions. They soon lose track and look up from their Bibles in confusion. I have seen this several times in recent Bible study meetings. As a practical matter, then, I find that a "dynamic equivalence" version can only be used very extensively if everyone uses it. This being the case, I think we have a right to ask whether it can ever be appropriate to use such a version for teaching. It is unreasonable to expect everyone to use the same "dynamic equivalence" version. People will have their own Bibles, after all, and they will choose between versions for their own private reading; but a teacher must use a version that is not always going its own peculiar way. ⁽⁴¹⁾

Conclusion

We have shown that the dynamic equivalence method represents a departure from tradition, and from the principles of translation used by the Biblical authors themselves. Its pretensions to "scientific" principles of linguistics are dubious, as has been pointed out by numerous linguists and biblical scholars. It results in a simplification of the text in which important features of the Bible are erased. It proceeds from false assumptions about the relationship of Scripture to the Church and to the reader. Finally, as a practical matter, we have seen that the versions produced with this method cannot "get along" with other versions already in use.

Notes

1. ESV margin, "or, with interpretation, or, paragraph by paragraph. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon says the word מפרש (mephorash) here most probably means "distinctly" (which may mean either "clearly" or "in sections") though it mentions the sense "interpreted" favored by some (page 831). C.F. Keil in his commentary favors "explaining" but rejects "translating" as the meaning here. He writes, "It is more correct to suppose a paraphrastic exposition and application." (Hendrickson edition, vol.4, p. 145). The Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti libros (KBL) of Koehler and Baumgartner (Leiden, 1953) favors "divided into parts." The latest English edition of the revised KBL (Leiden, 2001) favors "making an extempore translation," so that the meaning of the Hebrew word corresponds to the Aramaic mepharash (Ezra 4:18). But this understanding of the word seems to depend upon a redactional analysis which treats the statement in verse 8 as anachronistic. It seems unlikely that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah themselves would have been written in Hebrew if this language could no longer be understood by most Jews at the time.

2. The BDB Lexicon says that the phrase ושום שכל (wesom sekel) means simply "set forth (the) understanding." (p. 968).

3. See Nehemiah 13:23-25. Hebrew, and not Aramaic, is meant by "the Jews' language" here and elsewhere in Scripture. See Loring Woard Batten, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Books of Ezra and Nehemia (International Critical Commentary; Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1913). Gesenius also (Hebrew Grammar, ed. Kautzsch, §2.t) concludes that "the supplanting of Hebrew by Aramaic proceeded only very gradually" and that Hebrew was still understood by the common people as late as 170 B.C., centuries after the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. W. Robertson Smith agrees: "The fall of the Jewish kingdom accelerated the the decay of Hebrew as a spoken language. Not indeed that those of the people who were transported forgot their own tongue in their new home, as older scholars supposed on the basis of Jewis tradition: the exilic and post-exilic prophets do not write in a lifeless tongue. Hebrew was still the language of Jerusalem in the time of Nehemiah in the middle of the fifth century B.C.," and in a footnote he adds, "An argument to the contrary drawn by Jewish interpreters from Neh. 8:8 rests on false exegesis." (W. Robertson Smith, "Hebrew Language," Encyclodaedia Biblica; a Critical Dictionary of the Literary, Political and Religious History, the Archaeology, Geography, and Natural History of the Bible, Volume II, ed. T. K. Cheyne and J. Sutherland Black [New York: The Macmillan Company; London: Adam and Charles Black, 1899], column 1988.) Likewise Gustaf Dalman concludes that "in the time of Nehemiah the Law could still be understood in the original Hebrew in Jerusalem," but he suggests that its language needed some occasional explanations: "Nevertheless, it required interpretation when read at public services, probably not merely as to the contents (Neh. 8:7f.). Later a full translation into Aramaic was considered to be absolutely necessary, so that the 'the clear and understandable' reading (Neh. 8:8) was interpreted as meaning the addition of a full translation." (Jesus-Jeshua: Studies in the Gospels [New York: MacMillan Co., 1929], p. 9.) D. Winton Thomas also concludes that "Hebrew continued to be the normal vehicle of expression" for some time after the return of the exiles ("The Language of the Old Testament," in Record and Revelation, edited by H. Wheeler Robinson [Oxford, 1938], p. 387). If this is not the case, and if in fact Hebrew was not understood by most Jews in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, this means that the post-exilic parts of the Hebrew Old Testament (1st and 2nd Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi) were written in a scholarly language that could not be understood by the people.

4. See Nida's books Message and Mission: The Communication of the Christian Faith (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960); Toward a Science of Translating, with Special Reference to Principles and Procedures Involved in Bible Translating (Leiden: Brill, 1964); The Theory and Practice of Translation (Leiden: Brill, 1969); and also the book he later co-authored with Jan de Waard, From One Language to Another: Functional Equivalence in Bible Translation (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1986). I should mention that much of what Nida wrote on the subject does not square very well with the translations which have been produced under the banner of "dynamic equivalence." Nida himself coined this phrase in an effort to distinguish his method from unrestrained "paraphrase." Later he complained of abuses of the method he outlined, and for this reason in his later writings he distanced himself from the term "dynamic equivalence," preferring instead "functional equivalence." (On this, see the preface of his book, From One Language to Another, in which he says, "Some Bible translators have seriously violated the principle of dynamic equivalence as described in Theory and Practice of Translating [sic] and Toward a Science of Translating.") Recently some others have preferred to call it "meaning-based translation," or "closest natural equivalence" -- a phrase which Nida also sometimes used in his writings. These shifts in terminology do not represent changes in the method. I use the term "dynamic equivalence" because it continues to be the one most widely used.

5. Toward a Science of Translating (1964), p. 1. A perusal of the essays collected in Douglas Robinson's Western Translation Theory from Herodotus to Nietzsche (Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing, 1997) will reveal just how commonplace the basic ideas about translation usually associated with Nida were, long before his birth. The need for "idiomatic" renderings was emphasized by writers in ancient times, and the desirability and possibility of producing an "equivalent effect" was thoroughly discussed by translators in the middle of the nineteenth century. Nida adds nothing substantial to these old discussions, which were quite sophisticated, and he does not even interact with them in such a way that the difficult problems raised in them are addressed. Other more technical aspects of his theoretical writings are little more than ad hoc applications of various concepts developed by other linguists. See for example chapter four of his book Toward a Science of Translating, in which the special concepts and terminology of Chomsky's generative grammar are pressed into service in some very questionable ways. For Nida's dependence on Chomsky see Edwin Gentzler, Contemporary Translation Theories (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 44. Gentzler writes, "Despite claims to the contrary, Nida's theory crystallized with the addition of Chomsky's transformational component—Nida read Chomsky's Syntactic Structures in mimeograph form two years before it was published. With the adoption of Chomsky's theoretical premise, his transformational rules, and his terminology, Nida's theory solidified ..." Gentzler also points out that it was the acceptance of Chomsky's ideas among linguists that set the stage for the favorable reception of Nida's theories of translation: "Generative transformational grammar, along with its legitimacy within the field of linguistics, lent credence and influence to Nida's 'science' of translation." For an extended critique of Nida's use of Chomsky's ideas see V.S. Poythress, "Truth and Fullness of Meaning: Fullness versus Reductionistic Semantics in Biblical Interpretation," in Translating Truth: The Case for Essentially Literal Bible Translation (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2005). Nida himself contributed nothing new to a general theory of language, and his use of concepts developed by others is often facile. In short, it seems to me that his contributions to translation theory have been overstated.

6. Eugene Nida, Message and Mission (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), p. 221. Along the same lines Nida later wrote that translators who rightly discern the "needs of the audience" will see that "Non-Christians have priority over Christians. That is to say, the Scriptures must be intelligible to non-Christians, and if they are, they will also be intelligible to Christians. Not only is this principle important in making the translation of the Bible effective as an instrument of evangelism, but it is also necessary if the language of the church is to be kept from becoming an esoteric dialect ..." (Theory and Practice of Translation [1969], pp. 31-2). Many years later, Nida began to acknowledge the failure of this whole approach. For the article on "Translations" in The Oxford Companion to the Bible (1993) he contributed a sub-section on "Native American Languages" in which he wrote: "For a variety of reasons the publication of the scriptures in some Indian languages has not been a success, but where there have been missionaries or leaders of national churches who have encouraged literacy, instructed people in the meaning and relevance of the Bible message, and trained local leadership, the response has been remarkable" (p. 778, emphasis added). Experience shows that devotional Bible reading cannot be expected outside the context of a church with a sustained teaching ministry.

7. Addison, English poet and literary critic, described the effect of these idioms with the following words: "There is a certain Coldness and Indifference in the Phrases of our European Languages, when they are compared with the Oriental Forms of Speech; and it happens very luckily, that the Hebrew Idioms run into the English Tongue with a particular Grace and Beauty. Our Language has received innumerable Elegancies and Improvements, from that Infusion of Hebraisms, which are derived to it out of the Poetical Passages in Holy Writ. They give a Force and Energy to our Expressions, warm and animate our Language, and convey our Thoughts in more ardent and intense Phrases, than any that are to be met with in our own Tongue. There is something so pathetick in this kind of Diction, that it often sets the Mind in a Flame, and makes our Hearts burn within us. How cold and dead does a Prayer appear, that is composed in the most Elegant and Polite Forms of Speech, which are natural to our Tongue, when it is not heightened by that Solemnity of Phrase, which may be drawn from the Sacred Writings." (Spectator, No. 405; Saturday, June 14, 1712). See also Robert Alter, "Beyond King James," Commentary 102/3 (1996), pp. 57-62. Alter decries what he calls the "heresy of explanation," the idea that "translation should explain the Bible rather than simply representing it in another language" and laments the general demise of literary translations after the King James Version. He concludes, "There is no good reason to render biblical Hebrew as contemporary English, either lexically or syntactically." Alter is Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981) The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), Genesis: Translation and Commentary (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1996).

8. E.C. Hoskyns, The Riddle of the New Testament (1931), pp. 19-20. This opinion of the language of the New Testament is shared by many linguists and other scholars, and in fact there are none who deny that the language of the New Testament often mimics the Hebraistic "translation Greek" of the Septuagint; yet, as Stanley E. Porter observes, "there is no place in Nida's framework for the language of the New Testament being anything other than the common language that was in use in the Mediterranean world of the first century. Theories regarding the special nature of the Greek ... have no place in his analysis" (Porter, "Eugene Nida and Translation," The Bible Translator 56/1 [January 2005], p. 10).

9. The scholarly literature on the meaning of the expressions εν Χριστω Ιησου, εν Κυριω, etc., is very extensive. Adolf Deissmann in his Die neutestamentliche Formel "in Christo Jesu" (Marburg, 1892) explained the εν as a spatial metaphor expressing incorporation by mystical union with Christ. Moulton likewise relates it to "the idea of the mystic indwelling" (A Grammar of New Testament Greek, vol. 1 [Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1906], p. 103). J. Dick Fleming concludes that the "thought of vital union is the central and original conception of the phrase [εν Χριστω] used by St. Paul." (Art. "In" in vol. 1 of Hastings' Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels [Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1906], p. 795). For a review of others up to 1955 see E. Best, One Body in Christ, 1955. In Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Oepke explains that the εν in εν Χριστω Ιησου, εν Κυριω, and related formulae expresses inclusion within "Christ as a universal personality." (English edition [Eerdmans, 1964], vol. 2, pp. 541-2.) Though Deissmann compared εν Χριστω with Hellenistic parallels, obviously it does not belong to the realm of secular and "popular" Greek. To claim that the English word "Christian" adequately conveys the meaning would be to dismiss all that has been written on the subject by scholars.

10. The significance of this has often been noticed by theologians. For example, Geerhardus Vos: "In a very striking way God regularly appears as the speaking subject in the quotations made from the Old Testament. Where Paul contents himself with the formula, 'as it is written,' or 'as the Scripture says,' Hebrews prefers to make the affirmation of the divine authorship explicit and employs the formula 'God says.' That this is not the result of meaningless habit, but possesses doctrinal significance, appears from the cases, where, rhetorically considered, it would be unnatural to introduce God as the speaking subject, since in the passage quoted He is the Person spoken of. Even in such cases the author insists upon emphasizing that the statement about God came from the mouth of God Himself. It is God who said 'the Lord shall judge His people' (x. 30). And so vivid is the realisation of this supreme fact of the direct divine authorship of Scripture that what we call the secondary authors, that is, the writers of the Biblical books, are, again in distinction from Paul's custom, scarcely ever mentioned. The only case where the name of a Bible writer is introduced is chap. iv. 7, and even here the phrase is not 'David saying' but 'God saying in David.' There are even passages where pains seem to have been taken to bring out the relative unimportance of the secondary authorship by more positive means than the mere omission of the writer's name. In a couple of instances use seems to have been made for this purpose of the indefinite pronoun 'some one' and the indefinite adverb 'somewhere': 'One has somewhere testified saying' (ii. 6);' For He hath spoken somewhere of the seventh day on this wise' (iv. 4). By this manner of statement the impression is conveyed that in view of the authority wherewith God invests every word of Scripture the human instrumentality through which the divine word was mediated becomes a matter of little or no importance. As a matter of fact the word of revelation is so literally to the writer's mind the word of God that it is represented as having been spoken by God being locally present in His messengers : 'God of old times spoke unto the fathers in the prophets'; 'God said in David.' The conception is not instrumental, as if 'in' were a Hebraizing construction for 'by means of'; it should rather be compared with the similar form of statement by our Lord to the disciples: 'it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you' (Mat. x. 20), and by Paul who offers to the Corinthians a proof of Christ speaking in him (2 Cor. xiii. 3)." ("Hebrews, the Epistle of the Diatheke," Princeton Theological Review 13/4 [1915], pp. 626-27). Even if it be regarded as a metaphor it cannot be dismissed as insignificant. See Michael Reddy, "The Conduit Metaphor," in A. Ortony, ed., Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge University Press, 1979.

11. Barclay M. Newman, Creating and Crafting the Contemporary English Version (New York: American Bible Society, 1996), p. 17.

12. Brooke Foss Westcott, The Gospel According to St. John: the Greek Text with Introduction and Notes, vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1908), p. 124. Likewise Hermann Olshausen explains, "the words, 'are wrought in God' ... represent God, the source of truth, as the ground of all truth and sincerity in a creature, so far as they are manifested in him. Hence εν, in, retains its proper meaning; and the expression may be explained by εν δυναμει θεου, in the power of God. (Biblical Commentary on the New Testament, by Dr. Hermann Olshausen, Translated from the German for Clark's Foreign and Theological Library, First American Edition, revised after the fourth German edition, by A.C. Kendrick, vol. 2 [New York: Sheldon & Co., 1860], p. 364.) The kind of semantic reductionism that interprets this expression merely as "wrought with God's approval" (Hendriksen) is naturally favored by those who are trying to make the text easier to understand. But if εν θεω receives this treatment, one might as well also translate εν Χριστω as "pleasing to Christ."

13. In this article "New Living Translation" refers to the first edition of the version, published in 1996. The second edition (published in 2004) makes some improvements. In Acts 5:30 it reads "killed him by hanging him on a cross," and it gives a literal translation in a footnote: "Greek, on a tree." Other differences between the editions will not be noticed in this article.

14. J.H.A. Hart, in The Expositor's Greek Testament vol. 5 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1910), p. 48. The connection with the words of Exodus is not just literary decoration here. Hart observes that in this epistle Peter "is engrossed with the conception of the Church as the new Israel which has been delivered from idolatry—the spiritual Egypt—by a far more excellent sacrifice." We grant that the meaning of "gird up your loins" is not obvious to many people in our day, and that it requires an explanation.

15. Dennis E. Johnson, "Fire In God's House: Imagery From Malachi 3 In Peter's Theology of Suffering (1 Pet 4:12-19)," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 29/3 (September 1986) p. 285. In criticizing the NIV along with the other versions mentioned in this essay I do not mean to put the NIV on the same level as the others with respect to "dynamic equivalence." The NIV is ordinarily more literal. However, many Bible teachers will agree with me when I say that the NIV does too often give paraphrastic renderings. It is not so much a problem of "accuracy" (narrowly defined) as a regrettable loss of imagery, vividness, and allusiveness in this version. As Daniel Wallace has said, the NIV "is so readable that it has no memorable expressions, nothing that lingers in the mind. This is a serious problem for the NIV that is not always acknowledged." (The History of the English Bible Part IV: Why So Many Versions?) Leland Ryken, who focuses on literary qualities, includes many criticisms of the NIV along with criticism of more paraphrastic versions in his recent book, The Word of God in English: Criteria for Excellence in Bible Translation (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2003).

16. Nida advises translators to eliminate repetitition in his books Toward a Science of Translating, p. 231, and From One Language to Another, pp. 87, 96, 119; and so the translators of the Good News Bible frequently eliminate or combine clauses that are seen as repetitious. Another good example may be seen in Hosea 2:4-5, where parallel lines of the prophet's poetic discourse are reduced to non-repetitious prose.

17. As R.B.Y. Scott observes, the KJV's "passing over is better than he will spare, because it preserves the allusion to the deliverance commemorated by the Pesach (Passover) festival; the verb appears in the O.T. only here and in Exod. 12." (Interpreter's Bible, volume 5 [New York, 1956], p. 340.) The NEB's rendering, "standing over her," is in accordance with a newly proposed sense for the word פסח in this place. Likewise the New JPS version's "protecting." Baruch Levine in his article on "Feasts and Festivals" in The Oxford Companion to the Bible (1993), p. 226, continues to assert that the word "properly means 'to straddle, stand over,' hence 'protect' (Isa. 31.5)." But most scholars have rejected this proposal, there being no sufficient evidence that in Isaiah 31:5 the word means something other than what it has always been understood to mean—and clearly it does mean "pass over" in Exodus. The REB revision of the NEB substitutes "sparing her" for "standing over her" in Isaiah 31:5.

18. Thus St. Augustine writes concerning God's omniscience, Quid est praescientia nisi scientia futurorum? Quid autem futurum est Deo, qui omnia supergreditur tempora? Si enim in scientia res ipsas habet, non sunt ei futurae, sed praesentes, ac per hoc non jam praescientia, sed tantum scientia dici potest. "What is foreknowledge except a knowledge of future events? What, however, is future in the sight of God, who transcends all concepts of time? For if he has the events themselves in the scope of his knowledge, they are not future as far as he is concerned but present; and by this very fact it can no longer be called foreknowledge but only knowledge." (De Diversis Quaestionibus ad Simplicianum, II. ii. 2., cited in Charles Hodge's Systematic Theology, vol. 1, p. 401.) Some commentators have doubted whether Isaiah could have intended such an idea of transcendence. Franz Delitzsch assets that this thought is "quite outside the biblical range of ideas," and so he thinks the expression must mean only "the eternally dwelling one" (Commentary on the Old Testament by C.F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, vol. 7, Isaiah, translated by James Martin, Hendriksen reprint, 2001, p. 549). Yet the Hebrew text says plainly, "he who inhabits eternity," and so it is translated thus in essentially literal versions (KJV, ASV, RSV, NASB, ESV, etc.). We reject the notion that the mind of this great prophet could not have received such an idea of God's transcendence, and we think it is only a low view of inspiration which will put it "outside the biblical range of ideas."

19. D. A. Carson, "God's Love and God's Sovereignty," Bibliotheca Sacra 156/623 (July 1999), p. 262. It should be noted that in the current controversies about "Open Theism," in which some people are even denying that God transcends time, this phrase in Isaiah 57:15 becomes more than a "fine expression" that stretches the mind: it becomes a point of reference for the teaching and defense of orthodox theology.

20. "I can remember times when working on Mark in Cincinnati that the committee spent a half an hour or more deciding on the meaning of one word in a verse. For example, in Mark 1:12 the King James Version says that "the spirit driveth (ekballei) him into the wilderness," using the first meaning of ekballo given in the lexicons. I can still remember some of our participants facetiously wondering what kind of a car the Spirit used to transport him into the wilderness." Wesley L. Gerig, "Translating the New International Version," Reflections, official publication of the Missionary Church Historical Society, vol. 5/2 (Fall 2001), p. 6.

21. It is maintained by some that in the first century the sense of the word ekballo was weakened so much that it meant merely "sent," without a connotation of command or compulsion, and so this has been given as a meaning of the word in some Greek Lexicons. But the NT citations offered in support of this opinion (Matt. 9:38, John 10:4, Acts 16:37, etc.) fail to establish it, and it is not acknowledged in Lust's Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (2003). In the Septuagint and in the New Testament the word is nearly always associated with commands or the use of force. Probably the NIV translators favored a weakened sense here, against the weight of the evidence, because they feared that ordinary readers would think "impelled him to go out" meant that Jesus was compelled against his own will.

22. Strangely enough, Wyclif chose this excellent equivalent for the Greek word while translating, not directly from the Greek, but from the Latin Vulgate, which has verecundia here. "Shamefastness" was used by the KJV translators also (though corrupted to "shamefacedness" in later printings), and retained in the ERV and ASV revisions. That αιδως and its cognates denoted a sense of shame appears clearly in the following quotations from Epictetus, a moralist of the first century: πεφύκαμεν δὲ πῶς; ὡς ἐλεύθεροι, ὡς γενναῖοι, ὡς αἰδήμονες. ποῖον γὰρ ἄλλο ζῷον ἐρυθριᾷ, ποῖον αἰσχροῦ φαντασίαν λαμβάνει; τὴν ἡδονὴν δ' ὑπόταξαι τούτοις ὡς διάκονον, ὡς ὑπηρέτιν, ἵνα προθυμίας ἐκκαλέσηται, ἵν' ἐν τοῖς κατὰ φύσιν ἔργοις παρακρατῇ. "And how are we constituted by nature? Free, noble, modest: for what other animal blushes? what other is capable of receiving the appearance (the impression) of shame? and we are so constituted by nature as to subject pleasure to these things, as a minister, a servant, in order that it may call forth our activity, in order that it may keep us constant in acts which are conformable to nature." (Discourses, book 3, chap. 7). καίτοι καὶ δέδωκέ μοι ἡ φύσις αἰδῶ καὶ πολλὰ ὑπερυθριῶ, ὅταν τι ὑπολάβω αἰσχρὸν λέγειν. τοῦτό με τὸ κίνημα οὐκ ἐᾷ τὴν ἡδονὴν θέσθαι ἀγαθὸν καὶ τέλος τοῦ βίου. "And indeed nature has given to me modesty, and I blush much when I think of saying any thing base (indecent). This motion (feeling) does not permit me to make (consider) pleasure the good and the end (purpose) of life." (Fragments, 52. English translation from The Discourses of Epictetus, with the Encheridion and Fragments, translated by George Long [London: George Bell and Sons, 1877]; Greek text according to the edition of Heinrich Schenkl [Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1916]).

23. Cf. the monograph by Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature (Oxford University Press, 1993). A good introduction to the subject as it relates to the New Testament is in Jerome H. Neyrey's Honor and Shame in the Gospel of Matthew (Philadelphia: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1998).

24. The NIV translation here is so uncommonly bad that I was prompted to look for an explanation for it in works written by the original NIV committee members. I found one in a book by Ralph Earle, Word Meanings in the New Testament (Baker, 1986). Earle quotes J.H. Bernard's opinion that "aidos here signifies that modesty which shrinks from overstepping the limits of womanly reserve," and says "in our opinion, that states the case with accuracy and relevance" (p. 338). We can agree with that judgment. But Earle does not clearly explain why we should think the NIV's "decency" is an accurate rendering. He seems most interested in contrasting the NIV's rendering with the KJV's "shamefacedness." Speaking of women "in this day," he says that "something between shamefacedness and boldfacedness" should be sought, and so he recommends the NIV's rendering because it expresses a "golden mean." This is unacceptable, if we are being asked to think that αιδως denotes some state of mental poise equally distant from shyness and boldness (!) — but it does indicate that the NIV translators knew what the word αιδως means. Bernard, whom Earle quotes in part, even says in his commentary that "shamefastness and sobriety ... is as near to the Greek as we can go in English." (The Pastoral Epistles, edited with Introducation and Notes [Cambridge, 1906], p. 45.)

25. Johann David Michaelis, A Dissertation on the Influence of Opinions on Language and of Language on Opinions. Second edition. (London: W. Owen, 1771), p. 28. English translation of Beantwortung der Frage von dem Einfluß der Meinungen in die Sprache und der Sprache in die Meinungen (1760).

26. Today even some of the most literal versions put "grandsons" here, because it is possible to interpret בני as including daughters. But to those who are familiar with the ancient patriarchal culture, it is by no means clear that בני here is meant to include daughters, so that בני בנים would include the sons of daughters also.

27. C.H. Dodd observes that "a Greek reader would feel the expression to be definitely strange to the natural idiom." (The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, p. 174.)

28. Gerald Hammond puts it well: "While the Renaissance Bible translator saw half of his task as reshaping English so that it could adapt itself to Hebraic idiom the modern translator wants to make no demands on the language he translates into ... The basic distinction between the Renaissance and the modern translators is one of fidelity to their original. Partly the loss of faith in the Hebrew and Greek as the definitive word of God has led to the translators' loss of contact with it, but more responsibility lies in the belief that a modern Bible should aim not to tax its reader's linguistic or interpretive abilities one bit." (Gerald Hammond, The Making of the English Bible [Manchester: Carcanet New Press, 1982] pp. 212-13).

29. For exposition along traditional lines see the commentaries of Calvin, Matthew Henry, Alford, etc. Alford writes, "All Israel's reproach was Christ's reproach: Israel typified Christ: all Israel's sufferings as the people of God were Christ's sufferings, not only by anticipation in type, but by that inclusion in Christ which they, his members before the Head was revealed, possessed in common with us. Christ was ever present in and among God's people; and thus De Wette well and finely says here, 'The writer calls the reproach which Moses suffered, the reproach of Christ, as Paul, 2 Cor. i.5; Col. i.24, calls the sufferings of Christians the sufferings of Christ, i.e., of Christ's dwelling, striving, suffering, in his Church as in his body; to which this reproach is referred according to the idea of the unity of the Old and New Testaments, and of the eternal Christ [the Logos] already living and reigning in the former.'"

30. Richard T. France appears to be trying to justify the rendering of the NIV in his recent commentary on The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2007) when he says that the imperative here "probably reflects a popular proverbial style, as in our 'give him an inch and he'll take a mile'" (p. 485); but the English verb in his example is not in the imperative mood, and he offers no evidence that a Greek imperative was ever used in such a conditional sense. France does not give a reasonable explanation for the interpretation in the NIV, and he ignores the interpretation given by nearly all other commentators, who understand ποιησατε in the sense "consider." The BAGD lexicon states that the meaning here is "assume, suppose" (p. 682).

31. We should point out here that the use of "behold" in the New Testament is a distinctly Hebraistic and biblical usage, and not colloquial Greek at all. In many places it does not correspond in meaning with "look here," or any normal usage of ιδου found in secular Greek literature or non-literary papyri; but its use does correspond perfectly with that of the Hebrew interjections הֵן (hen) and הִנֵּה (hinneh), translated as ιδου in the Septuagint. James Hope Moulton writes, "We very rarely use the interjection 'Behold' in ordinary speech, and normal late Greek speech did not use it much more than we do. In those parts of the New Testament which come from Aramaic sources, or are written by men (like St. James) who continued to use Aramaic as their ordinary language, we find this 'behold' extremely often." (The Science of Language and the Study of the New Testament [Manchester, University Press, 1906], p. 16.)

32. Jan de Waard and Eugene Nida, From One Language to Another (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1986), p. 9. I am aware of the fact that many young people do not know that "I shall not want" means "I shall not lack what I need" here. When I asked my 13-year-old daughter about it, I discovered that she thought it meant "I will not desire more than I need." But I find it very difficult to believe that anyone would interpret it in the way that Nida supposes.

33. English translation from Faust, Parts One and Two, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated by George Madison Priest (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952, reprinted from the edition published by Knopf in 1941), from line 1217. Goethe published the first part of his Faust in 1808.

34. Ardel B. Caneday notices the importance of this verse in current debates about "Open Theism." In a review of John Sanders' 1998 book The God Who Risks, he describes Sanders' interpretation: "Gen. 50:20, a verse that affirms that God effectively succeeds at his plans, has consoled innumerable Christians. But it now means something quite different. Sanders explains, 'I take this to mean that God has brought something good out of their evil actions. God was not determining everything in Joseph's life, but God did remain with him.' (p. 55) The subject and its verb—'God intended it for good'—has nothing to do with intention at all, but refers to God's ability to mop up the mess, which is 'to bring good out of evil human actions' (p. 55)." ("Putting God at Risk: A Critique Of John Sanders's View Of Providence," Trinity Journal 20/2 [Fall 1999] p. 137.) We wonder if Sanders has been reading the New Living Translation. Is it asking too much of Bible translators that they should avoid giving 'proof texts' for such heretical ideas in their versions?

35. Ernst Würthwein, The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Biblia Hebraica. Translated by Erroll F. Rhodes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), p. 47. The English version quoted here was translated from the fourth edition of Würthwein's Der Text des Alten Testaments (Stuttgart, 1973).

36. Dugald Stewart, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, in The Works of Dugald Stewart, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Hilliard and Brown, 1829), p. 97. Emphasis added. It should be noted here that distortions of an author are likely to increase with the degree of admiration in which he is held. Therefore when the preface of a Bible translation says, "the translators were united in their commitment to the authority and infallibility of the Bible as God's Word in written form," practical wisdom might sometimes require us to beware of this trendency.

37. See his book Christianity in Culture: A Study in Dynamic Biblical Theologizing in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1979) esp. Chapter 15, "Dynamic-Equivalence Theologizing," pp. 291-312, and his article "Dynamic Equivalence Churches: An Ethnotheological Approach to Indigeneity," in Missiology, vol. 1 (January, 1973), pp. 39-57. The relationship of Kraft's missiology to Nida's theory of translation is not merely verbal. For a good discussion of the matter see Robert L. Thomas, "Dynamic Equivalence: A Method of Translation or a System of Hermeneutics?" in The Master's Seminary Journal 1/2 (Fall 1990), pp. 149-76.

38. In a conversation with one retired missionary from the Wycliffe Bible Translators I learned that this "contextualization" stategy sometimes has very bad consequences. Before introducing Jesus Christ to one tribe he asked them which of their gods was most powerful, and then proceeded to tell them that this god has sent to them a Son. The tribesmen were not at all receptive. Later the missionary discovered that this god, with whom he had associated Jesus Christ, was the god most feared and hated by the tribe, a malevolent diety more like Satan than God. For the true God of the Bible they had no "equivalent."

39. Stanley E. Porter, "Hermeneutics, Biblical Interpretation, and Theology," in I. Howard Marshall, Beyond the Bible: Moving from Scripture to Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), pp. 125-6. Porter (currently President and Dean of McMaster Divinity College in Ontario) is largely supportive of Marshall's contention that "Orthodoxy is not tied to specific vocabularies and forms of words."

40. James Stalker, The Preacher and His Models (London and New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1891). Rev. James Stalker, D.D. (1848-1929) was best known for his books Life of Christ, Life of St. Paul, and Imago Christi. He was Professor of Church History at Free Church College, Glasgow, and a notable preacher in his day.

41. For a good discussion of other problems presented by dynamic equivalence versions in Bible teaching, see Robert L. Thomas, "Bible Translations and Expository Preaching," chapter 17 in Rediscovering Expository Preaching, edited by Richard Mayhue (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1992).