Concerning the language of the NT, I will repeat what I said on your blog, that you are going against the consensus of Greek scholars. As Mike said, “You have several skills I don’t have”, especially in Hebrew, but not I think in Greek. Not that I claim to have this skill myself either. But as I understand the scholarly consensus (and readers like Carl can confirm this), the NT is generally written in much the same language as informal personal letters of the period and so presumably in language understood by ordinary people. Yes, ordinary Corinthians or Romans would have understood that 1 John passage because in their culture they were used to sacrificial language. I will not defend the CEV rendering which I agree is over-simplified.

I like your example from 2 Cor 6:12.

BTW, a best-selling translation – KJV – translates along the lines you suggest.

KJV’s translation, however, may have made Paul’s metaphor too blatant for readers then, and is a head-scratcher now.

2 Cor 6:11-12 is rich in metaphors, a piece of eloquent rhetoric for that very reason. English has to be stretched to capture it; here is an attempt:

Our mouth, O Corinthians, is open for your sake,
our heart is opened wide.

You are not stopped up on our account,
you are stopped up on account of your own inward feelings.

Now, in a fair exchange – I speak to you as children -
you open wide as well.

The trouble is, we don’t use “stopped up” metaphorically in English (equivalent phrases in many languages are so used). As often, two translations are necessary to capture just the bare essentials of the source text:

You do not suffer indigestion on our account,
you suffer indigestion on account of your own inward feelings.

Three more attempts:

Things have not reached an impasse on our account;
things have reached an impasse on account of your own inward feelings.

Your stomach is plugged but not on our account;
your stomach is plugged on account of its own contents.

You can’t go and get it over with, but not on our account;
you can’t go and get it over with because of your own inward feelings.

You say:

“What we’re trying to do, which perhaps is coming across as defensive, is to get you to see that the grammar of the Bible doesn’t have to be profound even though the content is.”

Thank you for stating your point of view so clearly. I happen to disagree. I don’t think you can flatten the complex grammar of Paul, of Leviticus, or of Isaiah into bite-sized, self-contained syntactical units without considerable semantic loss.

For the rest, let me try to be clearer. I do not argue for word-for-word translation. I argue for “as literal as possible, as free as necessary” translation. I know full well that it is difficult to translate metaphors, and that calque-ing them is not always possible. I argue that it is best to engage in figure-for-figure translation, as opposed to abstract-proposition-in-replacement-of-a-figure translation.

I strenuously object to the tendency of DE translations to take a metaphor like “Let the sea thunder, and all that it contains!” (Psalm 98:7) and de-metaphorize it: “Let the sea and everything in it shout his praise!” (NLT)

The example I just gave has nothing to do with exegetical error and everything to do with faulty translation technique.

Even a cursory comparison of a DE translation of the poetry of the Hebrew Bible with the source text will turn up hundreds of examples of this kind. Don’t believe me? Just say so. I will post one a day until Jesus returns.

(I can already hear it now: “Come quickly, Lord Jesus.”)

Your praise of CEV for its natural English is fair game if it is true, and I believe it is, that CEV scissors out elements in its source text for the sake of achieving natural English. As I see it, CEV achieves its award-winning natural English at the cost of fairly radical simplification. Now, you may not agree with that, but that is my argument. It is not off-topic.

I’ve given the examples of CEV Lev 4:26 and 1 John 2:1-2 (see below). You are welcome to show where I am in error in my observations. It is not the case that exegetical error is the cause of the omissions in CEV. It goes straight to translation theory (cause), and application (effect).

Peter,

Thanks for being clear about your rejection of the kind of bilingualism that continues to characterize Christians around the world. No wonder you disprefer translations that maintain continuity with Tyndale-Geneva-KJV, but I don’t see why you prefer TNIV, a relatively traditional translation, over against GNB, NCV, and CEV, all of which excel in natural English. TNIV by comparison is full of Biblish.

Why do you prefer TNIV? It is a churchy translation. I can even name the ethos of which churches it reflects: the moderate to trendy evangelical crowd.

On my blog, in a comment you seem to suppose that the NT was written in language non-Christians could understand. I think you misunderstand the consensus about New Testament Greek. For example, if you think Paul, Peter, and John are not speaking “churchy” in their letters, you are sorely mistaken. The letters are written with church people in mind and presuppose a deep knowledge of scripture (the OT) and accumulated Christian tradition of a kind no non-church member would have had.

Surely you do not mean to suggest that people in a marketplace in Corinth or Rome, filled with non-Jews and non-Christians, would be able to understand a passage like this without considerable explanation:

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:1-2 TNIV)

BTW, I agree that the syntax of this could be cleaned up. But even if you put it in dumbed-down, simplified, award-winning natural English, it still would have stumped the Corinthian butchers and candlestick makers:

My children, I am writing this so that you won’t sin. But if you do sin, Jesus Christ always does the right thing, and he will speak to the Father for us. Christ is the sacrifice that takes away our sins and the sins of all the world’s people. (CEV)

The truth is this: even though CEV scissors out traditional language:

“Advocate” is gone;
“The Righteous One” is replaced with the ridiculous “always does the right thing” (I admit that “Righteous One” makes no sense at all unless you know your Old Testament very well: precisely my point);
“Propitiation” is sacrificed, without atonement or expiation offered;

CEV still doesn’t make sense unless you know in advance what it has to mean. Field test to your heart’s content if you think I’m off base. Surely Acts 8:31 is all you would hear and will hear among any group of non-churched people in the world, whether 1 John 2:1-2 is read in an excellent but still improvable translation like TNIV, or a translation for the non-literate like CEV.

As far as being defensive, I think you misunderstand there, too. For example, you continue to confuse the foreignness of a metaphor with its richness. For example, an African language uses an expression which if literally brought into English would be “eat path.” It seems to me you would see something more profound, something deep, in the text that would bloom out of the words used in that expression. That richness is not there. It simply means, in English, “take the lead.” What we’re trying to do, which perhaps is coming across as defensive, is to get you to see that the grammar of the Bible doesn’t have to be profound even though the content is. Though I think there are places where no translation has properly engrossed the reader. But, again, engrossing doesn’t mean unnatural.

[Hmmmm...perhaps that would be an interesting survey/study: which translations (or paragraphs) are the most engrossing?]

Now, regarding your statement: Except for the hundreds of millions of people to whom the Word of God is communicated when one person reads the Bible to another in a non-DE translation.

You’ll have to explain why, on the one hand, formally equivalent translations still sell quite well; and, yet, on the other hand, the Biblical literacy level among Christians is precipitously dropping. I’m quite concerned regarding this state of Western affairs.

Lastly, I apologize if this comes across as condescending. It is not meant to be. You have several skills I don’t have. It’s that these concepts we’re butting heads around are very basic to the nature of communication and how language works. So, I’m trying to be quite clear.

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[1]. For example, in my opinion an accurate rendering of 2 Cor. 6:12 would have the phrase, “you have constipated affections.” This doesn’t capture the pun, but it does capture the metaphor. Paul is being purposefully funny and yet with a bit of a witty bite. However, who would buy such a translation? Bibles don’t say stuff like that!! And yet, that’s the rich metaphor of the original. That’s the type of thing I’m referring to when I use the word acceptability.

But critique of DE translations puts you guys on the defensive. Loosen up.

Not true, John. I’m an equal opportunity employee. I believe in improving any Bible version, whatever its translation philosophy. I have emailed significant numbers of revision suggestions to translation teams for both literal and DE translations. Go look at my own critiques of the CEV, for evidence. Click on our blog Versions page, then CEV.

And if you will go back and read my blog posts you will find that I emphasize repeatedly that a natural language translation is unacceptable if it is not exegetically accurate (or doesn’t meet several of the important goals for Bible translation).

I suggest that by quoting my one sentence about CEV natural English, and then blogging about other CEV deficiencies, you are attacking a straw man. Bible translation is far more multi-faceted than simply natural English vs. unnnatural English.

Please remember the blogging context: recently there has been a focus on the English in the ESV, whose team makes high claims for the quality of its English. Those claims do not hold up in the court of high quality English literature, as can be discovered by studying what pieces are widely recognized as having been authored as high quality English literature.

But we must never forget all the other important parameters for any adequate translation: exegetical accuracy, genre equivalence, register, rhetorical equivalence, communicative accuracy, etc.

Please play fair when you link to any post from BBB. I only praised the CEV as having the most natural English of any English Bible version. You wrote an opposing post which points out other problems with the CEV. The linkage to my post was inappropriate, however, because you are dealing with two *different* parameters which enter into any translation process. You’re confusing the issues by mixing the proverbial apples and oranges.

Now, if you had shown evidence that the CEV does not actually have the most natural English of any English version, then you would have been playing fair and addressing what was actually said.

Except for the hundreds of millions of people to whom the Word of God is communicated when one person reads the Bible to another in a non-DE translation.

Is the Word of God communicated to them? I suspect most of these nominal churchgoers sit back and allow it to wash over them, as I admit I do sometimes during Bible readings in church. If it is communicated to them, then why the pitifully poor understanding of the Bible among ordinary people?

Yes, there are people who are bilingual in English and Biblish. And there are good Biblish translations for those who prefer them. But the majority of the population in any country is not bilingual in this way and so needs better Bibles which they can understand because they are not in Biblish.

You say:

“Few, if any, people in the word communicate with the odd kind of dialect found in Biblish.”

Except for the hundreds of millions of people to whom the Word of God is communicated when one person reads the Bible to another in a non-DE translation. Sure, KJV, NKJV, NAB, and ESV users get a higher dosage of Biblish in such communication than do (T)NIV and NRSV users, or RSV and NAB users (Catholics), but the difference is only one of degree.

Except the tens of thousands of people in seminary who still learn to parse the meaning of Biblish.

Except for the millions of people around the world who, when they pray, use the language of a traditional Bible translation to do so, the KJV in English, the Diodati in Italian, etc. This bilingualism ought to be fascinating to a linguist. Your “few if any” statement sweeps all of this under a rug. I know you better so I’m confident that your statement does not reflect cultural imperialism on the part of “we know better” linguists. In any case, “few if any” is inaccurate.

I just returned from reading “The Night before Christmas” with my 5 year old. Anna adores the poem and knows it by heart. Down to the last “‘Twas,” “ere,” and “alongside of his nose.” Field-test “had settled our brains,” “the down of a thistle,” and see what happens.

BTW, I realize that my Anna does not use these expressions outside of the world of “The Night before Christmas.” I don’t think that is a strike against the expressions. I would not change one word of Clement Moore’s classic.

None of these observations settle the question as to what kind of Bible translation is best for what setting. But surely you will concede that “strange language” fills the world of children no less than adults. The old man goes on snoring and bumping his head on a roller bed, even if no one knows what a roller bed is.

It’s a beautiful, wonderful thing. It’s a beautiful, wonderful thing that with each passing year, Anna understands a little bit more of the poem she loves, down to the last “courser” and “droll little mouth.” Someday, if she takes German, a light will go on when she reads “Donder and Blitzen.” In the meantime, she understands the poem perfectly. It is literally a part of her existential self, weird syntax and otherwise unknown vocabulary included. The question is: how much “strange language” do we want in our Bibles, and why.

At funerals, I always recite Psalm 23 by heart from the KJV. You would not pretend, I imagine, that I read it from the “natural English” of CEV. For the record, I also know Psalm 23 by heart in Hebrew. But here is where I come down. Psalm 23 is scripture for me in both the Hebrew and KJV. Don’t ask me to choose between them.

If you want Psalm 23 to be scripture for you in the CEV, be my guest. I will not follow you for cultural, theological, and ecclesiological reasons.

For the rest, I think you exaggerate the extent to which the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek of the Bible was similar to the way people talked between themselves in the marketplace or other everyday settings in Jerusalem and Corinth. The Bible is written in temply, synagoguey and churchy language. The language of historians and bards, priests and prophets, rabbis and apostles, not to mention John the Divine whose language oozes with biblical allusions and defies the rules of ordinary grammar.

Church people talk funny, especially when they talk about their faith. You know that. What you seem to deny is that they always have. Always.