In Defense of Modern Translations (or Why the NIV Hating is Getting Old)

We live in an age of a deluge of information. Blogs, news sites, propaganda outlets, and internet professors abound in the billions. Social media now enables the spread of information at a speed previously unimaginable, and the ability to sift falsehood from truth has become critical now more than ever. This was brought home to me this Sunday morning, when I received a message on WhatsApp from some friends concerning the NIV translation.

The message began by linking the publishers of the NIV, Zondervan, to Harper Collins as publishers of “The Joy of Gay Sex” and “The Satanic Bible”. This then, is an attempt to already prejudice the mind of the reader about a supposedly evil agenda of the NIV. It then goes on to list the removal of many words (Jehovah, Calvary, Holy Ghost et al) and then the disappearance of 45 verses from the NIV. All of this is juxtaposed against the KJV as a standard of judgement.

This tactic is not new at all. In the earlier days of Christianity, the only version of the Old Testament used by the church was the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament done around the time of the Babylonian exile). Along came Jerome, who translated into Latin from some manuscripts of Hebrew, a new version of the Old Testament called the Latin Vulgate. You should have seen the consternation it caused, even causing St Augustine to warn Jerome about it in no uncertain terms. Of course, the Latin Vulgate prevailed, and become the standard text of the church for a long time, and is still the standard for the Roman Catholic church today.

The Process of Bible Translations

Firstly, the English bibles we have today are obtained by a process of translating from collections of Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic manuscripts. This is normally done by scholars who have in-depth knowledge of these languages. Christians therefore have to first get used to the idea that God didn’t speak to his people in English. A set of human beings always have to do the work of translation.

Secondly, the only way one could have copies of these manuscripts before the invention of the printing press in the 16^th century was to manually copy them. This always had a tendency to introduce errors, whether intentional or not. In addition, some of the copyists made decisions to include passages which didn’t previously exist in the manuscript they were copying, and the resultant copy then had words that didn’t exist in its older source manuscript. The reason for these additional inserts is cause for another blog post in its own right. Suffice to say that, as a result of these 2 problems (copyist errors and intentional insertions), it only makes senses that the older a manuscript is, the “cleaner” it will be. This is not rocket science, it’s simple logic.

Based on this logic, it shouldn’t surprise us that modern translations like the NIV, NRSV, ESV etc are different from the venerated KJV. The KJV was translated in 1611, at the time of which the scholars only had access to manuscripts dated back to the 10^th century. Since those days we now have manuscripts dating all the way back to the 2^nd century at the least, and a comparison of those manuscripts to the ones used for the KJV shows clearly where mistakes have been made and where additional texts have been inserted. Therefore, the modern scholars are bound by the requirements of their own craft to revise and remove what is obviously an insertion, hence the missing passages in these versions. At least they make the effort to put footnotes on these passages so that one can see that these have been removed for good reason.

Thirdly, as scholars learn more about the history and background of the people about whom a book of the bible is written and/or the audience to whom it is written, they gain more information as to what the Hebrew or Greek words meant in their historical context and therefore how they should be translated into English (or any other language). This then causes revisions to change how certain verses were translated, much to the chagrin of some Biblicists.

Examples of Revisions In Translation

Here is an example from the NIV of changes resulting from this third class of revisions.

“The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me” (Ps 138:8 NIV 1984)

“The Lord will vindicate me” (Ps 138:8, NIV 2011)

Just reading the whole Psalm in context, it is very obvious that the second one is the more appropriate one. Since the Psalmist seems to be relying on God against the anger of his enemies in the previous verse, vindication is obviously what the Psalmist will expect. But since this translation choice might not be comfortable with some (especially the name-it-claim-it individualists), this change will not go down well with that crowd.

Another example is the oft repeated 2 Cor 5:17. My ears have grown tired of hearing it being bandied about during sermons, in crusades and bible tracts.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Cor 5:17 NIV 1984)

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”(2 Cor 5:17 NIV 2011)

Of course a footnote shows the old alternate translation, but there must be good reason why this one is preferred by the translators now. Might it be that the focus of the text is not on the individual who receives Christ? Could it be that Paul in context is talking of God’s cosmic work of reconciliation of the world to himself through the process of launching a new reality – a new people of God (in Christ) determined by faith in Christ – and that this work he has entrusted to his apostles like Paul to execute?

It might seem that words never stand alone. They mean what they mean from the surrounding background of sentences and words, but even more importantly from the life and experience of the one speaking it, and digging deep into that is a process that Christians cannot ignore if we are to be people who take the bible seriously.

Conclusion

There are 2 classes of people who tend to be caught off guard by such attempts to denigrate modern bibles. The first class is many innocent Christians who are not familiar with how the bible is translated into modern languages, and why the process of bible translation will continue to be an evolving process till kingdom comes. To those I say, don’t let such propaganda frighten you off modern bible translations. No bible is perfect, not even the modern ones like NIV or NRSV. But no matter what,  you are safer with MOST (emphasis) modern translations like these than staying at the KJV.

The second class of people are those who either intentionally have beef with anything that doesn’t sound like Victorian English (because they actually pray in “thous” and “thees”) , or whose churches have actually invested themselves in the KJV so much that they find the need to validate their usage of it by denigrating modern bibles. Some such churches have gone so far as to print their own bibles, which have their own commentaries alongside each page, mostly based on the KJV.

To this second class of people, I’ll encourage that they not get caught up in such propaganda out of ignorance. But if they still swear by their KJVs, then please be graceful to the rest of us who don’t understand Victorian English and let’s learn to live in peace.

Because in so far as the process of receiving the text of God involved human beings (including human beings during the KJV translation as well), we must acknowledge the finiteness of human efforts, come at the bible with a bit more humility and place the emphasis where it should be – following Jesus.