Bible translators and their products: the value of differences

The Public Square
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New Warhorn Media post by Tim Bayly:

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Forgive me if you’ve commented on this before and I’ve missed it, but what would you prescribe as the cure to the problem of modern translations? I understand and appreciate all your criticisms that I’ve read over the years, but I always come away from reading you wondering what the solution is?

Do we just stick with NASB95 and the KJV? Do we (somewhat begrudgingly) adopt the LSB? Do you believe a new translation is needed? If so, who is going to do it, and how will it contrast to these others?

Asking sincerely. Thanks.

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Currently, it’s my view there is almost no felt need for any change in Bible translations. Conservatives who like archaisms are using the KJV, which is pretty good concerning sex (although translating בְנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל “children of Israel” should be corrected). Other conservatives think the ESV is just fine. MacArthur’s men have their in-house LSB while the rest of Evangelicals all are fine with the neutered Bibles. When asked, I say I would choose either the NASB95, ESV, NKJV, or KJV, and that my own preference is the NASB95 while meticulously reading its footnotes and regularly having recourse to the original.

Seems like a new Bible is needed for a number of reasons with a number of standards needing to be met in its production and release, but when pastors refuse to awaken the sheep to the gagging of God done by present Bibles, there is no hope of support.

The neutered Bible controversy back in the nineties was the perfect opportunity and I pushed and pushed Joel, John, Wayne, Vern, RC, Paige, and the others to take the opportunity and wean Evangelicals off the NIV, which was ubiquitous at the time. They were resistant at first, but eventually we coalesced around revising the RSV and proposed it to Lane Dennis. He was excited and took it on. It saved his company financially, but look what they did to the thing. So disheartening, yet at least there is an only-partly neutered and bowdlerized version that has a significant share of the market here in the US.

The key is for pastors to begin to preach and teach the loss of the Biblical doctrine of the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture, and that loss being most obvious in the death of the Biblical doctrine of sexuality (starting with male authority). Until that is preached and taught, I’m afraid no one will care about the translation of Scripture.

Love,

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FYI the link to the above article has been broken. I believe this is the [updated article: Neutered Bibles - Warhorn Media

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Barth won.

The Neo Orthodox doctrine of Scripture now prevails across the Evangelicalism of the English-speaking world. Some of our Bible translations aren’t as bad as others, but all of them hide or remove differences between Scripture’s original Hebrew and Greek and today’s English, and they are particularly fervent in doing so when those differences “reflect the male-oriented perspective of ancient Israelite society.”

This is the terrible irony of Crossway’s new translation of Calvin’s Institutes (still yet to be published). From their explanatory doc Why the 21st Century Needs a New Translation of Calvin’s Institutes:

4 The McNeill-Battles Footnotes Impose a Modern Theological Interpretation onto Calvin’s Theology
The annotations in the McNeill-Battles footnotes are sometimes misleading and reflect an early twentieth-century Neo-Orthodox interpretation. This rendering distorts Calvin’s meaning and fails to present Calvin’s thought in its sixteenth-century context. A striking example of this is when McNeill spends several pages of introduction (vol. 1, liii–lv) explaining that Calvin did not focus on the infallibility of the words of Scripture but on its content or message (which McNeill, in typically Barthian fashion, ultimately identifies with Christ, not Scripture). On the contrary, Calvin habitually refers to the Scriptures as having been “dictated” by the Holy Spirit, so that the resulting words are from the Spirit, not the human mind. The McNeill-Battles method imposes a foreign theological grid from the twentieth century onto Calvin’s thought.

This new translation has excised the word ‘man’ and replaced it with ‘human’ (notice even above: ‘the human mind’). Same issue with new Bible translations as you, Tim, have pointed out. Barth and the Neo-Orthodox may have planted the seeds, but look where the fruit is growing…

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Well noted, Matt. But let me adjust it slightly: “look where the fruit done gone.”

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Just posted this on socials:

Lane Dennis/@crossway publish ESV and just announced latest product—a new translation of Calvin’s Institutes.

They criticize Battles edition for imputing “Neo-Orthodox” view of Scripture to Calvin, but with no irony whatsoever, their new translation of Calvin will gag Calvin by removing his male inclusives. Crossway is pathetic in their attempts to show themselves au courant in all language matters—particularly vigorously deleting the male inclusive.

Their new translation of Calvin will itself be entirely Neo-Orthodox precisely at the same time as they brag about it being needed because they oppose Neo-Orthodoxy. They say that, in order to do a better job of communicating Calvin’s meaning, they must delete his words.

Decades ago when I wrote for them and got a copy of my manuscript back with all my male inclusives deleted by their editor, I realized Crossway despises God’s male inclusive. Never forget that.

I told them they had to put my male inclusives back in b/c God Himself ordained the male inclusive when he named our race—male and female—“adam,” which is to say “man” (Genesis 5:2 ). (H/T to Matt)

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