Translation Theory

There is an ancient Jewish adage regarding translating the Scriptures, “One who translates a verse literally is misrepresenting the text, but one who adds anything of his own is a blasphemer.” Modern translators of the Bible continue to echo, in more sophisticated debate, the dilemma of this ancient bit of wisdom. The literal method of translation seeks to convey an exact sense of the words and the structure of the original language, while the paraphrase, or “dynamic equivalent” method, purposely recasts the essential “thought” of the original into the natural idiom and flow of the second language. The problem is that an overly naïve literalism easily becomes nonsense, while “recasting thought” can end up obscuring or even altering the richness of the original text.The TEB is decidedly on the “literal” side of this spectrum, although the concept of transparency better conveys its theory and method. The basic idea of transparency is that one should be able to “peer through” the English translation, and, to whatever extent possible, see, hear, and even feel, the dynamics of the original text. This includes alliteration, puns and word plays, idioms, rhythms, redundancies, and even obscurities—allowing the English reader an entrance into the complex world of the host languages, that all too often is the privileged domain of the specialist. Here are a few examples:Genesis 1:11 (TEB) reads: And ELOHIM said, “Let the land sprout the sprout, a plant seeding seed, a fruit tree making fruit, according to its type, its seed, within it, upon the land.” Here the play between noun and verb, reflecting the flow and rhythm of the Hebrew, is preserved. In contrast, the NIV has: “Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds,” and the NRSV reads: Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” All three translations are roughly equivalent in meaning, and the NIV and NRSV surely convey the Hebrew in good contemporary English, but they are opaque, rather than transparent, vis-à-vis the original text. The verbs “bring forth,” “produce,” “yield,” and “bear,” are fine in English, but “sprouting sprouts,” “seeding seed,” and even “making” fruit, wonderfully convey the flavor one gets when reading the Hebrew, while remaining easily comprehensible in English. In verse 20 the waters “swarm a swarm” of living beings, and “flyers fly” upon the earth.

In Genesis 2:25 (TEB) the man and woman are “nude,” while the serpent in the next verse is “shrewd”—in Hebrew the root word is the same, so there is a consistent attempt to point out such cases of a “play on words.” In Genesis 2:7 God “shapes the soil-man (Adam)—dust from the soil (adamah).” The root words are the same, and it is fascinating to see how this comes through in the English, as God later curses the soil, and sends the soil-man forth to work the soil, until he returns to the soil, from which he was taken!

Both Eve and Adam experience “distress”—hers in bringing forth children, and his in bringing forth bread from the earth (Gen 3:16-17)—but the Hebrew word is the same. The NRSV has “pain” for the woman, but “toil” for the man, interjecting a subtle but significant difference that the original text does not support.

In Genesis 6:11-13 (TEB) the earth is “ruined” through wickedness, because all flesh has “ruined” its way, thus God will “ruin them” with the great Flood. This sequence of interconnected ideas is important to bring out the narrative signals of the writer.

Genesis 2:22 (TEB) says that God “built the side that he took from the soil-man into a woman” in contrast to “made a woman from the rib” (NIV) or “made into a woman” (NRSV). The verb “build” here might not be our most natural English way of expression, and it clearly means that God “made” the woman, but the TEB allows the English reader to “see” through the English. There is a common Hebrew word for “make” (indeed God “makes” the land creatures in Gen 1:25), but the writer does not choose that verb in this sentence—so why should the English? The verb “build” is readily understandable, and is used throughout the Hebrew Bible in the most natural English sense, whether referring to a house, a boat, or here—a woman.

In Genesis 4:3 (TEB) we have the phrase: “And it came about, at an end of days.” This is translated “in the course of time” in both the NIV and the NRSV. Here the TEB explains in a note that the phrase in Hebrew refers to “an unspecified period,” but the literal Hebrew expression remains intact in the text, which also opens interpretive possibilities to the reader.

In Genesis 2:7 (TEB) “man became a living life-breather” which is the precise term used for the breathing animals in Genesis 1:20. The NIV and the NRSV not only lose the idiom, but, for the man they put “living being” and for the animals they put “living creatures,” injecting an interpretive notion into the English that is completely absent from the Hebrew. Older translations, such as the KJV, even have here “man became a living soul,” interjecting an unwarranted theological element. Here is a case where the loss of the idiom robs one of more than the colorful beauty of the language, it also interjects notions that one assumes are there when they are not.

In Genesis 2:16-17 (TEB) Adam is told “eating—you shall surely eat!”, referring to all the trees of the garden but one, but “dying—you shall surely die!”, if he eats the forbidden fruit. This colorful double use of the verb in Hebrew is common, and is a way of showing emphasis. The TEB retains this flavor and flow of language for the English reader. There is a refreshing “oral” quality to the text throughout. Many times the explanation “Look!” is used in Hebrew, to draw attention to a narrative. The TEB also translates the single conjunction “vav” consistently, in all places, as “and,” rather than supplying a whole list of conjunctions common in modern translations, such as: “then,” “but,” “so,” “when,” “or,” “now,” and “that.” Although these conjunctive ideas might be implied by the context of a given phrase or sentence, there is a wonderful “disjunctive” narrative flow in the Hebrew, as one moves through the texts, with the simple repeated flow of the English “and.” (see Gen 1:1-5). One has the impression that one is listening to a story teller, moving in rapid fire fashion from one vivid scene to another, allowing the hearer to paste it all together in his or her mind. The effect is rather extraordinary.

Throughout the TEB one constantly encounters refreshing and fascinating idioms that are found in the original Hebrew. For example in Genesis 29:1 we read: “And Jacob lifted his two feet, and walked toward the land of the sons of the east “ The NRSV has: “Then Jacob went on his journey, and came to the land of the people of the east,” while the NIV has: “Then Jacob continued on his journey and came to the land of the eastern peoples.” In Genesis 12:9 the TEB reads: “And Abraham pulled up stakes, walking, and pulling up stakes toward the Negev,” The NRSV simply has: “And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negev,” while the NIV has “Then Abram set out and continued towards the Negev.” When you get up early in Hebrew you “cause to shoulder up” (see Gen 22:3), a reference to packing up and loading the animals for a journey. All three versions are understandable in terms of the basic meaning, but the TEB offers the English reader a glimpse into the colorful way that Hebrew actually expresses such common ideas.

There are hundreds of such examples, almost on every page, and reading the TEB makes reading the Bible itself a new experience, even for those who are intimately familiar with the standard English translations: “And the nose of Jacob burned against Rachel,” when she complains about her lack of a child (Gen 30:2); Lot bows to the mysterious visitors who come to destroy Sodom, “two nostrils toward the soil” (Gen 19:1); Vindication is called a “covering of eyes” (Gen 20:16); and when Joseph’s hostile brothers see him they declare, “Look! the lord of the dreams yonder comes!” (Gen 37:19).

There are many cases, especially in the Hebrew Bible, where the text is simply unclear, uncertain, or obscure. The tendency of a translator is to provide some “solution,” or a kind of “best judgment,” as to the proper meaning. The TEB takes quite the opposite approach—where the original is uncertain or obscure, the English should reflect the same, remaining transparent for the reader, and leaving open a range of possible meanings. In Genesis 6:3 Yahweh declares (TEB) “My spirit will not contend with man for an age, in that he also is flesh—so his days are a hundred and twenty years.” The meaning remains obscure and possible variations of meaning are left for the footnotes rather than incorporated into the text. In Genesis 4:7 God says to Cain (TEB) “Is there not, if you do well, a lifting up? And if you do not do well, at the door is sin—a crouching one—and to you is his desire, but you shall rule over him.” The “lifting up,” possibly meaning forgiveness, is in contrast to Cain’s “fallen” face, in the previous verse. The noun “sin” is feminine, while the verbal form “a crouching one” is masculine—making their agreement problematic. The phrasing in Hebrew is choppy and disjointed, with the referents unclear, but the essential possibilities are left open with variations left to the notes. One of the most engaging examples is in Genesis 29:20 where Jacob serves seven years to earn Rachel as his wife, and, according to the TEB “they were in his eyes as single days, in his love of her,” which might imply the very opposite of the standard translation “but a few days,” or “only a few days” (NRSV, NIV). Perhaps Jacob is watching the days pass one by one, painfully waiting for the period to pass. At any rate, the TEB allows the reader to at least consider other interpretive possibilities.

The Biblical texts at times can be extremely repetitious, both in narrative style and vocabulary. Often translators are tempted to “smooth things out” a bit, forcing the original languages to conform more closely to modern English usage. Genesis 2:23 reads: (TEB) “This one, this time—bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh! This one will be called woman, because from a man this one was taken.” In Hebrew the feminine demonstrative pronoun (“this one”) is repeated three times in a single sentence. Genesis 11:6 (TEB) says: “This they begin to do, and now nothing is restrained from them of all that they have planned to do.” Both the NIV and the NRSV put “nothing will be impossible for them,” which is surely the meaning, and even much smoother English, but it removes the “flavor and flow” of the Hebrew text. In Genesis 11:10 (TEB) Shem “brought forth” Arpachshad, he subsequently lived five hundred years after his “bringing forth Arpachshad,” and he “brought forth” sons and daughters. The NIV tries to offer a bit of variation: Shem “becomes the father of” Arpachshad, then he “has” other sons and daughters, even though the same verb “brought forth” is repeated three times. The TEB attempts to be as consistent with vocabulary as good Hebrew or Greek usage allows. Genesis 27:4-14 mentions the tasty food that Isaac “loves” three times, but the NRSV varies between food he “likes” and food he “loves,” although the Hebrew words are precisely the same, and either expression is fine in English. There is no good reason to translate a single word, even if it occurs a dozen times in a short context, by several different English expressions in an attempt to interject variety. Often the very redundancy of the original text conveys a certain effect that is broken and lost by less precise translations.

In general the TEB attempts to render Hebrew and Greek words, wherever they occur, in a consistent manner, based as much as possible on their root meanings. This includes tying Hebrew and Greek together, conceptually, through the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Obviously, there are contexts in which a word can have more than one meaning, but there is no attempt in the TEB to multiply English terms in an attempt to produce a complexity that simply does not exist in the original language. For example, in Hebrew there are seven different words for the various types of moral failure, translated in most traditional versions rather arbitrarily and inconsistently by such English terms as sin, iniquity, wickedness, evil, and trespass. The TEB tries to get at the root meaning of each term, whether to “miss the mark, or err,” “to rebel,” “to twist or pervert,” “to be unjust,” and so forth, and then consistently stay with that English concept so that the reader can easily distinguish between this complex of terminology. English is an incredibly rich language with dozens of words for any given concept, reflecting subtleties sometimes absent from the Hebrew, and as often as not from the Greek as well. Even though classical Greek is quite rich in vocabulary, the Greek of the New Testament has its conceptual roots in the Hebrew Bible (as witnessed by the Septuagint vocabulary), and reflects a relatively simply spoken Greek, known as koine, that was common in the 1st century.

Theological and Ecclesiastical Vocabulary

Most modern translations are intended for liturgical and devotional use and incorporate a whole range of theological vocabulary that is far removed from the original historical and cultural contexts of the texts. In other words, the ancient text is made to serve our traditional assumptions and modern premises, rather than the other way around. Surprisingly, a long list of comfortably familiar theological terms, so common to all English translations, do not even occur a single time in the TEB—atonement, sanctification, covenant, soul, angel, Christ, church, redemption, salvation, baptism, and so forth. The word “atonement” comes from the Hebrew verb “to cover,” and whether one is burying a corpse with dirt, or symbolically “covering” sins with the pouring out of blood, the same term is used (see Gen 6:14 where Noah’s vessel is “covered” with pitch). The English word “soul” carries with it concepts of human uniqueness, and even immortality, in contrast to the Hebrew term that can refer to animals and even a human corpse (Num 6:6)! The words translated “angel” simply mean a “messenger,” and the same words, in Hebrew or Greek, are used for messengers of all types, whether they be human or from beyond this world. The word “Christ” or “Messiah,” is not a proper name, but a title or designation for an “anointed one,” and used in both Hebrew and Greek for a long string of priests and kings, sometimes in a “messianic” context, but often not. The Greek term translated “church” (ekklesia) throughout the New Testament, is used for an angry mob in Acts 19:32, and thus refers generically to an “assembly,” with no special connotations of “holiness.” The idea here is neither to be different for the sake of being different, nor to indulge oneself in iconoclastic jabs at the religious establishment, but something much more fundamental is involved. Not only do these theological terms interject a “flavor” absent from the original languages, more often than not they carry connotations that are misleading and simply incorrect.

A Manuscript Edition

The TEB will put the books of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament in their original manuscript order. This means that the Hebrew Bible (which Christians call the Old Testament), will follow the order of the Tanakh (Jewish canon), even in editions of the OBP that contain both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. This ancient division makes better sense, even for Christians, as it is the order known and reflected in the New Testament itself (Luke 24:44). The Hebrew Bible is divided into three divisions of 22 “books” or scrolls: Torah: Genesis through Deuteronomy; Prophets: Joshua/Judges, Samuel/Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Twelve Prophets; and Writings: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth), Esther, Daniel, Ezra/Nehemiah, Chronicles. The New Testament will contain the traditional 27 books, but in the five-fold division and order found in the oldest complete manuscripts: Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John; Acts; General Letters: James, Peter, John, Jude; Paul’s Letters: Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, Hebrews, Timothy, Titus, Philemon; Revelation.The TEB is based on the two oldest complete manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament: the Leningrad Codex and Codex Sinaiticus, respectively. In other words, much like the Jewish Publication Society translation of the traditional Masoretic text, the TEB will not be based on an eclectic text—even when it comes to the New Testament. Obviously, for the Hebrew Bible, we have not only variants of the Masoretic tradition, but the Greek Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls, plus the various versions such as the Samaritan (Pentateuch) and the Syriac. In the case of the New Testament we have the other great Codices (Vaticanus, Alexandrinus), Bezae, the so-called Textus Receptus, the thousands of papyri fragments, plus the versions (Syriac, Vulgate et al.). Rather than create an eclectic base text from these many dozens of sources, based on the principles of textual criticism, the basic English text of the TEB will be a translation of our two oldest complete manuscripts, with significant variant readings put into footnotes. The advantage of this method is that the reader always knows what text he or she is considering at any point (either Leningrad or Sinaiticus), and is still exposed to the rich and complex legacy of our multiple textual witnesses. Most modern translations end up being an eclectic blending of many manuscript readings in a scholarly attempt to “recover” the most original reading. The problem is that the English reader is easily lost with vague notes about the Hebrew or Greek being “uncertain,” the resulting translation labeled as “conjecture,” or references such as “other ancient authorities read” without any specifics. The TEB method is as clear as it is simple, and all significant variants will be cited in the notes. In fact, the TEB will be the first modern English translation to include all significant variants from the newly released Dead Sea Scrolls. Once again, the TEB offers the reader access to textual matters usually resolved by the translators, and imbedded, without sufficient explanation, in the resultant English text.