Sumpter 2013 - English Bible Translations - REVISED

1 English Bible Translations, Dr. Philip Sumpter (2012).
The following was translated into German by Christian Espelage and published as “Aktuelle englische
Bibelübersetzungen: Ein Überblick.” Bibel und Liturgie 85: 4 (2012): 293-311.
English Bible Translations: An

Overview of Current Versions
Contents
Introduction............................................................................................................................................. 1
1. Translation and Hermeneutics ............................................................................................................ 2
2. Overview of Select Translations .......................................................................................................... 4
The King James Version (1611)............................................................................................................ 4
Early Revisions of the King James Version .......................................................................................... 5
Revisions of KJV Revisions ..................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
Fresh Translations in More Idiomatic English ..................................................................................... 8
Easy-to-Read Versions ....................................................................................................................... 12
3. Translation Challenges ...................................................................................................................... 14
Transparency to Original Text ........................................................................................................... 14
Technical Theological Terms ............................................................................................................. 15
Figurative Language .......................................................................................................................... 15
Gender issues .................................................................................................................................... 17
Cultural Issues ................................................................................................................................... 18
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 18
Abbreviations of English Bible Versions ................................................................................................ 19
Introduction
The purpose of this essay is to provide an overview and taster of the most popular English Bible
translations in current use. It is hoped that the reader will not only be better informed as to the
nature of these translations but also be better equipped to choose the best translation for his or her
own purposes.
The challenge of providing a short yet useful introduction to this subject is that mere description of
the characteristics of each translation alone is too abstract to properly communicate a feel for their
character.1 On the other hand, extensive comparison of various renderings would exceed the bounds
1
The Internet is full of such brief summaries. See for example, the following:
http://www.tyndalearchive.com/Scriptures/index.htm; http://www.leeuniversity.edu/library/guides/bible-
of a short essay. In order to provide both an overview and a taster in the space provided I have
decided to present the information within three sub-sections. First, I will outline what is perhaps the
most basic challenge a translator of the Bible has to face, namely the question of the amount of
freedom he or she may exercise in rendering the text as intelligibly as possible. This brief theoretical
sketch will provide us with a rough typology by which to categorize the various translations that are
available. In this I follow the scheme provided by Gordon Fee and Mark Strauss in their helpful book,
How to Choose a Bible Translation for all Its Worth.2 Following this basic overview of current
translations, I provide a brief summary of the basic characteristics of some of the most popular
translations. With this basic introduction in hand, I then try to add “flesh” to the theory by illustrating
the ways in which the various versions have responded to some of the challenges faced by all
translators. My primary sources are the aforementioned volume by Fee and Strauss, Bruce Metzger’s
The Bible in Translation,3 and Raymond Van Leeuwen’s important article, “On Bible Translation and
hermeneutics.”4 At the end of this essay is a list of abbreviations.5
1. Translation and Hermeneutics

Texts desire to “make sense” to their readers. In order for this to occur, the reader of a text must be
in possession of three kinds of knowledge: 1) knowledge of the language system; 2) knowledge of the
text’s situation and co-text; 3) knowledge of the text’s factual and socio-cultural background.6 The
need for a translation arises when potential readers are not in possession of the first type of
knowledge, namely knowledge of the language system. A translation, however, can only indirectly
provide for the second and third types of knowledge.7 For text as ancient, foreign and intertextually
dense as the Bible, this deficit on the part of the reader can become particularly acute when trying to
grasp its message. How can a translation provide for this deficit in contextual knowledge (whether
historical or intertextual), thereby enabling maximum comprehension?
If one wishes to stick to the Bible itself without having to make reference to secondary literature
such as commentaries, there are a number of possible supplements that can be provided alongside
the text. 8 These range from explanatory footnotes, introductory summaries, and cross-references to
versions-english-list.aspx; http://www.hickoryrock.org/resources/English_Bible_Versions.html. Simply reading

the introductions to the various translations may also not suffice, as Eugene Nida notes: “most translations are
not accompanied by any explicit statement of the theory or principles involved in the production of the text. As
a result, only by analyzing the text can one ascertain the implicit principles. Even when a text does include a
statement concerning translation principles, a study of the text often reveals that quite different considerations
must have significantly influenced the work of the translators” (“Theories of Translation,” in Vol. 6: The Anchor
Yale Bible Dictionary [D. N. Freedman, ed.; New York: Doubleday, 1996], 512-515; here, 512).
2
Gordon D. Fee and Mark L. Strauss, How to Choose a Translation for All Its Worth: A Guide to Understanding
and Using Bible Translations (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007).
3
Bruce M. Metzger, The Bible in Translation: Ancient and English Versions (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic,
2001).
4
Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, “Bible Translation and Hermeneutics,” in After Pentecost: Language and Biblical
Interpretation (eds. C. Bartholomew; C. Greene; K. Möller; Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2001), 284-311.
5
An extensive list of modern English Bible translations along with their abbreviations can be found on
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_English_Bible_translations).
6
Goatly, A., The Language of Metaphors (London: Routledge, 1997), 138; cited in Van Leeuwen, “Translation
and Hermeneutics,” 286.
7
Van Leeuwen, “Translation and Hermeneutics,” 286.
8
Cf. Raymond Van Leeuwen, “Translation,” in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible (eds.
Vanhoozer, K. J., Bartholomew, C. G., Treier, D. J., & Wright, N. T.; London; Grand Rapids: SPCK; Baker
Academic. 2005, 812–814).
related verses, and translations differ in the way they provide for these. It is also possible, however,
to try and overcome the deficit within the translation itself by moving beyond a formal or word-for-
word reproduction of the original (often called a “literal” or a “formal equivalent” translation)9 and
finding an interpretive equivalent for what the original reader would have understood when reading
the text. These translations, coined “dynamic equivalent” or “functional equivalent” by the pioneer
translator Eugene Nida,10 set themselves the task of recreating within the contemporary reader the
same level of immediate comprehension that the author would have expected from his original
audience.11 They thus aim for maximum comprehension with minimum processing effort. This
approach has come to dominate English Bible translation since World War Two.12 Its advantages are
as follows: Reading the Bible is less strenuous, for it reads like a text out of one’s own culture rather
than a foreign one; reading is more natural, for the English is idiomatic rather than “wooden;”
meaning can often be clarified where a more literal translation may be ambiguous. Proponents of
this approach, however, also admit the following disadvantages: there is an increase in the level of
subjective interpretation; there is a reduction in the reader’s ability to infer the nature of the original
text lying behind the translation; there is a loss of the referential richness of metaphors when they
are reduced to their abstract “meanings;” there is a loss of Biblical intertextuality as a constraint on
meaning. Raymond Van Leeuwen has made this latter deficit programmatic for his own defence of
the traditional, “literalistic” mode of interpretation.13 As more recent scholarship on the nature of
the Biblical text has shown, the final form of the Bible is far more intertextually interwoven than has
often been assumed.14 He notes that idiomatic translations work better with oral texts, but not texts
that use a basic stock of vocabulary to weave their own worlds, whereby meaning is generated
inferentially within a larger literary context that generates its own interpretive “clues.” In other
words, more literal interpretations, despite their more unnatural English, are more adequate to the
Bible’s “peculiar mode of relevance.”15
My purpose here is not to make a case for the superiority of one particular translational method but
simply to provide a framework for appreciating the various strategies adopted by current English
translations. We should note, however, that the differences among translations on this matter are
more a matter of degree rather than an absolute either-or, for most “translations tend to mingle
features that range from ‘functional equivalent’ or ‘free’ to ‘literal’ or ‘direct.”16 With this caveat in
9 Word-for-word translation is never completely possible. For example, Fee and Strauss list the following
translations for the Greek word logos in the very literal NASU: reason, statement, word, accounts, thing, story,
news, matter, question, message, report, accounting, saying, account, speaker, complaint, exhortation
(Translation, 47-48). Similarly, the NIV, a “mediating translation,” translates the Greek word charis as follows:
grace, favour, credit, thank, goodwill, privilege (Translation, 48-49).
10
See, e.g., Eugene A. Nida and C.R. Tabor, From One Language to Another: Functional Equivalence in Bible
Translating (Nashville: Nelson, 1986).
11
Cf. Van Leeuwen, “Translation and Hermeneutics,” 300. Nida says, for example, that “correctness of
rendering can only be judged in terms of the way in which the intended audience is likely to understand a text”
(“Translation Theory,” 514).
12
Van Leeuwen claims that functional/dynamic equivalence now has almost universal hegemony in the West
(“Translation and Hermeneutics,” 289).
13
Van Leeuwen, “Translation and Hermeneutics.”
14
In Germany, the Old Testament scholar Georg Steins has been a particularly strong advocate of this insight.
15
Van Leeuwen, “Translation and Hermeneutics.” He writes: “One cannot simply translate words into
‘functional equivalents’ in the target language: the normative context for biblical meaning is the whole of
Scripture and its world” (291; emphasis original).
16
Van Leeuwen, “Translation and Hermeneutics,” 287. He adds that the differences are a matter, for example,
“of whether the normative emphasis is on the source or the target language.”
mind, we may nevertheless reproduce Fee and Strauss’s helpful classification of contemporary
translations according to their position on the “translation spectrum”:17
Translation Spectrum
Formal Equivalent Mediating Functional Equivalent
NASB KJV RSV NAB NIV JB NEB GNT LB
NASU NKJV ESV NRSV TNIV NJB REB NLT CEV
Tanakh HCSB NET GW NCV The Message
Beyond decisions concerning the use of footnotes, cross references, and interpretive or idiomatic
expansions, translations must also wrestle with the question of textual basis, format, intelligibility,
intended readership, etc.18 I will expand upon these more theoretical considerations with
illustrations from the various versions in section 3 below. In order to give the abbreviations listed
above a more concrete profile, however, I shall first describe the primary characteristics of the most
popular ones.
2. Overview of Select Translations

In what follows, I shall only focus on translations of the entire Christian Bible (i.e. translations of both
Old and New Testaments) and not translations that focus on the New Testament only. An exception
is my treatment of the Tanakh. A far more detailed history of English Bible translations than the one
provided here can be found in Metzger’s The Bible in Translation. Fee and Strauss provide a much
briefer overview to Metzger (including some more recent translations he does not discuss) at the
conclusion of their How to Choose a Bible Translation. My overview is largely dependent on these
two publications. There are also a number of helpful websites dedicated to the subject.19
The King James Version (1611)

The translation of the King James Version (KJV; 1611) was instituted by its namesake, King James VI
of Scotland, later King James I of England. His purpose was to create a standard English translation in
order to overcome the divisions that afflicted the English church of the time, and in order to do so he
enlisted the help of the Anglican Church’s best academics. It was in fact a revision of the so-called
“Bishop’s Bible” in light of the original Greek and Hebrew, although other English translations were
also drawn upon (e.g. Tyndale, Coverdale, Matthew, the Geneva Bible). The result was a “literal”
translation (though the translators were inconsistent on this),20 often remaining unintelligible where
the original could not be understood, yet nevertheless of such a high literary quality that, as we
know, it definitively shaped the English language.21 In contrast to the highly polemical Geneva
17
Fee/Strauss, Translation, 28; also 147. An example of differences of interpretation can be seen in Van
Leeuwen’s evaluation of the NRSV. Whereas Fee/Strauss classify it as a formal equivalent translation, Van
Leeuwen considers it to be functional equivalent. See Van Leeuwen’s analysis of Psalm 1:1 below.
18
This final concern is less important to formal equivalent translations, although, as can be seen in the more
theologically conservative renderings of the ESV (cf. Gen 1:1; Isaiah 7:14, both lacking footnotes noting
alternative translations), this is only relatively the case.
19
E.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Bible_translations;
http://www.hickoryrock.org/resources/English_Bible_Versions.html; http://www.bible-
researcher.com/versions.html (all accessed in May, 2012).
20
They were not often consistent on this; cf. Metzger, Translation, 74.
21
Fee and Strauss, Translation, 138, list the following English idioms that have their source in the KJV: “fall flat
on your face” (Numbers 22:31; escape by the skin of my teeth” (Job 19:20); “a fly in the ointment” (Ecclesiastes
(Reformed) and Douay-Rheims (Catholic) translations, which filled their marginal notes with polemic
against their theological adversaries, the KJV kept its notes to a minimum. In fact, that was an explicit
specification in the commission from King James. Their primary function was to highlight
uncertainties concerning either the wording or interpretation of the original text, sometimes giving
brief explanations of words or expressions.
One of the most criticized deficiencies of the KJV is inconsistency in both style and choice of
translations for Hebrew or Greek words. Sometimes one original word is given too much variety in
translation, sometimes too many original words are given the same translation. There are also
inconsistencies in the spelling of names (e.g. Jeremiah, Jeremias, and Jeremy). More seriously, the
quality of translation varies from book to book.22 For example, the Old Testament historical books
are translated better than the prophetic books. The most defective is the book of Job, which is
unintelligible in a number of places. Another weakness with respect readers today is the KJV’s textual
basis. At the time, there was no standard Hebrew text for the Old Testament and the Greek text used
was the late and corrupt version of Erasmus, as popularized and slightly modified by the Parisian
printer Stephanus and the Swiss reformer Theodore Beza. Stephanus called his edition the Textus
Receptus, or Standard Text, as advertising plug, but we’ll see that some Christian conservatives today
still buy that hype.
Despite these weaknesses, the KJV remained the authoritative translation until the 19th century. Even
today, as I discussed, there are branches of American Protestant fundamentalism that claim that this
translation is the only true and authoritative Bible.
Early Revisions of the King James Version

The first revision of the KJV was Revised Version (RV), undertaken in 1870 and published in 1881 (NT)
and 1885 (OT + NT). [A translation of the Apocrypha was completed in 1894 and included in an 1894
edition with . The project was initiated by Anglican leaders and involved the best British scholars of a
broad range of denominations. It was intended to update the KJV by making the critical basis of the
New Testament a new Greek edition by B.F. Westcott and F.J.A. Hort, which reflected the latest
manuscript discoveries and scholarship, and by correcting a variety of inconsistencies. Other
innovations of the RV were the arrangement of the text into paragraphs, laying out Old Testament
poetry as poetry rather than prose, and the inclusion of variant manuscript readings in marginal
notes. This translation came to enjoy quite a bit of success in England on the level of academic usage
and private study. It was also authorized for official use in the worldwide Anglican communion, but
was not widely adopted, partly because of controversy surrounding it but probably moreso because
the translation was painfully wooden. An example is its unnatural rendering of Luke 9:17: “And they
did eat, and were all filled; and there was taken up that which remained over to them of broken
pieces, twelve baskets.” (NB the OT translation was considerably better.) The Baptist preacher
Charles Spurgeon famously quipped that the RV “was strong in Greek but weak in English.”23 [One of
its most passionate critics, John Burgon, said it “reads like a first-rate school-boy’s crib,—tasteless,
unlovely, harsh, unidiomatic;—servile without being really faithful,—pedantic without being really
learned;—an unreadable Translation, in short; the result of a vast amount of labour indeed, but of
10:1); “pride goes before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18); “sour grapes” (Ezekiel 18:2); “pour out your heart” (Psalm
62:8); “everything under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:3, 9, 14, etc.).
22
Metzger, Translation, 77.
23
Fee/Strauss, Translation, 140, Metzger, Translation, 104.
wondrous little skill.”24]
[The stilted English of the RV was so thoroughly criticized that B.F. Westcott published a book
defending its painfully literal translation style: “the claim which [the translators] confidently make—
the claim which alone could justify their labours—is that they have placed the English reader far
more nearly than before in the position of the Greek scholar; that they have made it possible for him
to trace out innumerable subtleties of harmonious correspondence between different parts of the
New Testament which were hitherto obscured; that they have given him a copy of the original which
is marked by a faithfulness unapproached, I will venture to say, by any other ecclesiastical
version. . . . This endeavour after faithfulness was indeed the ruling principle of the whole work.
From first to last, the single object of the Revisers was to allow the written words to speak for
themselves to Englishmen, without any admixture of gloss, or any suppression of roughness.
Faithfulness must, indeed, be the supreme aim of the Biblical translator. In the record of a historical
Revelation no sharp line can be drawn between the form and the spirit. The form is the spirit.”25 This
is basically a manifesto for formalist translation. <discussion of the Cambridge philosophy of trans +
Westcott/Hort Greek bias>]
[The RV itself had a relatively short life and has long been out of print. A revision of it was initiated in
the 1930s, but the outbreak of WW2 scuttled that. After the war, rather than undertake a revision
(which was effectively done in the RSV), a joint committee of British churches was established to
produce an entirely new English bible, which would be called the New English Bible. But to rewind . . .
The British revisors of 1870 extended an invitation for American scholars to participate in their
revision. Starting in 1872, a team of 30 American scholars began submitting suggested revisions to
the British revision committee. An agreement was struck that any suggested revisions not accepted
by the British committee would be published as an appendix to the finished bible. In return, the RV
would be subject to an exclusive Crown copyright for 15 years, after which it could be published in an
American edition that would incorporate desired changes for the American market.
But in fact, by the 1890s unofficial editions of the RV started to appear in the US which incorporated
the American committee’s suggested changes. This prompted the university presses at Cambridge
and Oxford to release “Americanized” editions in 1898, and in 1901 Thomas Nelson & Sons published
the first official US edition, which became known as the American Standard Version (ASV). This
edition included additional changes that took it yet further away from the KJV.
Most striking was its consistent rendering of the divine name YHWH in the Hebrew text as “Je-
ho’vah” (6,823 times). The original vocalization of YHWH was probably “Yahweh.” But to refrain from
uttering the name of God, YHWH in the Hebrew Masoretic text very often carries the vowels for
“Lord” (Adonai), which is conventionally Anglicized as “Jehovah.” However, the ASV preface gives an
explicitly anti-Semitic reason for its universal use of “Je-ho’vah”: “the American Revisers...were
brought to the unanimous conviction that a Jewish superstition, which regarded the Divine Name as
too sacred to be uttered, ought no longer to dominate in the English or any other version of the Old
Testament.” Both the KJV and RV, and many modern bibles, render YHWY regularly as “Lord” or
“God” and only exceptionally (or not at all) as “Jehovah.” The KJV uses “Jehovah” in only seven
24
Burgon, The Revision Revised, 238.
25
Brooke Foss Westcott, Some Lessons of the Revised Version of the New Testament. London: Hodder and
Stoughton, 1897. 4-5
verses, and in three of those it is as part of compound place names. Later revisions of the ASV, like
the RSV and NASB, reversed this practice. Only Jehovah’s Witnesses found this to be a feature rather
than a bug. They published and used the ASV alongside their own New World Translation until 1992.
Less controversial and more enduring changes in the ASV were the dropping of “thees” and “thous”
(except when referring to God) and some other archaisms.26
While the ASV became the basis for further revisions, extending up the present, it did not displace
the KVJ as America’s bible of choice and its publication lapsed. But its original publisher, Thomas
Nelson, has more recently sponsored a new, direct revision of the KJV, produced by 130 American
evangelical scholars, called the New King James Bible (NKJV; 1985). Its purpose was to both
modestly modernize the language and provide a NT translation based squarely on the Textus
Receptus. This sets it apart from almost all other modern bibles, and it’s proven very popular.]
Descendants of the ASV

In the States, when the International Council of Religious Education acquired the copyright for the
ASV, a decision was made to revise its excessively literal style and take advantage of advances in
lexicography. Despite plans to make this an international project, the wars years of 1939–1945
meant that it remained an essentially American affair. The result was the Revised Standard Version
(RSV; 1952). The New Testament textual base of the 1971 second edition was the critical Greek text
adopted and ratified by the United Bible Society. Among the changes was the transfer of the ending
of the Gospel of Mark and the pericope of the adulteress (John 7:53–8:11) from the RSV footnotes
into the text, although the passages continue to be separated from the main text by a blank space
with explanatory notes to indicate that they were not part of the original Greek text. This translation
came to be the first ecumenically recognized version after later editions incorporated the Apocrypha,
or deuterocanonical books, as well those books recognized as canonical only by the Eastern
Orthodox Church. This ecumenical version was labelled the RSV “Common” Bible.
[[discussion of preface]]
Discovery of new manuscripts (the Dead Sea Scrolls and more Greek papyrus manuscripts of the New
Testament) inspired the National Council of Churches to inaugurate a new revision of the RSV, called
the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV; 1990). In addition to taking advantage of advances in
textual criticism, the revisers intended to improve paragraph structure and punctuation, eliminate
archaisms, attain greater accuracy, clarity, and euphony, and more gender-accurate language.27 This
version continues to be one of the most ecumenical of all English versions. In 1994 Oxford University
Press produced an Anglicised edition with British spelling, grammar, and punctuation, as well as the
adoption of a limited number of changes in wording in order to replace Americanisms. This version is
also popular among academics. The Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University, for example, voted
to adopt the NRSV as the recommended version for use in undergraduate courses in religion. Similar
decisions have been made at other British and American colleges and seminaries. The version was
also adopted by Oxford University Press for its 1999 The Common Worship Lectionary.
The publication of both the ASV the NRSV provoked concern among more conservative Protestants,
who felt that the translations had liberal tendencies. The first response came with the publication of
26
See Metzger, Translation, 103, for details.
27
Metzger, Translation, 156. For tables comparing the RSV and NRSV renderings along these lines, see pp. 157-
161. Metzger was the chairman of this translation committee.
the New American Standard Bible (NASB) in 1971, which was another revision of the ASV. Its
twofold purpose was “to adhere as closely as possible to the original languages of the Holy Scripture,
and to make the translation in a fluent and readable style according to current English” (from the
forward). It is the most consistently literal or formal equivalent of major English versions produced
over the last half century.28 Examples of this are its italicization of English words that do not have
direct Greek or Hebrew antecedents and the identification of verbs in the New Testament in the
historical present with an asterisk. The revisers reverted to the traditional format of the KJV, in which
each verse begins a new paragraph. New paragraphs are indicated by the use of boldface numbers or
letters. As mentioned, unlike the ASV, the NASB uses the traditional rendering of YHWH as LORD
rather than the ASV’s “Jehovah.” A further innovation is to print Old Testament quotations in the
New Testament entirely in small caps. Although they claim to base their Greek text on the most
recent critical edition of the New Testament, important deviations have been noted at several places
in the gospels (Matthew 6:13b; 12:47; 18:11; 23:14; Mark 7:16; 9:44, 46; 11:26; 15:28; Luke 24:12;
etc.)29 It’s a common opinion that the NASB lacks clarity and readability.30 This has been somewhat
improved in a 1995 update (designated the NASU), which removes some of the archaic language,
including the “thees” and “thous” that had been retained with reference to God in the original NASB
(carried over from the ASV).
2001 saw the publication of the English Standard Version (ESV), another conservative revision, this
time based on the RSV. Minor revisions were released in 2007, 2011, and 2016. The ESV has proven
very popular with evangelicals, who have pushed it into the current top five in sales, and Gideons
International has adopted it as its preferred modern English bible. So what prompted it? Its revisers
were uncomfortable with what they considered liberal tendencies in the NIV and NRSV (they
particularly did not like the adoption of inclusive language) while also being dissatisfied with the
wooden literalism of the NASB. Examples of the more conservative evangelical tendencies are their
return to the word “virgin” in Isaiah 7:14 and “propitiation” in Romans 3:5 (see section 3 below for a
discussion of this). Like the NASU, they have removed the RSV’s “thees" and “thous” with reference
to deity, have updated archaic language, and have adopted a moderate, though inconsistent, use of
gender inclusive language. Even though it’s estimated to differ from the RSV by only about 8% and
retains an emphasis on formal equivalency, it’s readability is greatly improved and rated on the
Flesch Reading Ease scale about 8th grade level.
Fresh Translations into Idiomatic English

Around the time that the Americans started to revise the ASV with the RSV, several Protestant
churches in Great Britain decided to begin a wholly new translation that made no attempt to stand
within the tradition of the KJV. The result was the New English Bible (NEB), published in 1970. Some
of the top British critical scholars and literary stylists were enlisted (in fact, C.S. Lewis was one of its
stylists). Signs of this scholarly involvement may be seen in their rearrangement of the text of certain
Old Testament passages in accordance with what some regarded as a more suitable sequence
(especially in Isaiah and Zecharaiah) and the use of square brackets to designate material considered
late additions to the text (e.g. Job 11:6b). The translators decided to omit the superscriptions to the
Psalms.
28
In the opinion of Fee/Strauss, Translation, 147.
29
30
Fee/Strauss, Translation, 147.
Characteristic of this version is its freedom of rendering the original. For example, the NEB adds,
“Those who sleep in death” (1 Thessalonians 4:13); “guardian angel” (Matthew 18:10); “tongues of
ecstasy” (1 Corinthians 13:8). It also uses periphrasis, rendering, for example, “scribes” as “doctors of
the law” and “saints” as “God’s people” (see the section below on “cultural issues” for a general
discussion). So the NEB marked a strong move in the direction of “functional equivalent” translation.
Although highly praised for its accuracy and fine literary style,31 the NEB has also been criticised for
its use of the kind of recherché language peculiar to British academics.32 An updated version, the
Revised English Bible (REB), appeared in 1989, removed the “thees” and “thous” used to address the
deity, reintroduced the Psalm headings, and revised the somewhat colloquial style. It also introduced
a moderate use of gender inclusive language. This is all good, and moves in a more conventional
direction, but it ends up feeling lacklustre in comparison.
Whereas the ESV may be seen as the conservative answer to the NRSV, the New International
Version (NIV; 1978) is analogous to the NEB in that it is an early theologically conservative
Protestant attempt to produce a translation that strikes a balance between form and content.33 The
project was huge, eventually costing about eight million dollars.34 The text has been printed in one
column and divided into sections with sections headings, making it inherently more readable. Its “use
of poetic structure is frequent and effective.”35 Still, it has some quirks. One unusual device is its use
of quotation marks to set off a word or phrase judged to have a non-typical meaning, such as
“sinners” (Matthew 9:10-11), “gods” (Psalm 82:1; John 10:34), “acts of righteousness” (Matthew
9:10-11); “seven(s)” (Daniel 9:24-27).36 One of a number of odd insertions was “your” in Matthew
13:32, which was made to read: “Though it [the mustard seed] the smallest of all your seeds.” This
addition was later removed, and most outright quirks have now been addressed. The NIV a very
popular bible for good reason; it seems to hit a certain sweet spot in what most readers expect in a
translation. One scholar summarized the its translation as “more colloquial than the Revised
Standard Version, less free than the New English Bible, and more literary than the Good News
Bible.”37
The NIV soon became one of the most widely used versions in the US, but a decision was made to
update it in order to keep up with changes in the English language and advances in Biblical
scholarship. The first update came in 1984, but it was very modest. Then in 2005 Zondervan
published Today’s New International Version (TNIV), which was a major revision. About a third of
the changes related introducing gender-inclusive language, together with hundreds of other changes
intended to increase accuracy. The reaction to it was viscerally negative, especially with respect to its
31
Though see some detailed criticisms provided by Metzger in Translationi,133-137; for the revised version of
the NEB, see 153-155.
32
Metzger provides the following examples: Stephen’s speech “touched [those who heard] on the raw” (Acts
7:54); advises the Corinthians to “have nothing to do with loose livers” (1 Corinthians 5:9); in Mark 4:21 the
lamp is put “under the meal-tub;” in 6:3 the congregation “falls foul” of Jesus. These are retained in the REB.
33
34
The costs were originally borne by the New York Bible Society, though the project was saved from financial
unviability by the publishing house Zondervan, which contracted with the New York Bible Society to be the sole
commercial publisher in America.
35
36
See Metzger, Translation, 140-141, for inconsistencies, such as the translation “Mary of Magdala” and “Mary
Magdalene” or the equivocation on the use of ancient or modern time units (e.g. “third hour”; “three in the
afternoon”).
37
attenuation of gendered language. Zondervan and the Committee on Bible Translation that produced
NIV listened to reader’s complaints, but did not retreat, admitting only that they’d stumbled in
presenting past updates, failed to bring readers along with them and "underestimated" their loyalty
to the 1984 NIV.38 The 2011 edition of the NIV, which is the current edition, largely retained the
revisions of the 2005 TNIV, and Zondervan burned its bridges to the past by discontinuing publication
of the popular 1984 edition. It seems to have been the right call. The NIV continues to be the top
selling translation in the US and, by one survey, the second most read translation of the bible after
the KJV.
Another conservative Protestant translation from the original languages which strives to be idiomatic
is the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB; 2004). It was produced by the Sunday School Board of
the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and is named after the publishing wing of SBC: Broadman
Holman. It was intended to serve as an alternative to the NIV for Southern Baptist curriculum and
ministry and is generally more literal than the NIV. Though following the current critical Greek text
for the New Testament, the HCSB is unique among modern versions in supplying many alternative
readings from the Textus Receptus in its footnotes (looking toward the NKJV which is based on the
TR). This coincides with the high regard for the KJV amongst Southern Baptists.
Non-Protestant Translations
Three fresh Roman Catholic translations of the original languages (JB, NJB, NAB) appeared in the
wake of Pope Pius XII’s encyclical in 1943 declaring the authority of the original text. The first
response in English was the New American Bible (NAB; 1970), which has its roots in the
Confraternity Bible of 1948. This translation has the honour of being the first English language
Catholic translation of the original languages. [Older ETs were based on the official version of the RC
bible, the Latin Vulgate.] The NAB sought to be ecumenical and so a third of its committee were
Protestants. In the Old Testament the translators drew upon other textual witnesses when the
Masoretic text was held to be corrupt (especially in the books of Samuel). In the case of the Psalms,
the basic text was “one which the editors considered closer to the original inspired form, namely, the
Hebrew text underlying the New Latin Psalter” (published in 1945).39 The translators felt free to
occasionally rearrange the text when they felt that the Hebrew text had been accidentally
disordered. One scholar has claimed that the translation has “a certain typically American quality of
English idiom—plain, flat, and matter-of-fact.” Yet an effort appears to have been made to give the
Psalms a “certain liturgical and literary timbre.”40 In fact, overall it’s clearly a translation intended to
be read aloud in liturgical settings. There was some criticism of the first edition for its “apparently
arbitrary divergences in the rendering of technical or quasi-technical words and phrases.”41 For
example, the Greek phrase hē basileia tou theou was variously translated as “the kingdom of God,”
“God’s kingdom,” “kingdom of heaven” (!), or “the reign of God,” all within a single chapter (Luke
38
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Today's_New_International_Version#cite_note-2 (accessed in May, 2012). After
completing this article I discovered the following review of the 2011 version of the TNIV: Rodney J. Decker, “An
Evaluation of the 2011 Edition of the New International Version,” Themelios 36:3 (2011), available online here:
http://thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/an_evaluation_of_the_2011_edition_of_the_new_internation
al_version/#_ftnref1.
39
Metzger provides the quote without its source (in Translation, 128).
40
41
18). These kinds of quirks have been revised out in the latest, 2011 edition called the New American
Bible Revised Edition (NABRE).
One other noteworthy characteristic of the NAB were its theological explanatory notes that seek to
elucidate what Roman Catholics call the sensus plenior (“fuller sense”) of Scripture. It has, for
example, a note on Genesis 3:15 (“I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your
offspring and hers”) that identifies Christ as the woman’s offspring. These theological notes are very
traditional Christian interpretations that often go back to the earliest Christian tradition, and were
regularly included in pre-modern bibles as part of what was called the Ordinary Gloss, but they are
not something found in other modern bibles. The current Catholic Study Bible, based on the 2011
revised edition, ____
The earliest response to the 1943 papal encyclical was from the French Dominican scholars at the
École Biblique in Jerusalem, who produced the French-language Bible de Jérusalem in 1956. This was
followed by the English Jerusalem Bible (JB) in 1966, which was translated directly from the original
languages rather than being a revision of the French. It was prepared by members of the British
Catholic Biblical Association, who included J.R.R. Tolkein (he translated the book of Job). The
scholarship is highly respected and takes into account the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The
language is contemporary (there’s no use of “thee,” “thy,” “thine,” “ye”; more weirdly, Goliath was
said to be one of the Philistine “shock-troopers” [1 Samuel 17:4]), “Yahweh” is used instead of LORD,
along with other contemporary translation choices. Traditional Catholic renderings are avoided, as
when the angel Gabriel says to Mary, “Rejoice, so highly favoured!”, rather than “Hail.” In fact,
there’s little to indicate that the translators have worked from a Catholic perspective.
1985 saw the arrival of an updated version, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB). Textual improvements
were been made, moderately gender-inclusive language introduced, and certain more traditional
renderings have been reintroduced (e.g. “blessed” for the JB’s “happy” in the Beatitudes). “Yahweh”
has been retained, but in general the translation is less delightfully eccentric and more conservative
while still being highly readable. The full version for the NJB contains excellent critical notes, but the
École Biblique is currently working on a new version of the Jerusalem Bible with even more extensive
notes organized according to subject area (e.g. historical background; intertextuality; history of
interpretation). The English version is called the Bible in Its Traditions and a unique feature will be its
incorporation of variant readings from the Vulgate, Septuagint, and Syriac textual traditions into the
translation (hence the name of the version). The official website along with English and French
samples can be found here: http://www.bibest.org/
1985 also saw the arrival of the Tanakh, published by the Jewish Publication society as an update of
The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text (1917). The literary style is sophisticated with a
large vocabulary. Needless to say, the ordering of books is according to the traditional Jewish
division, as found in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (the source of the Hebrew text). Like the NIV,
NEB and the Catholic versions I’ve mentioned, it is occupies a mediating position between formal and
functional equivalent. Nevertheless, the translators are candid about verses they do not understand,
so that one often finds the footnote, “Meaning of Hebrew obscure.” At Job 24:18, the footnote even
reads, “From here to the end of the chapter [verse 25] the translation is largely conjectural.” In 1999
the Jewish Publication Society issued the JPS Hebrew –English Tanakh, which contains both the
Hebrew and English text in parallel columns, allowing the reader to move rapidly from one language
to the other.
The most recent translation to be made directly from the original languages in the New English
Translation or NET Bible (NET; 2005). Its acronym is a reference to the fact that it was intended from
the outset as an online Bible. It was produced by more than twenty Biblical scholars sponsored by
the non-sectarian Biblical Studies Foundation (Bible.org). The NET’s most distinctive feature is its
inclusion of almost 61,000 notes, which provide interpretive options, alternative renderings, and
other insights into the original text. The rationale is that these notes should help the reader to “look
over the translator’s shoulder,” as it were. In addition to these notes, the NET provides study notes,
text-critical notes, and map notes. Although primarily an Internet version, it was also printed by in
2005.
Easy-to-Read Versions
If the NEB inaugurated an era of natural English translations, then credit could perhaps go to Kenneth
Taylor, the author of The Living Bible, Paraphrased (LB or TLB; 1971), for inaugurating a phase of
highly interpretive versions designed to make the Biblical message immediately apparent to its
readers. Taylor himself was not a translator; he simply paraphrased the ASV so that his children could
understand it. His paraphrase was so well received that Taylor founded his own publishing house:
Tyndale House Publishers. The LB was endorsed by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which
gave it a huge boost. By the mid-1970’s it had captured 46 per cent of the total US bible sale and
even today, surveys report it’s still the primary bible read by 5% of bible readers. That’s actually
amazing. As Taylor acknowledges in his preface, the theological perspective throughout is “a rigid
evangelical position.” This explains its free use of evangelical terms and what have been called
“revivalist clichés.”42 For example, the “righteousness of God” is paraphrased as “the way to heaven”
(Romans 3:21); “justification” becomes “glorious life” (5:16); “eternal life” is rendered “get to
heaven” (Mark 10:17) and “gospel” is rendered “wonderful story” (Mark 1:1) or “way to heaven” (in
quotation marks in Galatians 1:6). A Catholic version was produced in 1973 called The Way: The
Catholic Version.
Tyndale House Publishers went on to produce a complete revision of the LB in 1995: the Holy Bible,
New Living Translation (NLT). In contrast to the LB’s paraphrastic approach, the NLT is a true
translation from the original languages by eighty-seven scholars from various denominations.
According to its preface, its goal was to have “the same impact on the modern readers as the original
had on its own audience.” One example of this shift in focus is its translation of John 1:1. Whereas
the LB read, “Before anything else existed, there was Christ,” the NLT retains both the allusion to
Genesis and the Christological title “the Word”: “In the beginning, the Word already existed.”43 The
NLT uses gender inclusive language and its style of language is that of the average English speaker.
It’s reading level is about 7th grade. But in general it’s regarded as “ a clear, accurate, and reliable
translation.”44 A second edition was published in 2004, and minor revisions were issued again in
2007, 2013 and 2015. The NLT is a top-five selling bible and my overall favorite to just sit down and
read.
42
43
44
In 1976 the American Bible Society produced The Good News Bible (GNB; also known as Today’s
English Version [TEV] and recently renamed The Good News Translation [GNT]) in response to
requests from Africa and the Far East for translations suitable for non-native English speakers (the
apocryphal/deuterocanonical books appeared in 1979). It was the first English version to
intentionally adopt dynamic or functional equivalence as a translation technique based on the
principles developed by Eugene Nida and others.45 The New Testament was translated by Robert
Bratcher, a Baptist missionary to Brazil, in consultation with a committee, whereas the Old
Testament was produced by a team. The language is colloquial and foreign customs are reworded
(e.g. “anointed my head with oil” [Psalm 23:5] becomes “welcomed me as an honoured guest”). It
“has sometimes been criticized for oversimplifying the text and for imposing a uniform pedantic style
on the highly diverse styles and genres of Scripture.”46 It was revised in 1992.
In addition to the GNB, the American Bible Society undertook another translation specifically for
young readers called the Contemporary English Version (CEV; 1995). It’s translated from the original
texts and utilizes vocabulary familiar to children in grades one through three, so it’s even easier to
understand than the GNB. But there are many places where it may fairly be said to cross over into
paraphrase. For example, in Ephesians 2:8 where it conventionally reads, “For it is by grace you have
been saved, through faith,” the CEV translates, “You were saved by faith in God, who treats us much
better than we deserve.” Being made for children, the wording is often chosen to enable ease of
listening rather than reading. And the CEV preface clarifies that it is not intended as a replacement
for other translations but as “a companion—the mission arm—of traditional translation.”
Finally there is Eugene Peterson’s popular The Message (2002). Peterson’s work goes beyond
attempting to reproduce the original meaning in idiomatic English in order to focus on the
contemporary response of the reader. One reviewer has called it “a ‘translation of tone’ … bridging
the gap between the original languages and English, and between centuries of time and language
change, to bring to us [the bible] as it originally sounded.”47 It’s also been suggested, “The Message
intentionally eliminates historical distance not only with reference to language but also with
reference to time and culture.”48 To do this Peterson freely uses contemporary words like
“addendum,” “chagrined,” “consummate,” “curt,” “embryonic,” “perigee,” and “resplendent.” An
example is his rendering of Matthew 23:27. According to the NIV translation, Jesus accuses the
Pharisees of being “whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are
full of the bones of the dead.” In The Message, however, Jesus says to the Pharisees, “You’re like
manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it’s all rotting bones
and worm-eaten flesh.” In Colossians 1:20 Paul says, “Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated
pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in
vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the Cross.” 49 Rather
than being concerned with translation alone, Peterson has attempts to provide readers with a
transculturated bible.
45
46
47
See http://www.navpress.com/landing/bibles.aspx#05; cited in Fee/Strauss, Translation, 32, fn. 2.
48
49
Other examples of transculturation are P.K. McCary’s Black Bible Chronicles (1993) and Rob Lacey’s The Word
on the Street (2003).
3. Translation Challenges
Transparency to Original Text

Translations on the left of the spectrum in Fee and Strauss’s diagram in section 1 above have the
advantage that they are often transparent to the original text. A disadvantage is that such a
translation often leads to unnatural English and is liable to be misleading. For example, the beginning
of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:2 is rendered by the various versions as follows, arranged
in order of decreasing literalness (Fee/Strauss, p. 27)50:
“Then He opened His mouth and taught them, saying” (NKJV)

“And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying” (ESV)
“and he began to teach them, saying” (NIV, NCV)
“and he began to teach them” (NCV).
The Greek idiom uses two phrases, “open the mouth” and “teach,” in order to express a single
action. The literal translations of the NKJV and ESV have kept the form, yet not only is the English
unidiomatic, they create the impression that two consecutive actions are being stressed.
A similar difficulty arises when formal equivalent translations attempt to limit the number of
translations used for a single original word. For example, more literal versions will translate the
Greek word sarx in Luke 3:6 as “flesh”: “and all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (NASU, ESV,
NKJV, NRSV). This rendering is in line with its more common meaning, as found in other contexts,
even if in this context it is unnatural. Freer translations, however, specify the meaning in this
particular context as “people” or “humanity” (p. 27):
“And all people will see God’s salvation.” (TNIV)

“and then all people will see the salvation sent from God.” (NLT)
“And all mankind will see God’s salvation.” (NIV)
“and all humanity will see the salvation of God.” (NET)
“and everyone will see the salvation of God.” (HCSB).
On the other hand, a weakness of the freer approach is that it can make it difficult for the reader to
draw important inferences from the larger context. Van Leeuwen gives the example of 2 Samuel 13,
which describes Amnon’s rape of Tamar, the sister of Absalom. In this story, Amnon’s advisor
Jonadab is described as very ‘wise’ (hakam) (v. 13), yet it is difficult to imagine how such catastrophic
advice could be described with this adjective in English. This leads freer translations to reject the
normal translation of “wise” in this context (cf. LXX; Vulgate; Young’s Literal Translation; D-R) and
translate it as “crafty,” “shrewd,” “clever,” etc. (apart from the two English just referenced, no other
English translation I am aware of translates “wise,” not even formal equivalent ones like the NASU or
ESV).51 However, this translation masks the point of the story when read in context. The term
“wisdom” is a recurrent motif and is used to illustrate that even the best human wisdom can fail.52
A similar case can be found in the New Testament, where in 1 Corinthians Paul identifies himself as a
“wise [sophos] master builder” (NASU, NKJV), who has laid the foundation of the Corinthian church.
50
All page numbers of taken from Fee/Strauss, Translation.
51
Pace Van Leeuwen, who wrongly claims that the KJV translates the word as “wise,” when in fact it uses
“subtle.”
52
“Wise” does not in fact collocate with “builder” in English, so that many versions translation it more
idiomatically as “skilled” (ESV, HCSB, NRSV) or “expert” (NLT, NIV, CEV, GNT). Yet while these may be
contextually appropriate translations, the verbal allusion with the other uses in the term in chapters
1–4 is lost. In these chapters, Paul has repeatedly used the adjective sophos (“wise”) and the noun
Sophia (“wisdom”) in order to contrast the true wisdom of God with the false wisdom of the world.
Interestingly, the TNIV, a revision of the NIV, has recognized this and has thus changed the
translation “expert” to “wise” (Fee/Strauss, p. 56).
Technical Theological Terms

Advocates of functional equivalence often argue that technical theological terms such as
“justification,” “sanctification,” and “propitiation”, although rich in theological meaning, are
incomprehensible to average readers. As such, they use clearer English (Fee/Strauss, p. 58). Thus,
whereas the NIV and TNIV retain “justifies/justification” for dikaioō/dikaisis (Romans 4:25; 5:16, 18),
the NLT, GNT, and NCV speak of being “made right with God” (CEV: “made acceptable to God”). The
NIV, TNIV, NET, NLT, and GW use “holiness” or “made holy” for the traditional “sanctification”
(hagiasmos; Romans 6:19, 22), whereas others simplify further and translate “living for God” (NCV)
or “belonging completely to him” (CEV).
This is, of course, one place in which the particular theological persuasions of various translators can
become most visible, as can be seen in the list of translations for the Greek word hilastērion in
Romans 3:25:
“whom God put forward as an expiation” (RSV)

“whom God put forward as a propitiation” (ESV)53
“whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation” (NASB, NASU)
“God presented him [Christ] as a sacrifice of atonement” (NIV, TNIV)
“God sent him to die in our place to take away our sins” (NCV)
“For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin” (NLT, revised edition, 2004)
“For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God’s anger against us” (NLT,
1st edition, 1996).
Figurative Language
Literal translations tend to stick to the form, whereas freer translations focus on content. In the case
of typical Biblical idioms, the former emphasis may lead to unnecessarily stilted English, as when the
ESV, NKJV, and NASB translate Genesis 27:31 as “Isaac answered and said to Esa.” The Hebrew
infinitive lemor which stands behind the translation “and said” is a discourse marker with no English
equivalent and thus need not be translated at all. For this reason, all freer translations translate the
phrase simply as either “answered” (NIV, TNIV; cf. GNT) or “replied” (NET, NNB, NASU [a literal
translation!]; cf. NAB).
When it comes to more intentionally poetic language, however, the desire for “immediate
comprehensibility” by functional equivalent translations can become problematic, as this often
means that the “husk” of the literary form is replaced for its “actual meaning,” its true “kernel.” The
problem with “de-metaphorization” is that images contain a richness of meaning that is lost when
53
The difference between “expiation” and “propitiation” is that the “former carries the general sense of
satisfaction for sins through an atoning sacrifice, while the latter includes both … a sacrifice of atonement and
the appeasement of God’s wrath” (Fee/Strauss, Translation, 59).
they are reduced to just one interpretation. For example, a key word in the book of Ecclesiastes is
hebel, which means something like “breath, mist, fog.” This metaphor does not work well in English
however, so most English translations translate it according to an interpretation of its referent, such
as “meaningless” (NIV), “useless” (NCV; GNT), “futile” (NET), “[absolute] futility” (HCSB; Tanakh),
“absolutely pointless” (GW) or the more traditional “vanity”( KJV; cf. Vulgate vanitas; this is followed
by most “literal” versions such as the, NRSV, ESV, NASU, LEB, even Young’s Literal Translation; an
exception is the rendering of Eugene Petersen’s highly paraphrastic The Message : “smoke”). While
the meaning of the Hebrew is difficult, the problem with these renderings is that they preclude all
but one interpretation. Given the structural significance of the word, it can even bias one’s
interpretation of the whole book.54
The problem of abandoning the form of the text is particularly acute in texts dominated by the poetic
function, for in this genre form and content can hardly be separated. Van Leeuwen illustrates the
problem in his comparison of the rendering of Psalm 1:1 by the RSV and its less literal revision, the
NRSV:
Blessed is the man Happy are those,

who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners, or take the path that sinners tread,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers (RSV) or sit in the seat of scoffers (NRSV)
The former translation is not completely formal equivalent because it does not imitate the Hebrew
word-order, even though it could have done. It does, however, preserve the images, “so that the
verbs (walk, stand, sit) instantiate a gradual move towards the immovable stasis of sin.”55 It also
retains the Biblical image of the way, which resonates with similar imagery elsewhere in the canon.
The NRSV’s “functional equivalent” translation, however, thwarts this. Not only “is the movement in
the parallel verbs lost, but in attempting ‘gender inclusivity’ (plural ‘those’ for singular ‘the man’), the
Psalm’s overall movement from the individual to the group is lost. The reader is robbed of the
suggestive power of parallel phrases (e.g., ‘in x/y/z of 1/2/3 …’) and images which make it possible to
read more deeply and infer meaning more richly.”56
It is a characteristic of translations geared for younger, less capable, or non-native readers, to

transform other figures of speech that would not be difficult for an average reader. For example, the
54
Van Leeuwen, “Translation and Hermeneutics,” 302. Fee and Strauss offer the following examples of
interpretation of metaphors: Whereas most translations keep the imagery of God as “my rock” in 2 Samuel
22:2, the GNT translates it as “my protector,” whereas the CEV keeps both the metaphor and its abstract
meaning: “my mighty rock, my fortress, my protector”; the idiom in Matthew 6:3 “do not let your left hand
know what your right hand is doing” is rendered by the CEV as “don’t let anyone know about it,” and by the
NCV as “don’t let anyone know what you are doing;” the first edition of the NLT (1996) translated “spare the
rod” in Proverbs 13:24 with the abstraction, “refuse to discipline your children,” whereas the 2004 revision
reintroduced the metaphor with an explanatory phrase, “spare the rod of discipline.” Van Leeuwen provides an
interesting example from the Jewish Tanakh. It translates, “Circumcise yourselves to the LORD; remove the
foreskin of your hearts” in Jeremiah 4:4a as, “Open your hearts to the Lord, Remove the thickening about your
hearts” (with a footnote to “open your hearts” containing: “Lit. ‘circumcise’; cf. Deut. 10.16 and 30.6”)
(“Translation and Hermeneutics,” 292).
55
56
Van Leeuwen, “Translation and Hermeneutics,” 290. The progression of verbs is preserved in the KJV, ESV,
NASU, NIV, LEB, it is lost in the HCSB, NLT, Tanakh, NET, NCV, GW, GNT, NIrV. Fee and Strauss have a more
detailed discussion on poetry on pp. 69-72.
NCV renders the rhetorical question in Mark 2:7, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?”, as a direct
statement: “Only God can forgive sins;” the NLT adds the explanatory word “taunted” to Mark 15:18
in order to make clear that the speech genre is sarcasm: “Then they saluted him and taunted, ‘Hail!
King of the Jews!’” (the CEV writes: “they made fun of Jesus and shouted”); the synecdoche in the
following phrases, “sin with his lips” (NASU) and “die by the sword” (TNIV), is clarified as “sin in what
he said” (TNIV) and “die in battle” (NLT, CEV).
Gender issues
Given the growing sensitivity to patriarchy in language, a number of recent translation and revisions
of translations (e.g. RSVNRSV; NIVTNIV; see also the NET, NLT, GW, CEV, NAB, NJB, NRSV, REB,
NCV, GNT, NIrV) have sought to introduce gender inclusive language in those places where the
intended referent is not gender specific. Thus, whereas the NIV translates Romans 3:28 as, “For we
maintain that a man is justified by faith,” the TNIV reads, “a person is justified by faith.” Whereas in
Matthew 12:12 the ESV reads, “Of how much more value is a man [anthrōpos] than a sheep!” (cf.
HCSB, NASU, NKJV, NIV), the TNIV renders it, “How much more valuable is a human being than a
sheep!” (cf. NLT, NET, NAB, NRSV, GNT, NCV). The same applies to renditions of the Greek adelphoi,
“brothers”, which usually carries an inclusive sense. Thus, whereas the more literal versions have
stuck with the form of the word, rendering it either “brothers” (NIV, ESV, HCSB) or the more archaic
“brethren” (KJV, RSV, NKJV, NASU), freer translations render it “brothers and sisters” (TNIV, NLT,
NET, GW, NCV, NRSV). The ESV helps clarify its literal translation by consistently adding a footnote at
its first occurrence in each book telling the reader that the term is often gender inclusive.57
Whereas most of the gender inclusive translations above have sought to improve translational
accuracy by only translating those terms as gender inclusive which would originally have meant as
much, there are a few feminist versions, such as The New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Version
(1995) and The Inclusive Bible (2007), which seek to eliminate patriarchal references in the Bible.
As we have already seen in the NRSV rendering Psalm 1:1 above, inclusive language translation can
also cloak important meaning. Van Leeuwen gives the example of gender inclusive translations of
“the old man” and “the new man” in, e.g., Romans 6:6 and Colossians 3:9-10 (KJV; NKJV; LEB; NET;
ASV) as your “old/new self” (interestingly followed by the ESV, NASU,RSV, which are otherwise
avowedly literal on this matter; see also the NRSV, NIV, HCSB, and all functional equivalent
translations). As Van Leeuwen puts it: “Paul here is referring to putting on Christ, ‘the new man’, the
second Adam—which is of course Hebrew for ‘man’ … .The NIV [amongst others] has here obscured
Paul’s presentation of Christ (not the ancient or modern reader’s ‘self’) as the last Adam who
establishes a new humanity in himself, so that our ‘life is hidden with Christ in God’ (Col. 3:3).”58
An interesting challenge for inclusive language translations are those verses in which Jesus himself is
described as a ‘man’, although it would appear that it is really his humanity rather than masculinity
that is at stake. Thus, whereas the NIV translates 1 Timothy 2:5 as follows: “For there is one God and
one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (cf. NKJV, RSV, ASV, ESV, NASU), the
TNIV, the NIV’s more gender sensitive revision, reads, “For there is one God and one mediator
57
For a discussion of ambiguous cases where, for example, the clearly gendered Greek noun anēr is used
inclusively (e.g. Matthew 12:41; 14:35; James 1:12), see Fee/Strauss, pp.102-103.
58
Van Leeuwen, “Translation and Hermeneutics,” 291. He concludes: “It is better that Christian readers realize
that they do not understand what the text is saying when they encounter a phrase like ‘the new man’, than
that they assume they know when they do not” (291).
between God and human beings, Christ Jesus, himself human” (cf. NRSV, NLT, HCSB, LEB, NET, NCV,
GW, GNT). This move becomes more difficult, however, in those places where an analogy is drawn
between Adam and Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:21 reads, “For since death came through a man, the
resurrection of the dead comes also through a man” (NIV). How much is Paul’s message
compromised in the TNIV’s rendering: “For since death came through a human being, the
resurrection of the dead comes also through a human being”?
Cultural Issues
We saw in section 1 that lack of knowledge concerning the context of a text inhibits our grasp of its
meaning. When it comes to words for foreign concepts or institutions, formal equivalent translations
usually reproduce the literal meaning whereas more interpretive translations paraphrase the
language in order to make it more immediately comprehensible. Fee and Strauss provide us with the
following examples (p. 8): Whereas most translations translate mathētai as “disciples”, the NCV uses
“followers”; the term “synagogue” is translated as “Jewish meeting place” by the CEV; “covenant” is
rendered “promise” or “agreement” by the CEV, GW, and NCV; Israel’s “tabernacle” is identified in
some versions as “the Tent” (GNT; CEV, GW) or “the Holy Tent” (NCV). The traditional translation of
grammateis as “scribes” (KJV, RSV, NASU, NRSV, ESV, REB, NAB, NJB) is variously translated as
“teachers of the law” (NEB, TNIV, GNT), “experts in the law” (NET), “teachers of religious law” (NLT),
or “teachers of the Law of Moses” (CEV).
Another move made by freer translations is to make explicit what was implicit to the original readers.
For example, “the Jordan” (TNIV) is clarified as the Jordan “River” by the NET, NLT, CEV, and GW.
When the TNIV, NET, and ESV tell us in Genesis 37:29 that Reuben “tore his clothes,” the NLT and
GW add “in grief”, whereas the CEV and GNT add “in sorrow.” The “Asherah poles” of the Canaanites
are translated by the CEV as “the sacred poles they use to worship the goddess Asherah” (cf. GW,
GNT). The NCV simply says “Asherah idols.” Finally, whereas the TNIV simply talks of the Pharisee and
the tax collector in Jesus’ parable in Luke 18:10, the NLT adds “despised” to the latter character in
order to show how Jesus’ contemporaries would have felt when hearing the term.59
Conclusion
In this article I have provided both an overview and a taster of some popular English Bible
translations. In section 2 I provided a summary description of the source, character, and purposes of
the most popular translations, presented in roughly chronological order and in terms of their theory
of translation (formal equivalent or functional equivalent, the latter approach characterizing the later
translations). In section 3 I took a thematic approach, providing concrete examples of different
responses to the challenges that every translation must face. My dependence on Metzger’s The Bible
in Translation and Fee and Strauss’ How to Choose a Translation is evident and these books should be
consulted by those desiring more information about the history and character of the translations
mentioned above along with a number of other translations not discussed here.
None of the authors cited in this article, each involved in translation projects themselves, claim that
only one translation or translation type is sufficient. All recognize that different translations serve
different functions and must be chosen accordingly.60 Nevertheless, they do have their favourites.
59
See Fee and Strauss, pp. 88-90, for more examples.
60
Van Leeuwen, for example, has dedicated his article to defending more literal approaches, against the
general popularity of functional equivalent translations. Nevertheless, he contributed to the New Living
For example, Eugene Nida, writing in 1992, suggests that the RSV would be a great text for a
traditional, ecclesial context, the GNB for a common language translation, and the NEB for a literary
text.61 Fee and Strauss, writing in 2007, suggest that the NRSV is the most reliable of the formal
equivalent versions (though see Van Leeuwen’s comments on Psalm 1:1 above), the TNIV is the best
choice for a mediating version, and the NLT, especially in its 2004 revision, is an accurate, clear and
readable functional equivalent version. For my part I share Van Leeuwen’s concerns about literalism
as discussed in section 1 above and, pace Fee and Strauss, am uneasy with gender inclusive
translations (their enthusiasm for this approach explains, at least in part, their preference for the
NRSV and TNIV).62 For this reason, I tend to use the ESV, primarily because this is the most recently
updated formal equivalent version (I find the English of the NASU slightly unnatural and appreciate
neither their capitalization of pronouns referring to God nor the fact that each verse is written on a
new line, rather than being organized in clearly visible natural paragraphs [see summary above]).
Either way, as we have seen, all translation is to a degree a betrayal of the original meaning, so that
we can never do without the help of scholars trained in the original languages. In addition to this,
meaning—an in particular Biblical meaning!—must be wrestled for. As Van Leeuwen puts it, “The
Bible is not just a book to read, but rather a book to read, study, and, as it were, to live in.”63
Abbreviations of English Bible Versions

ASV American Standard Version
CEV Common English Version
D-R Douay-Rheims
ESV English Standard Version
GNB Good News Bible
GNT Good News Translation
GW God’s Word
HCSB Holman Christian Standard Bible
ICB International Children’s Bible
ISV International Standard Version
JB Jerusalem Bible
KJV King James Version
LB Living Bible
LEB Lexham English Bible
NAB New American Bible
NASB New American Standard Bible
NASU NASB Update
NCV New Century Version
NEB New English Bible
NET New English Translation
NIV New International Version
Translation (NLT) and, as a Protestant, considers such translations “most successful as an aid to evangelism and
for unsophisticated readers” (“Translation and Hermeneutics,” 308).
61
Nida, “Translation,” 513. As mentioned above, the GNT was the first translation to explicitly draw on the
theory of “functional equivalence.”
62
Fee and Strauss were on the committee responsible for the TNIV.
63
NIrV New International Reader’s Version

NJB New Jerusalem Bible
NKJV New King James Version
NLT New Living Translation
NRSV New Standard Revised Version
REB Revised English Bible
RSV Revised Standard Bible
RV Revised Version
TEV Today’s English Version (older name for GNT)
TNIV Today’s New International Version

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1 English Bible Translations, Dr. Philip Sumpter (2012).

English Bible Translations: An

1. Translation and Hermeneutics

versions-english-list.aspx; http://www.hickoryrock.org/resources/English_Bible_Versions.html. Simply reading

2. Overview of Select Translations

The King James Version (1611)

Early Revisions of the King James Version

wondrous little skill.”24]

Descendants of the ASV

Fresh Translations into Idiomatic English

Transparency to Original Text

“Then He opened His mouth and taught them, saying” (NKJV)

“And all people will see God’s salvation.” (TNIV)

Technical Theological Terms

“whom God put forward as an expiation” (RSV)

Blessed is the man Happy are those,

It is a characteristic of translations geared for younger, less capable, or non-native readers, to

Abbreviations of English Bible Versions

NIrV New International Reader’s Version

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