On Bible translations

A recent visit to a local Christian bookshop is one provocation for this post. Another is reading Peter Simpson's Colin McCahon: Is This the Promised Land? Vol. 2 1960-1987 (Auckland University Press, 2020) on NZ’s (arguably) greatest artist, Colin McCahon, and seeing the impact the New English Bible translation made on him and his religious paintings.

Taking the bookshop first: I am bewildered by two observations looking at the Bible section of the bookshop. 

1. The available Bibles are dominated by (i) fairly recent translations published by North American publishers and (ii) the ESV (which is not so recent, and is a certain form of conservative Christianity’s go to successor to the KJV/RSV/ASB line (both evangelical and - in respect of some parts of the English-speaking world re "lectionary Bibles" - Catholic).)  

2. Thus very good English translations (such as NRSV, New Jerusalem Bible, Revised English Bible, Good News Bible, NIV, New Living Translation) are hard to find (at least in this particular shop). 

(Obviously such observations will vary from store to store, from Protestant store to Catholic store and so on.)

Apart from the obvious commercial consideration (a publisher will make more out of their own “brand” of translation than out of another translation that they (presumably) pay royalties on to the copyright holder of the translation), why would the English-speaking Christian world - at least as measured by what a bookshop thinks it can sell most of - move on from the translations I list above? What on earth is wrong with:

- NRSV: best, modern, scholarly, appreciated by Catholics and Protestants, inclusive (great for congregational reading in worship; better than ESV on that score) translation ever?

- New Jerusalem Bible: learned, readable, scholarly Catholic translation, widely appeciated by Protestants as well?

- Revised English Bible: updated successor to the fine New English Bible (more on that below) and with good ecumenical scholarship behind its updates?

- Good News Bible: brilliant translation within confines of deliberately limited vocabulary; and when supplied with Annie Vallotton drawings, the best ever illustrated Bible, and not particularly needing updating even as English speech has changed over the 50+ years since it first appeared?

- New Living Translation: fresh, vibrant English, easy to read - potentially the new Good News Bible of its day?

- NIV: ok if all the above impress you but you are keener on a translation skewed favourably by its evangelical translators, then this is for you and for me?

(I would be happy to put The Message in the list as well. There weren't many copies of it available in this store …!)

It is not as though, before we get to the actual plethora of very recent translations or current availability of diverse forms of publication of the ESV, that the English-speaking Christian world has been short of great translations. Who would need more than the six I list above to choose from?

Apparently we all do!

What is wrong here with even more choice in 2024? Arguably, nothing! Choice is good. The paper Bibles are printed on will be just the same amount of paper whether we have a choice of six translations or of sixteen (assuming something of a consistent rate of purchases among Christians). Etc. It does make it harder to have a sense of a common reading of Scripture together - though it could reasonably be argued that if we are not all reading the NRSV in church then we do not have a common reading whether the range beyond the NRSV is two or ten or twenty versions.

We might also add that the Bible has always been a “contested space”. Even when there was no translating going on, just copying of Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic texts in pre-printing press scriptoria, we know that various scribes sought to improve the text before them with the odd extra clarifying word or the subtle change which harmonised one text with another or made some difficult to understand sentence less difficult. Then when (in the English speaking world) translations took off, the much loved 1611 KJV was the outcome of several esrtwhile attempts through the previous century to form a widely agreeable text for the whole of the then English-speaking world.

Once, several centuries later, the stability and continuity of the KJV was no longer fit for a now changed English language, it was always unlikely that a “revised version” of the KJV would satisfy all across the UK/Commonwealth and USA, across Catholic and Protestant communities, and across theologically diverse congregations. Thus by the time the 19th century Revised Version gave way to the post WW2 Revised Standard Version (with various other Catholic and Protestant translations popping up through the first half of the 20th century), the character of 20th century English was ripe for the 1950s (JB Philips New Testament), 1960s (NEB New Testament, Today’s English Version (Good News Bible) New Testament, The Jerusalem Bible), 1970s (completion of NEB, GNB, emergence of The Living Translation) and 1980s (NIV, The New Jerusalem Bible).

If, then, within the particular “contest” of the diverse character of English (incuding the diverse character of its speakers: first language, second language; “American” v “British”; “popular” v “academic”), to say nothing of diverse nature of desired translations (word for word, meaning for meaning, somewhere in between), we allow that there was never going to be a “new KJV for the 20th and 21st centuries” which swept all other “wannabe” dominant Bibles before it (and, we might note, even the so-called New KJV has not particularly dominated the field of modern English Bibles), the question remains: do we need all the translations currently available? 

(My associated question: are we seeing the sweeping aside of wonderful translations in favour of North American publishing houses turning a profit on their “house” translations which have nothing much to commend them, relative to what is already in existence?)

Yet, without particularly wanting to support the most recent of translations and the publishers behind them, might we note that there has been an unhelpful tendency on the part of the major players of the mid to late 20th centuries to adjust/update their translations so that no particular moral authority exists anywhere in the English speaking world to stop others coming forward with new translations?

Consider:

While the NEB, dating from the early 1960s/70s, had some old fashioned English, so could have been updated by its publishers (i.e. the REB), has the REB met any particular need for a solid, academically very sound translation not already met by the NRSV? (And, the NRSV is better at inclusive language that the REB!)

The Bible Societies, while still publishing the Good News Bible, felt it had shortcomings in the market for “limited vocabulary” English Bibles, and so published the Common English Version (CEV). But was it really needed? Many years later it seems that the GNB is still around (albeit very, very hard to find in the Chch bookshop I mentioned above) and the CEV is … not so much.

Then what about the NRSV itself? Recently, its progenitors determined it was in need of an update, it seems in an even more inclusive direction re its language, so we now have the “NRSVUE” (NRSV Updated Edition). Well, OK, but if body A thinks an update in a particular direction of an existing translation is needed, why shouldn’t body B think a new translation is needed in another direction? What is wrong with some stability of availability of a translation? The KJV was available for some 270 years before the Revised Version came along. The NRSVUE has come along after some 30 - 40 years of the NRSV!

Put another way, could all Bible publishers, societies and committees just stop bringing out new or updated editions of their English versions! Let a season of settlement enter into our English speaking world. In 2100, let the wise owls of Rome, Geneva, Oxbridge, Harvard, Toronto, Melbourne, Dublin and Auckland get together and sift through the current practice of the congregational and individual reading of Scripture to determine, say, the top four versions, and then whether any or all of those versions need updating. Let’s then just publish those versions for the next 270 years!

How about that second provocation for this post?

For those unfamiliar with NZ art, Colin McCahon was (even in his own life-time) and is (in his works which live on) one of our foremost artists and probably our foremost "religious" artist, noting that a considerable portion of his prolific output of paintings focus on Christian themes. In the second volume of Peter Simpson's biography of McCahon (splendidly illustrated with reproductions of his paintings), he describes McCahon discovering the then still fairly new New English Bible New Testament (pp. 95-99), and cites from a 1969 letter McCahon wrote:

"Have you looked at the New English Bible (Oxford-Cambridge 1961) WOW. It says lovely things - like - Mary went to the place where Jesus was - " [ p. 96]

Simpson then references five works of McCahon's each of which consisted of a biblical text, worked from (in McCahon's words) "my rediscovery of the meaning of the story of Lazarus," i.e. from John 11 - these works themselves forerunners of much larger 1970 paintings. (See also Simpson's exposition on pp. 144-147.)

But, relative to this post, let's take the words noted above, "Mary went to the place where Jesus was" (John 11:32). In the KJV (which presumably was the translation McCahon was familiar with prior to his being gifted the 1961 NEB New Testament), these words are rendered, "Then when Mary was come where Jesus was". The freshness of the NEB is immediately obvious, and raises for the reader the life-giving thought, Might I, like Mary, go to the place where Jesus is?

But here is the thing, when I went to check my own NEB New Testament re these words, I could not find them. Instead, John 11:32 reads, "Mary came to the place where Jesus was". Subtlely different! What gives? On closer inspection, I have a copy of the 1970 Second Edition. Changes here and there have entered in, in the space of nine years. My point here is not to evaluate whether those changes are good, bad or indifferent. (The Greek points more to "came" than to "went to".) My point is that "we" keep changing the English text of Scripture, even within the tradition of a particular translation, and, so, the likes of, well, me, can scarcely complain when I go into a bookshop and see a bunch of new translations!

The NEB, incidentally, is a great translation - it has a feel for the English language which other translations - including the Revised English Bible do not have. Hard to get hold of a copy!