Preface
This book was first suggested to me by the publisher and members of the Committee on Bible Translation as a measured response to recent controversies about translational theories on the one hand, and resulting translations based on these differing theories on the other. These matters are basically dealt with in chapter 2. Unfortunately, average readers of the Bible tend to choose their Bible on the basis of rhetoric, pure and simple, which they either believe or disbelieve.
While I was at first reluctant to interrupt another project to take this on, the opportunity to offer such a book as a companion to the first two “How to” books became attractive for several reasons. First, experience in the church has indicated that people know little about the what and why of Bible translations, so there is a tendency to make choices that are not especially discriminating. People “really like” one version or another but are often unable to articulate why. Thus, one of the aims of this book is to help the average layperson make an informed choice about which translation will become their basic Bible of use.
Second, occasionally I discover that people using a translation based on “functional equivalence” (see chap. 2 for this term) from time to time want to refer to one they consider more “literal” (= formal equivalent), in order to find out what the Bible really says. Similarly, those whose primary Bible is based on formal equivalence consult one based on functional equivalence to find out what the Bible really means! This needs probing.
A third reason is that as a longtime teacher of New Testament at both the undergraduate and graduate level, I sometimes had reason to say of a given translation that “the translators really got it wrong” at a given point. So when I was invited to join the Committee on Bible Translation, it was time for me “to put up or shut up.” Moreover, I had by then become conscious that any public disapproval of the translation most of my students were using was not only in “bad form,” but had the danger of disparaging the Bible itself. So joining the Committee became for me one of the great learning experiences of my life, not to mention a wonderful bonding with scholars from a variety of Protestant traditions who have become good friends.
Still another reason I found this project appealing was that some features of contemporary translations, although explained in the translators’ preface, tend to remain a puzzle to the average reader. This is true, for example, of footnotes that offer an alternative reading, either with a simple “Or . . .” or with the curious statement that “Some manuscripts read . . .” Some people probably wonder which reading — the one in the text or the one in the footnote — is the real Bible. It occurred to me that the opportunity to explain both the nature and limitations of Bible translation could bring real benefits to the church.
But it also became clear to me, even before I started on this book, that I would need help — lots of help — because although I have served on the Committee since 1990, translation theory is in fact an area that I have written on very little (except for chap. 2 in How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth). But in this case I needed help less with regard to the Old Testament as such than with issues related to translation in general. So I turned to a younger colleague on the Committee on Bible Translation, Mark L. Strauss, professor of New Testament at Bethel Seminary San Diego, who has spent several years both speaking about and writing on this subject.
Besides bringing many years of expertise on these matters to the project, Mark also helped to keep me from writing a book only for my generation of Bible readers, while I helped him not to forget that my generation still exists! While we hope this collaboration proves useful throughout, for us it became noticeably beneficial in chapter 4, on the matter of idioms. Here in particular we became aware of the speed with which English changes.
Mark and I also owe a considerable debt to my wife, Maudine, who read through every chapter with great care and with an eye toward the reader without technical expertise. Her own years of teaching in public schools in the fifth and sixth grades also brought another level of understanding to the task that we greatly valued. We are also grateful to those who read and commented on the manuscript, including linguist and Bible translator Wayne Leman, biblical scholars Karen Jobes and Doug Moo, graduate student Aaron Sherwood, Jimmy Brown of Athletes in Action, and our Zondervan editors Katya Covrett and Verlyn Verbrugge.
The end result, it should be noted, is a truly joint product. Mark and I were each responsible for the first draft of our selected chapters, but we worked together on all of them to give them a degree of uniformity helpful to the reader. Our greatest concern has been to make a sometimes technical, not to mention complex, subject as accessible as possible to as large a readership as possible. Our goal is to help people understand the differences among the various English translations and so to make an intelligent choice regarding the primary Bible they use.
Finally, a word about the title. The publishers came up with the suggestion that it be another “How to Read” book, but the nature of the subject matter made that problematic. For some time, at the publishers’ suggestion, we toyed with “How to Translate the Bible for All Its Worth.” But good sense finally prevailed, since the book is not intended to help people translate for themselves, but to understand the nature of translation and what lies behind the translation(s) they use. So the present title was settled on as serving both goals: we want people to understand how their “favorite” Bible version was created and to have the facility to choose a translation (or translations) that will serve them best.
Our ultimate concern, it must be emphasized, is not the content of this book as such, but that people will become both better readers and better students of God’s Word. We gladly dedicate this effort to our ultimate mentor in this exercise, John H. Stek, who was one of the original translators of the NIV and who for two decades chaired the Committee on Bible Translation (which produced both the NIV and TNIV) until his retirement in 2005. It is hard for us to imagine a Bible translator with more skill and sensitivity as to what good English is all about — English that is at once sensitive both to the divine nature of the biblical text and to what “works” with regard to the English language.
Gordon D. Fee
Lent 2007