The Bible in English: Paraphrases

The first group of Bible versions in English that I'll give my thoughts on are paraphrases.

As the name of this group implies, these are not actual translations of the original languages of Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic into English. These are merely an individual's or group's attempt to take an existing translation (or existing translations) and reword them into a new version. Usually this is done in order to make the Bible more readable and easier to understand. Also, these paraphrases are usually done with the intent of removing "archaic" or "religious" words such as verily, sanctification, salvation, redemption, propitiation, and other words that the general public may not be familiar with.

The epitomes of this group is The Message and The Living Bible Paraphrase.

My general take on this group is that I don't like them. First of all, I grew up in church and using the King James Version. From the time I was a small child, I heard and used those archaic "thees and thous" and the religious words like sanctification. So, I readily admit, I am not in the target audience for these versions of the Bible. But these versions just don't "sound like the Bible" to me. They sound like, well - what they are, someone explaining what the Bible says - but not the actual Bible itself. As one of my friends said upon reading a passage from "The Message" for the first time, "It sounds like this guy is just talking about [the Bible]. I don't like it."

Aside from my general distaste for them, I have actual reasons for not appreciating this group.

The Bible was not written in English. If you are trying to capture the original intent of the authors (or, better yet, the Author - God), it's better to go as close to the source as possible. Every translation is going to have words that could have been better translated as other words. Translation is an act of humans - it is not perfect. There will be errors. Rewording an imperfect translation only adds a layer of room for error.

It's like the telephone game - where one person whispers into the ear of another, and that person tries to repeat it to the person behind them, and so on. Pretty soon what is said is completely different than the original phrase. Or it's like making a copy of a copy of a copy on a copying machine. The more layers of copies, the less clear the result is going to be.

Another problem I see with paraphrases is that these are usually the work of one man. A single individual sitting down with a few translations of the Bible, and then rewriting it in his own words. There are no checks and balances there. There is no accountability. There is no editorial review. With most modern translations (and there are a few exceptions), there are usually 50, 100, or more people involved in the translation process. Everyone from thelogians to language experts, from novelists to editors, from people who speak Greek or Hebrew natively to those who know ancient customs and cultures better than today's. There is a ton of expertise that goes into a (good) modern translation. Even the King James Version of 1611 had over 40 translators, and has been revised several times since then. One person taking the task of rewriting God's Word on his own... Well, that's bound to run into problems.

Finally, these paraphrases aside from lacking the accountability and expertise that a team of translators have to offer, they often reflect - without question - the personal beliefs of the person doing the paraphrase. Let me put it this way. A Catholic Priest, a Jewish Rabbi, and a Baptist Preacher walk into a store... No wait. If each of those 3 men was given the task of paraphrasing the book of Leviticus - you'd get three completely different books. Even if you narrowed it down to 3 Baptist - a independant, fundamental, KJV-only, Premillienial, Pre-Tribunal Baptist preacher, a liberal, CCM playing, ecumenical-leaning Southern Baptist professor, and a speaking-in-tongues, pew jumping choir director from a big city Baptist church - they will each paraphrase the book of I Corinthians pretty differently.

Because of these reasons, and my resulting relative lack of familiarity with many paraphrases, I don't really have a "favorite" in this category. A paraphrase done by a team specifically for children may qualify, but that's about the only reason I see much value in paraphrases. But even then there are actual translations that are based on the original languages that could better fit the bill. They can be used to give you someone else's opinion of what a given passage is saying - but I would never use a paraphrase as my main Bible, and I would never use it to preach or teach out of - except, like I said, in limited qualities to perhaps illustrate a given point in a hard-to-understand passage.

Disclaimer: (from the previous post on this subject). I am a Christian, and therefore I believe that the Bible is the Word of God and is in its original manuscripts inspired ("Breathed by God" or God - through His Spirit - moved men to write it), infallible (above reproach, withstanding any line of questioning), and inerrant (not one factual, scientific, historic, or spiritual error in the whole book). All of my conclusions on which translation/translations are best are viewed through this bias.

5 Types of Translations

In my study of the various translations, versions, and paraphrases of the Bible in English, I've noticed similiarities among many of them. So much so that I began to, at least in my own mind, group them together into 4 or 5 categories. These are the ones I'll use for our discussions.

• Traditional texts - Usually well over 100 years old. The epitome of this group is the King James Version. Others would include Websters, Tyndale, The Bishop's Bible, Wycliff, and the Geneva 1599.
  
• Paraphrases - Not actually a translation, these versions come from usually an individual going through one or more English translations, and then rewording the English, usually to try to make it easier to read or bring out points that may be hard to discern in a more literal translation. The epitomes of this group is The Message and The Living Bible Paraphrase.
  
• Specialty Translations/Versions - Translations or paraphrases that were made for specific groups or uses. For example, the International Children's Bible was (as should be obvious) written to be easily read by children. The Complete Jewish Bible was written to emphasize the Jewishness of the Bible, even so far as to dividing the New Testament (which, is called the "B'rit Hadashah" in this Bible) into sections to be read in Synagogue, and using the traditional Jewish names for the books (which seems to result in less books in the Old Testament, but they are all there just named differently) and Jewish names are used throughout, even when the original language was Greek. Others include the Bible in Basic English (for Deaf or Hard of Hearing English readers), the New International Readers' Version (for children), and the New Life Version (for those to whom English is a second language).
  
• Easy-to-read/Today's Speech - Translations whose goal was to make the Bible easy to read for modern readers. There is a sliding scale here - the ease of reading or natural sounding in the receiving language, in this case English - as compared to the accuracy to the original language (Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic). Translations in this group lean heavily towards the ease of reading side of the scale. The New Century Version, Contemporary English Version, Today's English Version, and others fall in here.
  
• Middle of the road - On the sliding scale described above, these fall in the middle, trying to both sound natural in English, but remaining as true as makes sense to the original languages. Where compromises may take place is in areas such as idioms and expressions that may not make sense to modern readers. Like "He covered his feet" means "he used the bathroom". Of course, they didn't have actual bathrooms during the time of King David, but "covering one's feet" doesn't carry much meaning today. Examples: New International Version, New Living Translation 2nd Edition.
  
• Word-for-Word Translations - The other extreme of the scale. As close to the original languages as the translators can get and still be properly formed English. A few examples: English Standard Version, New American Standard Version Updated Edition, New King James Version.
  

We'll get more in depth as time allows. And I'll tell you which ones I like from each category, and which category I like best, and why.

Please remember my "Disclaimer" from the previous post on this subject. I am a Christian, and therefore I believe that the Bible is the Word of God and is in its original manuscripts inspired ("Breathed by God" or God - through His Spirit - moved men to write it), infallible (above reproach, withstanding any line of questioning), and inerrant (not one factual, scientific, historic, or spiritual error in the whole book). All of my conclusions on which translation/translations are best are viewed through this bias.

Translating the Bible into English

I've been collecting and studying up on various translations of the Holy Bible. That is to say translations from the original Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic into English. My favorite translation has always been, and will continue to be from what I've seen, the King James "Authorized" Version. It was first completed in 1611, but there have been several updates since then, (and I'm not referring to the New King James Version or the Update King James Version, or any other variation), if you go to a store and pick up a King James Bible, it's probably one of the revisions from the 1700s, primarily the 1769 version.

Over the next several days, (unless I get it all out in a day!) I'm going to be sharing some of my thoughts on specific translations, as well as the general trends of these translations, versions, and paraphrases. You should know that there are well over 300 different versions of the Bible in English, so I will by no means reviewing them all. And I'm probably going to stick mostly with the ones still on store shelves today, but I will bring a few others out as examples as well, since I am going with the information I have available to me, which includes several out-of-print versions. I'll also mention a few that are primarily if not solely available online.

It needs to be noted that I am a Christian, and that I believe that the Bible is true, and is, in fact, God's Holy Word. I'm not coming at this without any kind of bias or opinion. I believe that the Bible was inspired by God, and in its original manuscript, it was infallible, inerrant, and 100% acruate, so my judgments of the translations will be based on those assumptions.