Why are there Differences between Bible Translations

Introduction

I think most people assume a discussion like we are having today about bible translations is meaningless. Either because they don’t think it is a big deal or because they have already made up their mind on what they think. With the bible translation battles that some churches have had, some would rather just have peace. When it comes to differences in bible translations, I do think it is an issue we can agree to disagree on, but that doesn’t make it an unimportant issue.

Tonight, I want to start in a passage in Galatians 3:16 “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.”

In this passage, Paul makes a theological argument. That argument is that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise because God made that promise to Abraham’s seed, not seeds. Paul is making a very particular argument based on one word. Honestly its based on a few letters in Hebrew; not even a whole word. His entire argument begins to fail without them.

Matthew 4:4 “But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

Every word of God is important. Jesus could have said, the words, or the word, but he chose to say every word. So the issue even if we disagree amongst ourselves, even if it is complicated is not an unimportant topic.

Up front here I have a couple copies of different translations of the English bible. I decided to open them to the same passage so you could compare them. The passage is:

John 1:5 “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”

John 1:5 ESV

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1:5 ASV

And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not.

Comprehend the way we understand it today means to understand something fully. So it paints the picture that the darkness can’t really grasp the light. The ESV translation says overcome meaning the darkness can’t conquer the light. Apprehend means to lay hold on something or arrest Well, which is it.

Many people would say well the ESV changed the word. That is possible, but you cannot make a comparison starting with the KJV. That presupposes that the KJV translators were always right in every decision they made. As we have seen God inspired his word in the originals in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic; then he preserved those words in those languages for us today. You and I don’t speak Greek and Hebrew fluently though do we? So someone had to come along and translate those words into English so we could read them. So if I have two translations that differ, where do I have to go to decide which on is correct? The original source text, the Greek and Hebrew.

Different translations make different choices about how they are going to translate. While much of the bibles still read the same, there are actually three main reasons why our English bibles read differently in certain places. Tonight, we are going to look at those three main reasons.

Textual Basis

If we are going to understand the differences properly, we need to know why they differ. The biggest reason many bible translations differ is because most modern bible translations follow a form of the critical text tradition while the KJV, NKJV, MEV and Simplified KJV follow the Textus Receptus tradition. We have already mentioned passages like Mark 16 and the story of the woman caught in adultery. Because the source text differs the translation is going to differ. Let’s look at a couple of these places where the translations differ based on text. Throughout this message I am going to compare the KJV and the ESV. I have chosen the ESV because if I held to a critical text position, this translation would be my preferred translation because it balances accuracy and flow of reading very well. It is also the most popular by sales out of the literal translations. The NIV surpasses it but I have chosen not to include it in our comparison for reasons you will see in a second.

Matthew 17:21 “Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.”

KJV onlyists will often claim that this verse has been omitted or left out of other translations. Again you cannot make that evaluation merely based on the KJV because it is possible that the KJV added it. The Byzantine family of manuscripts and the Textus Receptus have this longer reading while the alexandrian manuscripts and the critical text have the shorter reading. My goal in these messages is not to argue which is better because that would take much longer, but I desire to give you the information. All I will say is that I personally would follow the Byzantine reading which includes this verse.

Romans 8:1 “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”

In this passage, the difference is not the entire verse, but it does include the later half of the verse. You could potentially argue that this phrase being omitted loses some important doctrinal information and it does change the flow and implications of this verse. The counter argument would be that this phrase is found in vs 4 so you haven’t lost anything really. Again the Byzantine text family and the TR have this longer reading while the alexandrian texts and the critical text do not. The evidence really is split though א had three different scribes work on it. The oldest scribe did not have these words, but the second scribe added them back in.

Revelation 22:19 “And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.”

This one is interesting because as I mentioned Erasmus admitted that he used the latin at the end of his edition in Revelation. Most Greek Manuscripts have Tree of life The ESV follows this tradition because the critical text has tree, but nearly all Greek manuscripts even from the Byzantine family have tree. CK. Hoskier who did a comparison of all the Greek manuscripts of Revelation notes the few exceptions in his work.

The context of the passage also seems to lead us to think the correct word should be tree in vs 2, 14. Looking for clues in the context and the actual words used in a manuscript is looking at internal evidence.

Translation Philosophy

When it comes to bible translations, the translations might be looking at the same Greek text and still the translation will look different. Each translation is on a spectrum from literal to paraphrase. There are three main ways someone could choose to translate the bible:

Formal Equivalence- Most of your traditional bibles throughout history have been translated with formal equivalence. Formal equivalence seeks to get as close to the literal meaning of the word as you can. It often also seeks to follow the word order as best as possible which is why the KJV sometimes has places where the word order is hard to understand. A version of this called Optimal Equivalence focuses on the literal meaning of the word while not being tied down so much to the word order.

Because no two languages function exactly the same way and have the same vocabulary, exact literalness is technically impossible. There are going to be times when you cannot translate a word or phrase literally. One example is Exodus 34:6 “And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,” The word longsuffering is literally an idiom which reads the long nose of God. It is impossible from the words themselves to really get the idea of the idiom in English; so the KJV translators as all other translators do translate it dealing with the longsuffering of God.

Functional Equivalence- This method of bible translation also called dynamic equivalence was formulated by Eugene Nida in the 1950’s-1960’s. The main idea of this theory was that we should focus on translating the ideas of scripture from Greek to Hebrew and not be tied so much to the words themselves. It was largely the method behind the translation of the NIV. It still sought to translate individual words but to give the idea of each word. I personally reject a primarily functional translation because the very words of God are important. I would rather have the words and need to study to understand them, than have someone else tell me what they think they should mean in the text.

Paraphrase- a paraphrase is much like a commentary. They are not viewed themselves as the bible by most because they are so loose. A paraphrase is less tied to the words level and just gets the idea of the verse across. They can be helpful in much the way a commentary is but not as your normal bible.

As I mentioned earlier, every bible is on a spectrum from most literal to least. So you could have two bibles like the NASB and the KJV that are both literal but one is more literal than the other. You might be surprised to see that the NASB is more literal than the KJV. Personally, I find the NASB and LSB to be too literal for normal reading at times.

Translation Choices

There is a third reason that translations differ. Sometimes the differences in translation are neither because of the text or translation philosophy. Sometimes a word can mean one of two things and the translator has to choose which one matches the context the best. Sometimes a word has more meaning than can be conveyed in English and so the translator must choose the best way to get that across. One example of this is the perfect tense in Greek. The perfect tense is an action that was completed in the past, is presently true and is expected to continue on in the future. The KJV translates them as present tense verbs to emphasize the fact that they are presently true while most modern translation use our English Present perfect tense to translate which puts more emphasis on the completion of the action in the past. Both concepts are included in the Greek, but you would have to use a sentence for every English translation to convey the concept fully.

Other times a word might carry more than one meaning depending on context. The translator has to look at the context to decide which meaning is intended. Sometimes the words are merely synonyms with approximately the same meaning, but not always.

Philippians 4:5 “Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.”

Philippians 4:5 — ἐπιεικές

KJV:

“Let your moderation be known unto all men.”

ESV:

“Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.”

NASB:

“Let your gentle spirit be known to all people.”

NIV:

“Let your gentleness be evident to all.”

From these translations we see that there are really three ideas included in this word. If you look at the definition of this word in BDAG which is one of the most exhaustive lexicons or Greek dictionary, you will find this entry:

The same word can mean :

tolerant

gentle

yielding

So the translator has to make a choice based on context as to which it is. The only contextual clue I could find in this passage goes back to vs 2 with this debate between Eudias and Syntyche. The contextual implications seem to lean towards being gently reasonable towards one another. This fighting between believers does not bring glory to God and Paul is concerned that whatever this word means all men would know it about us.

Conclusion

I think that Phil 4:5 is a perfect verse for us to end on because this issue has caused many a fight among Christians and between churches, and bible colleges. While the differences are important and we should do our best to wade through them, we must also be fair in our evaluation. We need to realize that it isn’t as simple as pulling up two English bibles side by side and comparing them. If we are going to make an objective comparison we must go back to the source. We must also be reasonable. Be willing to agree to disagree with others. Have the conversations, but be willing to listen and teach. Finally, we must also be gentle. A unChristian spirit is often excused because of the importance of this issue. I want to leave us with one final verse:

James 3:14–15 “But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish.”