From: Fred Haltom (haltom@cbcag.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 08 1998 - 17:52:28 EST
Michael Olszta ask,
"Is it possible for a Bible translation to be THEOPNEUSTOS or is it
only possible that the original words penned by the writers of the New
Testament could be so? Please give your reasons why or why not."
Here's part of an article I recently wrote that addresses your
question,.but it is probably off topic for our list.
Inerrancy applies to the autographs. It is the original
documents written by the biblical writers themselves which are
inerrant. The autographs are "by inspiration of God." Inerrancy
derives from inspiration. However, no autograph exist today: we have
only copies of copies of what Moses or Paul or other biblical authors
wrote. Some claim that inerrancy is a mute point because we have no
extant inerrant autographs. However, we do have thousands of
apographs, i.e., Hebrew and Greek manuscripts hand-copied from the
original autographs. By comparing these apographs to each other,
scholars have reconstructed the autographs. The reconstructed
autograph is called a text. Throughout the history of the church,
there has been several accepted texts. We now know what the
original autographs said in over 99 percent of the words. In the
remaining one tenth of one percent where we are uncertain, no major
doctrine is affected. Plus, we know where these variant readings are
in the text. Our present Hebrew and Greek texts are, for most
purposes, the same as the original autographs, and the doctrine of
inerrancy therefore directly concerns the text. We affirm that the
text preserves the original inerrant message. This derivative
inspiration and inerrancy also applies to our English Bibles insofar as they
preserves the original message. Derivative inspiration and inerrancy
is taught in 2 Timothy 3:16. "All Scripture" refers to the Bible
used by the early church which was the Septuagint version. And the
Septuagint is a translation from a Hebrew text into common spoken
Greek. To the degree that translations preserved God's inspired and
inerrant message, they are useful for "doctrine, reproof, correction,
and instruction in righteousness." What is the value of various
modern versions? For the layman, the doctrine of inerrancy often
boils down to which version of the Bible is "the best," i.e., the
most accurate translation of the text. There are two basic
approaches to translating that gives rise to four types of
translations. The two approaches are "formal correspondence" and
"dynamic equivalence." The former attempts to keep a word for word
correspondence between the source language (SL, Hebrew or Greek) and
the receptor language (RL, English or other spoken languages). The
"formal correspondence" approach gives rise to two types of
translations: the highly literal and the modified literal. The
highly literal is like an interlinear word for word match resulting
in ambiguity and problems with idioms. The modified literal clarifies
idioms, accounts for meaning of words in their context, and retains
the linguistic form if it communicates in the RL. This is the
traditional method of translating and reached its peak in the
nineteenth century American Standard Version (ASV) of 1901. Most
versions prior to the 1960's are the modified literal type of
translation. The King James Version (KJV), Revised Standard Version
(RSV), and New American Standard Bible (NASB) are modified literal
translations. The second approach to translating is dynamic
equivalence. It assumes that the original message in the SL was
natural and easily understood by the original readers. So the RL
should be easily understood by today's readers as well. Two types of
translations come from this approach: the idiomatic and the unduly
free. The unduly free is often referred to as a paraphrase. It
sometimes substitutes historical facts or customs in the SL with
those accepted or understood in the RL. This tends to distort the
message, yet is said to "communicate" to the readers. The Ebonics
Bible is an example of this type. A good paraphrase is the Living
Bible. Next is the idiomatic translation. It seeks to convey to the
RL the same meaning and tone of the SL. The translator interprets
the sense in the SL and then restructures the message into the RL.
This sense for sense translation is done according to the needs of a
target audience (perhaps third grade children, like the NIV
Children's Bible). The Contemporary English Version (CEV), Today's
English Version (TEV), The Message (TM), and the New International
Version (NIV) are all examples of this idiomatic type. Since the
1960's the idiomatic type of translation has generally prevailed.
Your can e-mail me personally if you would like to discuss this
further.
Fred Haltom, Professor of NT Greek
Central Bible College
Springfield, MO
haltom@cbcag.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:38:50 EDT