8 ms·

This may be off-topic but is there any consensus on what is the most accurate translation of the bible into English?

maxlybbert 7y ago
My “to-read” list is too long, so I haven’t actually read it, but personally I’m interested in “The Art of Bible Translation” by Robert Alter.
- war1025 7y ago
  Heard an interview with this guy on NPR about a year ago [1]. He made some comment about how he tried to make it more poetic than most translations. Then proceeded to give several examples where his translation sounded distinctly more awkward to me than the text he was replacing. For example, replacing "anoint" with "moisten" and "soul" with "life breath". [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/01/14/684120470/after-24-years-scholar-completes-3-000-page-translation-of-the-hebrew-bible https://www.npr.org/2019/01/14/684120470/after-24-years-scho...
  - maxlybbert 7y ago
    I don’t remember how I learned about that book at all. But I appreciate having another data point about the author. Thank you.
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    Um "anoint" and "moisten" have very different meanings in English.
- jlos 7y ago
  Robert Altar's book "The Art of Biblical Poetry" is mandatory reading for understanding Old Testament poetry. Hebrew poetry is based primarily on parallelism, as opposed to meter or rhyming as in English. Wonderful part about that is that parallelism, as opposed to rhyming or word-plays, translates well across languages.
  - maxlybbert 7y ago
    I’ll put that on my “to-read” list as well. Thank you.
burlesona 7y ago
I think the consensus is there can't really be a "best" translation. A quick google led me to this page which matches well the reasoning I've heard from most practicing Christians: https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/explore-the-bible/which-is-the-best-bible-translation/ https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/explore-the-bible/which-is-t...
gbear605 7y ago
There is no consensus since “the most accurate” isn’t a single goal. For instance, you could try to translate word-by-word, but then you’ll lose a lot of idioms. Or one translation might well preserve the poetic nature of a part of Genesis while leaving out the understanding of what specifics the poetry referred to. One commonly acclaimed translation is the ESV, which I’m familiar with and like the translation of, but it certainly has its problems.
- schoen 7y ago
  I know it's outside of the academic translation studies conversation, but I really enjoyed Douglas Hofstadter's Le Ton Beau de Marot, which contains dozens of translations of a single French poem, to emphasize how difficult a task translation is, how many different ways of doing it there are, and how many different purposes it can serve.
edflsafoiewq 7y ago
The NRSV is commonly used by scholars, but there is, of course, no such thing as a "most accurate" translation of the Bible.
- OJFord 7y ago
  Nor indeed of anything, from any language to any other.
sb057 7y ago
My personal preference (for accuracy, anyway) is Thomas Nelson's "The Expanded Bible", which provides alternate and literal translations, as well as important commentary (such as "wind" and "spirit" being the same word in Greek). No deuterocanon, unfortunately!
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  That is a nice translation available under Bible software based on the SWORD project if I remember correctly. I too like to use that one from time to time.
imjustsaying 7y ago
Any translation has a profound impact on the way the bible is perceived, so perhaps it is worthwhile to look directly at the source. Take this famous opener in the KJV bible for example: John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Well just what does it mean by Word? Turns out this is Koine Greek λόγος, logos. Logos not only means word, but it importantly also means reasoning, order, and logic. Logos has multiple senses that don't translate well into a single, word. This was a big revelation for me. https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Logos https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Logos
- RandomBacon 7y ago
  "reasoning, order, and logic" still make sense to me because I believe in theistic evolution - evolution is basically a tool that God used to get us where we are today. There is also Pandeism (where basically God ceased to exist because he became the universe). Scott Adam's book God Debris touches on this. FYI, (I'm not Catholic, but) the Catholic Church today holds that view that Science explains the how, and Religion explains the why. It was actually a Catholic priest that came up with the Big Bang theory. FYI continued, I believe everyone should be open-minded and respectful. I understand that my beliefs may be wrong (after all not all religions can be right at the same time). I believe people taking either side to the extreme does not help anyone, and I'm glad we can have reasonable, respectful conversations here on HN.
  - HNLurker2 7y ago
    Logos comes from the stoics also.
    - Jamwinner 7y ago
      Thats not correct, anthough many stoics adopted the common term. Its akin saying 'vibrations' today. What is the cirlejerk around stoicism these days? Is life for coders really that bad?
  - saiya-jin 7y ago
ars 7y ago
> most accurate translation of the bible into English? It's not really possible to do that. First of all many of the Hebrew words have multiple meanings, and all the meanings are intended. So how do you translate that? Pick one for the main translation, and add notes maybe on alternate meanings? Some translations do that. But there's more. Jews have a long history of what the words in the bible mean, but Christians don't. So when Christians translate the bible they will do so in a way that's different from what Jews do. Now you have a complicated question to answer. Who's right? Who has the correct translation? Christians will typically go by their best understanding of the Hebrew, but Jews will use their tradition. Next you have questions of intent. Take an idiom in English - if you translate it to another language it makes no sense. So what do you do with similar situations? Translate word for word? Try to understand that intent? How do you do that? Use the Jewish tradition on the intent? Something else? In summary: If your translation doesn't have an associated commentary almost as long as the main text you can be pretty sure it's not going to be accurate.
gumby 7y ago
Not only is there to such consensus, but there is an important (important beyond religious issues) lack of consensus of what is the most accurate text to be translated. Modern societies weren't the first to find absurdities and contradictions in holy texts. Early scholars decided to search for the "actual" underlying meaning. For if the gods are infallible, and failures in the text must be human failures trying to translate their gods' word into lowly human expression. In christianity this "hermeneutic" scholarship laid the groundwork for modern linguistics, hermeneutics and semiotics.[1] As for translations: I was surprised to learn that the biblical supposed prohibition on homosexuality dates in the English bible as far back as...1946. [2]. Which makes some sense; until at least Pope Urban, the Catholic Church was happy to perform both mixed sex and same sex marriages [3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hermeneutics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hermeneutics [2] https://medium.com/@adamnicholasphillips/the-bible-does-not-condemn-homosexuality-seriously-it-doesn-t-13ae949d6619 https://medium.com/@adamnicholasphillips/the-bible-does-not-... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_same-sex_unions#Policy_of_the_early_Christian_Church_and_Middle_Ages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_same-sex_unions#Pol...
- aeneasmackenzie 7y ago
  >Which makes some sense; until at least Pope Urban, the Catholic Church was happy to perform both mixed sex and same sex marriages That's not what your [3] says. >Nevertheless, Historian John Boswell argued that Adelphopoiesis, or brother-making, represented an early form of religious same-sex marriage in the Orthodox church. >Alan Bray saw the rite of Ordo ad fratres faciendum ("Order for the making of brothers") as serving the same purpose in the medieval Roman Catholic Church. John Boswell died of AIDS. No mention of how Alan Bray died, but he was also homosexual. Hardly impartial sources.
  - dan-robertson 7y ago
    I don’t particularly see how how this person died has a bearing on what he said.
  - foldr 7y ago
    Heterosexuals also have relevant biases. And your statement regarding John Boswell's death is crass and offensive.
aeneasmackenzie 7y ago
The Douay-Rheims translation is the most accurate. You can directly reconstruct the latin[1] from it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douay–Rheims_Bible#Modern_Harvard-Dumbarton_Oaks_Vulgate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douay–Rheims_Bible#Modern_Harv...
- voldacar 7y ago
  The Douay-Rheims is a translation of the Latin vulgate, which is itself a translation of the earliest Greek/Hebrew texts into Latin. The vulgate itself is imperfect, and the Douay-Rheims is more like a translation of a translation, so I wouldn't call it the "most accurate"
- Mikeb85 7y ago
  But Greek is the original language of the NT... And there's definitely translations directly into English and other languages from Greek...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
RickJWagner 7y ago
That's a question that will invoke a lot of passionate (and different) answers in the right circles.
sigzero 7y ago
The NASB is probably the best word for word one.
gniv 7y ago
I haven't looked into it, but this might be interesting to you: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/magazine/hebrew-bible-translation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/magazine/hebrew-bible-tra...
learc83 7y ago
The NET bible has very extensive translation notes. Basically anytime something is even slightly ambiguous there's a note with information on what the ambiguity is and why they went with the translation they went with.
fortran77 7y ago
https://www.artscroll.com/Products/STOH.html https://www.artscroll.com/Products/STOH.html
fortran77 7y ago
There's a reason traditional Jews read the five books of Moses in the original Hebrew (and why I was raised to be fluent in Hebrew, and also studied Aramaic, in addition to the Yiddish we used for daily conversation at home and the English I used outside in the United States).
- dang 7y ago
  Do you still have occasion to speak Yiddish?
  - fortran77 7y ago
    Sure! When I'm hanging out with Hasidim.
vlozko 7y ago
Short story: it’s complicated. But if you want to read up on something really fascinating about using technology to get the most accurate translation, look into CGBM: https://www.uni-muenster.de/INTF/Genealogical_method.html https://www.uni-muenster.de/INTF/Genealogical_method.html
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  Look into the Peshitta Bible. Whilst Greek manuscripts have come and gone. The Peshitta has remained untouched as far back as it goes.
giancarlostoro 7y ago
Fair warning: Brace yourself. It sounds on-topic enough. After years of being a Christian and reading and studying a number of Bibles and studying a bit of Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek (in order to read the source material, even if it's just to study simple words or phrases) I've got a few translations that are noteworthy. The most noteworthy for me is the Cepher Bible[0]. This one is pricey, but it covers everything I've seen and liked from the other Bible translations I will list. It restores the Aleph Tav throughout the Old Testament, which is all over the Bible and ommitted in basically all mainstream Bible translations. The significance of the Aleph Tav can be understood when you read the New Testament where Jesus in Revelation says "I am the Alpha and Omega" well this translation in Greek makes no sense, but if you take it to be "Aleph and Tav" and that He indeed said this to Hebrew Israelites, he is literally saying that He is the scriptures of the Old Testament, which flows with other claims such that He fulfilled the Old Testament. It's worth investigating. There's other things such as the mathematical error in Matthew being fixed up, which is a result of a mistranslation from Aramaic to Greek (check out Shem Tovs Matthew, considered to be the Original version of Matthew which was written in Hebrew not Greek!). There's other things like pointing out (and if you study that the New Testament was really written in Aramaic and then translated to Greek, not a popular thing, but if you do, you'll hear of some of these changes) that the whole phrase about a rich man getting to heaven is like a camel going through the eye of a needle was actually written in Aramaic to say it is like a ROPE going through the eye of a needle! Meaning they have to take apart all the different threads surrounding their soul, so they can fit through, or become humble, after all, you wont take your gold nor jewelry with you when you die. Then there's The Scriptures by ISR[1]. This one attempts to restore the names of God by showing them in Hebrew form, and the name of Jesus (Yeshua) in Hebrew as well. It also restores some of the names of different characters throughout the Bible similar to what the Cepher does. There's the HallelYah Scriptures[2] which seems to be really closely related to The Scriptures by ISR. This one's a little more extreme about restoring some names, and even more words, they also do not put any words in red like a number of Bibles because they found it 'too religious'. There's also the Aleph Tav Scriptures[3], which last I checked was only the Old Testament, but I believe the author's worked on the New Testament as well. I've written about the Aleph Tav in the former paragraph about the Cepher, if you really want to understand the Aleph Tav, this Bible is going to take you deep enough. Then for just plain regular reasing the CSB (formerly HCSB) is my personal choice. It's something you can read to people in a Bible Study who aren't interested in the depth of the scriptures. I wont link to this one since it's mainstream but one thing I do appreciate from them is the fact that usually in the front of their Bibles they will have a chart explaining where "Lord", "Lord God" and "God" come from in regards to Hebrew. There's too many Bibles that don't clear this up and it becomes confusing to follow the text, they also point out some other things. [0]: https://www.cepher.net/ https://www.cepher.net/ [1]: https://isr-messianic.org/publications/the-scriptures.html https://isr-messianic.org/publications/the-scriptures.html [2]: https://www.halleluyahscriptures.com/ https://www.halleluyahscriptures.com/ [3]: https://alephtavscriptures.com/ https://alephtavscriptures.com/ One final note: You can also get the app for the Cepher, they have a free version without some books that are not even in Catholic bibles. I leave one final note for anybody wanting more from the Bible as a fellow Christian / from a Christian perspective: scripture is revealed more than anything by God. So pray before you read. Some of my best readings have resulted from prayer.
crgwbr 7y ago
I’m personally a fan of the New World Translation [1]. It was first released in English, but has since been released in about 160 other languages as well. [1]: https://www.jw.org/en/library/bible/study-bible/books/ https://www.jw.org/en/library/bible/study-bible/books/
- goto11 7y ago
  Is that the Jehovas Witness translation? The word Jehova is itself a mistaken translation.
  - aetherspawn 7y ago
    It agrees with the Byington translation, as well as early King James versions and many other translations in that respect. But the most interesting testament to the accuracy of the NWT, I think, is that it uses parallel translations of texts from the era in languages other than Greek and Hebrew (for example Sumerian) that have definite article. This means that scriptures that are ambiguous due to the lack of grammatical constructs in Greek, are accurately represented. For example, John 1:1 reads “the word was a God” rather than “the word was God”. The same constructs elsewhere are assumed in most translations based on context, but modern context is based on doctrine, and doctrine is uninteresting for literary science.
    - jamesgeck0 7y ago
      NWT apologists often fail to mention that the Byington translation was published exclusively by Watch Tower until the copyright expired. I personally suspect they published it for the sole reason of justifying translation errors in the NWT. > The same constructs elsewhere are assumed in most translations based on context, but modern context is based on doctrine, and doctrine is uninteresting for literary science. Context determines meaning. If you discard context you cannot translate documents accurately, in any language. The NWT has the worst of both worlds. It discards the context of the original document in order to support doctrine. This can be seen in John 1:1. The language is not particularly ambiguous. https://carm.org/john-1-1-word-was-god https://carm.org/john-1-1-word-was-god
irrational 7y ago
I don't know about the New Testament, but I'd recommend Robert Alter's The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary for the Old Testament. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BN5HWWX https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BN5HWWX
jlos 7y ago
I studied Greek, Hebrew, and Bible translation for an undergrad, so I'll toss my two cents in. Accuracy depends on what your aiming for. There are two schools of thought on modern english translations, dynamic equivalence and formal equivalence. Formal equivalence tries to maintain as much as possible the linguistic and syntactical features of the original languages and will often prefer to leave ambigous language or difficult readings as they are. Sort of a 'window' into the original language. The English Standard Version is probably the best representative of this perspective. Dynamic equivalence tries to maintain as much as possible the affect and intention of the original languages, and so will often remove ambiguities, paraphrase passages, and make translation choices that limit alternative readings. The New International Version is both the most popular and pioneering translation in this regard.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Which is why most Christians (I know, in UK) use several translations. I go with NIV, NASB, MSG and if construing particular words will use blueletter to look at Greek/Hebrew.
- Terretta 7y ago
  If you want to aim for the epic feel of, say, Tolkien, try the New English Bible (“NEB”) from the dynamic equivalence school, which reads like literature and formats poetry as poetry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_English_Bible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_English_Bible Tolkien was at Oxford in 1925 - 1959, and wrote The Hobbit and LOTR during that time frame. NEB was kicked off in Oxford and Cambridge in 1946.
eru 7y ago
Donald Knuth made his own translation (of some part of the Bible): https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/316.html https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/316.html
ImpressiveWebs 7y ago
Read the book “Truth in Translation” by Jason BeDuhn[1]. He examines, IIRC, 7 different Bible translations and shows why many have translated specific passages in a biased manner. And he more or less declares a “winner”, with some caveats. It’s a really good, down-to-earth read that’s not too technical in terms of language discussion. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Translation-Accuracy-Translations-Testament/dp/0761825568/ https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Translation-Accuracy-Translatio...

My “to-read” list is too long, so I haven’t actually read it, but personally I’m interested in “The Art of Bible Translation” by Robert Alter.

war1025 7y ago
Heard an interview with this guy on NPR about a year ago [1]. He made some comment about how he tried to make it more poetic than most translations. Then proceeded to give several examples where his translation sounded distinctly more awkward to me than the text he was replacing. For example, replacing "anoint" with "moisten" and "soul" with "life breath". [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/01/14/684120470/after-24-years-scholar-completes-3-000-page-translation-of-the-hebrew-bible https://www.npr.org/2019/01/14/684120470/after-24-years-scho...
- maxlybbert 7y ago
  I don’t remember how I learned about that book at all. But I appreciate having another data point about the author. Thank you.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  Um "anoint" and "moisten" have very different meanings in English.
jlos 7y ago
Robert Altar's book "The Art of Biblical Poetry" is mandatory reading for understanding Old Testament poetry. Hebrew poetry is based primarily on parallelism, as opposed to meter or rhyming as in English. Wonderful part about that is that parallelism, as opposed to rhyming or word-plays, translates well across languages.
- maxlybbert 7y ago
  I’ll put that on my “to-read” list as well. Thank you.

burlesona 7y ago

I think the consensus is there can't really be a "best" translation. A quick google led me to this page which matches well the reasoning I've heard from most practicing Christians: https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/explore-the-bible/which-is-the-best-bible-translation/ https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/explore-the-bible/which-is-t...

gbear605 7y ago

There is no consensus since “the most accurate” isn’t a single goal. For instance, you could try to translate word-by-word, but then you’ll lose a lot of idioms. Or one translation might well preserve the poetic nature of a part of Genesis while leaving out the understanding of what specifics the poetry referred to. One commonly acclaimed translation is the ESV, which I’m familiar with and like the translation of, but it certainly has its problems.

schoen 7y ago
I know it's outside of the academic translation studies conversation, but I really enjoyed Douglas Hofstadter's Le Ton Beau de Marot, which contains dozens of translations of a single French poem, to emphasize how difficult a task translation is, how many different ways of doing it there are, and how many different purposes it can serve.

edflsafoiewq 7y ago

The NRSV is commonly used by scholars, but there is, of course, no such thing as a "most accurate" translation of the Bible.

OJFord 7y ago
Nor indeed of anything, from any language to any other.

sb057 7y ago

My personal preference (for accuracy, anyway) is Thomas Nelson's "The Expanded Bible", which provides alternate and literal translations, as well as important commentary (such as "wind" and "spirit" being the same word in Greek). No deuterocanon, unfortunately!

giancarlostoro 7y ago
That is a nice translation available under Bible software based on the SWORD project if I remember correctly. I too like to use that one from time to time.

imjustsaying 7y ago

Any translation has a profound impact on the way the bible is perceived, so perhaps it is worthwhile to look directly at the source. Take this famous opener in the KJV bible for example: John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Well just what does it mean by Word? Turns out this is Koine Greek λόγος, logos. Logos not only means word, but it importantly also means reasoning, order, and logic. Logos has multiple senses that don't translate well into a single, word. This was a big revelation for me. https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Logos https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Logos

RandomBacon 7y ago
"reasoning, order, and logic" still make sense to me because I believe in theistic evolution - evolution is basically a tool that God used to get us where we are today. There is also Pandeism (where basically God ceased to exist because he became the universe). Scott Adam's book God Debris touches on this. FYI, (I'm not Catholic, but) the Catholic Church today holds that view that Science explains the how, and Religion explains the why. It was actually a Catholic priest that came up with the Big Bang theory. FYI continued, I believe everyone should be open-minded and respectful. I understand that my beliefs may be wrong (after all not all religions can be right at the same time). I believe people taking either side to the extreme does not help anyone, and I'm glad we can have reasonable, respectful conversations here on HN.
- HNLurker2 7y ago
  Logos comes from the stoics also.
  - Jamwinner 7y ago
    Thats not correct, anthough many stoics adopted the common term. Its akin saying 'vibrations' today. What is the cirlejerk around stoicism these days? Is life for coders really that bad?
- saiya-jin 7y ago

ars 7y ago

> most accurate translation of the bible into English? It's not really possible to do that. First of all many of the Hebrew words have multiple meanings, and all the meanings are intended. So how do you translate that? Pick one for the main translation, and add notes maybe on alternate meanings? Some translations do that. But there's more. Jews have a long history of what the words in the bible mean, but Christians don't. So when Christians translate the bible they will do so in a way that's different from what Jews do. Now you have a complicated question to answer. Who's right? Who has the correct translation? Christians will typically go by their best understanding of the Hebrew, but Jews will use their tradition. Next you have questions of intent. Take an idiom in English - if you translate it to another language it makes no sense. So what do you do with similar situations? Translate word for word? Try to understand that intent? How do you do that? Use the Jewish tradition on the intent? Something else? In summary: If your translation doesn't have an associated commentary almost as long as the main text you can be pretty sure it's not going to be accurate.

gumby 7y ago

Not only is there to such consensus, but there is an important (important beyond religious issues) lack of consensus of what is the most accurate text to be translated. Modern societies weren't the first to find absurdities and contradictions in holy texts. Early scholars decided to search for the "actual" underlying meaning. For if the gods are infallible, and failures in the text must be human failures trying to translate their gods' word into lowly human expression. In christianity this "hermeneutic" scholarship laid the groundwork for modern linguistics, hermeneutics and semiotics.[1] As for translations: I was surprised to learn that the biblical supposed prohibition on homosexuality dates in the English bible as far back as...1946. [2]. Which makes some sense; until at least Pope Urban, the Catholic Church was happy to perform both mixed sex and same sex marriages [3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hermeneutics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hermeneutics [2] https://medium.com/@adamnicholasphillips/the-bible-does-not-condemn-homosexuality-seriously-it-doesn-t-13ae949d6619 https://medium.com/@adamnicholasphillips/the-bible-does-not-... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_same-sex_unions#Policy_of_the_early_Christian_Church_and_Middle_Ages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_same-sex_unions#Pol...

aeneasmackenzie 7y ago
>Which makes some sense; until at least Pope Urban, the Catholic Church was happy to perform both mixed sex and same sex marriages That's not what your [3] says. >Nevertheless, Historian John Boswell argued that Adelphopoiesis, or brother-making, represented an early form of religious same-sex marriage in the Orthodox church. >Alan Bray saw the rite of Ordo ad fratres faciendum ("Order for the making of brothers") as serving the same purpose in the medieval Roman Catholic Church. John Boswell died of AIDS. No mention of how Alan Bray died, but he was also homosexual. Hardly impartial sources.
- dan-robertson 7y ago
  I don’t particularly see how how this person died has a bearing on what he said.
- foldr 7y ago
  Heterosexuals also have relevant biases. And your statement regarding John Boswell's death is crass and offensive.

aeneasmackenzie 7y ago

The Douay-Rheims translation is the most accurate. You can directly reconstruct the latin[1] from it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douay–Rheims_Bible#Modern_Harvard-Dumbarton_Oaks_Vulgate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douay–Rheims_Bible#Modern_Harv...

voldacar 7y ago
The Douay-Rheims is a translation of the Latin vulgate, which is itself a translation of the earliest Greek/Hebrew texts into Latin. The vulgate itself is imperfect, and the Douay-Rheims is more like a translation of a translation, so I wouldn't call it the "most accurate"
Mikeb85 7y ago
But Greek is the original language of the NT... And there's definitely translations directly into English and other languages from Greek...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

RickJWagner 7y ago

That's a question that will invoke a lot of passionate (and different) answers in the right circles.

sigzero 7y ago

The NASB is probably the best word for word one.

gniv 7y ago

I haven't looked into it, but this might be interesting to you: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/magazine/hebrew-bible-translation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/magazine/hebrew-bible-tra...

learc83 7y ago

The NET bible has very extensive translation notes. Basically anytime something is even slightly ambiguous there's a note with information on what the ambiguity is and why they went with the translation they went with.

fortran77 7y ago

https://www.artscroll.com/Products/STOH.html https://www.artscroll.com/Products/STOH.html

fortran77 7y ago

There's a reason traditional Jews read the five books of Moses in the original Hebrew (and why I was raised to be fluent in Hebrew, and also studied Aramaic, in addition to the Yiddish we used for daily conversation at home and the English I used outside in the United States).

dang 7y ago
Do you still have occasion to speak Yiddish?
- fortran77 7y ago
  Sure! When I'm hanging out with Hasidim.

vlozko 7y ago

Short story: it’s complicated. But if you want to read up on something really fascinating about using technology to get the most accurate translation, look into CGBM: https://www.uni-muenster.de/INTF/Genealogical_method.html https://www.uni-muenster.de/INTF/Genealogical_method.html

giancarlostoro 7y ago
Look into the Peshitta Bible. Whilst Greek manuscripts have come and gone. The Peshitta has remained untouched as far back as it goes.

giancarlostoro 7y ago

Fair warning: Brace yourself. It sounds on-topic enough. After years of being a Christian and reading and studying a number of Bibles and studying a bit of Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek (in order to read the source material, even if it's just to study simple words or phrases) I've got a few translations that are noteworthy. The most noteworthy for me is the Cepher Bible[0]. This one is pricey, but it covers everything I've seen and liked from the other Bible translations I will list. It restores the Aleph Tav throughout the Old Testament, which is all over the Bible and ommitted in basically all mainstream Bible translations. The significance of the Aleph Tav can be understood when you read the New Testament where Jesus in Revelation says "I am the Alpha and Omega" well this translation in Greek makes no sense, but if you take it to be "Aleph and Tav" and that He indeed said this to Hebrew Israelites, he is literally saying that He is the scriptures of the Old Testament, which flows with other claims such that He fulfilled the Old Testament. It's worth investigating. There's other things such as the mathematical error in Matthew being fixed up, which is a result of a mistranslation from Aramaic to Greek (check out Shem Tovs Matthew, considered to be the Original version of Matthew which was written in Hebrew not Greek!). There's other things like pointing out (and if you study that the New Testament was really written in Aramaic and then translated to Greek, not a popular thing, but if you do, you'll hear of some of these changes) that the whole phrase about a rich man getting to heaven is like a camel going through the eye of a needle was actually written in Aramaic to say it is like a ROPE going through the eye of a needle! Meaning they have to take apart all the different threads surrounding their soul, so they can fit through, or become humble, after all, you wont take your gold nor jewelry with you when you die. Then there's The Scriptures by ISR[1]. This one attempts to restore the names of God by showing them in Hebrew form, and the name of Jesus (Yeshua) in Hebrew as well. It also restores some of the names of different characters throughout the Bible similar to what the Cepher does. There's the HallelYah Scriptures[2] which seems to be really closely related to The Scriptures by ISR. This one's a little more extreme about restoring some names, and even more words, they also do not put any words in red like a number of Bibles because they found it 'too religious'. There's also the Aleph Tav Scriptures[3], which last I checked was only the Old Testament, but I believe the author's worked on the New Testament as well. I've written about the Aleph Tav in the former paragraph about the Cepher, if you really want to understand the Aleph Tav, this Bible is going to take you deep enough. Then for just plain regular reasing the CSB (formerly HCSB) is my personal choice. It's something you can read to people in a Bible Study who aren't interested in the depth of the scriptures. I wont link to this one since it's mainstream but one thing I do appreciate from them is the fact that usually in the front of their Bibles they will have a chart explaining where "Lord", "Lord God" and "God" come from in regards to Hebrew. There's too many Bibles that don't clear this up and it becomes confusing to follow the text, they also point out some other things. [0]: https://www.cepher.net/ https://www.cepher.net/ [1]: https://isr-messianic.org/publications/the-scriptures.html https://isr-messianic.org/publications/the-scriptures.html [2]: https://www.halleluyahscriptures.com/ https://www.halleluyahscriptures.com/ [3]: https://alephtavscriptures.com/ https://alephtavscriptures.com/ One final note: You can also get the app for the Cepher, they have a free version without some books that are not even in Catholic bibles. I leave one final note for anybody wanting more from the Bible as a fellow Christian / from a Christian perspective: scripture is revealed more than anything by God. So pray before you read. Some of my best readings have resulted from prayer.

crgwbr 7y ago

I’m personally a fan of the New World Translation [1]. It was first released in English, but has since been released in about 160 other languages as well. [1]: https://www.jw.org/en/library/bible/study-bible/books/ https://www.jw.org/en/library/bible/study-bible/books/

goto11 7y ago
Is that the Jehovas Witness translation? The word Jehova is itself a mistaken translation.
- aetherspawn 7y ago
  It agrees with the Byington translation, as well as early King James versions and many other translations in that respect. But the most interesting testament to the accuracy of the NWT, I think, is that it uses parallel translations of texts from the era in languages other than Greek and Hebrew (for example Sumerian) that have definite article. This means that scriptures that are ambiguous due to the lack of grammatical constructs in Greek, are accurately represented. For example, John 1:1 reads “the word was a God” rather than “the word was God”. The same constructs elsewhere are assumed in most translations based on context, but modern context is based on doctrine, and doctrine is uninteresting for literary science.
  - jamesgeck0 7y ago
    NWT apologists often fail to mention that the Byington translation was published exclusively by Watch Tower until the copyright expired. I personally suspect they published it for the sole reason of justifying translation errors in the NWT. > The same constructs elsewhere are assumed in most translations based on context, but modern context is based on doctrine, and doctrine is uninteresting for literary science. Context determines meaning. If you discard context you cannot translate documents accurately, in any language. The NWT has the worst of both worlds. It discards the context of the original document in order to support doctrine. This can be seen in John 1:1. The language is not particularly ambiguous. https://carm.org/john-1-1-word-was-god https://carm.org/john-1-1-word-was-god

irrational 7y ago

I don't know about the New Testament, but I'd recommend Robert Alter's The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary for the Old Testament. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BN5HWWX https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BN5HWWX

jlos 7y ago

I studied Greek, Hebrew, and Bible translation for an undergrad, so I'll toss my two cents in. Accuracy depends on what your aiming for. There are two schools of thought on modern english translations, dynamic equivalence and formal equivalence. Formal equivalence tries to maintain as much as possible the linguistic and syntactical features of the original languages and will often prefer to leave ambigous language or difficult readings as they are. Sort of a 'window' into the original language. The English Standard Version is probably the best representative of this perspective. Dynamic equivalence tries to maintain as much as possible the affect and intention of the original languages, and so will often remove ambiguities, paraphrase passages, and make translation choices that limit alternative readings. The New International Version is both the most popular and pioneering translation in this regard.

pbhjpbhj 7y ago
Which is why most Christians (I know, in UK) use several translations. I go with NIV, NASB, MSG and if construing particular words will use blueletter to look at Greek/Hebrew.
Terretta 7y ago
If you want to aim for the epic feel of, say, Tolkien, try the New English Bible (“NEB”) from the dynamic equivalence school, which reads like literature and formats poetry as poetry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_English_Bible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_English_Bible Tolkien was at Oxford in 1925 - 1959, and wrote The Hobbit and LOTR during that time frame. NEB was kicked off in Oxford and Cambridge in 1946.

eru 7y ago

Donald Knuth made his own translation (of some part of the Bible): https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/316.html https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/316.html

ImpressiveWebs 7y ago

Read the book “Truth in Translation” by Jason BeDuhn[1]. He examines, IIRC, 7 different Bible translations and shows why many have translated specific passages in a biased manner. And he more or less declares a “winner”, with some caveats. It’s a really good, down-to-earth read that’s not too technical in terms of language discussion. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Translation-Accuracy-Translations-Testament/dp/0761825568/ https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Translation-Accuracy-Translatio...