Translating the Bible is a vexed task | Hacker News Reader

Translating the Bible is a vexed task

economist.com

53 pointsMoSattler176 comments

Since the article is kind of shallow, here are a few atypical approaches to Biblical translation I’ve found interesting over the years:

• The Five Books of Moses, by Everett Fox, who attempts to retain in English the underlying poetry of the Hebrew like alliteration, meter, wordplay, and so on. (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/55160/the-five-book...)

• The Books of the Bible: not a new translation (it’s just the NIV), but rather than a typical modern Bible which is laid out for easy referencing, instead cuts out chapters and verses completely, formatting it instead in the way the books were originally written, and eliminating a few historical artifacts of translation like the splitting of the Book of Chronicles, the order of books relative to each other, and so on. (https://www.christianbook.com/niv-books-of-the-bible-volumes...)

• Alpha: A Translation of Genesis 1. (https://llamasandmystegosaurus.blogspot.com/2017/05/alpha.ht...)

For readers of the Hebrew Bible who want to dig deeper, the Jewish Publication Society Commentary series [1] is quite remarkable. Here's the description in the listing for the first volume, for Genesis. [2]

"The JPS Torah Commentary series guides readers through the words and ideas of the Torah. Each volume is the work of a scholar who stands at the pinnacle of his field.

Every page contains the complete traditional Hebrew text, with cantillation notes, the JPS translation of the Holy Scriptures, aliyot breaks, Masoretic notes, and commentary by a distinguished Hebrew Bible scholar, integrating classical and modern sources.

Each volume also contains supplementary essays that elaborate upon key words and themes, a glossary of commentators and sources, extensive bibliographic notes, and maps."

[1] https://jps.org/product-category/collections/jps-bible-comme...

[2] https://jps.org/books/jps-torah-commentary-genesis/

There was a beautifully made book from 1936 called "The Bible Designed To Be Read As Literature" that was set out and edited to be more like a normal book:

https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.10239/

I picked up a copy secondhand years ago and I'm happy I did.

Bibliotheca looks like possibly a modern version of this, I recently ordered a copy so I'll know when it ships late 2023.

https://www.bibliotheca.co/

I like the ESV and Crossway publishes a Reader's Edition exactly like this:

https://www.crossway.org/bibles/esv-readers-bible-cob/

That does look amazing, thank you for the link. Unfortunately for me it doesn't contain the deuterocanonical books ("apocrypha") which for me are important to have.

Crossway does publish the ESV with apocrypha. I think there must be a Reader's Edition with them somewhere.

Unfortunately the ESV Reader's Edition does not contain the deuterocanonical books, it's actually noted on the Bibliotheca (Bible) Wikipedia article that Crossway's edition "could be viewed as less ecumenical" because it's missing these books. Still, the ESV set is stunning and I still am considering picking up, I'd just use another Bible for the missing books.

> Crossway does publish the ESV with apocrypha.

I'll have to take another look, last I checked i couldn't find one meeting my specifications but I may have missed something. Thanks!

If you like Everett Fox, you may like Robert Alter's translations of the tanakh. He has translated the entire hebrew bible and given plenty of notes along the way. If you don't read hebrew, by the time you are done reading the translation and notes you will have seen or heard the hebrew language wordplay, and the english translation by itself is nice to read!

Similar translations from the Greek by Andy Gaus titled "The Unvarnished Gospels" and "The Unvarnished New Testament".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Gaus

> instead cuts out chapters and verses completely, formatting it instead in the way the books were originally written

I wish there were more translations like this (and of a high quality binding). One example I found and have ordered is "Bibliotheca" which looks amazing, should arrive later this year. Unfortunately it's not a translation I'm very interested in, I've been seriously considering seeing what it takes to print my own edition that has all the textual features I want.

Rather superficial article about the subject. Whole books are written about the subject or why one translation is better than another. (A quick search will find you people telling you not to use the King James translation.) The article does not even touch upon culture things, such like how to deal with a translation for a culture where pigs are kept as pets or cattle, while in the old testament they are considered as unclean animals. It also does not mention that there is not one Greek text upon which the new testament is based, but that there are many variants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textual_variants_in_the_New_Te...

> Rather superficial article about the subject. Whole books are written about the subject

Well yes, it's an introductory article prompted by the "whole book" it specifically points readers to — The Word, by John Barton [1].

The whole point of the article is that if this intro whets your appetite, go read that book.

Not sure what else you're expecting from a short, 750-word weekly magazine column about language.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Word-How-Translate-Bible_and-Matters/...

> Rather superficial article about the subject.

I liked the article because it gave a general idea on how hard it is to translate very old religious texts. I don't think it's trying to write a theological analysis, just giving a basic understanding of the subject.

For those who are more interested in the topic, they can do more research themselves, like checking out the book the economist is covering in the article.

> (A quick search will find you people telling you not to use the King James translation.)

Most of them are bad reasons - for example, one very popular criticism is the claim that KJV invented the usage of the word "unicorn" in the Bible, and it's actually a wild ox. But it was traditionally translated that way from the time of the Latin Vulgate, and nobody knows for sure what a re'em is. [Ed - it turns out the Septuagint also uses the word μονοκερως, so it goes back even further.) So while it seems reasonable to personally disagree with the choice of word, it's going too far to declare it to be wrong when a) nobody knows what the referent is for sure b) the two pre-existing "canonical" translations have used your equivalent translation for ~1800 years.

You can find people explaining why not to use any translation; people are, uh, religious about their chosen translation and the KJV is the old guy you've got to tear down. But any mainstream translation is probably OK. You certainly miss out on a lot of poetry and historical citations if you skip out on the KJV, and there's very few actual problems with it. Probably the fairest criticism is the general decline in reading ability means that many people find the KJV hard to read, and the NKJV in that regard is only a minor improvement for modern audiences.

> You certainly miss out on a lot of poetry and historical citations if you skip out on the KJV, and there's very few actual problems with it.

Looking at the KJV's book of Revelation, it contains all the errors that Erasmus's Greek manuscript for the book of Revelation has. It's a terrible, and often invented, translation of that book. It's not just a few problems with a word here or there, it's part translation, and part some book which was invented some time in the 16th-17th century. (Meaning that some of the KJV book of Revelation was invented at that time - the actual book was probably written in the 1st century).

This is a huge overstatement of the problem, which generally refers to the last six verses of the book. Consider the comparison of the KJV with the NIV, which is based on a newer/modern critical Greek text. Eramus made up the missing verses by translating from the Vulgate. Otherwise the Greek variants that exist are defensible.

https://biblehub.com/akjv/revelation/22.htm https://biblehub.com/niv/revelation/22.htm

As you can see, it says "book" when it should say "tree."

You can compare KJV with the NIV and other editions. To say parts of the book were "invented" in the 16th century is going a few steps too far. It would be better to say that we now have a manuscript which we believe is probably better in that it is likely more faithful to the original...but which is not really substantially any different from the textus receptus. Revelation has very few Greek sources and they do contain variants, but precisely because of the lack of sources it's difficult to make strong claims about what is or isn't correct.

[Ed - and it looks like book vs life is also entirely defensible after googling it - if it is an error, it is a very very old error, dating back at least to the 300s, and book does make theological sense - it would be far from the only reference to the book of life.)

I was just mentioning the KJV as an example because it was mentioned in the article, but I guess that the same can be found about every English translation. I have a NASB translation at home that I used a long time when I still believed in the existence of the super-natural. I read through the Dutch NBG (from 1951) translation (Dutch being my mother tongue) and parts of the Staten Vertaling (the Dutch equivalent of the KJV), which by the way also had a substantial impact on the Dutch language, giving it some new words, but also influenced it grammar. Some of those influences have waned in the past decades. I am familiar with several other translations in Dutch. I understand that after the NBG translation the Dutch society for bible translations has produced two more translations.

I found Dan McCellans video [1] to be informative. Two of the biggest problems I took away from that video are:

1) KJV is based on later revisions of the text. Newer works are based on newer discoveries of older versions of the text, and so are closer to the original source text.

2) The differences with modern English usage can lead to very different readings from what the authors of KJV meant. A good example is given at about 19 minutes into the video.

[1] https://youtu.be/RRn-De2I6II

There’s even a KJV for Catholics now thanks to some Anglicans choosing to become Catholic.

“Traduttore, traditore” (“translator, you traitor!”).

Translating ancient texts is hard enough given the complex historical and cultural contexts. When it comes to religious texts, though, the level of complexity grows exponentially, especially given how their contexts widen.

On an unrelated note, this always vexes me:

> By contrast, the two faiths’ cousin—Christianity

I get how one can see a relation between Judaism and Christianity.

But to add Islam to the mix under the generic label of “Abrahamic religions” seems to be way too much of a stretch, as there’s neither historical nor philosophical continuity.

It’s like saying that everyone who’s heard of the Trojan horse story and perhaps related it to their circle is automatically a member of a “Homeric culture”.

Islam is generally considered an Abrahamic religion. There is a lot of continuity; the (very very) short version of the Islam perspective is "Abraham explained God's will to us, then Jesus was sent by God to explain God's will better, and then finally God sent Mohammed and he communicated God's will perfectly". Three time's the charm I guess? Many of the figures you know from the Bible make their appearance in the Quran as well, including Abraham of course (hence: Abrahamic religion).

Yep, I know that, but it doesn’t offer anything else than a claim to authenticity, by posing as a continuation, while the previous revelations are then discarded.

The mentions of Biblical persons and events, as I hinted in the previous comment, are cultural rather than theological, and can’t be used to establish theological continuity, no matter how hard the Ismaelite genealogy is pressed.

> posing as a continuation, while the previous revelations are then discarded.

Can't the same argument be raise for Christianity? I'm sure at the time of Jesus he saw himself as rectifying Jewish practice (and of course there are the passages where he says that the old laws are still in force), but pretty quickly Christianity was modified and sold to gentiles (thanks to Paul, who never met Jesus and wrote 13* of the 27 books of the New Testament) and the Mosaic laws were mostly set aside.

The whole idea of "fulfillment theology" is that Jesus fulfilled the old covenant and established a new law. That is why Christians eat pork and so on.

* everyone agrees that three of those 13 weren't actually written by Paul, and three more are in various degrees of doubt

Christianity does largely embrace the previous revelations still, even if they don’t follow most of the regulations. Listen to any AM radio station preacher and you’re bound to hear about the 10 commandments, the psalms, etc. They have various degrees of reinterpretation but the original content is still widely used and promoted. In contrast Islam seems to only tangentially refer to the Tanakh or the New Testament and reading them is not encouraged AFAICT. Islam did however borrow many practices from both.

I’d argue that in some ways Rabbinical Judaism is as divergent as Christianity from ancient Judaism in many ways. There’s no following of the temple sacrifices or rites, etc, so new traditions have been added. The central role of Israel as a physical country changed for many (much early Zionism was viewed dimly by religious Jews and primarily embraced by secular Jews). The Talmud is roughly in a similar position as the New Testament, etc. I say that as an academic exercise in parallels and not to demean the differences or history. I just find the thought exercise intriguing.

one example is that Passover (Pesach – פסח) may have included a ritual sacrifice in days before the modern format.

Even in the four scriptures Jesus makes it pretty clear several times that the chosen people are first but they will refuse and salvation will be passed onto others. E.g. the address to Jews when he healed a (gentile) centurion's servant [Matthew 8:10-12]

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%208&ver...

Jungian here - with some small comparative religion training.. multiple primary "motiff" in the Christian stories are repeats of older themes but changed..

for the non-Bible side, lots of Germanic and Scandinavian folk stories have been rewritten as Christian-themes too

entire islamic theology is based on Abraham and his actions, the rituals in the holy journey of Hajj and Umrah are all repeats of actions of Abraham and his family.

Yep it’s a very narrow focus on one person, and disregards the millennium of Judaic and Christian traditions that followed on from Abraham.

In general, to my ears “Abrahamic religions” is a forced academic classification, and doesn’t point to any actual spiritual kinship shared between the religions thus classified.

> In general, to my ears “Abrahamic religions” is a forced academic classification, and doesn’t point to any actual spiritual kinship shared between the religions thus classified.

They all share the same god and the same origin story, and even share religious sites. Compare them to any other religion, and they are quite close.

> They all share the same god ...

Except that they don't share the same god.

The Christian God is triune, one God existing in the three distinct persons of Father, Son, and Spirit, which the Jews and Muslims both reject.

Further, though Judaism and Christianity agree that the only true creator God, YHWH (or Yahweh/Jehovah according to Christianity), has revealed himself in deeds and words, Islam says that his name is Allah.

And of course, fundamental to Christianity is the acknowledgement of the full humanity /and/ full divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, crucified and resurrected. Judaism and Islam both reject those beliefs, thus we again see a difference on who God is.

These three monotheistic religions each have separate conceptions of God.

> The Christian God is triune, one God existing in the three distinct persons of Father, Son, and Spirit, which the Jews and Muslims both reject.

The Protestant* god. Catholic and Orthodox disagree on that specific phrasing.

https://christianityfaq.com/catholic-protestant-christianity...

As a non-religious person, the differences between the Catholic, Orthodox and various Protestant faiths aren't dissimilar to the differences between them all and Islam and Judaism.

Allah isn't a name in that sense, it's the arabic word that means God, and it's the one that christian arabs use when they talk about God from a christian perspective.

There's a lot of different ideas about what monotheism and God means within those three, highly related, religious families too.

It's very weird to single out islam in this way, seems political rather than historic or religious.

The entire concept of "sameness" doesn't make sense when talking about objects that are unknowable or just non-existent. For example, two persons can describe in different terms a real object (say, a chair): in that case, the object exists independently from its descriptions and the two persons can eventually agree on the fact that there is indeed one object they were both looking at. But for objects that are unknowable or non-existent, it is the description that defines the object- and each description, unless entirely equivalent to the others, defines a different object.

Therefore the idea that Abrahamic religions relate to the same God can only make sense from a perspective of faith.

> [H]is name is Allah.

"Allah" is not a name, it's the Arabic word for "God".

> These three monotheistic religions each have separate conceptions of God.

Right, separate human conceptions of the same God.

> Compare them to any other religion, and they are quite close.

Apples and oranges are quite close when compared to chairs and tables, but they’re different.

Regarding the “same God” thing, you’re two thirds right, Islam being the other third.

> Yep it’s a very narrow focus on one person

That one person being Abraham. Hence "Abrahamic". If the adjective were "Davidic" you'd have a point, but the whole premise of the "Abrahamic religions" label is that they trace their religious genealogy back to Abraham. The label makes no claim about any shared history since then.

EDIT: And as far as your claim of a lack of spiritual kinship—do you know anything about any of the non-Abrahamic religions? When you set Hinduism or Shinto into the mix, Islam practically looks like a sect of Christianity.

Have you actually even met a Muslim? Most will consider Christian and Jews brothers in faith. There’s far more similarities than differences, contrasted with the local pantheistic religions Mohammad (PBUH) preached to replace.

Waraqa bin Naufal, a Christian hermit who influenced Mohammad, is in certain conspiracy theories taken to have a great role in the origin of Islam.

then Joseph Smith's religion is also Abrahamic.

It's not a stretch at all. In the same way that the New Testament (Christianity) extends the Old Testament (Judaism), the Koran considers itself a part of the same lineage. Moses, Jesus etc are prophets in Islam, and Jews and Christians are "people of the book" and accorded special protections.

Abraham is considered the first prophet in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam hence Abrahamic.

Technically speaking, in Judaism and Christianity Abraham is not a prophet (which is a very specific term), he’s instead a patriarch.

And in terms of being the first, that’d be Adam.

Abraham is called a prophet by God ("therefore restore the man’s wife, for he is a prophet").

No one calls Islam a "Judaic" religion or a "Christian" religion, they call it an "Abrahamic" religion. That implies nothing more than a shared relationship to Abraham. How far they diverge theologically from that point is irrelevant to the question of whether they can all be considered Abrahamic.

Also, as far as the differences go, this comment shows a stark lack of understanding of world religions in general. For all the differences between Islam, Judaism and Christianity, their similarities are glaringly obvious when placed alongside Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Shinto, or any of the other religions of the world. "Abrahamic religions" is a very useful grouping for religious studies, serving much the same role as the "Romance languages" in linguistics.

When you look at the full scope of what is possible in religion, the Abrahamic religions have more in common than they do differences.

I think Judaism and Islam have more in common with each other than with Christianity.

Christianity's belief in the divinity of Jesus is shared by neither other religion. The Jewish jurist Maimonides ruled that Christians were idol worshipers because of their belief in the trinity and Muslims were not (Menachem Meiri rules otherwise).

But more than that, in terms of practice, Muslims and Jews share a great deal. Praying in a certain direction. Praying several times a day. Specific dietary requirements, including banning pork.

And Jewish and Islamic thinkers were in constant dialogue, I'm not sure why anyone could say there's no philosophical continuity.

> Muslims and Jews share a great deal. Praying in a certain direction. Praying several times a day. Specific dietary requirements, including banning pork.

Christian churches face the East. Christian clerics and devout laypersons pray the Liturgy of the Hours daily. Finally many Christians observe religious dietary requirements involving fasting and abstinence from meat.

> Christian churches face the East

I should have been more specific, it's about praying to a specific place. Jews face the western wall in Jerusalem, Muslims face Mecca. And they do this in or out of the synagogue (or mosque as far as I know). I've seen people get out a compass!

> Christian clerics and devout laypersons pray the Liturgy of the Hours daily.

This might be more analogous, but the "devout laypeople" seems less analogous, as it's got the status of a commandment in Judaism and Islam.

> Finally many Christians observe religious dietary requirements involving fasting and abstinence from meat.

In this Christianity really differs from Judaism and Islam. I'm talking about ritual slaughter and avoiding eating specific animals, not general periods of abstinence from meat.

All in all obviously Judaism and Christianity share a lot too, I'm just suspicious of the claim that they shares more with each other than Islam when my experience is not like that at all.

> Jews face the western wall in Jerusalem

Close, but a few metres out - we face the place where the Holy of Holies was, on the Temple Mount.

Heh, I considered writing that, but decided against it because I figured the western wall would be more familiar to the audience on HN even if it's a few metres out.

Protestant here. Church is understood to be the congregation, not a building. Whichever building the congregation chooses to gather in, is what becomes the "church" building. That building doesn't have to face in any particular direction to be a valid site of worship. I don't have to follow Liturgy of the Hours as a devout Christian, even though prayer in general is encouraged. While we fast, abstinence from meat seems to be more of a Catholic practice.

The Koran literally begins by explaining how it is related to the other two religions that preceded it, and how it is also historically contiguous with them.

So does "The Divine Authority of Holy Scripture Asserted" by self-professed Messiah, John Miller. There are plenty of cults that spring out of every major religion, but that doesn't necessarily mean that relationship is anything more than tenuous.

This isn't a statement on Islam - depending how you examine certain things and weigh them, it could be either Abrahamic or maybe a little bit more distant. But you need to make a judgement call.

> There are plenty of cults that spring out of every major religion

Where do you draw the line?

Generally speaking, size and widespread acceptance. The use of the word "cult" there, isn't an insult. It just speaks to the smaller breakoff groups that form. Protestantism began as a cult. It is no longer.

Sort of like how creeks spring from every river.

Given that this is a conversation about Islam, this whole subthread seems like a distraction. By any metric of "size and widespread acceptance", Islam is a major religion whose claims should be treated as seriously as any other (which doesn't necessarily mean they should be taken at face value).

Yes, it is a major religion... But if it came from the other religions, it began as a cult. As all religions do. Abraham's story, the origin of his religion, began as a cult. And that's the way I used the term in my paragraph that began this subthread.

The focus on the word "cult" is a distraction. The concentration is on whether two religions should really be considered part and parcel, when they have diverging core theology, diverging core tenants, and differing historical origins.

Islam incorporates Jesus, Moses and Abraham. The continuity is direct, both historically and theologically. The histories of Christianity and Islam are wrapped up in one another. After all, the Arab conquests took what europe called the “near east”, which had previously been Hellenized and Romanized. Whatever perceived gulf lies between Islam and Christendom politically, I don’t think the history bears it out.

> The continuity is direct, both historically and theologically.

Theological continuity would mean that Islam accepts and extends, ie that Jesus is the anticipated Messiah subsequently crucified and risen, not to mention accepting Jesus as the son of God and final prophet.

I have yet to find any Islamic faction that holds that to be true :)

I think you're setting an unreasonably high bar.

Christianity has a high degree of continuity with Judaism, but rejects important aspects of Jewish theology, such as Kosher and Sabbath-keeping. So while Christianity accepts large amounts of Jewish theology, and extends new ideas, it doesn't universally accept everything that came before it.

Similarly, Islam accepts large amounts of Christian theology (and indeed reintroduces some Jewish practice) and brings new beliefs with it, but doesn't bring every tenet along.

Admittedly Jesus' divinity is a very big part of Christianity to reject; but then, the idea of the trinity would be an equally big pill to swallow for a Jew ("hear, O Israel: the LORD your God is one").

First Christians were Jews which kept the Sabbath and didn't eat unclean meat (even Jesus kept the Sabbath). Then later Christians changed many practices and diverged from the first teachings. During Reformation attempts were made to come back to original Christianity. Seventh-day Adventists for example keep the Sabbath holy and don't eat unclean meat - just like Jesus did! And there are also some other, smaller denominations which also keep the Sabbath holy - like Seventh-Day Baptists.

Islam contains the concept of abrogation, which loosely means that the God of Abraham can change how he explains things. Just like the authors of the Bible, Mohammed makes multiple contradicting proclamations, and the latest one is what his God thinks is a better explanation now. Accordingly, any contradiction with the Bible is also simply their God updating his past explanations.

https://nyuscholars.nyu.edu/files/42476117/Abrogated_Rulings...

> I get how one can see a relation between Judaism and Christianity.

That relation exists but it’s vastly overstated by many people today. Christianity and Talmudic Judaism are both in some sense successors to the old Hebrew religion that the Romans ended by destroying the Temple, but they draw very little from each other. In fact the direct predecessors of today’s rabbis, the Pharisees, are already portrayed in a less than flattering light in the New Testament.

Islam on the other hand positions itself as the successor faith to both Judaism and Christianity. And frankly, nowadays, I’d say that’s the closest relation those two faiths have.

There is: Mohammed met many christian travelers and decided it was a good idea to unify people.

The stories are the same, the people are closer than Italians and Israelis, and saying Christianity is Abrahamic because Rome killed a guy who reneged most of jewish literal intepretation then elevated him as a divine figure is just as silly...

A big challenge in translating "The Bible" is that it is an anthology collected over 100s or 1000s of years in many different and divergent forms. Thus there is no authoritative original version. All available versions were compiled, curated, and edited by their respective authors.

Another big challenge is the punishment for getting it wrong, which the article doesn't even mention.

>For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: 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.

Personally, I wish more people would include curse clauses in important documents. Legal contracts, government constitutions...why not tack on a few lines threatening a dire curse for any party who reneges on their responsibilities?

The thing is the curse is only for the loser. The winner can change the document at will. For instance,for hundreds of years, christians lived and died thinking that the book of revelations was not part of the canon, only added 397 ad. The winner gets to say, it was always apart of the canon, you just didn't know it. Similarly, books like Shepherd of Hermas, was considered by many to be part of the canon, but later removed. No curses for either.

Please say that that is from the old testament

No. Revelation, IIRC

Yeah, it's actually one of the last sentences in the New Testament - Revelations 22:18.

Jesus did his best to tone down the fire and brimstone, but the Abrahamic god is not a particularly forgiving one.

What's interesting about that is it's obviously only referring to the book of Revelations itself, since "The Bible" as such didn't even exist at the time, if it isn't a late addition. Yet Christians apply it to scripture as a whole.

Also, IIRC, Revelations almost didn't even make it into the Biblical canon, like a lot of other apocryphal books it was considered too crazy for the mainstream.

> Yet Christians apply it to scripture as a whole.

I mean. some do, but, that’s hardly the only position.

http://actsapologist.blogspot.com/2016/05/how-does-catholic-...

The Bible did exist, just not the section called the new testament.

"The Bible" is a Christian invention. What existed was the Torah and other Hebrew texts, whose incorporation into Christian canon is based on retroactive continuity, and has never been recognized as valid within Judaism.

AFAIK Bible is from Greek and was used by Greek speaking Jews to refer to their sacred books.

You have no clue what you're talking about. Jesus spoke more regarding the topic of hell than everybody else in the bible _combined_.

Of course he did, hell is a Christian concept that isn't accepted by modern Judaism and was a divisive topic during ancient Judaism

> Jesus did his best to tone down the fire and brimstone

Jesus introduced the fire and brimstones. The old testament does not really have the concept of hell or eternal punishment.

IDK. Jesus supposedly also plans to be the one to decides who to cast into everlasting flames or eternal paradise.

Some things this article doesn't touch on (although maybe the complete book does), which come up when translating into other languages. I'm not saying there are no solutions to these, but they are interesting (and for those who believe, important) questions.

1) How to translate names of animals and other concepts that are unfamiliar in the target culture, e.g. "sheep" into Inuit.

2) Whether to translate a given word in the same way in each instance of the word. Suppose you're translating into a Mayan language, where "bread" is an unfamiliar concept. Jesus refers to "breaking bread" (literal sense) and "the bread of life" (metaphorical sense, for which a translation as tortilla might be better).

3) How to translate a word where the target language makes unavoidable distinctions that the source language does not. In Tzeltal, there is a word for "older brother" and a word for "younger sibling", but no word for "brother, whether younger or older". When the Bible refers to Peter and his brother Andrew, which word do you use?

Lots more...

The issue of having not enough words in the target language is definitely a big one. In John 6:50-54 the original Greek uses different words for eating that have different connotations but will sometimes be rendered as the same word in English "eat" which takes away from the text. Relevant to Christian understanding of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Where do I find a literal translation of the bible?

I would like one that does not force a meaning on words that are not known. I think have read enough fiction with made up words to be able to understand something anyway.

Also, maybe not based on Latin? Latin was not the original language anyway, and I got fed up with the mistranslations that we keep repeating as correct.

I gave up after searching and learning the history of the text, but maybe something exists, even if it is not recognized by this or that church?

Off the cuff, I would say ESV is probably the most mainstream translation that fits your requirements. The translation style attempts to be literal and the source texts are based on the original Greek and Hebrew, not Latin translations.

How literal you want to get beyond that is kind of a deep rabbit hole, that probably ends with learning ancient Hebrew and Greek.

> I would like one that does not force a meaning on words that are not known.

A study edition or commentary would help with that.

Yeah I've heard the ESV jokingly described as "English as you've never heard it before" because of the lengths it goes to in order to preserve ordering and meaning to the words while still technically being grammatically correct English.

> I would like one that does not force a meaning on words that are not known.

The Amplified Bible offers several alternative meanings for a lot of words to try to get some more nuance across. This does make for harder reading.

Almost no translations are based on the Latin. Possibly some Catholic ones are, I don't know.

Some translators might have looked at the Latin, particularly in hopes of clarifying some of the Hebrew, since we have almost no non-Biblical texts in ancient Hebrew. I guess the assumption there--if anyone did do this--would be that Jerome (the main translator into Latin) was closer to the time that ancient Hebrew was spoken, and might therefore have had access to a better understanding of its meaning. But this idea is mostly speculation on my part.

Of the unencumbered versions, Young's Literal is popular, although stilted. He used the Textus Receptus and Masoretic Text. Its age means it hasn't kept up with modern discoveries, however. If you have some facility with the original languages, you can find critical editions that highlight significant variants.

Translation is a hard problem, even in modern language. Rendering a figure of speech literally often means finding a comparable phrase in the target language, for example. Word-for-word is not the same as literal!

The most literal English translation that is yet still readable English is the New American Standard Bible. ESV is very good, too, but at some times is more "literary" than literal.

If you want more literal, you might try the American Standard Version, which never gained much traction but it's a good formal, if older, translation.

Try the YLT, Young's Literal Translation, https://biblehub.com/ylt/genesis/1.htm

I've become fond of https://ebible.org/t4t/

Check out the ESV

That’s why we read the Hebrew bible out loud, in its original language, three times a week and cycle over the whole thing in the course of a year.

> That’s why we read the Hebrew bible out loud

Do you have any resources for someone who wants to learn Biblical Hebrew? I desire to be able to read the original languages.

Study at a yeshiva? Parents send their kids to schools that teach this stuff. That's' how I learned it. And it takes years to deal with modern vs biblical Hebrew, and also Aramaic, etc.

Start with Sefaria so at least you can see what it looks like: https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.1?lang=bi&aliyot=0

People can’t even reliably retell a story they witnessed firsthand and experienced in their native language 5 minutes ago. I don’t understand how anyone can put any stock into religious and other historical text, it’s all complete bs.

Most Bible translations remove the tetragrammaton, anyone familiar with whether or not it appears in copies of the Torah? Many Christian denominations simply don’t acknowledge its existence.

The Christian practice of commonly rendering the Tetragammatron as “LORD” in small caps comes from historic Jewish practice, known from extant copies of the Septuagint (a Jewish translation).

The Tetragammatron is important to Christianity. John 8:58 is generally read as Jesus invoking it in an explicit claim of self‐divinity.

John exists outside of the Hebrew Scriptures though. I would go as far as to disagree with the statement “The Tetragrammaton is important to Christianity.”

Translations of the Tetragrammaton exists in some translations of the Bible and removed in most others (in place of LORD), for example Pslams 83:18. Hebrew Scriptures keep the title intact, Christian translations remove it.

Why is that?

P.S. the Tetragrammaton does not translate literally to Jesus

P.P.S Scrolling through this list of translations doesn’t seem to render the Tetragrammaton for your given verse (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%208&versio...)

It absolutely does. A Torah scroll without it would be invalid for public readings.

Personally I always thought that formal equivalence (word-for-word) is better than dynamic equivalence (thought-for-thought). And that’t not just the Bible but generally speaking about any ancient text. On the other hand that doesn’t mean that the translation should be archaic too (see the “ye and thou vs you”)

But oh well it’s a nice topic. Our languages constantly evolve as time goes on yet the originals stay the same. Who knows maybe AI will be helpful too here one day.

Odd that an all powerful god would choose text written in dying languages, easily susceptible to being lost or destroyed, as the preferred method of communication.

Thomas Paine, US founding father and deist, believed God's Word is the universe he created. From "The Age of Reason":

It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh a universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.

Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation.

i wonder WHY he believed that, what evidence he had to think it was true?

He was doing the best he could, given Babel. The whole thing, going all the way back to the Fall, was necessarily and inescapably imperfect.

Why would an omnipotent and omniscient God create such a mess, you ask? A lot of theological ink has been spilled on that question, but I think the consensus was that it was the best that could be done, given a (theological) concept of free will. The alternative was for God to create nothing at all, or at least nothing sentient.

that seems pretty antithetical to the concept of 'all powerful'. It doesn't seem like god is too concerned with free will anyway, at least according to the bible. If you read the story of pharoah and moses, it is clear that god tramps all over pharoah's free will. The story goes that after every plague, "and god hardened pharoah's heart"... which means pharaoh didn't have the free will to let the Israelites go, instead destined to suffer more carnage from the next plague. Even Babel shows that. God stopped the progress of a peaceful people who were learning, developing and progressing technologically, socially etc. It is probably one of the few examples from the bible where people were actually getting along. God put a stop to that.

> The story goes that after every plague, "and god hardened pharoah's heart"... which means pharaoh didn't have the free will to let the Israelites go

I am familiar with an explanation for this: the "hardening" was just a reinforcement of what was already there. God didn't make the pharaoh's heart this way from the start. He was already disinclined to let the Israel go, as per his ability to choose freely. Hardening of the heart was just letting him dig in deeper in his conviction (or, if he chose differently, to distance himself away from the old position).

Sounds like translating clear, obvious text to what people want the answer to be. Now explain Babel.

"And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven....

And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. Genesis 11:1-9 "

The crime? The people were one, and were making progress.

> The story goes that after every plague, "and god hardened pharoah's heart"

Not every plague. In the first five plagues, the language “Pharaoh’s heart hardened” or “Pharaoh hardened his heart” is used.

As one would expect, Christians often use this to argue that the latter plagues resulting in loss of life would not have occurred had Pharaoh relented early on.

exactly. because it is not the writing which is the primary means of communication. they only suppose it since the invention of sola scriptura. churches with apostolic origin always claimed it's the personal communion and handing-on the faith among the faithful with the assured support from the Holy Spirit is the way.

The article only touches on this in the last paragraph, but another challenge is translating the language to serve multiple purposes. The canonical texts never serve one purpose. They need to have an allegorical/exegetic component for the educated and clergy, and they need to have a down-to-earth moral/historical component for the "unwashed masses."

I'm more curious about the first word in that article - is "dodgy" becoming accepted as part of the US English vernacular now? It's particularly common in Aus English but I usually have to find alternatives when conversing with Usonians.

The Economist is a UK publication

Wow - I'd always assumed it was US-based for some reason (maybe because its articles get referred to on HN so frequently!).

Now that I think about it, dodgy isn't used everywhere but it wouldn't feel out of place if someone used it here in the US unlike other commonwealth words like bonnet or solicitor.

I'm an american. It isn't common, but it is common enough that when it is used it doesn't stick out as an out of place word. I use it myself once in a while.

TIL dodgy isn't used much by Americans. Canadian here, we use it all the time.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/ . I doubt I'll ever shop elsewhere for biblical info.

Regarding “hard choices” when translating: what about not making them?

If the goal isn’t to editorialize on purpose, could one just write, “[young girl|virgin]” when faced with what the “correct” translation is supposed to be?

There are some 1500 hapax legomena in the Old Testament, means words that appear only once and, by extension, whose exact meaning is often unknown. How do you translate them?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapax_legomenon

A famous example of which is 'daily' in 'give us this day our daily bread' (technically a 'dis legomenon' since it occurs twice, but since it is in identical passages, the repetition doesn't help) - it's something that's still said so frequently and yet we have no good way of knowing what the original word actually meant - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiousios

Ah makes sense. That is indeed vexing.

If we have complete gaps in our knowledge of the language, then there’s no room for anything but editorialization.

Should they be translated then? Leaving then unchanged would communicate the fact that the word has no direct translation. English has borrowed and invented lots of words which have no direct meaning, they just are a subtle way to express a concept - e.g. "grok"

"Grok" isn't really a good example - it was invented by a recent English speaker and used quite enough that it was clear enough what it meant (I'm not sure if Heinlein explained it outright but I don't believe he objected to various definitions published. Further if you do consider it a word in another language it translates reasonably directly into "understand intuitively" in standard English, not much different to how the word "get" is often used.)

Leaving a word untranslated (but transliterated into modern English orthography as best as possible), with footnotes explaining possible meanings is seemingly sensible enough but the Bible is meant to be the "word of God", and leaving it sprinkled with words that nobody's sure about the meaning of would tend to undermine its attempt to sound authoritative on matters spiritual.

I also like The Simpsons’ word, “cromulent.”

It has no meaning and yet it seems to fit in a lot of places. It’s almost like a parity correction: we’re missing data here, just fill in the blank based on the context.

A lot of work in Bible translation over the millennia has been motivated by translators’ desire to make the most important document in history, the stuff of salvation and life itself, accessible to the common man.

Luckily, there is room in the world for (and demand for) countless approaches to Biblical translation, from the hyper‐literal to the simple paraphrase.

Any person who’s participated in a group Bible study (except in those kooky KJV‐only cults) has experienced reading Bible passages out loud in a circle of people, each of whom happens to be quoting a different translation of the same text.

The version I use is superior though ;)

*what they believe it's the most important document in history (because most have been indoctrinated from a very young age to believe so)

I was describing these people’s motivation. It goes without saying that that’s what they believe.

No it doesn't go without saying, specially because it means the translations are extremely biased towards showing a positive view of the texts and towards translations likely to reinforce their existing believes.

> the translations are extremely biased towards showing a positive view of the texts

That's certainly not true of reputable translations - you can easily verify this by just glancing at something widely available like e.g. an annotated version of the NIV - the scholarship and scrupulous attention to detail is evident.

The critical apparatus on the NET Bible is massive. The notes are well worth reading and probably unparalleled for anyone interested in ancient document translation.

Agreed - I find them fascinating.

“Bob Johnson’s fundraising efforts for John Smith’s campaign were motivated by a desire to seat the best candidate as President.”

Does that sentence say that Smith is the best candidate? No, it says that Johnson thinks that.

Would it be better if it were reworded to “…were motivated by a desire to seat who he thought was the best candidate as President”? No, that would just be redundant.

Does the original sentence imply that Johnson holds an unbiased, objective opinion of Smith? Of course not. If anything, it implies the opposite!

In your example "a desire" is unambiguously "the desire of Bob Johnson", but in your initial comment "a desire" is not part of a sentence or even paragraph that mentions an individual or a group, therefore is likely to make the readers assume the author (in this case you) is the one making the claim (in this case that means assuming you are the one who believes it's the most important document)

Well, you assumed wrong. To make it clearer, I’ve amended “a desire” to “translators’ desire” in the original comment.

If you search online it is easy to find parallel texts showing, say, the Koine Greek and English side by side. I think you should try to see what you make of them.

Since a lot of people put a lot of faith in these texts, their importance is not just a mere belief.

The word that I meant to emphasize there was "most", as in of course there is a practical importance involved in any document people give importance, but "importance" in 2 very different contexts, one from the metaphysical/spiritual knowledge they believe it has vs the behaviors it incites among it's believers.

Also how do you translate concepts that were clearly known to the readers to modern times. Do you entrust that readers have someone to tell them what this would've meant, or do you adapt to something more apt in their language. For example in countries where they don't each bread made from wheat or that isn't a staple, daily food, what do you translate for bread?

In high school our Shakespeare books had the text on the left and explanations on the right. The explanations were mostly to deal with what you’re bringing up.

There are actually Bibles that do this (like the Interlinear), with accompanying commentaries as well. You'll often find them on the desks and shelves of preachers, because they consider it their job to dive into that research, understand it, and then convey that understanding to those who haven't been trained in the literary arts.

That's > or < what the Amplified Bible does.

It rapidly becomes unreadable?

With a bit of work, one can find Ronald Knox's short volume On Englishing the Bible, which has many interesting things to say.

Faithfulness to an imagined "original text" is often asked for, often attempted, but wholly futile. We have no such "original text". There never was any such "original text".

Read it in the form most entertaining, and you will experience it in the purest form still possible. Seek precision, and you will go badly astray. Anything that turns on the exact meaning of a word will be forever ambiguous. There can be no useful list of such passages or words. You must assume all are.

Disagreement about meaning is unavoidable and mistaken. Your opinion about true meaning fails in exact proportion with your confidence in it. Extracting "true meaning" is no different from Newton's attempts at divination by versal numerology.

You may evaluate others' opinions in this way. The more confidence they have in their interpretation, the less competent is their opinion.

> Faithfulness to an imagined "original text" is often asked for, often attempted, but wholly futile.

I think this overstates the case, especially when it comes to the text of the Bible. Thousands of variants exist, but this is precisely because the text was so widely copied. The prevalence of manuscripts and pieces of them dwarfs every other ancient document by orders of magnitude. The abundance provides a means of reconstructing the text with a high degree of probability.

Whether that correlates with truth is of course another question but skepticism about the transmission of the Bible would lead us to much deeper skepticism about every ancient document. Perhaps that's warranted! But it seems like a losing proposition if you are to retrieve anything from written history.

I am fully on board with considering the value of the text regardless of its provenance, and with measured skepticism about all received documents, ancient or modern. Best evidence is that actual physical existence of a Jesus in Palestine is about 50% likely, but the likelihood that (such a) He said any of what is received is roughly nil.

For the interested do you have a set of sources?

Pretty representative material. Of course various people differ in detail.

https://independent.academia.edu/RichardCarrier

Unfortunately he really would rather you buy his books than read his blog posts, so they are hard to search.

https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/2014/08/car388028

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTllC7TbM8M

Thanks for passing this along. Carrier's innovations in the work of Bayesian inference applied to history are interesting and definitely worth exploring in greater detail. It's been a fun rabbit hole to go down!

"You may evaluate others' opinions in this way. The more confidence they have, the less competent is their opinion."

Rare self burn, nice.

Rare? Thanks.

Americans have a weird fixation on translating the Bible. No religion apart from Protestants attempt to interpret holy texts without supporting ancient commentsry.

Jews have the Talmud and other commentaries, Muslims have hadiths, Orthodox and Catholic Christians have centuries of commentaries by saints, similarly Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and others all have many supporting texts, not just a single canonical one.

Yet Protestant Americans are looking for a "perfect" translation so that they can magically understand a text that was never meant to be a single text nevermind interpreted on its own. It's also strange that Protestants trust the Orthodox/Catholic church to decide what is scripture but throw away commentary by saints, including those who lived through the councils that decided what is considered scripture.

Protestants are absolutely trained to make use of commentaries. Its one of the bare fundamentals of exegesis, which is taught in first year in basically every Bible college. Its nonsensical to say that they ignore the masses of study on these documents.

yes they trained to use, however i never heared a preacher appealed to a commentary source, only to the bible itself. strange. they usually answer any question with 1 bible verse, no more.

Protestant commentaries are way too modern and they throw out basically anything they deem "too Catholic".

They also threw out books of the Bible that everyone used for the better part of 1500 years.

The most common commentaries used across all the Protestant churches would probably be the Tyndale commentaries. You will also find the Tyndale's on many a Catholic priest's book shelf.

This sounds less like a complaint on professionalism, and more like a personal beef. Not one reflected by the wider church - you'll find many leaders both in and outside the Catholic church, who communicate regularly, and coordinate their efforts together.

Tyndale eh? Like I said...

There's a massive corpus of commentary written from ~400-100 AD, nevermind 1500...

There are some strains in at least American Protestantism that do so, I suppose. On the other hand, Eerdmans, based in Michigan, publishes https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/7978/eerdmans-commentary-o... .

When I say commentary I mean ancient commentary, or you could call it supplemental texts, ancient homilies, whatever. I mean writings closer to the actual time of Jesus. People like Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine of Hippo, Gregory Nazianzus, Basil of Caesarea, John Chrysostom, Irenaeus of Lyon, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, even Origin or Tertullian, and so on...

Protestants basically ignore that there's a TON of writings from the early church.

Even slightly later writings like John Climacus are still much, much closer to the time of Jesus and the early church than the reformation is, nevermind modern times.

Do you have evidence of this claim?

One Protestant ministry I find helpful equips protestants to understand the Christian gospel and contemporary paganism by drawing on the rich heritage of Irenaeus's apologetic defense against the pagans of his day. That particular ministries entire idea was seeing the connection between global paganism and gnostic belief in the first centuries of the church, realizing that Irenaeus had already done the heavy theological lifting, and the current need was to learn from him (and other church fathers) and recontextualize their insights for the church today.

For many protestants I've known, the church fathers and the ecumenical councils are seen as helpful, but never carrying the same authority as the Scriptures. The authority of councils and creeds is derived from the Bible, not the inverse.

> Do you have evidence of this claim?

I mean, there's like 1000 Protestant sects and they're all seperate so good luck, but the vast majority don't recognize writings of saints...

Here's a nice article explaining what the early church fathers got wrong from an evangelical perspective: https://bible.org/article/theology-adrift-early-church-fathe...

Just go to any Evangelical or American Protestant heavy website and see how they treat writings that aren't scripture...

In a couple of places, Jaroslav Pelikan quotes Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield's Augustine and Calvin (a book and an author I've never heard of elsewhere) as saying "the Reformation, inwardly considered, was just the ultimate triumph of Augustine's doctrine of grace over Augustine's doctrine of the church." A selection of Luther's writings shows numerous entries for Augustine in the index--not all for support, it is true.

A dip into Calvin's Institutes of Religion turns up references to Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Gregory Nazianzus, Basil, Chrysostom, and Bernard of Clairvaux.

[edit: the sentence on Calvin]

> It's also strange that Protestants trust the Orthodox/Catholic church to decide what is scripture

They... don't: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Bible

And who decided what the "New Testament" is? Hint, not the Protestants...

The fact that the analysis that Protestants did failed to disagree with the Catholics on that point doesn’t mean thet let the Catholics decide the Scripture; had they done so, their decision would not have varied from that of thd Catholics on any point, but it did, because thet decided for themselves.

There was no such thing as Protestant when the canon was formalized, and the reformation had nothing to do with canon.

> the reformation had nothing to do with canon

Canonical issues were debated during the "reformation", including canonicity of certain New Testament works (there are famous Luther quotes that often get brought out).

he must meant that they have not changed the NT canon at the end.

Seems like a field where GPT could do a descent job

People have translated the Bible for hundreds of years now. They have interpreted, expounded and preached it for a way longer time already. The problems are interpretation details and questions that cannot be definitely answered because the texts were composed millenia ago. This is a field where GPT is truly redundant.

Also, since it was trained on modern-day texts, it is very ill-suited for this task. And there might not be enough ancient texts to properly train a large model that could be used to extract hidden knowledge.

Descent job or decent job?

Nice typo

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