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Choosing a Bible: Understanding Bible Translation Differences

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I'm generally in agreement with Ryken on some of the issues that drive his arguments in this book, but I think he way overstates his case far too often to give this book a good recommendation. Here is where I agree with Ryken. We ought to be more careful in translating the Bible than some of the more dynamic translations often are. When there is an ambiguity in the text that scholars do not tend to agree on, we should seek to preserve the ambiguity in the translation. When translators can avoid working too much interpretation into their text without sacrificing genuine English language grammar and semantics, they should do so.

However, Ryken does not stop at such moderated claims. He argues that it is always wrong to interpret the text when translating, which is impossible. English words are usually not exactly equivalent in meaning to Greek or Hebrew words, and any translation will be inexact. Sometimes inexactness in one way is better than inexactness in another, but Ryken seems to disallow any interpretation at all, which strikes me as ignoring the fact that translators must interpret before figuring out how to translate. How do you know which words to translate unless you know what they mean?

Ryken elevates word meaning over sentence meaning, when the primary unit of meaning in a sentence is the sentence's meaning. He says that we ignore the meaning of words when we concern ourselves with how the syntax or context of a sentence contributes to the meaning of the sentence. Nothing could be further from the truth. Word meaning is part of what determines sentence meaning, but translating word-for-word often obscures the meaning of the sentence.

Ryken's language is often over-the-top. He usually doesn't impugn the motives of those who have different opinions on translation philosophy, but he does misrepresent those different views as leading to inaccuracies in translation. Even if there are cases when they do, he treats all dynamic translation as inaccurate, when sometimes it is much more accurate because it actually conveys the meaning of the original, when strict word-for-word translation does not. Often I will agree with his particular examples, but then he generalizes to overarching statements that I find way too far to be justified by the examples he gives. He regularly cites more dynamic aspects of the NIV, giving the misimpression that these cases are standard rather than the more extreme ones. He perpetuates the myth that the TNIV is even more dynamic than the NIV, which is actually the opposite of the truth. Something like 75% of the changes in the TNIV go in a more formally equivalent direction, according to Craig Blomberg, who actually counted them.

I cannot recommend this book. Even though I appreciate most of the fundamental points he makes, he just goes way too far with them. If I took seriously most of his conclusions, I would be left thinking that translation itself destroys the Bible. Most of the things he complains about in dynamic translations are necessary elements of any translation, including those he calls essentially literal such as the ESV. Others are not necessary for translation but will sometimes be the best option even if they will not always be a good idea. His absolutism against any dynamic translation seems to me to be well overstating what the examples he's chosen should show. There are things dynamic translations have to offer, and the best attitude seems to me to be to recognize a place for the different translations out there based on the different purposes for different translation philosophies. It just seems radically unfair to call something inaccurate simply because it focuses more on translating the meanings of idioms rather than preserving dead metaphors that mean little to English speakers who did not grow up in the church.

This book or rather this 30 page essay is about Bible translations since the 1950s not translating the words as exact as possible, from one language to another. In other words, if a word means 'fire' in the greek, and it's translated as 'bright light', then we aren't reading the words of the author who wrote that particular book. As many people know, the Bible has 66 books which are written by many different authors in 'different places emotionally, physically, politically, and spiritually'. Which is a fancy way of saying that some of the authors were kings, some were travelers, and some were just flat out broke when it came to money. Also means, that emotionally they were feeling different when they wrote different books or parts of a book as in the case of psalms. And it also means, that some had a closer relationship to God than others.(although some would argue with that... still.. do miracles, do travel, & faithful to God's commmandments... closer to God? just maybe.) And some were stronger than others in various physical ways. Which makes the compilation of the Bible quite interesting... besides the fact that all of history has essentially been changed by the Bible, also known as the Word of God.

Being all that is true(and historically it is, research apologetics enough, you'll see for yourself)... it'd be nice to know what exactly the authors did say in the books that they wrote that are compiled in the Old Testament and New Testament without either the Old Testament Apocrypha or the New Testament Apocrypha. The author argues that thought-for-thought translations and paraphrases are not giving us the words that the original authors said and therefore rip us off with whatever time we've spent reading them.

The translations that the author shows stabilities in text from the original languages to english are NASB, ESV, KJV/NKJV, and RSV/NRSV. The translations the author argues lose their stability in translation, which therefore undermine Christians in their trust for the inerrancy of the scripture, are NIV, TNIV, NLT, CEV, GNB, NTME, TLB, TM, and the TSB. This specific information is found on page 32, Appendix: Bible Translations Chart.

That said, the NIV held the best to the battering of the stability attack. It still fell... though not quickly. In other words, the NIV was the best of the errant.

This is a good book, which belongs in anyones library, as 32 pages of no-fluff is easy to fit on the bookshelf.

Choosing a Bible used to be an easy task. Only a few decades ago there were only two or three translations to choose from, giving a person very little in the way of options. The situation today is far different. We are inundated with translations of Scripture and it seems that a major new translation hits the store shelves every couple of years. Terms like "dynamic equivalent," "formal equivalent," and "paraphrase" are tossed around but few people have any real sense of what they mean. Christians purchase Bibles expecting that what they are reading is truly the Word of God. But is it?

Leland Ryken has written extensively on the subject of Bible translations. His book The Word of God in English, which I have also reviewed here, was foundational in my life as I attempted to come to terms with the multitudes of translation options available to me. I have since read an excellent essay he wrote for a recent book Translating Truth. Choosing A Bible is a short book, weighing in at only 30 pages, that provides a highly-compressed version of the most important arguments from The Word of God in English and his contribution to Translating Truth. Ryken seeks to show quickly and convincingly that Christians deserve and ought to desire nothing less than an essentially literal translation of the Bible.

The format of the book is simple. He begins by showing how Bible translations differ from each other. He writes about the goal of translation and compares thought-for-thought with word-for-word. He then provides five negative effects of dynamic equivalent (or thought-for-thought) translations. They are:

* Taking liberties in translation
* Destabilization of the text
* What the Bible "means" vs. what the Bible says
* Falling short of what we should expect
* A logical and liguistic impossibility

The book concludes with ten reasons that we can trust essentially literal translations. These include transparency to the original text, keeping to the essential task of translation, preserving theological precision, preserving the dignity and beauty of the Bible and consistency with the doctrine of inspiration.

As with all of Ryken's writing, this book is well-argued and convicting. He does not argue for a particular translation, though it is obvious that he prefers the English Standard Version (he did, after all, serve on the translation oversight committee for the ESV). He merely argues that we, as Christians, deserve to be given nothing less than the Word of God in English.

This book is meant to appeal to all Christians and there is little that will prove difficult to understand. Choosing A Bible is a great introduction to translation theory and to understanding the importance of translations that preserve the words of God.

It's not about whether you buy bonded leather or genuine leather binding. We believe that the Bible is the inspired (or as 2 Timothy 3:16 would say- expired) Words of God. It's the text before us that matters, and specifically how that text is translated. With so many translations today most Christians have no idea why one version might be better than another. As Dr. Ryken suggests, we typically decide on a translation based on its readability, not its accuracy.

Choosing a Bible is a 30-page booklet adapted from Dr. Ryken's The Word of God in English. The basic purpose of the booklet is to argue against dynamic equivalence (hereafter DE) translations and for essentially literal (EL) translations. DE is based on the idea that whenever the original text may be unclear to the average reader, the text "should be translated in terms of an equivalent rather than literally." (7) This is usually referred to as "thought-for-thought" as opposed to "word-for-word."

Dr. Ryken offers five reasons why DE is not a good method for translation. 1) Translators take liberties with the text that we would not usually take with other documents. 2) DE destabilizes the text by bringing into question the reliability of the translation. 3) DE gives us what the Bible "means" to the translator instead of what the Bible says. 4) We expect to read what the author intended us to read when we read a translation; however, DE often fails to meet this expectation. 5) It is logically and linguistically impossible to separate the thoughts in the Bible from the words in the Bible.

In contrast, 10 reasons why EL can be trusted are offered. These are mostly the opposite of why DE can't be trusted. Additionally, EL doesn't mix commentary with translation, it preserves theological precision, and it preserves the dignity and beauty of the original text.

Being only 30 pages, this is not an exhaustive treatment of the translation debate. However, Dr. Ryken's concise writing is clear, precise, and persuasive. Naturally much of the arguments could be expanded, but for it's size I don't know of any other resource of this excellent quality. I can think of a few theologically liberal friends I'd like to give this to for them to chew on.

This book was a serious disappointment to me, largely because it did not do what it promised to do. This was not a guide to help me navigate through the various English translations of the Bible to figure out which one(s) might help me the most. Instead, it was Ryken's blistering critique against the functional equivalence approach to translation, in which he essentially assigns most English translations of the past half-century as utterly devoid of spiritual and literary value.

Most frustrating about the book is that the author has a lot of helpful information to share about the process of translation and the philosophical difference between the essentially literal approach (word-for-word) and the functional equivalence approach (or dynamic equivalence, thought-for-thought). It is important for Christians to understand the difference in the translations that fall within these two camps, and a book to describe and catalog these differences would have been wonderful.

Rather than offering this helpful possibility, Ryken takes his preference for essentially literal translations to ridiculous and logically absurd conclusions. As just one example, he says that much of Jesus teaching was not meant to make sense to the original listeners and readers, and so thought-for-thought translation inappropriately tries to eliminate that intended confusion. But he completely ignores the fact that essentially literal translation can easily insert confusion and nonclarity where it never existed for the original readers, thereby providing a case when functional equivalence is actually more faithful to the text by returning the clarity of the original biblical language.

Ryken's primary gripe against functional equivalence is that it incorporates interpretation within the translation process. However, the nature of translation is inherently interpretative, as no two languages have a set of parallel words with identical definitions. There are certainly potential concerns when the interpretation within the functional equivalence method yields markedly different renderings from one translation to another, a point that Ryken rightly makes, but this does not eradicate the value of the process. Ryken makes the critical and unfortunate mistake of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Ryken has such a strong predisposition against the NIV, NLT, The Message and many others that it's a wonder that those who read these translations are even Christians. I found his entire approach to be arrogant and his attempts to defend his extreme position to be unconvincing. He has some good cautions to provide those of us who read functional equivalence translations. However, I still see great value in good ones like the New Living Translation (my favorite for personal devotions). I wish that this book had been written to describe the differences between the various translations, rather than as an excuse to lambaste those who do not share Ryken's unbending commitment to wooden, word-for-word translations as the only legitimate English translations of the Bible.

This is a persuasive argument against the more liberally-translated Bibles of the past 50 years. He makes some good points and doesn't really stray into fundamentalist ranting. I think he makes a good argument that the translation should not become a commentary, and that commentaries can be used as supplements to debate the meanings.

The name of the book is really not very representative of the content. It is not really an overview, but a position statement advocating literal Bibles over liberal Bibles.

After reading this short booklet you may not share the strong views of the author, but you cannot help but desire to know more about the "words" of God instead of the "interpretations" of man. I am by no means opposed to the newer translations that are much easier to read (NCV, The Message, etc.), but I have told my students for years that they should treat them as commentaries and not as translations. Now, I have an excellent book that I can recommend to them. In a thirty minute (or less) window of time you can learn the basics of the arguments for word-for-word (as much as possible) translations of the Bible.

I created a video summary of this book titled Choosing a Bible - Video Book Summary that can be found at the most popular video site on the Internet. The video is too long to post here. In it, I summarize the arguments of the author and do point out a weakness or two in his arguments. For example, the author suggests that if you use the essentially literal translations (word-for-word), you do not have to correct the translation during sermon and lesson delivery. Well, since the KJV is included in the essentially literal group, this statement is completely wrong. Because I want my hearers to understand the Word of God and because we use KJV almost exlusively in our church, I am continually teaching the church about words in the KJV that no longer mean what they meant then. In most cases, it is not an issue of improper translation as much as aged translation.

Additionally, when you study any Bible, you have to remember that the translators have to choose how words should be translated based on context. Many of the arguments of the author can be applied to essentially literal translations just as they can to dynamic equivalent translations. For example, the author says that translations like the NIV translate the interpreted thought of the author into modern meaning and this removes the actually words of the Bible. Well, by the same token, the ESV and NKJV (as examples) have words that the translator thought were right based on context. However, they make these decisions based on their theology or lack thereof - there is no question of this. For this reason, while those who are responsible for teaching and preaching the Word of God absolutely must study deeper than the "words" of the translators of any version.

These issues states, I still agree with the general argument of the author. To me, essentially literal translations are translations of the Word of God and dynamic equivalent translations are interpretations of the Word of God. Stated differently, I treat essentially literal translations as Bibles and dynamic equivalent translations as commentaries. By the way, I have all of the Bibles the author references in this book in my library and use them all frequently. I simply treat The Message, the NCV and the NIV as commentaries rather than Biblss.

One would expect a fair and explanatory treatment of the subject from the title of this book, but this is not the case. The title should read: Choosing a Bible: Why You Should Avoid Dynamic Equivalence

The book is a quick read and very repetetive. I recommend it only so far as you are already familiar with the subject matter and want to add fuel to your own fire in agreeing with the author that word-for-word translations are the only way to go. If so, the author provides several examples illustrating this point fairly well.

The author is very passionate about asserting a very narrow view... if you are actually looking for guidance on choosing a bible, I cannot recommend this book.

Leeland Ryken is honest, simple, & to the point in his pamphlet. He does a good job of simply discussing the issues with different translation methods. He perhaps is a bit alarmist, but brings up and drives home the essential point that any translation that falls under the thought for through translation and aims to help the reader interpret the text has left translation and entered into commentary.
Bible translating is the trickiest and hardest of things, can one be too careful with Holy Text? The last thing we need are publishers, and translation committees doing any more interpretation than is absolutely necessary. Nor do we need Christian leadership saying all Bible translations are equal, when some are purposefully not, for their ease of reading.
Dr. Ryken could only be accused of being overly alarmed, perhaps because as he says he was unaware the vast difference between the philosophies of essentially literal: word-for-word-translations and dynamic equivalent: thought-for-thought-translations.

This product, the book "Choosing a Bible--Understanding Bible Translation Differences" by Leland Ryken, is a small book but gives an insight into the choice of a good English translation of the Holy Bible. I bought this book because when I decided to buy a bible, I found that there are many different versions of translation. When I was at high school, I thought the version that the school taught was the only authentic version. Now I have a guide. Thanks to the author.