Dan Olinger

"If the Bible is true, then none of our fears are legitimate, none of our frustrations are permanent, and none of our opposition is significant."

Dan Olinger

Chair, Division of Biblical Studies & Theology,

Bob Jones University

home / about / archive 

Subscribe via Email

On Reading The Message

January 4, 2024 by Dan Olinger 5 Comments

For many years I’ve made a practice of reading through the Bible in a year. I also like to read as many different versions as possible, for reasons I detail in the link in the previous sentence.

This past year I read through Eugene Peterson’s The Message, which I’d never read before. Since I usually prefer to read versions at the formal end of the spectrum, this choice was unusual for me; Peterson famously sought to make The Message speak in everyday, even casual language. I suppose we could argue over whether this work is a dynamic translation or a paraphrase, but it’s definitely “looser” than the versions I usually read.

A blog post is not the place for a detailed formal book review, but I noticed something in reading this translation that I hadn’t anticipated, something that I suspect would logically affect other similar versions as well.

I was struck from the outset at the general uniformity of style. In most formal Bible translations—indeed, in most literature, period—you get stylistic variations from genre to genre. Narrative is straightforward, descriptive, matter-of-fact. Poetry is much more stylized and terse, denser in meaning and implication. Legal documents are rigidly formal and plain. Speeches are often flowery.

Further, within narrative, different characters have different ways of speaking. Their personalities and character qualities show up in their speech. You learn about the characters from the form of their words as well as their content.

In The Message, a lot of that—maybe most of it—disappears. Abraham sounds like Moses sounds like David sounds like Peter sounds like Paul. Even God talks the same way as everybody else. That’s most evident in dialogue, but it carries over into the prophetic and epistolary literature as well.

When a translation preserves those stylistic differences, you can tell the difference between Peter, the impetuous fisherman, and Paul, the highly trained rabbi from Hellenistic Tarsus. You can tell the difference between Ezra, the ready scribe in the Law of Moses, and Amos, the shepherd from Tekoa. And the more slowly and attentively you read, the more you notice, the more there is to savor.

Now, I think plastering over those stylistic differences lowers the literary quality of the work, and it renders it more difficult for us readers to pick up on the subtleties that were designed into the stylistic variations among the genres and the characters in the Scripture.

That said, I’m a firm believer in making the Scripture accessible to the ploughboy, and if losing those stylistic subtleties were the price of making the Word comprehensible to readers of a given educational or socioeconomic stratum, that’s a price I’d be willing to pay, every time.

But I don’t think that price is necessary. I wish Peterson’s eminently understandable text preserved more of those subtleties.

As I’ve said, I suspect that this is a characteristic of all paraphrases, and likely of translations of the more dynamic sort—those closest to paraphrases. The literary style becomes the style of the translator / paraphraser.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t read these works, of course; as one of my college Bible professors commented, the power of the Word of God is not limited by the imperfections of its translators. We ought to read every Bible we can get our hands on. I’ve learned some things from Peterson, as has everyone who has read from The Message.

But works like this should most certainly not be the only Bible translation you read.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible Tagged With: translation

On “Literal” Interpretation, Part 2: Sometimes You Shouldn’t Translate

October 26, 2023 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

Part 1: Nobody Does That

There’s an argument among conservative Christians over whether we should translate the Bible “literally”—by which the proponent usually means “word for word, so much as is possible in translating from one language to another”—or “loosely”—by which the proponent means “concept for concept.” The technical term for the latter is “dynamic equivalence.”

Of the popular English translations today, the most “literal” is, in my opinion, the NASB, while the most representative of dynamic equivalence is the NIV—though I hasten to say that the NIV frequently goes beyond dynamic equivalence to interpretation, seeking to “clarify” ambiguous original language. That makes the NIV in some respects more of a commentary than a translation.

Some may be surprised that I didn’t identify the KJV as the most “literal.” Well, I didn’t because it isn’t. The KJV translators did occasionally render in dynamic equivalence, although the term wasn’t around in those days. Probably the clearest example is the way they translate the Greek exclamation μη γενοιτο (me genoito), which literally means “May it never come to pass!” The KJV translates this expression “God forbid” in all 16 occurrences, thereby introducing the name of God where it does not appear in the Greek. I’m not criticizing this translation choice; I think it’s a perfectly good one for the culture of 1611. But it’s indisputably not a literal translation.

I think there are advantages and disadvantages to both “literal” and dynamically equivalent translations, and a I make a point of consulting multiple translations, across the spectrum of translation philosophy, when I study a passage.

I ended the previous post by promising a consideration of when we shouldn’t translate the original language at all—when translating is to miss the whole point. I would direct you to a passage that may sound familiar:

For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept;
Line upon line, line upon line;
Here a little, and there a little: …
But the word of the Lord was unto them
Precept upon precept, precept upon precept;
Line upon line, line upon line;
Here a little, and there a little;
That they might go, and fall backward, and be broken,
And snared, and taken
(Is 28.10, 13).

But what if Isaiah’s point isn’t the words?

Here’s the transliterated Hebrew. (I need to show it to you to make the point.)

tsaw ltsaw tsaw ltsaw qaw lqaw qaw lqaw

“line upon line, line upon line, precept upon precept, precept upon precept”

Do you see what Isaiah—and the Lord—are doing here? I’d suggest that there’s a strong possibility that the message is not about the meaning of the words; it’s about the sounds of the words. Blah, blah, blah. Yada, yada, yada.

It’s worth noting that the context bears this out. In verse 11 God says that he’ll speak to his people “with stammering lips and another tongue”; in verse 12 he says, “yet they would not hear.” God’s point is not that the Israelites are slow learners and need pedagogical scaffolding; his point is that they just don’t listen to what they already know—the Torah and the words of the prophets are just a bunch of noise to them.

Nearly all the English versions miss the point, I would suggest, by translating the Hebrew. There are a few that get it, in my opinion:

You don’t even listen— all you hear is senseless sound after senseless sound (CEV).

They speak utter nonsense (GW).

CEV is a paraphrase rather than a translation; GW is a translation originally designed to meet the needs of deaf readers and often used with ESL readers.

Some would caution against taking this approach, given the doctrine of verbal inspiration. I would agree that we should approach this idea with caution. But I also think that the evidence of sound and context are strong in this case.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Filed Under: Bible, Theology Tagged With: bibliology, translation