Bible Translations and the English Bible

Since the Bible was originally written in Hebrew and Greek (and a small portion in Aramaic), how did it come to be translated into English? Evangelicals believe that the Bible is entirely God’s Word, but that God has worked through various human authors, including their personalities, circumstances, cultural contexts, and writing styles, so that what they wrote was the inspired Word of God. Paul reminds Timothy of the Bible’s divine inspiration: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16). Up to this point the process looks like this:

Divine author → Human author → Original text of Scripture (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek)

People then wanted to make copies of the original documents (the autographs), and copies were made from the copies, and so on. Although the autographs no longer exist (the case with all ancient documents), we do possess numerous copies of the books of the Bible. For example, there are almost six thousand Greek manuscripts (handwritten copies) of all or parts of the New Testament in existence today.

Before the invention of the printing press in the 1400s, all copies were made by hand, and scribes sometimes made mistakes (e.g., misspelling a word or reversing two letters or omitting a line of text). As a result, the copies we have don’t look exactly the same, although they look remarkably similar, and no major doctrine of the Bible is in doubt because of the wealth of manuscripts.

The Wycliffe Bible, the first complete Bible in English.

Textual criticism (or analysis) is the scholarly discipline that compares the various copies of a biblical text in an effort to determine what was most likely the original text. The work of the best textual analysts is presented in the modern critical editions of the biblical text. For the Old Testament, the standard critical text is the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS). For the New Testament, it is reflected in the latest edition of the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (GNT) or Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece. These critical editions form the basis for almost all modern English translations of the Bible. A translator or translation committee will use these critical editions to translate the Bible from Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek into English for the benefit of English-speaking readers.

Copies of the original text → Critical text → Translators → English translations → Readers

At this point in the process a translator (or usually a translation committee) will translate the Bible from the source languages (Hebrew or Aramaic or Greek) into the receptor language (in our case modern English). Here is where you enter the picture. As the reader, you pick up your English Bible and begin to read and interpret.

It’s quite a process. God spoke through human authors who composed an original text. The originals were copied and recopied. Textual critics study all the various manuscripts and produce a modern critical edition of the Old and New Testament texts. Translators move the meaning of the ancient biblical text into English for our benefit.

Although the process of Bible translation may seem like a simple process, it’s really fairly complex. No two languages are exactly alike, so there is no one-to-one correspondence between words in the ancient language and English words. A very literal rendering of John 3:16 would read, “So for loved the God the world, so that the son the only begotten he gave, that the one believing into him might not be destroyed, but might have life age.” Is this really the best translation of John 3:16? Could we even read an entire Bible “translated” in this way?

Since languages differ in many ways, making a translation is a complicated endeavor. A more literal translation is not necessarily a more accurate translation. Translation involves more than just stringing together words. Translating the Bible into English calls for reproducing the meaning of a biblical text (in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek) in English as fully as possible. There are difficult choices involved in the details of such a process and that explains why English translations differ so much. The translators wrestle with how best to move the meaning in the ancient text into English.

Approaches to Bible Translation

There are two main approaches to translation: the formal approach (“word-for-word”) and the functional approach (“thought-for-thought”). Actually, no translation is completely formal or functional. All translations have a bit of both, but some are more formal and others more functional. The more formal translations—such as the New American Standard Bible, English Standard Version, and Holman Christian Standard Bible—try to preserve the structure and words of the ancient text as much as possible, but they run the risk of sacrificing meaning for the sake of form. The more functional translations—such as New Century Version, New Living Translation, Contemporary English Version, and God’s Word Translation—focus on expressing the meaning of the original text in today’s language, but they risk distorting the meaning of the text by moving too far from the form of biblical language. The following chart shows where many contemporary translations appear on the continuum of translation approaches.

The Living Bible on the right side of the continuum is actually a paraphrase rather than a translation. Instead of translating from the original biblical languages, a paraphrase will restate or explain an existing English translation with easier-to-understand English words and style. Paraphrases such as the Living Bible (1967–1971) or the Amplified Bible (1958–1965) should be viewed as commentaries on the Bible rather than translations of the Bible. But, as the following survey shows, there are many good English Bible translations from which to choose.

The 1534 New Testament Tyndale Bible enjoyed wider distribution because of the printing press.

English Translations prior to 1611

John Wycliffe produced the first complete translation of the Bible into English in the 1380s. He translated the New Testament from Latin into English and was persecuted for his willingness to put the Bible into the language of ordinary people. John Purvey produced a revision of the Wycliffe Bible (1388), and this translation dominated until the time of William Tyndale. With the invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s, English Bible translation rapidly moved forward.

William Tyndale produced the first English New Testament (1526) based on the Greek text rather than the Latin. Tyndale was executed and his body burned in 1536 for his courageous commitment to Bible translation. In 1535, Miles Coverdale produced a translation of the entire Bible into English (Coverdale Bible). The Matthew Bible was completed two years later (1537) by John Rogers, an associate of Tyndale. Rogers also suffered martyrdom for his work as a translator. In 1539, Coverdale revised the Matthew Bible, a revision better known as the Great Bible because of its larger-than-normal pages. The Great Bible was very popular with the people and was the first English translation authorized to be read in the Church of England.

From Geneva, Switzerland, Oxford scholar William Whittingham and others produced a revision known as the Geneva Bible (1560), which featured Calvinistic marginal notes. This Bible became extremely popular among groups such as the Puritans, but was not permitted to be read in English churches. The Bishops’ Bible, a revision of the Great Bible, was completed in 1568 for this purpose. The Roman Catholic Church also needed an English translation with marginal notes in support of its doctrine, and in 1593 it produced the Douai-Rheims Bible.

The 1583 edition of the Geneva Bible, an extremely popular early English Bible translation among Protestants.

The Authorized Version of 1611

In 1604, King James I authorized a new translation of the whole Bible for use in the churches of England. The leading university scholars in England produced the Authorized Version of 1611, commonly known as the King James Version (KJV). The King James Version of 1611 also included the Apocrypha, a group of Jewish books recognized as canonical by Catholics but not by Protestants.

The goal of the KJV translators was to produce an English translation from the original languages that ordinary people could understand and that would be worthy of public reading in the churches. In spite of early criticisms, the KJV became one of the most widely used English translations. The KJV has been revised numerous times since 1611. It’s a revision of the 1769 edition that is prominent today—an edition that differs significantly from the 1611 edition. For example, the original KJV contained the Old Testament Apocrypha, books traditionally accepted by Catholics and rejected by Protestants.

In spite of the popularity of the KJV, translators have been motivated to continue producing new Bible translations for two reasons. First, the translators of the KJV used only about a half dozen, very late Greek manuscripts to translate the New Testament. Since that time, many older manuscripts have been discovered and most scholars contend that these are more likely to reflect the original text. Today, New Testament scholars are able to translate from a Greek text that draws on almost six thousand Greek manuscripts, some dating back to the second century. Sometimes the differences between the KJV and contemporary translations are due to differences in the underlying Greek text (e.g., Acts 8:37; 1 John 5:7–8; Rev. 22:19). Second, the KJV’s use of archaic English words and phrases such as “aforetime,” “must needs,” “howbeit,” “holden,” “peradventure,” and “whereto” confuses contemporary readers. For other examples of outdated language in the KJV, see Exodus 19:18; 1 Samuel 5:12; Psalm 5:6; Luke 17:9; Acts 7:44–45; 2 Corinthians 8:1; James 2:3; 5:11. The KJV was a good translation for its day, but has been eclipsed by numerous contemporary translations.

English Translations Since 1611

The English Revised Version (ERV; 1881–1885) was the first major revision of the KJV, and the first English translation to make use of the modern discipline of textual criticism. American scholars produced their own revision of the ERV in 1901: the American Standard Version (ASV). Toward the middle of the twentieth century (1946–1952), the Revised Standard Version (RSV) appeared, still based on the KJV but with the goal of representing the best scholarship in language designed for public and private worship. The New American Standard Bible (1971) claimed to be a revision of the ASV, but should really be considered a new translation. The New King James Version (1979–1982) made an effort to update the language of the KJV while retaining the same underlying Greek text. The New Revised Standard Version, a thorough revision of the RSV, was completed in 1989 with the goal of being as literal as possible but as free as necessary (in order to accurately communicate the meaning).

There have been many other contemporary translations in recent years that are not tied to the KJV. The New American Bible (1941–1970) and the Jerusalem Bible (1966) are major Catholic translations of the Scriptures. The New Jerusalem Bible, a revision of the Jerusalem Bible, appeared in 1985. Both the New English Bible (1961–1970) and its revision, the Revised English Bible (1989), are translations into contemporary British idiom. The American Bible Society completed the Good News Bible in 1976 (also called Today’s English Version) with the goal of expressing the meaning of the original text in conversational English.

The New International Version (NIV; 1973–1978, 1984) sought to produce a translation in international English offering a middle ground between a word-for-word approach and a thought-for-thought approach. Today’s New International Version (TNIV; 2001) is an attempt to revise the NIV using the best of contemporary biblical scholarship and changes in the English language, especially as it relates to the issue of gender and language. The NIV was thoroughly revised in 2010. As a result, the NIV (1984) and the TNIV will eventually be discontinued. The issue of gender-inclusive language was brought to the fore by the publication of the TNIV. Bible translators will continually be challenged as to how best to translate the meaning of the biblical text into contemporary English in light of language changes such as those in the area of gender.

The New Century Version (1987) and the Contemporary English Version (1991–1995) are recent thought-for-thought translations. The New Living Translation (1996) is a fresh, thought-for-thought translation based on the popular paraphrase, the Living Bible (1967–1971). The New International Reader’s Version (1996) was created to enable early readers to understand God’s Word. Eugene Peterson’s The Message (1993–2002) is an attempt to render the message of the Bible in the language of today’s generation. The New English Translation, commonly referred to as the NET Bible (1998–2005), offers an electronic version of a modern translation for distribution over the Internet (complete with over sixty thousand explanatory notes by the translators). The English Standard Version (2001) is a word-for-word translation that uses the RSV as its starting point. The Holman Christian Standard Bible (1999–2004) also promotes a word-for-word approach unless clarity and readability demand a more idiomatic translation.