So if we can see that God’s message is successfully and faithfully communicated regardless of the language into which it’s translated, what about all the different translations and variations within a single language – such as English, for instance. They can’t ALL be “right”, can they? At the very least, can’t we rank them so we’ll know which is the “best” and “worst”?

We would really have to begin with some kind of categorization into which we can place each version. This is because the translators of each version have a particular viewpoint from which they pursue their work.

Some desire to translate as literally as possible. This approach is useful to many who don’t want idioms or cultural expressions of language translated into English equivalents but allowed to stand exactly as they appear. For instance in today’s English we might express a very emotional experience as being “kicked in the gut” whereas the literal Bible phrase of that day and time is something like “it moved my liver and kidneys”. If translated literally there is still some education process needing to be imparted to the reader or they probably won’t understand the meaning behind such a figure of speech.

Or take the example given by Jesus to settle affairs in advance so that a legal judgment rendered against you takes your last “lepton”; today’s English would state your last “penny” and the message remains unchanged. This is why many versions attempt to stay as literal as possible until they encounter such idioms or figures of speech which are translated into modern day equivalents so we don’t stumble over “What in the world is a ‘lepton’?” when the context is unchanged by translating it as “penny”.

At the other end of the spectrum are versions that want to make the biblical text as readable as possible in every day English such as The Living Bible™ or Good News for Modern Man™. Their aim is to provide the Bible text in the most common, modern English usage.

But for each of these “extremes”–and all the variations along the spectrum between them–the question arises, “Are they ALL properly translating God’s Word into English? How can one translator use a completely different word from another?” As bizarre as this sounds, often they’re not really using “completely” different words.

One upon a time the U.S. Army sent me to language school and, like all its attendees, I was provided one year in which to become proficient in a foreign language. (It was like college except you took the same course 6 times a day, 5 days a week for a little over a year.) The first anvil that struck my Coyote-like head was the fact that in order to understand the words, grammar and syntax of the foreign language, I had to clearly understand them in my native English tongue. (Yeah, I know… “Duh!”) If you don’t know what a “participle” is in English, you’re probably not going to understand what a participle is in another language.

The second “anvil” that fell on me was the translation of words. Nearly every day I was presented with an English translation of the words or phrases being studied that WERE NOT, on first examination, properly rendered in English. In every case I was both “right” and “wrong”. This is due to the fact that as a native English speaker, I did not grow up in a dictionary. I learned the meanings of words and phrases based on their everyday usage in my particular experience and environment, according to how people around me used them as well as in the geographic region in which I grew up. But the “wrong” definitions were actually “right” in that they were usually obscure, alternate meanings documented in the dictionary which I hadn’t personally encountered, and therefore unfamiliar to everyday conversational English.

To see what I mean, open up a dictionary and look up a “normal” word such as “furniture.” Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary provides this sampling:

The archaic definition immediately grabs your attention, but is the regular definition using words to describe the meaning of “furniture” using the words YOU would have used had you been the editor of the dictionary?

The point is that the scholars translating the Bible are experts in both the language they’re translating AND English. Whereas you and I use a word like “furniture” in the same way and may be completely unaware of all the alternatives, these language experts know ALL of the English equivalencies and ALL of the documented dictionary definitions. Look at the result of “furniture” in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary:

You and I would probably never stray from number 2 above, whereas a translator that is committed to the most literal interpretation possible from the Greek or Hebrew may find instances where the use of “furniture” is the right English word choice given a particular nautical, military, construction, printing or even musical context. They’d use the English word “furniture”, assuming we have the same expert knowledge of English they have and know all the obscure meanings. Translators seeking the most modern, everyday definition would reject using the word “furniture” and substitute “gun mountings” if that was the real meaning based on the context. Both would be right. And we haven’t even considered all the possibilities a Thesaurus would provide of similar words that convey the same meaning or concept in a variety of flavors.

(Thanks for sticking with me.) Here’s the point: All of the translators of all the versions from one extreme to another and in between are probably correct to one degree or another. They are essentially choosing a definition of a word or phrase from a list of many possible meanings and gradations. Literal translators will often choose a more obscure definition from the list which is probably hyper-accurate for their purpose; translators desiring the most common usages have alternates to choose from that still belong to the same list as their more technically-minded colleagues. Ultimately, the words chosen STILL convey the SAME basic message.