The Bible very clearly presents itself as God’s own Word. Because it is God’s own Word, God speaks to us through the Bible with his full authority. All people need to hear what God said, understand, believe, rejoice, worship, and obey.
We all need to know what God says in the Bible, but what God originally inspired are texts written in languages that most people in the world don’t understand. Thankfully, instead of insisting that all people groups learn Hebrew or Greek in order to understand what he wants us to know, God graciously brings the message to every people group in the languages we know best. This is most clearly demonstrated through the powerful events of Pentecost, when people speaking all kinds of different languages heard “the magnificent acts of God in our own tongues” (Acts 2:11).
God’s message to the world can and should be explained, summarized, and applied through faithful biblical teaching and preaching. But because teachers and preachers can sometimes get it wrong, it is essential that each people group have translations of the written inspired Scriptures in their own language, so that people can read and be transformed by God’s Word directly. When this translation is done faithfully and accurately, the result may still genuinely be called the “Word of God.”
But what exactly does “faithful” and “accurate” translation of God’s Word entail? There are many approaches to Bible translation today. When done well, different approaches can advance God’s kingdom and fulfill his purposes in different ways. But not all approaches carry the divine authority of Scripture through the translation process equally well. As Bible translator James D. Price states:
A translation has theological authority to the extent that it is an accurate rendering of the autographic text, and in order to be trustworthy it must be based on a dependable theory of translation.1James D. Price, “Textual Translation: An Optimal Equivalence Model” (Paper presented to the Southeastern Division of the Evangelical Theological Society, April 3, 2009), 1. Emphasis added.
Likewise, Kevin Vanhoozer says:
[I]t is not self-evident that every theory and practice of translation preserves textual meaning…as well as any [other]. There is no reason for biblical interpreters passively to wait for a hospitable general hermeneutic or translation theory to come along. It is better to develop properly theological accounts of and approaches to interpretation and translation.2Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “Translating Holiness: Forms of Word, Writ and Righteousness,” International Journal of Systemic Theology (2011), 384.
To put it more simply, we should not just come up with our own theories about language, meaning, and what God wants in a Bible translation. Our understanding of how to approach Bible translation needs to be formed by what God says.
This series will argue that if we look at what Scripture says that relates to Bible translation, we will be led to two primary conclusions:
- God wants us to understand the Scriptures. Tools that help us understand the Scriptures, when faithfully done, are a blessing to the church and should be encouraged and developed for every language group. These can include interlinears, commentaries, explanatory paraphrases, books, sermons, etc.
- God’s Word, having God as its ultimate author, carries his authority. Every language group needs a Bible translation (or ideally, multiple Bible translations) in which translators seek to minimize their interpretive or explanatory “stamp” on the translation and maximally carry over the divine authority of Scripture.
When Jesus taught, the crowds were amazed, because “he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not like their scholars” (Matthew 7:29). The word of Jesus, as God in the flesh, carried full divine authority. Likewise, the Scriptures, as God’s Word, carry full divine authority. Translators should strive in the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit to carry this authority through into translation, and not add their “scholarly,” fallible interpretations or explanations into the translation itself.
That said, there is a level of interpretation that is necessary for any translation. Translators should be up front about any areas where language differences have forced them to make an interpretation, but where other interpretations are possible from the text in the original languages, as well as any areas where the reading of the original text is uncertain. God, however, is fully aware of these linguistic and textual difficulties, yet he still commands and commends Bible translation in every language. He does not want translators to despair of being able to faithfully translate, but instead he authorizes translators, as a necessary part of their task, to make those interpretations which are required to carry the message from the original languages into the language of translation.
But that does not give translators the authority to choose one interpretation over another where language differences do not require it, or to add explanations to the text where God did not inspire such explanations. Such interpretations and explanations may be done outside translation itself, and when done faithfully, they fulfill God’s purpose that people understand the Scriptures. But Bible translation itself must recognize that the authority of Scripture comes from the fact that God is their author. People need to know what God said, not just what the translators think.
A “Sola Scriptura” Translation
One helpful way to think of retaining divine authority in translation as much as possible is through the doctrine of sola scriptura. The Reformers used this phrase to distinguish their Bible-centered approach to truth from the Catholic approach that gave the church hierarchy and tradition equal, or arguably even greater, authority than Scripture. It is not an exaggeration to say that without the doctrine of sola scriptura, a Bible-centered theology is impossible. Including other authorities as equal to or even greater than the Bible inevitably warps the message God gave us.
The Bible is the “only infallible rule of faith and practice,” as many creeds state. Other guides can certainly be helpful, including church leaders past and present, creeds, confessions, and Christian teaching. But ultimately, it is God himself who is the only infallible authority, and he has perfectly revealed his truth in the words of Scripture.
In order for Scripture to practically fulfill the function of being the “only infallible rule of faith and practice” for the whole global body of Christ, each language community must have one or more faithful Bible translations in their own language. To put it another way, every language group needs to have one or more translations that they can read in worship and faithfully declare, “This is the Word of the Lord.” “Thanks be to God!” We will call this the “sola scriptura” function of the Bible. This series of articles will discuss what a sola scriptura Bible translation looks like, and calls on the church to work toward a future where every language group has at least one such translation, as well as teaching material to help them understand it. But first, two important caveats on what a sola scriptura translation is and isn’t.
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Essential, But Not the Only Way To Communicate Biblical Truth
It is essential for the church in each language group to have one or more translations that faithfully serve the sola scriptura function. But as stated above, a sola scriptura translation should be supplemented with tools to help people understand the Scriptures. For example, an interlinear, with the Greek or Hebrew text above and word-for-word translations below, is a very helpful tool for those who are studying the original language text, even if its syntactic strangeness makes it inadequate for normal reading, and even if the word-for-word translations seen in an interlinear can sometimes miss important contextual differences between how words are actually being used in a given sentence (see more in Part 4).
Likewise, a highly paraphrastic approach to Bible translation, in which the text is explained and expanded upon in order to maximize comprehension for those who aren’t familiar with the Bible, can be a very beneficial tool for teaching Scripture. But the fact that so many things are added to the text, and interpretations made that may not all be correct (usually without informing the reader of other legitimate interpretations), means that such an approach is not adequate to serve the sola scriptura function for a language group (see Part 5).
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No One Translation Is “Authoritative” Against All Others
The second important caveat is that there will never be a single “correct” sola scriptura translation for a language, because languages differ from each other in important ways, and words and grammatical forms do not always line up in a simple one-for-one way. Though the Catholic Church gave great weight to the Latin Vulgate, and though some today want to do the same for the King James Version in English, it is the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts that God has breathed out and which we must faithfully translate, and there is no single correct way to do this. This does not mean that there cannot be better and worse ways of translating a given word or phrase, but sometimes there really is more than one good and faithful way of translating a passage while maintaining the sola scriptura function of the translation.
To take a simple example, some translations of Genesis 1:4 say that God “separated” the light from the darkness, while others say that he “divided” them. The Hebrew word yabdel is faithfully translated in either case, and we cannot say that one translation is fundamentally better or more authoritative than the other here.
In short, when we speak of sola scriptura translations, we do not have in mind a specific translation that is “authoritative” while all others are not. Nor do we have in mind an approach to translation that is the “only” good and beneficial way to help people understand the Scriptures. However, we do have in mind important principles for translating that will retain God’s authority in the text as much as possible, and therefore will allow the resulting translation to faithfully serve the essential sola scriptura function for the church. While these principles can be implemented in multiple ways, they give translators clear goals to strive for, resulting in a strong overall similarity between different sola scriptura translations.
With those caveats, let us now briefly consider what a sola scriptura translation should look like. Each of these ideas will be more fully developed in later chapters.
The Foundation for Sola Scriptura Translations: God’s Flawless Word
This topic will be explored in greater detail in Part 2 of this series, while Part 3 will explore further theological implications of what the Bible says.
Since the concept of a translation that faithfully fulfills the sola scriptura function in a language deals fundamentally with maintaining God’s authority through translation, any sola scriptura translation must start first with translators holding to the conviction that God’s Word truly is flawless, pure, and perfect, just as he says. In Scripture, God used fallible human authors to infallibly give us exactly what he wanted to give us. As Psalm 12:6 says:
The words of the LORD are pure words—
Silver refined in a furnace…
Purified seven times.
A sola scriptura translation, then, must be approached with the knowledge that the Word of God is absolutely pure, refined, tested, and found to be perfect.
It is crucial to understand that God’s Word is flawless, but this truth does not, on its own, tell us exactly how we are to translate. The fundamental difficulty of the task of translation is that languages differ in how they put meaning together.3If this were not so, a computer could perfectly translate any idea by means of a purely mechanistic algorithm—yet translation software can still produce hilariously wrong translations.
At its core, language is about communicating meaning. A sola scriptura translation, therefore, must faithfully translate the meaning of the God-breathed texts in the original languages. We can say, then, that sola scriptura translations must be based on meaning (but note that the phrase “meaning-based translation” typically refers to a translation style that is quite different from what I will be describing, as Parts 5 and 6 of this series will explain in greater detail). Translations can fail to faithfully translate meaning in two main ways: they can be overly literal, or they can be overly interpretive.
Overly Literal Translations
See Part 4 of this series for a deeper exploration of why sola scriptura translations must avoid being overly literal in order to properly honor God’s Word.
It is sometimes claimed that the only translation style that adequately respects the inerrancy and full verbal inspiration of God’s Word is a “word-for-word,” “literal,” or “formal equivalent” translation. In fact, any translator who would claim such a thing knows full well that neither their work nor any translator’s work is ever actually “word-for-word” or as “literal as possible,” nor would any translator ever actually maintain “formal equivalence” (that is, equivalence in word order, grammar, and phrasal structure) fully in their translation. They know that to do so would be unfaithful to God, and so they rightly depart from a purely literal or “word-for-word” translation style whenever they deem the resulting meaning to be inaccurate.
Take, for example, Exodus 34:6. The “formal equivalent” New American Standard Bible translates this verse as:
Then the LORD passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in faithfulness and truth”
The phrase “slow to anger” comes from the Hebrew phrase erek appayim. The word erek can mean “long” or “slow,” while the word appayim in a concrete sense means “nostrils.” Yet no English translation ever translates erek appayim as “long-nostriled” or “long of nostrils”—and rightly so! For while appayim in the most concrete sense refers to a person’s two nostrils, in Hebrew this is extended to mean “anger,” perhaps because of the way nostrils can flare in anger. This may seem strange to us, but it is no more strange than the idea that the organ pumping blood in our chest should symbolize love or emotion. So translators in this case rightly ignore the anatomical symbolism and instead focus on the meaning of “anger.” To translate “literally” and call the LORD “long-nostriled” would not be more honoring to him; instead, it would deprive English readers of the clear meaning of the Hebrew text, which Hebrew readers would have easily understood. As humorous as Amelia Bedelia–style literalisms may be, they do not belong in a Bible translation that can faithfully serve the sola scriptura function.4As stated earlier, however, there is benefit in giving of the original languages the knowledge that appayim can refer both to the nose or nostrils and to anger. This can be done through an interlinear or through similar tools to access the meaning of individual words in the original languages. There may also be times when the connection between nostrils and anger plays an important role in the meaning of the text that is difficult to capture in translation, such as in Job 4:9 or Psalm 18:15; at such times, translators may want to use footnotes or other ways of bringing this multiplicity of meaning out in languages such as English where the meaning of “nostrils” and “anger” do not overlap.
Overly Interpretive Translations
Part 5 and Part 6 of the series will further explore why sola scriptura translations should not be overly interpretive. Part 7, meanwhile, addresses a common counterargument regarding highly interpretive translations.
Most Bible translations in the world today are done with an approach called “meaning-based translation” or “dynamic equivalence.” The core idea motivating these approaches is that translations should be easily understandable by anyone, even if they haven’t studied the Bible before. This is a laudable goal, but one that is not compatible with a sola scriptura function. The reason is that in these approaches, when an idea causes confusion to readers, translators typically simplify or give explanations in the text in order to make it easier for the readers. But sometimes, ideas in Scripture take time and thought to understand, and readers must “ask, seek, and knock” before the door of understanding is opened to them. By short-circuiting this process, we may end up depriving readers of the spiritual benefits that come from the act of pondering and seeking understanding from God.
Even more importantly, explaining things that are not made directly clear in the text runs the dangerous risk of explaining things wrongly. It is one thing for a pastor to preach a sermon or a commentator to write a commentary saying, “This is what I think this passage means.” It is another thing entirely for a translator to add in his or her own explanation of a passage and call it “God’s Word.” To do so is to put words in God’s mouth—the very definition of false prophecy (Deuteronomy 18:20).
Following the Pattern Given Us
This topic will be explored in detail in Part 8 of the series.
Finally, a translation that takes to heart the reality that God has given us exactly what he wanted in the original languages, and wants all people to have a faithful translation of his Word in their own language, will look carefully at the precise ways that God revealed himself in Scripture. If there are linguistic differences between the language of translation and the original languages that require a shift in form in order to best preserve the meaning, then we honor God by making such shifts rather than woodenly applying a “literal” translation model. But when no such linguistic differences exist, we cannot not presume to “edit” God’s Word in order to make it “better” than the original texts and still present the resulting translation as serving a sola scriptura function for the church. This is true even when no apparent difference in meaning or interpretation is easily perceived.
Much of what is derisively dismissed as mere “form” in some Bible translation approaches is actually God-breathed art—metaphor, poetry, imagery, word play, and more. Meaning is paramount, but there is more to meaning than mere dictionary entries.
A Clarion Call to the Church
Part 9 will give a fuller summary of the current need for Bible translations worldwide.
When we look at Bible translation worldwide, we see many encouraging signs. In the last few decades, many new languages have received portions of Scripture or even the full Bible. Some languages with many speakers even have multiple translations that can play different beneficial functions for the church. Meanwhile, new manuscripts continue to be discovered, and pioneering work has been done to improve our understanding of the biblical languages.
Yet there remains much to be done. Thousands of languages still lack a single word of Scripture. Even of those that do have some Scripture, many still lack the full Bible. Some languages with Scripture have quality issues in their translations that need to be addressed.
Finally, many translations do not approach Scripture in such a way that they can function as sola scriptura translations. Since the mid-20th century, the dominant translation philosophy among Bible translators has focused on maximizing the immediate comprehension of speakers who have little to no knowledge of the Bible. This means that most translations done by influential organizations like the United Bible Societies, Wycliffe, or SIL interpret and explain the text for readers to a high degree. When done well, these works are wonderful gifts to the churches, which should continue to play a role in church life. Indeed, the global church needs more such works, not fewer. But they cannot be relied upon to faithfully present God’s Word in such a way that readers can access what God actually affirms in Scripture, rather than what translators have inferred from their own, potentially flawed, understandings. The need for sola scriptura translations, therefore, extends even to the thousands of languages that have part or all of the Bible translated, but no translation that adequately serves the sola scriptura function.
The need is great, but our God is greater. He has promised that his Word will not return empty, and has commanded his followers to bring his truth to every people group on Earth, including our own. He will be with us as we continue in the sacred task of producing and revising Bible translations that can serve churches and faithfully point to the “only infallible rule of faith and practice”: the Word of God, to which all our thoughts and actions must submit. For strong, healthy churches with solid theological foundations, having one or more sola scriptura translations is absolutely essential.
This is the introduction to a series on divine authority in Bible translation. The full series, with topics explored in depth, can be accessed here.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9
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