This is part 5 of a nine-part series on divine authority in Bible translation. The full series can be accessed here:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9
In Part 4, we looked at ways in which being too “literal” can distort the meaning of what God revealed, and how all translators understand this, regardless of what they call themselves. (Of course, understanding is easier than applying successfully.) Whether they say so directly or not, all translators seek to preserve meaning. But translators define “meaning” differently.
In this part of the series, we will now consider one way in which meaning is defined by translators in the “dynamic equivalence” or “meaning-based translation” camp—namely, meaning as defined by the comprehension (or lack thereof) of readers, especially readers who have little or no background knowledge of the biblical context. We will show how this definition of meaning does not lead to the retention of divine authority in Bible translation, and that a biblical understanding of “clarity” will allow for greater ambiguity and expect a learning process for readers when approaching the biblical text. A “sola scriptura translation,” therefore—one that will be treated as “God’s Word” by believers in that language group—will place less emphasis on immediate comprehension than the currently reigning paradigms in most of the Bible translation community.
Should “Meaning” Be Defined By the Comprehension of the Readers?
Modern translation theory has been heavily influenced by Eugene Nida, who was a founding member of Wycliffe Bible Translators, and who for decades was head of translations for the American Bible Society. His ideas about “dynamic equivalence” or “functional equivalence,” which later evolved to the ideas of “meaning-based translation” at the hands of his Wycliffe/SIL1SIL and Wycliffe are technically two separate organizations, but most Wycliffe translators do their work through SIL. It is helpful, though a slight oversimplification, to think of Wycliffe as the “church- and donor-relations organization” and SIL as the “field organization.” colleagues, came at a time when the King James Version was still dominant in English, and when knowledge of the linguistic diversity of languages around the world was still nascent. Unlike previous theories of Bible translation, which tended toward “literal” approaches, Nida’s theories gave translators relative freedom to add, remove, or modify words and phrases in their pursuit of making Bible translations that are “accurate, clear, and natural.”
The triad of “accurate, clear, and natural” was not entirely new to Bible translation. Accuracy has long been a goal of faithful Bible translation, and while Nida gave clarity and naturalness greater prominence than his predecessors, all translators recognized that sometimes obscure idioms should not be translated literally, and nearly all translators sought to produce translations that followed the natural linguistic patterns of their language to various degrees. Some may have been more successful than others, and surely Nida in his day could find examples of translators who did so more poorly.
The greatest break that Nida made with the past was not the idea that translations should be “accurate, clear, and natural,” but rather his claim that a translation that is not understood by the reader is not an “accurate” translation:
[A]ccuracy in translation cannot be reckoned merely in terms of corresponding words but on the basis of what the new readers actually understand.2Eugene Nida, Good News for Everyone: How to Use the Good News Bible (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1997 ), 13. See also Eugene Nida and Charles Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation (Leiden: Brill, 1969), 173. (emphasis added)
Elsewhere, he and Charles Taber state:
Even the old questions: ‘Is this a correct translation?’ must be answered in terms of another question, namely: ‘For whom?’ Correctness must be determined by the extent to which the average reader for which a translation is intended will be likely to understand it correctly. Moreover we are not concerned merely with the possibility of his understanding correctly, but with the overwhelming likelihood of it. In other words we are not content merely to translate so that the average receptor is likely to understand the message; rather we aim to make certain that such a person is very unlikely to misunderstand it.3Nida and Taber, 1. (emphasis added)
Therefore, Nida and others after him argued that translators should seek to increase the clarity of a translation in several ways, including:
- Using words that nearly every reader knows, and avoiding archaic or obscure words or technical theological terms that are unclear to the average reader4Nida and Taber, 2.
- Removing ambiguity in the source text by choosing what they believe is the most likely interpretation, “unless an intentional ambiguity is linguistically ‘marked’”5Nida and Taber, 7.
- Rearranging the sentence structure and word order, turning passive voice constructions to active voice and supplying an agent, changing rhetorical questions into statements or supplying the intended answer, etc.
- Making “implicit information” explicit in order to increase clarity for readers
Therefore, under the theories of “meaning-based translation” as laid out by Wycliffe translators in various textbooks of the 1970s and ’80s, translators test comprehension with both Christian and non-Christian readers, and if they do not understand the message (even after just one time reading or listening), the translators look for additional ways to clarify the message. For example, in the Western Bukidnon Manobo language of the Philippines, the phrase spoken by John the Baptist in John 1:29 (“Look! The lamb of God”; Greek Ἴδε ὁ ἀμνὸς τοῦ θεοῦ), was translated as something like, “This is that person who is like a sacrificial young sheep whom God gives.”6Quoted in Stephen Howard Doty, The Paradigm Shift in Bible Translation in the Modern Era, With Special Focus on Thai (University of Auckland dissertation, 2007), 105. The intentionally literal English translation of the Western Bukidnon Manobo is called the “back translation.” Translators determined that these explanations were necessary to help Western Bukidnon Manobo readers understand what the translators believe John’s words meant. In the same translation, Romans 3:26 has this sentence (translated back into English) which does not appear in the Greek at all, but was included in the translation to clarify the meaning:
However, it is necessary that there be punishment for the sins of mankind, therefore he punished Jesus.7Quoted in Doty 109.
Presumably, these additions and explanations in the Western Bukidnon Manobo were likewise considered helpful to their readers, but they go beyond what John the Baptist actually said, and what Paul actually wrote to the Romans. We will discuss further the implications of these additions in Part 6.
An even clearer example of this approach is Daniel Boerger’s The Interpreted New Testament. Compare Galatians 2:19 in the SBL Greek New Testament, the ESV, and Boerger’s work:
ἐγὼ γὰρ διὰ νόμου νόμῳ ἀπέθανον ἵνα θεῷ ζήσω· (SBLGNT)
For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. (ESV)
When I trusted in the Messiah, God joined my spirit to the Messiah’s Holy Spirit. So when the Messiah died and was punished for everyone’s sin, in God’s sight it was as if I had died with him because we are spiritually joined and now we are a spiritual unity with him. As far as the Torah is concerned, I have already died and have been punished as it requires. So now I am no longer under the Torah’s legal jurisdiction and I don’t try to obey it in order to become righteous—because it can’t require anything of those who have died. So as a result of my union with the Messiah I no longer follow the Torah in order to be saved, but I follow the Messiah who saved me.8Daniel M. Boerger, The Interpreted New Testament: An Expanded Paraphrase With In-Line Commentary (Dallas: Fontes Press, 2020).
Boerger’s explanations of the meaning of this verse are, I believe, quite helpful for readers who have never encountered the teaching of the New Testament before (he gives an introduction which explains what “Torah,” “Messiah” and other terms mean from a Hebrew perspective, and presumes here that readers are familiar with these terms through that introduction). Yet the expansive explanations given clearly go beyond what is expected of a Bible translator. Boerger, therefore, rightly refrains from calling his work a “translation,” calling it instead an “expanded paraphrase.” Nonetheless, the type of transformations Boerger employs—increasing clarity by unpacking unfamiliar phrases and giving implicit information—is fully in line with the ideas of “meaning-based translation” as practiced by its proponents.
Moreover, not all translators who follow this type of methodology decline to call what they produce “Bible translations.” Some translators might even say that Boerger’s paraphrase is actually a fully “accurate translation” under meaning-based translation principles, by using a definition of accuracy that includes the “overwhelming likelihood” of comprehension as part of accuracy, regardless of the large difference between Boerger’s paraphrase and what Paul actually wrote. Indeed, given the fact that Wycliffe has used the Western Bukidnon Manobo as an exemplary model in their translation training, it is safe to assume that hundreds or perhaps even thousands of minority languages have no Scripture other than the kind of “expanded paraphrase” seen above, with entire sentences or perhaps even larger units added in without any direct basis in the original texts.
There is no doubt that the vast majority of these translations are a blessing to their language groups, just as Boerger’s explanations would be helpful for many English speakers. But can we truly say that they are “the Bible”? Is this God’s Word, or the translators’ words? How can translators know whether, or under what circumstances, God has given them the authority to make such changes in the name of “clarity”?
The Value and Limitations of Clarity
Since the Bible is God’s flawless Word, we must look to the Bible itself in order to gain insight on God’s view of the importance of clarity in communication. Specifically, we must ask: Is maximizing clarity a goal that God shares?
On the one hand, God clearly has important things he wants us to understand, and is not just intending to “speak into the air”:
For we are writing nothing to you other than what you can read and also understand. And I hope you will understand completely (2 Corinthians 1:13)
[I]f the trumpet makes an unclear sound, who will prepare for battle? It’s the same with you—unless you use your tongue for intelligible speech, how will anyone know what you’re saying? You’ll just be speaking into the air! Undoubtedly there are all sorts of languages in the world, yet none of them is without meaning. (1 Corinthians 14:8-10)
Therefore, there is a sense in which God indeed values clarity. He wants translators to pay attention to the meaning of the text , and not just be “speaking into the air.”
However, God sometimes intentionally speaks less clearly than he could. For example, when Jesus speaks in parables that are difficult to understand, and his disciples ask him why, his response is that the parables are deliberately unclear as a sign of judgment against those who are hardened to the truth (Matthew 13:10-16). Jesus is happy that his disciples understand, and wants “all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” just like his Father (1 Timothy 2:4), but he does not make his words clearer for the sake of hardened unbelievers—instead, he calls on people to “ask,” “seek,” and “knock” (Matthew 7:7-8). Those who refuse to do so, who use their initial confusion as an excuse to write Jesus off as crazy or irrelevant, will see “even what they have” taken away from them (Matthew 13:12).
This dynamic is also clearly seen in John 6, when Jesus declares that he is the “bread of life”:
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
At that, the Jews argued among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
So Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves. The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day, because my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. (John 6:51-55, NIV)
It is safe to say that if clarity were Jesus’ primary concern, he would not have talked about people eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Understandably, many who heard Jesus were confused or even frustrated by his way of speaking, but Jesus is undaunted:
Therefore, when many of his disciples heard this, they said, “This teaching is hard. Who can accept it?”
Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were complaining about this, asked them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to observe the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh doesn’t help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. But there are some among you who don’t believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning those who did not believe and the one who would betray him.) He said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by the Father.”
From that moment many of his disciples turned back and no longer accompanied him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, “You don’t want to go away too, do you?”
Simon Peter answered, “Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:60-68, NIV)
Note that Jesus responds to people rejecting his teaching as “hard” by saying that “the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” The words Jesus spoke—including the very words “eat my flesh” and “drink my blood” that were causing such confusion—were life-giving. Those like Peter and the disciples who persisted in seeking truth and wisdom from Jesus were rewarded with “words of eternal life.” Those who rejected his teaching because it seemed crazy or immoral on its surface were left with “no life” in them. Undoubtedly, Jesus could, if he wished, have found a clearer way to communicate the truth that he desired to communicate, while avoiding the confusion of saying that people should eat his flesh and drink his blood. In both of these instances, however, Jesus had a divine purpose in speaking less clearly than he could have.
Later in John, Jesus tells his enemies, “Why don’t you understand what I say? Because you cannot listen to my word…because I tell the truth, you do not believe me” (John 8:43,45). In other words, the reason they did not understand what Jesus said was because of their hard, unbelieving hearts, not because he erred in speaking too obscurely.
Nevertheless, even those genuinely seeking to understand often misunderstood Jesus’s words at first—for example, his disciples misunderstood Jesus when he spoke of the “yeast of the Pharisees” (Matthew 16:6), or of the “food that you don’t know about” (John 4:32). Whether his disciples or his enemies, those who heard Jesus’ confusing words were forced to decide whether to engage thoughtfully with his surprising claims, or dismiss and ignore him.
Just like Jesus, Paul wrote God-breathed words that were nonetheless not always clear. Peter says that some things in Paul’s letters are “hard to understand” (2 Peter 3:16). Paul himself tells us that “the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, because they are foolishness to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).
Even when Paul wrote “nothing to you other than what you can read and also understand” and hoped the Corinthians would “understand completely,” as we referenced earlier (2 Corinthians 1:13-14a), he states immediately afterward that they “have partially understood” him (2 Corinthians 1:14b). In other words, Paul’s initial God-breathed letter to the Corinthians was not fully understood, despite Paul’s intention that they “understand completely.” The problem was not Paul’s words, but the immature minds of the Corinthians and the inherent difficulty of the message.
We, too, as Christians witnessing to the truth, will sometimes speak clearly to unbelievers, yet they will not understand. The very first witnesses of the resurrection were greeted likewise with disbelief:
It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. (Luke 24:10-11 NIV)
Were these women’s words truly “nonsense”? Or was the fault instead with the apostles’ unbelief? John reports that Mary Magdalene announced to the disciples, clearly and straightforwardly: “I have seen the Lord!” (John 20:18). Would the apostles’ reaction really have been different if she had stated this simple truth more “clearly”?
Instead of believing that readers should immediately understand the Bible, and that there is a problem in the translation if they don’t, translators should recognize that understanding biblical truth sometimes takes time, and always requires God’s help. Consider how often the psalmist in Psalm 119 asks God for help in understanding his Word:
“Teach me your statutes” (v. 12, 26, 68, 124, 135)
“Open my eyes so I can see wonderful things in your law” (v. 18)
“Cause me to understand the way of your precepts” (v. 27)
“It was good for me to be afflicted so that I could learn your statutes” (v. 71)
“Give me understanding so that I can learn your commands” (v. 73)
“Give me understanding so that I may know your decrees” (v. 125)
The clear message is that only with God’s help will we be able to understand his Word—but he is faithful and generous in giving help to those who ask. We should not fear readers misunderstanding what he has not chosen to make clear. Certainly we can teach, but we should separate our potentially fallible teaching from the presentation of God’s infallible Word.
This, again, does not negate the importance of avoiding overly literal translation and confusing wording, but it helps us recognize the limits of “clarity” and immediate comprehension as an overarching goal in a Bible translation fit for sola scriptura use. As Bible translator Tony Naden writes, “Clarity and meaningfulness—yes! But is it good translation to be more clear and meaningful than the original?”9Tony Naden, “Understandest Thou What Thou Readest?”, The Bible Translator 33.3 (1982), 335. God speaks to us because he wants us to understand his message, but sometimes God has a purpose in communicating less clearly than he could. When the very words breathed out by God exhibit a lack of clarity (and lack of clarity is not introduced in translation as a result of obscure word choices or awkward grammar that are a poor match for the source text), the lack of clarity is part of the inspired message that translators are called on to faithfully give their readers.
Trusting That Everything is There For a Purpose
Ultimately, the desire to clarify and explain the Bible for readers is not bad when done well; preachers and teachers do the same thing, often to wonderful effect. But preachers and teachers do not—or at least should not—present their teaching as God’s infallible Word for people. If we intend to call the result of our work “the Bible,” a “Bible translation,” or “God’s Word,” then we must respect the fact that everything God inspired is there for a reason—including any areas of confusion and difficulty. Again, we are not speaking of the kind of linguistic difficulty that arises from overly literal translation, but of things that readers must ponder in order to grasp. We may call something a “stumbling block” for readers—but should we remove a block that the Lord himself put in our path to get us to stop for a moment? Writing about translations that simplify Scripture to the point of distorting meaning, Anthony Nichols writes, “if the modern reader is to be presented with a Bible in common language, he will have been deprived of so much that not only puzzled its first readers but also arrested and challenged them.”10Anthony Howard Nichols, Translating the Bible: A Critical Analysis of E.A. Nida’s Theory of Dynamic Equivalence and Its Impact Upon Recent Bible Translations (University of Sheffield thesis, 1996), 231. Similarly, Raymond Van Leeuwen says that “We may call such translations ‘closed’ rather than ‘open’ because they shut down the process of wrestling with what God has said…By choosing one meaning and rejecting another, they close the door to reflection and new insight.”11Raymond C.Van Leeuwen, “We Really Do Need Another Bible Translation,” Christianity Today (October 22, 2001). https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2001/october22/5.28.html Instead of eliminating ambiguity as an enemy of truth, we need to recognize the ways that our wise God chooses to use the limits of human language and understanding to serve his purposes, and strive to maintain this ambiguity in translation.
Examples of the Effects of Over-Emphasis on Clarity
Now let us explore a few examples of the effects of a translation style that demands a high level of “clarity” and immediate comprehension from translations. Compare the following back translation into English of the Western Bukidnon Manobo (WBM) translation of Luke 10:29, referred to earlier, with the Greek and the ESV:
But as for this teacher of the Law, he wanted that Jesus might think that his works were right. (WBM)12Quoted in Doty 107.
Ὁ δὲ θέλων δικαιῶσαι ἑαυτὸν
But he, desiring to justify himself, (ESV)
The phrase θέλων δικαιῶσαι ἑαυτὸν (translated “desiring to justify himself” in the ESV) can have multiple interpretations. The WBM translation gives one possible interpretation. But other functional equivalent translations give different interpretations:
But the man, wanting to show the importance of his question (NCV)
‘Ah,’ said the lawyer, wanting to win the point (NTE)
The scholar was frustrated by this response because he was hoping to make himself appear smarter than Jesus (VOICE)
But the man wanted to show that he knew what he was talking about (CEV)
But the legal expert wanted to prove that he was right (CEB)
The man tried to make himself look good (NLV)
But the man wanted to show that the way he was living was right (ERV)
The man wanted to justify his actions (NLT)
These generally fall into two exegetical categories—either the man wanted to show that he was clever and correct, or he wanted to show that he was living and acting rightly. Even within these two categories there is significant variation between the translations given. The Greek text does not answer even the basic question as to which of the two general camps of interpretation are correct. So any translation that answers it for the reader, before the reader even has a chance to see the possible interpretations for herself, is answering a question for readers that God did not give us the answer to in the text. The fact that so many translations disagree with each other on the “right” interpretation of this phrase underlines the fact that the translators do not actually know precisely what it means. Translators should not pretend that they understand the “true” meaning better than they actually do.13Leland Ryken gives this incisive comment: “If it is true, as Eugene Nida claims, that ‘the average reader is usually much less capable of making correct judgments about…alternative meanings than is the translator, who can make use of the best scholarly judgments on ambiguous passages,’ how is it that these translators with their allegedly superior knowledge cannot agree among themselves? In many instances, the experts produce more potential meanings among themselves than the average readers would produce on their own” (The Word of God in English [Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2002], 190).
An even more theologically consequential example is found in Revelation 22:16. The Greek of this passage reads:
ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ῥίζα καὶ τὸ γένος Δαυίδ
I am the root and the offspring of David
This comes very shortly after Jesus calls himself the “Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 22:13), using a series of contrasting pairs that underline Jesus’ divinity and identity as YHWH, the God of Israel. Elsewhere, the term “root” in the Bible (Hebrew shoresh, Greek rhiza) often refers to source, origin, or ancestry, but never clearly to one’s descendant. There is therefore a strong case to be made that “root” and “offspring” here form a contrasting pair, where “offspring of David” refers to Jesus’ human physical descent from King David, while “root of David” refers to Jesus as the very Source of David’s existence—namely, God himself.14See Vitrano-Wilson, “The Root and the Shoot: A Glorious, Yet Often Misunderstood and Mistranslated, Picture of Christ, “Journal of Biblical Missiology (7 September 2022) for a detailed investigation of the meaning of this verse, and Part 2 of the same article for its translation in many languages. In other words, Jesus is both David’s “Son” and his “Lord” (Matthew 22:41-46).
However, the Good News Translation, which Eugene Nida showcased as an example of his translation ideas,15See Nida, Good News for Everyone. translates Revelation 22:16 as:
I am descended from the family of David
The Good News translators have treated “root” as synonymous with “offspring” here, and consider the metaphorical language of “root” to be unnecessarily confusing to readers. They have therefore lumped the two ideas together in a way that loses the contrast, and with it the revelation of Jesus as both David’s descendant as well as the very One from whom David’s existence comes. Readers of a more direct translation here may or may not catch the theological significance of the contrast between “root” and “offspring,” but the Good News translators make it impossible for readers to even consider any other meaning than their bland interpretation.
These and many other examples illustrate the dangers of overly interpretive styles in the name of “clarity.” There will always be times when languages differ and translators are forced to choose one interpretation when the original text allows multiple possibilities. But the fact that some level of interpretation is inevitable does not mean that translators have free license to clarify, explain, and interpret the biblical text as much as they want and still call the result “God’s Word.”
Translators should strive to match the level of clarity that exists in the original language text—no more, and no less. They do no service to their readers when they use obscure or confusing wording when the wording in the original language is clear. But in the many cases where the best faithful scholars in the world disagree on how to interpret the Hebrew or Greek text, choosing only one interpretation means making the translation “clearer” than the original. When it comes to maximizing sola scriptura authority, “clarity” on an interpretive question that is not clear in the original languages is not true clarity at all, but rather obfuscation. We should all be wary of these warnings from the Word of God:
“Who is this who obscures my counsel with ignorant words?” (Job 38:2)
“A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind” (Proverbs 18:2).
Peter draws a sharp distinction between the words of God on the one hand, whether by God’s voice at the transfiguration or through the words of the prophets, and a person’s “own interpretation” or the “will of man” on the other (2 Peter 1:16-21). The authority of Scripture requires us to strive to minimize the ways in which our own interpretation affects the translation, and to be open and honest with readers through footnotes or other side material when such shaping is inevitable.16Some might object to including greater nuance of interpretation in footnotes or other side material, fearing that such notes might “confuse readers” or allow too much subjectivity. But which is better—to let readers in on the real subjectivity of the translator’s interpretation by showing readers when the Word itself is not fully clear on a given point, or to present a fallible human interpretation as the infallible Word of God? Otherwise, we may be guilty, as Raymond Van Leeuwen says, of “replac[ing] God’s word with [our] own.”17Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, “On Bible Translation and Hermeneutics,” 302.
The Difference Between a Bible Translation and an Explanatory Paraphrase
The biblical examples above show us that sometimes God intentionally communicates with less clarity than he could, and that such lack of clarity is a feature of the inspired text to be preserved, not a “bug” to be fixed. When producing a translation intended to be suitable for fulfilling the crucial function of Scripture as the “infallible rule of faith and practice,” it is better for translators to allow what is unclear in the original languages to remain unclear in translation whenever the language allows. God’s thoughts and ways are greater than ours—he speaks with purpose, and we can fully trust him to accomplish his purposes when he sends out his Word into the world (Isaiah 55:8-11).
This does not mean that a paraphrase like Boerger’s is wrong in making certain ideas clearer to his audience than the God-breathed words of Paul to the Galatians did. Since Boerger presents his work as a “paraphrase,” no claim to biblical authority is made, and readers can rightly understand that the work is being presented as the work of a potentially fallible teacher who nevertheless may have great insight to offer. Such work can be a great blessing to the church and a helpful guide to new students of the Bible. But when a work is presented as a “Bible translation” or as “the Bible,” such a presentation inherently carries a claim to infallible authority for the church, and such works must therefore strive, with God’s help, to follow his example in communication, and make our translations neither more clear nor less clear than what God inspired.
This is part 5 of a series on divine authority in Bible translation. Part 6 will combine the need to avoid both overly literal and overly interpretive translation under the rule of maximizing “interpretive resemblance,” and will give further examples of what this means in practice.
The full series can be found here:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9
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