WM 332: Discussion: TYNDALE: The Costly Legacy of Faithful Bible Translations

 

Tyndale Film website.

JTR

Book Note: Archaic or Accurate? The translation of scripture and how we address God in praise and prayer--Thou or You?

From X post:

In confessional Reformed circles we often bemoan the decline of reverence and sobriety in corporate worship. In response we rightly appeal to and advocate for a return to the Protestant teaching and practice of the Regulative Principle of worship.

In addition, among English speakers, one wonders what has been the impact of declining use of reverential pronouns in addressing God? How was this decline been another result of the downgrade of many modern translations? This shift has, in fact, only been relatively recent.

Is it possible that we English speakers might make reverential pronouns “great again” in our prayers and sung praise?

I’ve been reading this little book Archaic or Accurate? The translation of the scriptures, and how we address God in praise and prayer—Thou or You? and have found it helpful. It is a collection of short articles on this theme from the Bible League Quarterly, edited by John Thackway. I commend it.

Here are a few samples from "Archaic or Accurate?": the opening paragraph to the book’s Foreword and the opening paragraph plus from one of its best short articles on “The Use of Thee and Thou in Prayer.”

Subscription to the Bible League Quarterly is a bargain. You can get the online version for just 5 pounds (less that 7 dollars) per year. Great devotional resource for all Christians and helpful sermon resource for pastors.

https://bibleleaguetrust.org/the-quarterly/

JTR

Note: On the translation/interpretation of Ephesians 4:12

From X post:

Believe it or not, I only rarely ever address issues related to text or translation of the Bible from the pulpit in my regular Lord’s Day preaching (given our church’s uniformity of practice), but yesterday I did briefly address the translation/interpretation of Ephesians 4:12 (listen to the sermon here). My notes:

There is a major question about how to translate Ephesians 4:12, and a big part of that involves a single comma.

The older Protestant translations, like the AV, generally list three things that the pastor-teachers are supposed to do:

“For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.”

First, they are to labor at the “perfecting [maturing] of the saints.” Christ said, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). In Colossians 1:28 Paul said the goal of his ministry was, “that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.”

Second, they are to do the work of ministry. What is the work of ministry? We get an idea of this from Acts 6:4 when the apostles said they wanted to give themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word.

Third, they labor “for the edifying of the body of Christ.” They want to see the spiritual health, safety, and spiritual growth of God’s people.

In the 20^th century some translations removed the first comma and said Paul was saying the task of ministers was to equip all the saints for the work of ministry. Compare:

NIV: “to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up”

ESV: “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,”

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that I think the older translation is best. I think so for two reasons:

First, it reflects the grammar of the original Greek construction better. There are three distinct prepositional phrases (προς… εις… εις…).

Second, theologically and functionally it fits better the description elsewhere given of the special roles given to ministers.

The new translations reflect a modern egalitarian view. I remember growing up in SBC churches where the theme in many of those churches was “every member a minister.” To a certain degree that is true. All Christians are called to ministry. But not all are called to be pastors and teachers. See James 3:1: “My brethren, be not many master [teachers]….” And it is this special role that Paul is describing here.

JTR

R. L. Dabney on those who delight in criticizing and amending "the received English version"

 

From X post:

R. L. Dabney warns against those who delight in criticizing and amending “the received English version” “this precious work of our ancestors”:

"The most reprehensible pedantry of all is that which delights in criticizing and amending the received English version. Instead of seeking for opportunities to point out errors in this precious work of our ancestors, its credit should be carefully sustained before the people, whenever this can be done without an actual sacrifice of our integrity and of the truth of the text. The general excellence of the translation merits this treatment. Such were the learning and labour of its authors, that he who is most deeply acquainted with sacred criticism will be found most modest in assailing their accuracy in any point. But it is far more important to remark, that this version is practically the Bible of the common people—the only one to which they can have familiar access. If their confidence in its fidelity is overthrown, they are virtually robbed of the written word of God…. Thus let the confidence of your hearers in their English Bibles be preserved and fortified."

-Evangelical Eloquence, 162-163.

WM 321: Fidelity and Intelligibility: Has Mark Ward Misunderstood Tyndale's Plowboy?

 

My notes for this episode:

Mark Ward is a freelance youtuber who has become well known as an, and sometimes extremist, critic of popular contemporary use of the incessant King James Version, even claiming that it should no longer be used in Christian institution and declaring recently that it would be sinful to give a KJV to a child.

If you’ve ever listened to any of Ward’s videos, there’s a good chance you’ve heard him make the claim that he is simply following the spirit of William Tyndale (1494-1536), the first person to translate the NT into English from the original Greek, who once famously declared to a Roman Catholic cleric, “If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.”

In a recent debate with an independent Baptist pastor, Ward finished his closing statement with several dramatic references to Tyndale and the plow boy.

He lamented that some folk supposedly have put “having the Bible” over “understanding the Bible.”

He claimed that “Literally no one has done more work than he has to help people understand the KJV.”

He recalled (as he has often done in the past) that in his senior year of high school he played Tyndale in the school play.

He declared, “I have the heartbeat of William Tyndale.” Continuing in an impassioned and theatrical tone to say, “Please do not deny that my heart’s desire is for the plowboy to understand God’s Word,” saying, “I don’t want to miss a single [word], and I don’t want the plowboy to miss them either.”

And adding, “You cannot have the help of a preacher. You need a translator.”

He closed his speech with this paraphrase, “Lord open KJVOnlyism’s eyes.”

If you know Ward, you know he has a very broad definition of KJVOnlyism, essentially encompassing anyone who prefers its use to other translations.

The question remains as to whether Ward has properly understood what Tyndale meant in his famous statement, “If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.” Did Tyndale carry out his work of translation in the way that Ward suggests?

I’ve noted before some of many problems with Ward’s approach is his insistence on “absolute intelligibility” in Bible translation. Unless the reader—no matter his age, experience, or maturity—understands the meaning of every single word and phrase at his first sitting, Ward suggests, then the translation fails.

Criticism of Ward’s “absolute intelligibility” view was well stated by James Snapp, Jr. on his blog on October 29, 2024, in an article titled, “Mark Ward and his Ridiculous Claim about the KJV.”, a critique that Ward has yet to acknowledge, much less to offer a response.

In that post, Snapp said, “Dr. Ward seems to think that the Bible should be translated so plainly that it is incapable of being misunderstood.  Unfortunately such a translation has never existed and never will exist on earth….”

I thought of this recently as a I read an essay by Alan Jacobs, an Humanities Professor at Baylor University. The essay is titled, “Robert Alter’s Fidelity,” and it appears in a collection of Jacob’s essays, titled, Wayfaring: Essays Pleasant and Unpleasant (Eerdmans, 2010).

The essay is about Jewish scholar and literary critic Robert Alter’s publication of his translation of The Five Books of Moses. He has since completed the entire OT. Jacobs praises Alter’s translation not for its readability but its fidelity, and he makes much of that distinction.

In the opening pages he also makes some interesting comments about Tyndale’s saying about the plow boy and his interpretation of it is not the same as Ward takes it to be.

See Jacobs’ essay pp. 12-15.

Highlights and conclusion:

Jacobs says, “In translation, fidelity is the ultimate imperative and trumps every other virtue: even clarity or readability” (12).

Jacobs says we must not think that Tyndale assumed “the ideal experience of reading Scripture” is one in which “clarity manifests itself fully and immediately” (13).

He warns against translations that are swayed by “an assertively egalitarian, democratizing, and anti-clerical culture like our own today” (14).

He warns also of translators who think of themselves as being in loco parentis, thinking of readers as “little children” who need “scholarly fathers” to protect them “from the agonies of interpretive confusion” (14).

 Tyndale himself did not do this. He introduced words in his translation that his readers would not know (because he himself coined those words and phrases: like, Jehovah, atonement, Passover, scapegoat, mercy seat, etc.).

Tyndale was more concerned with fidelity than intelligibility. This same sense led AV translators to use terms like “propitiation” to describe the atonement in Romans and 1 John. The term was not well known to the readers of that day, but it rightly taught the meaning of Christ’s atoning death.

Jacobs says men of this era knew that Scripture “exhibits its clarity only to those who undergo the lengthy intellectual discipline of submitting to its authority” (14).

No matter how passionately it might be stated, we must conclude that Mark Ward does not, in fact, demonstrate “the heartbeat of William Tyndale.”

Ward’s understanding of Tyndale seems frozen in a simplified and unsophisticated version of Tyndale’s thought, retained from Ward’s memory of a high school play.

It does not represent a mature and accurate understanding of Tyndale or his view of what makes for a good translation.

As Paul puts it in 1Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

One of the marks of Ward’s confusion on this issue is that he claims the text underlying a translation is an unimportant factor in evaluating the worthiness of that translation. This is a total rejection of fidelity as the guiding principle of Bible translation.

In the end, we have to conclude, with Jacobs, that those who approach Bible translation, as does Mark Ward, do not approach in the spirit of Tyndale, whose concern was not that the plowboy might immediately have complete comprehension of every word, but that he might, over time, with the Spirit’s help and the instructions of officers appointed in Christ’s church, come to know it truly and faithfully.

JTR

WM 320: Initial Response: ESV Text Update (2025)

 

JTR

WM 315: Review: Gallagher on Paul, LXX, and Canon

 

JTR

Article: "Does the King James Version Wrongly Translate Acts 5:30?"

 

 

Jeffrey T. Riddle, "Does the King James Version Wrongly Translate Acts 5:30?" Bible League Quarterly, No. 499 (October-December, 2024): 22-28 [PDF Draft].

You can read it here on my academia.edu page.

JTR

Notes:

Draft PDF: Some spacing and tab adjustments needed. Corrections: P. 23 change "kremantes" to "kremasantes" in two places P. 25 add bold to RSV and NIV citations P. 26 remove duplicate of word "that" P. 27 change "constitutes" to "constitute" P. 28 change "causes" to "cause"

Jonathan Arnold: Old Testament Bible Translation and the LXX (RBS 2024 Breakout Session)

 

JTR

IN THE GAP with Will Odendall: Interview with Jeff Riddle on Bible Translations, etc.

 

JTR

Audio: The Translators to the Reader.Part 15: Reasons inducing us not to stand curiously upon an identity of phrasing

 

Last installment in this series: Translators to Reader.Part 15.

"Another thing we think good to admonish thee of, gentle Reader, that we have not tied ourselves to a uniformity of phrasing, or to an identity of words...."

JTR

Audio: The Translators to the Reader.Part 14: Reasons moving us to set diversity of senses in the margin, where there is great probability for each

 

"...it hath pleased God to scatter words and sentences of that difficulty and doubtfulness, not in doctrinal points that concern salvation... but in matters of less moment..."

JTR

Audio: The Translators to the Reader.Part 13: The purpose of the Translators, with their number, furniture, care, etc.

 

Here we find the famous statement that they saw no need to make a completely new translation, but "to make a good one better, or out of many good ones one principal good one."

JTR

Audio: The Translators to the Reader: An answer to the imputations of our adversaries

 

"...the very meanest translation of the Bible in English... containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God..."

JTR

Audio: The Translators to the Reader.Part 11: A satisfaction to our brethren

 

JTR

Audio: The Translators to the Reader.Part 10: The speeches and reasons, both of our brethren and of our adversaries, against this work

 

JTR

Audio: The Translators to the Reader.Part 9: The unwillingness of our chief adversaries that the Scriptures should be divulged in the mother tongue, etc.

 

Part 9 attacks the Roman church's opposition to vernacular Bible translations:

"So much are they afraid of the light of the Scripture... that they will not trust the people with it...."

JTR

Audio: The Translators to the Reader.Part 8: The translating of the Scripture into the vulgar tongues

 

JTR

Audio: The Translators to the Reader.Part 7: Translation out of Hebrew and Greek into Latin

 

What did the AV translators think of Latin translations of the Bible (Old Latin and Vulgate)?

JTR

Audio: The Translators to the Reader.Part 6: The Translation of the Old Testament out of Hebrew into Greek

 

In section 6 of the KJV Preface, a robust Protestant view of Greek translations of the OT, including the LXX, is set forward. It provides much needed clarification for our day.

JTR