What Bible Translation Should Apostolics Read?
by David K. Bernard
Podcast recording (no venue stated in the delivered transcript)
Kind: teaching

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/david-k-bernard--what-bible-translation-should-apostolics-read
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
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you know the bigger question is somewhat humorously stated the person said what is the best translation uh the best translation is the one you will obey the the point being it's not so much the wording but there must be a commitment to following the teachings of the bible but having said that i do think it's important to understand the history of translations again let me refer you to my book god's infallible word so if you want a detailed discussion of english translations and the underlying translation philosophy then i encourage you to read my book god's infallible word and then there's a sequel about interpretation which is closely related it's called understanding god's word but but let's take a look um at this whole subject now let me just say from the outset in the english language the classic historic most widely used translation has been the king james version of 1611 and i would say certainly i endorse this as an excellent translation perhaps uh used by god more than any other uh is for that matter in any language uh for the the word of god today and certainly at the start of the modern pentecostal movement the early 20th century it was the most widely used best known standard translation in english and so god used has used it over the years so i certainly highly recommend it however it is 400 years old uh and there are other translations so let me just give you a brief background as you probably know the the bible is written originally in hebrew in the old testament some aramaic and then greek for the new testament so if you really want to read god's word the best option is to read it in the original languages now i don't know hebrew i have studied new testament greek and i can with the proper study aids i can work my way through and have uh work my way through much of the new testament in greek and that really does help you but for most people they need a translation in their own native language now some people say you should only use the new king james version or the only use the king james version i don't think that's logically or biblically tenable for many reasons first of all we're apostolic so we follow the apostles now obviously the apostles didn't speak english but let's take the apostles when they quoted from the old testament apparently some of them at least knew hebrew and so they could make their own free translation but most of the time in the new testament they actually quoted from a very specific greek translation called the septuagint which was the popular greek translation of the hebrew bible in their day and because they were writing in greek and preaching greek they used the standard translation but if you do a careful study of the quotations of the old testament in the new testament you do find many of the quotations are exactly the septuagint but many don't match the septuagints so they were other translations or even free translations that the apostles themselves did on their own well if we're apostolic we think that the apostolic example is very important so the apostles and the new testament writers themselves use various translations of their bible so to say you could only use in principle in theory or biblically justifiably only one translation that's not what the apostles did so that doesn't seem to be a good way to start then if you're looking specifically english of course the king james was not the first translation in english there were others wycliffe and tyndale in fact tyndale's translation of the 1500s was revised a number of times the king james translators a century later did not start from scratch it was not original translation actually they started with tyndale and to a great extent the king james is a fifth revision of tyndale's so if you say that king james is great which i do you almost have to say tyndale's was great as well and in fact you know if the king james is the only possible one what did people do before it existed and another good example is the pilgrims when they came to the new world uh to new england uh that was before and during the king james bible translation and uh you know they came right after it was published but it the king james didn't achieve immediate success it was not the most popular bible and not widespread for a number of years later so actually um the pilgrims didn't use the king james they used the geneva bible and what's really interesting that was probably the most popular bible among protestants in english at the time the king james was written so the king james transfers in their preface they needed to quote the bible for certain things guess what they didn't quote their own translation they quoted the standard translation of their day which was the geneva bible so even if you take the king james translators as your authority they themselves said well there's another good translation another interesting example if you use the historic um lord's prayer when you come to the point says forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us that's from the english book of common prayer it's not from the king james it's from a translation before the king james so i'm just giving you a little illustrations not to discredit the king james but just to say historically we have not said you could only use one translation the apostles didn't say that the king james translators didn't say that even the early apostolics if you study the writings of the early books of the oneness pentecostal pioneers such as frank ewert gt haywood andrew urschen you you look at the early pentecostal heralds of the of the united pentecostal church 1940s and 50s we our authors predominantly use the king james which is no surprise because it was the most popular standard translation english but they would use other translations to demonstrate certain points so from the beginning of the apostolic movement we've understood there could be other translations so what should we do today and why is there even any issue why should we just keep using the king james well we can and do but face it the king james is 400 years old and so there are many words that are uncommon to us and maybe what's even more troubling is they're words we think we know but they've changed their meanings so we don't really know we get the wrong impression and even such things as the these and thous we're familiar with those if we're raised in the king james but what we don't realize is that the and thou was the singular and intimate personal whereas you was the plural second person and the most more formal so if uh but that's kind of flipped in our thinking so we say i thank the lord because we think we're using exalted biblical prayerful language where really it was intimate personal i think the one-on-one relationship so we misunderstand or we get the wrong impression it's kind of humorous to me when i hear people using the these and vows they usually can't keep them straight with grammatical consistency because we've forgotten all the rules that are associated with those and so we actually botch the job because we don't know the old language uh so and then i've learned as a pastor when dealing with children youth people not raised in church prison ministry so forth the king james is difficult for many people to comprehend so i do think there's a value in other translations now when you look at other translations you have to look at uh two things you first of all look at the text underlying text which is called textual criticism and there are some differences among manuscripts but that has been overstated because all the major translations have all the apostolic doctrine biblical clearly stated in fact some other translation are even more  clear in certain passages so there's really no significant concern there but that's a deep subject that we don't have time to go to the other one is the translation philosophy some translations like the king james are very literal some are more idiomatic so the king james takes the traditional thought you try to translate word for word as much as possible if you know two languages as i do knowing english and korean as well as new testament greek and some french you know that you can't always translate one word with exactly one word sometimes there's no exact correspondence sometimes a word works well in one context but you need a different word in other context sometimes you need several words or phrase to actually to accurately capture the meaning of the original word so it's it's a judgment call it's an art it's not a mechanical thing where you can crank out with google translate with purple perfect accuracy so it is always subjective in a judgment call so there's a question should you try to translate as much as possible word for word which means when you do that you're going to miss some of the connotations that were obvious to the original reader or do you try to try to translate thought for thought where you try to capture the full thought but in doing so you might have to use some words that are not literally in the original and so which philosophy is better and i think it depends on what your purpose is i think there's a room for both so if you don't know the original language as most of us don't probably a word for word is the best because it does gets closest to capturing the actual text but since you lose a lot of thought in translation if you're going to use a literal word for word you need some commentaries or word studies that help add to the picture and that's where a more idiomatic translation or what they call a dynamic equivalent translation can fill in the gaps so i actually recommend for study that use both kinds so for a public reading or a text use a literal like king james but if you really want to dig into something uh you have to look at several translations and use one or more that have the more idiomatic or dynamic equivalent so you kind of recapture the the the con connotation in addition to the actual word that you're trying to duplicate look at the meaning and the connotation of that word in in the original language and explain in your language but now regardless there are certain translations that you can't trust because they're ideological they're they're a certain group that has its own agenda such as jehovah's witnesses new world translations so so you wouldn't want to use that you want to use a translation that it's not just limited to certain denomination but you have a group of scholars that are well respected come from different backgrounds and they believe the bible is the word of god or they have a high respect for the bible so they would feel bad about deliberately trying to change the meaning so you want you really want a conservative group of translators that are committed to try to faithfully transmit the word so there are some liberal translations that you would exclude and there are some paraphrases that may be good as like a personal commentary but you wouldn't want to use them as the bible so like the message it's great if you're just wanting to get a bible story or if you want to get a commentary of what eugene peterson thinks it means but you wouldn't want to read it as the bible and then end of subject because he's going to use a lot of words and phrases that aren't in the original but it's his interpretation of what he thinks the original means so there's a place even for paraphrases but more as bible commentaries or more as bible story books rather than actual text so if you're going to restrict ourselves to conservative bible-believing authors what should we use well for a little translation the king james is excellent but if you want to use an update in modern english that still uses the same hebrew and greek text the new king james version it is excellent in principle if you believe that the king james is good you shouldn't have an objection to the new king james and then there are some others like the modern english version that uses the same underlying text but tries to modernize the english there are others that use a slightly different critical text but they're still conservative the english standard version the new american standard bible which is maybe the most literal of all even more than the king james so sometimes the king james is uses somewhat figurative language even though it's basic philosophy is literal it's not always completely literal the the new american center bible tries to be the most literal ball but then that has a disadvantage of sometimes sounding very wooden or artificial in english which in turn can maybe hinder your con comprehension because it's not regular english necessarily but those that i've mentioned of a more literal conservative philosophy king james new king james esv mev nasb uh i'm sure there are probably a couple others that i'm not thinking of but all those would fall into that category the christian standard bible would be another csb now if you want a more dynamic equivalent that is trying to capture more of the thought but yet you still want conservative um conservative philosophy conservative translators the niv new international version is very good and more recently the nlt the new living translation not to be confused with the living bible which is a paraphrase but the new living translation now i really like both the niv and the nlt of vividly bringing out the meaning in modern english it can you can really open your understanding because you're so used to the traditional language that sometimes it doesn't fully register but when you read the fresh translation it comes alive you say oh that's what it means now i get it and you go back to the king j well yeah that's what it was saying but somehow i just never saw that i will caution you though with the niv and the nlt especially when you want to make a doctoral point go back to one of the more conservative translations and make sure the doctrinal point especially goes back and forth and sometimes the more idiomatic translations will obscure a point that really is significant to us as apostolics so there might be a statement about god's name which we the theology name is very important a more idiomatic translation might say god's honor uh which is true that's the connotation but you miss the fact that there is a specific identification with the name so that's why i say the more idiomatic translations can help your comprehensions oh this is what this is meaning this is the significance but you still need the more little translation to make sure you don't miss a key doctrinal point so i say use both