Read highlights from Dr. Douglas Moo’s presentation Wednesday night on Bible translation, “We Still Don’t Get It: Evangelicals and Bible Translation Fifty Years After James Barr.”
We live-blogged these remarks during Dr. Moo’s speech, delivered in a special event at the 66th annual meeting (#ETS2014) of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) (@etsjets) in San Diego, CA. The special event was the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the New International Version (NIV) Bible translation (website / @NIVBible); Dr. Moo is Chairman of the Committee for Bible Translation, which is “the body of scholars with responsibility for overseeing the text of the New International Version of the Bible.”
—Zondervan Academic (@ZonderAcademic) for Bible Gateway Blog
See the event’s news release: Zondervan Hosts Dinner to Celebrate 50-Year Anniversary of the Commissioning of the NIV, the World’s Most Read Modern English Bible Translation
Update 12/1/14: Download the full speech from Dr. Doug Moo in the free eBook, “We Still Don’t Get It”
[Browse the Bible Gateway Store to see the many editions of New International Version Bibles.]
Read from the bottom up.
9:00 — [The evening concludes.]
Answer 11 [From Doug Moo]: All translators struggle with that exact point. In working in any discourse, there are certain technical terms that go with that discourse that most people are able to understand. For example, if you read a spy novel, or a mystery novel, the reader will encounter words that they are able to understand, even though those are somewhat technical.
Question 11: You mentioned in your presentation “biblisch” or “church-ese.” In the classroom I find students are less and less familiar with words we may think of as sacred, like “covenant.” Should the Ark of the Covenant be “the Treaty Box”? When do we move from retaining sacrosanct words to finding colloquial expressions? [Note: Earlier in the evening Dr. Moo defined “biblisch” as “a form of English so indebted to biblical idiom that it sounds unnatural in the ears of the typical modern speaker of English.”]
If you want to know what we disagreed on, look at the footnotes.
The question isn’t just what does the word mean, but what word will convey the meaning to the readers in English? I [Doug Moo] think we eventually went with “deacon” but included a note on our thinking.
Answer 10: Romans 16. Was Phoebe a deacon or an overseer?
Question 10: What was a verse that you disagreed over the most?
[Doug Moo defines “intertextuality” in this paraphrase.] How the Bible reflects back on itself through its different parts.
Everything is done deliberately. Maybe it sometimes looks like there was no reason for a particular change, but we had a reason, and it’s related to the long reach of the committee’s memory.
Another answer is memory. The NIV has a very long memory. For example, “If we change that, we will lose that linkage back to the OT verse…”
We all struggle with this and we don’t all vote unanimously on these matters. We take suggestions from others such as you into account.
Answer 9: I think you have to do the best you can. [Laughter.] You can’t communicate everything… There is wordplay all over the text, beginning in Genesis.
Question 9: How do you ensure the preservation of clauses, phrases, terminologies that are meant by the New Testament author to make the reader think of the Old Testament?
Answer 8: There is no current plan for a new version… I don’t think it’s very useful to the public at large if we change versions often.
Question 8: When do you plan to release new editions? Will new apps such as YouVersion or Faithlife change how you approach new versions?
[A comment about preaching from complex texts:] If you find yourself undermining a text in your sermon preparation, you need to not preach on it that Sunday.
Answer 7: We would say it like this: What is this particular verb form saying, and then how would we say that in English?
Question 7: Isn’t there a place to call something a more literal translation?
We [translators] are aware our audience today is generally less literate and less churched. We need to continue to look at this going forward.
Answer 6: We constantly try to determine what presuppositions readers bring to the text. There’s an awareness that translation is a communication, not merely a collection of words.
Question 6: In 1965 communication theory looked more at the code and expected it to carry the full message. Now more contemporary thought says the message may not be contained in it, but may only be implied. How has this affected the amount of explicit information you can get from a text?
Answer 5: That’s a great question, especially in Hebrew poetry [where it comes into play often].
Question 5: To what extent is intertextuality a principle of translation?
The footnotes mark where we had to make a difficult decision and maybe aren’t completely satisfied with it. We continually look into these things.
Answer 4, from Doug Moo: Putting footnotes in a Bible is sort of like putting an apple in a child’s lunch. The mother feels good about it but the child will never eat it.
Question 4: [Question about how they engage with new critical developments.]
Answer 3: It’s a very fascinating field of study to combine their practices and philosophy with those of modern translation. One of the things that strikes us is that we don’t have the original Septuagint. What we do have is evidence of an evolution over many years.
Question 3: Does the Septuagint offer us any guidance for English translation?
Answer 2: I don’t believe we have a written policy. We ask, does this communicate in English? (For example, “gird your loins” becomes “prepare” in the NIV.) How much can we keep, how much do we need to change in order for it to be understood? Another key factor is whether it’s a live or a dead metaphor for the reader — e.g., a “vessel” in “the weaker vessel.” Does that phrase make the reader imagine a clear picture of a vessel?
Question 2: Do you have a policy on figures of speech?
Answer 1: We try to do both. We try to be evangelical, but serve a larger constituency.
Question 1: You mentioned you had to make a decision about to whom you were speaking: to the evangelical community, or the community at large. Which way did you go?
[Now members of the CBT approach the stage for the audience Q&A. Present are Doug Moo, Mark Strauss, Karen Jobes, Bill Mounce, Jeannine Brown and Richard Hess.]
8:19 — Do we effectively teach our students the realities of language? Or do we continue to require our second-year language students to translate “word for word,” perpetuating a simplistic and ultimately quite false view of language?
A second reason for using the word “literal” is simplicity. Third, it is the way we were taught.
Why do we still find ourselves speaking and writing about the “literal” meaning of words? I can think of three reasons. First is what I call “homiletical expediency.” Wanting to show off our knowledge.
Modern linguists are skeptical about “double” meanings, generally insisting that one should give a particular word the least meaning necessary to explain it in its context. Yet this sensible guideline does not exclude the possibility (perhaps fairly rare) that an author may use a word with a double meaning.
8:13 — To claim that a word in the biblical languages has a “literal” meaning capable of being summarized in a single English equivalent is simply not true.
Yet we still write about and talk about the “literal” meaning of a word.
Above all, [Barr] stressed that words have a field of meaning. All these principles are taught and elaborated in our basic texts about exegetical method.
The third and final linguistic principle [I will discuss] is at the heart of Barr’s seminal work: the nature of lexical semantics.
8:08 — The fact that translations transfer meaning, not words, makes clear that the doctrine of inspiration does not entail a “word-for-word” translation approach.
Translation is not, as many people assume, a matter of word substitution… Translators must first determine the meaning that the clustering of words in the biblical languages convey — and then select a cluster of English words that accurately communicates that meaning to modern listeners and readers.
A second major principle of modern linguistics: meaning is found not in individual words, as vital as they are, but in larger clusters (phrases, clauses, sentences, discourses)… Words themselves are not the final arbiters of meaning.
8:04 — The Collins report revealed that evangelicals are using “man” to refer to the human race far more often than the general population.
Our ability to understand the language of our target audience has been significantly enhanced by the rapid advance in computing power. The field of “computational linguistics” … To my knowledge, the NIV was the first translation to take significant advantage of it.
We sometimes hear it said that English translations will inevitably contain difficult texts, and that we shouldn’t worry too much about these because it is the ministry of the teacher in the church to make clear the meaning. I don’t entirely disagree, but I wonder how many people reading the Bible have access to a good teacher.
A 2013 study concluded that 35% of adults in the US can’t read at all or read below a 5th grade level.
From the beginning, the NIV has had as its target the general English-speaking population.
We [the CBT] often warn ourselves about the danger of translating not into English but into “biblisch”: a form of English so indebted to biblical idiom that it sounds unnatural in the ears of the typical modern speaker of English. “Daughter of Zion” is a good example.
7:52 — Translators must work with the language as it is. Wishing it were otherwise is vain.
No one person or committee of persons prescribes what words will mean or how they will be used in combination. The users of language determine meaning and usage.
We have not consistently honored these insights in discourse about translation.
[Doug Moo cites the influential release of James Barr’s The Semantics of Biblical Literature, 1961. More info on James Barr.]
7:46 — Reasons to celebrate are many. One of them is the broadly evangelical nature of the NIV. The initial meeting of 32 scholars represented a broad spectrum of denominations. This broad spectrum continues in the CBT today.
In 1964-65, it was decided a committee on 15 should continue to take the [NIV] translation forward.
To put it provocatively, and more than somewhat unfairly, evangelicals were faced with the choice of a Bible that was either antiquated, heretical, unreadable, or unreliable.
In 1973 I bought my first NIV. Some of you will remember that New Testament NIV, and some of you will also remember the landscape of English translation in those days.
Fifty years of the NIV is cause for celebration.
7:40 — [Dr. Doug Moo begins his presentation.]
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