Bigtest

This is a podcast segment called Navigating Faith at Voyage Church, where the pastor, Cody, answers common questions about theology, the Bible, and Christian living. The segment aims to provide a safe space for discussing topics that may not come up during regular church services or Bible studies. The first question Cody addresses is about Bible translations. He explains that while the original manuscripts are considered inerrant, translations can have mistakes. There are two main philosophies of Bible translation: formal equivalence, which aims for word-for-word translation, and dynamic equivalence, which focuses on capturing the main idea of each phrase or sentence. Cody recommends having a formal equivalence translation for Bible study, as it provides a close understanding of the original text, while dynamic equivalence translations are easier to read and understand. Examples of formal equivalence translations include ESV and NASB, while NIV and NLT are examples of dynamic equivalen Okay, well, welcome, everyone, to Navigating Faith at Voyage Church. My name is Cody. I pastor at Voyage, and, well, I'm excited to be here as we kick off a new segment on our podcast, primarily designed as a time for teaching, just to go over maybe common questions that people might have, whether it be questions in theology, questions about the Bible, questions about faith, or maybe just practical Christian living. We want just an opportunity to dive into that stuff. I know there's a lot of resources out online, and as much as there are many good resources, there's also a lot of not-so-good resources, and so we always wanted to create as a church kind of a safe place where we could talk about things that sometimes, you know, just don't come up in, like, a Sunday worship setting, things that maybe don't even come up in Bible studies or in small group discipleship groups. I know when I first started out as a believer, I did spend a lot of time Googling questions that I had, and, you know, it's not that I wasn't part of a good church, but, you know, it just didn't seem like to be, you know, there'd be times to kind of ask this question or that question, because sometimes we don't want to, you know, stand out in a Bible study. We don't want to change the direction of conversation. Whatever it is, I know that there's a lot of questions that are lingering out there, so I'm excited to go through this and to really bring this, kind of bring this, like I said, this new segment online here on our podcast. I love asking questions. I love getting answers to questions and figuring out, so we're going to kick it off here, and down the road, I hope to hear, get some good questions and feedback from our church community, bring some other people in on this podcast to maybe have longer segments. Well, for now, though, we're going to start off with our first question for at least this week, and I think it's a common one that people have when you're a new believer. It's, well, it's absolutely a question that you face as a new believer, but, you know, also it's something that I think we come back to time and time again, and that is a question about Bible translations. Simply put, what Bible translation should I read from? Should I purchase and kind of have as my Bible translation? I think it's a great question. It's a great question, and there's a lot that goes into answering that question. I think that probably most of us bought a Bible translation, didn't maybe think much about it, and then over time, we got more information, maybe began to doubt our choice. I know a lot of people get pretty, you know, pretty proud, patriotic, can I say, about their chosen Bible translation. It's an interesting topic, and I want to dig into it a little bit with you guys here today. So, to start, though, we need to understand a few things about Bible translations. I think one of the first things we need to figure out, and we'll start, is just what are the different translations? How do we group them and categorize them and understand them? And really, what's the attitude that we should have towards translations to begin with, kind of overall view? And I think it's important to note that our faith, our Christian tradition holds that the original manuscripts are inerrant. That means without error. So, this is a creation of God, of God's revelation, so there are no mistakes or falsehoods in the Bible, and as we understand that, that's the original manuscripts, the original creations that God brought into being. Translations, though, we understand, can have mistakes. We don't come to the Bible thinking that a particular translation is holy and divine, right? So, we do understand, and I think that's why we have such a robust debate and a diversity of translations, because there are some slight differences, and people kind of are always trying to kind of gauge, well, which one is the most accurate, most likely, probably the original manuscript? Well, no translation is going to be perfect, even with the collections of Old Testament and New Testament documents we have in the original languages, you know, you're going from those collections, trying to get, basically, scholars look at the collections. They compare the different fragments or full copies of different books that they have to come out with, you know, with basically one copy of a text that is most accurate, and then from there, you translate into, well, in our case, we're translating into English, and the question comes, well, how do you translate some of these words? And that's where the debate comes to a head, and there are basically two good philosophies of Bible translation that give birth to the different translations that we often choose from. So I'm going to use some big words, maybe for some of you, I know, in church, don't like big words. We kind of got to get used to them, and I'll try and translate those terminologies as best as possible, but on one hand, we have what's called formal equivalence, and that basically means word-for-word translation, so the philosophy there is that when you're, say, looking at the book of Romans, Greek, one of the Greek New Testaments, you're basically taking it and trying to translate each Greek word into its English word equivalent, its best English word equivalent, and you go through the entire book like that. And that is kind of considered a, quote, you know, most accurate, right, as maybe we think, translation. Obviously, the most, I guess, accurate or most word-for-word translation you could have is what's called an interlinear Bible, and most people don't usually carry those around, and that's basically the Greek text, and then just basically an English word equivalent underneath. The downside of the word-for-word translations is that they can be translated in awkward English, sometimes called wooden English, it's a little rough, it's maybe unnatural to the English speaker, because, well, generally, you're translating from another language and you're losing some of that natural fluidity with which we speak, you're maybe losing some of the colloquialisms that we would speak with naturally. And so that's kind of the downside of formal equivalence Bibles, is while they're very close to, as close as possible, really, to the Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic text that we have, they can be a bit harder on the English side to really make good sense of. So that's their positive side, their downside. I want to give an opinion on all of these different categories about whether this is kind of a good Bible translation to invest in, and I think that formal equivalence is definitely an essential in a believer's bookshelf or nightstand, maybe, better for a Bible. I think especially for Bible study, it is a really wonderful translation type to have, because it does get just so close, as close as possible, to the Greek text. You can really get into understanding, really, word for word, what is being communicated, and you can't beat that. You can't beat that, especially when it comes to, really, Bible study that is especially driven towards understanding, comprehension, and learning. The word-for-word translations, I think, really, in many ways, can't be beat. So it's great. We should all definitely have a copy of one of these. Some of the common ones that you know of, I think a very famous one is the English Standard Version ESV. My wife really loves that. That's kind of her go-to Bible. My preference is the New American Standard Bibles, that's the NASB. Other people might turn to things like New King James, that's another example that you could have in this category of Bibles. Yeah, I think they're definitely great. The other side is, and I think, really, it's better to think of this as a spectrum rather than black and white. As we go down the spectrum to the other direction, we come to what's called dynamic equivalence. This is where some of the fans of the formal equivalence, the word-for-word translations, kind of turn their nose up, and that's not really fair. The dynamic equivalence comes at translation slightly differently. It's important to know, of course, that even with the word-for-word translations, there is a level of interpretation that Bible translators must do, right, because you come across maybe a Greek or Hebrew word, and you maybe have like four English words to choose from. How do you know which word? You're going to probably make that decision based on context, but you're only doing it word-for-word, so that minimizes a bit of that translation. When you come to what's called dynamic equivalence, the other way we can categorize these Bible translations is as being called a thought-for-thought, so we're kind of looking at maybe a bigger group of words, like a sentence, a phrase, and we're translating that piece-by-piece, so thought-for-thought, maybe sentence-by-sentence. So it does expand the amount of interpretation that Bible translators will undergo. They're not looking to translate each word-for-word. There's going to be more flexibility in what words they choose to translate and how they translate those words, because their goal, right, is to capture the main idea of each phrase and sentence, and so that's kind of the downside. There's a bit more interpretation going on before it gets to the reader, but on the positive side, you get a Bible translation that is much easier to read. It makes a bit more sense. It's more clear to the reader. It's now you're able to kind of create a more natural English with this type of translation style, and I think that's really the ultimate example of this translation. The flag bearer of this translation has always been the NIV, the New International Version. I almost can't even think of another translation. Maybe the NLT also fits in that category. It really dominates the scene in terms of thought-for-thought translations. And ultimately, is this a good Bible translation to have? Is this category of Bible translations good to have? Yeah, absolutely. Dynamic equivalence Bibles are a very good resource to have, and they're excellent Bible resources. My preference in this category, though, probably is more on a little bit between formal and dynamic equivalence Bibles. I really go with the CSB, the Christian Standard Bible, which itself, it doesn't – it likes to call itself – I can't even remember off the top of my head now. The translators of the Christian Standard Bible, they're not formal equivalence. They're not word-for-word, but they also say they're not dynamic equivalence. They kind of put themselves as a hybrid that goes in between the two. Regardless, I think that they've captured very well the natural flow of English. So for me, it really fits well with a sense of dynamic equivalence because it's very readable and very easy to understand, a very clear Bible translation, which is really what you want on this side of the Bible translation spectrum. So whatever dynamic equivalence Bible you would ultimately choose, should you go with this translation? I would say yes. Yeah, absolutely. There, I've kind of landed on both sides of that debate. So yeah, I think we should have more than one translation of the Bible to read from. That's kind of the big surprise that's not such a big surprise. It doesn't mean you have to always read everything twice over every morning and night or what have you. But to go back and forth, to do sometimes comparing between different verses is, I think, a real plus in Christian living and in understanding the Bible, going through various translations. If you want to invest more heavily in one Bible, it's a bit nicer, maybe has a bit more resources or is a study Bible, go with that. And then you can have a second one. Maybe you grabbed a pew Bible from a church that you're part of. And it's good to make sure, though, that I think that there's enough distinction so there's enough differences. Like one word for word translation, like I have the NASB, and then one that's more of a thought for thought translation. And for me, I would lean on the CSB. Other people might want to go, yeah, have their ESB and then they also have their NIV, I think it's good to have a foot in both camps for a full diet of scripture reading and Bible study. I think that's great. And one thing I love about having Bible studies together, and we're always short for time because we want to talk so much and go through the actual questions and the meat, but I would almost sometimes kind of love just to like everyone brings their own Bible and it's all different Bible translations and we can just read and compare the differences. And it's, you know, it's amazing because it just brings a greater fullness to the Word, right, to see God's Word expressed through different angles, you know, using different expressions and it's like, more is better, really, that's what it comes across to me. So if we can do that in our own lives, I think that's essential to do. That brings me then to the third category, and the third category kind of gets kicked out sometimes of the conversation because, you know, do we want to use the word translation for this? I don't know. I typically don't. And that is the category of paraphrase. So if we went on our spectrum, we started on one side with, say, like the, in our linear Bible, the most word for word heavy translation, we go down the spectrum, so we have our formal equivalents or our word for word translations, then we're into dynamic equivalents, territory, thought for thought translation Bibles. We keep moving on, and that thought for thought gets spread even more, stretched even more to the point we're now getting to a paraphrase, right? And is the paraphrase a paraphrase or is it a translation? That is often up for debate. I'm going to lean towards the side, to the side saying it's a paraphrase, it's not a proper translation. I wouldn't, you know, if you want to come and do a Bible study and understand really what is God saying here in a particular passage, I don't, I wouldn't feel confident that a paraphrase would, you know, help you in that case. I mean, okay, it would help you, but I do not think that it would be really a faithful guide. There is just too much interpretation already going on between the author. In this case, it's really, I want to paraphrase, we talk authorship now, right? We don't talk about the translators. We often see the people who come up with this are called authors, so there's a lot of interpretation that's going on before the reader, and, you know, maybe I should have said this from the beginning when we're talking about Bible study, right? As Protestants, you know, we are filled with the Holy Spirit, and he guides us in the learning and understanding and our reading of Scripture. So it is him within us guiding us to do the interpretation. So that's why there's always that tendency to lean towards wanting to get as close to the original language as possible, that the Holy Spirit within us would help us to interpret the Bible for ourselves and not rely necessarily on someone else's interpretation. It doesn't mean that someone else's interpretation is wrong, and I think it's important to know that we interpret the Bible in a community so that, you know, those times when we aren't guided by the Spirit but we're guided by our own foolishness, which happens, our own ignorance, which happens, we have those, the safety check, the safety valve of our brothers and sisters. So that's why I don't think that paraphrases are really in the same category. That being said, I think they can be a wonderful resource. I do think they have a place in a person's devotional life, and they even do, and they can in many cases, have a place in someone's regime of Bible study. Particularly, I think that they can really help put Scripture into real-life settings. I mean, the quality of language is going to be much more natural, much more colloquial, and you'll notice that. I think particularly Eugene Peterson's The Message, which is arguably the most famous paraphrase, at times is very colloquial. It really reveals a lot about his upbringing, the culture that he comes from. You get his flavor a lot, especially in some of the Psalms, and if you're from that culture or you speak that kind of language, all of a sudden the Bible becomes much more alive for you, and that can be a really wonderful thing. So I think it's absolutely great to use paraphrases, to include them in your life, but they would not be a go-to Bible resource, in my opinion. And the additional thing that we want to be aware of when it comes to paraphrases is now we really need to understand the author, because they're injecting, they're putting in so much of themselves through their interpretation into the text, which is standing in place for the Bible, so obviously that is a major deal. We need to know kind of their background, what do they believe, what are they going to do with this text, what do they think about God, about people, about how we're supposed to live before God, all the things that the Bible deals with, what is their theology really, and that becomes really important because they are going to communicate those beliefs in their interpretation. It's much more of a reality than, say, going to the other extreme and having the word-for-word translations, which is going to distill a lot of those biases and beliefs out of the finished work of the translation. I think an example, another translation, one that I think should be used, I don't think it really should be used, I think I would caution against this, and that is the Passion Translation. I haven't investigated it fully, fully, gone through and read it myself, but I've read and heard enough of it that would cause concern that the author of that paraphrase, mind you, it's called the Passion Translation, but it's a paraphrase, you know, comparing that to a lot of other paraphrases, there's a lot of additional text, so a paraphrase is going to add to the original Bible text, it's kind of the nature of the thing when you're interpreting and putting it in a very colloquial-style English, you're going to add a lot of extra words, and the Passion Translation does that excessively, and the question is, well, why are you doing that? What are you adding that actually isn't in the original text? And that stuff can be alarming, it can be worrying, if that is your only gauge, you know, for Scripture, if that is your only Bible. And this warning, however, can translate to the next question that we get often, and that is, what about study Bibles? And I think study Bibles, again, are a great resource, you can add additional notes, additional background information, yeah, it's fantastic to have a study Bible on hand. Again, though, there's a caveat, similar with a paraphrase, I would always caution against study Bibles that come from one author, and there are a few out there that are pretty famous, and it's, you know, so-and-so's study Bible. And it's, I guess my caution with that is, they're going to have a very specific theology, and they're going to use in the notes, they're going to back up, they're going to defend their theology, the specifics of their theology, through their notes. And those can be often, you know, narrow interpretations, or at least interpretations that are hotly or widely debated within the Church. But they're going to present it as something that is not debated, because it's their product, right? We're going to talk about, you know, we're talking about third-level, maybe fourth-level issues, and they're boldly going to state that this is the way you should interpret the passage, when in reality, among the, you know, evangelical Protestant tradition, there's five ways to interpret this passage, and, you know, it's, you have to have grace and understanding for every different side. So you're not going to have that richness, you're not going to have that complexity, and you might end up really taking matters that are less serious, more seriously than you should, if you are kind of in reading just from this one person's study Bible notes. So that's my guideline for that. It's obviously not that there's not a team, I think in all these cases there's teams of people, but when you have, you know, a person's label, a person's name on it, you know that really everyone who's working behind the scenes is really working for them to advance their views, their teachings, their messages. Other Bibles, study Bibles, which maybe come from the publishers, or come from more of a wider ministry where there's many different people involved, they obviously come to the text understanding the variety of interpretations on particularly troublesome texts or confusing texts, and they give space for everyone. That means sometimes they're a little bit more vague at times in their discussion of certain passages, but it's to allow for that ambiguity that does exist, and that's a positive thing. If there is ambiguity over text, you want to have that ambiguity, you want to be comfortable with that, you want to, especially when you end up having dialogue with other believers who believe differently about certain things. So I think it's really a strength to go with those kind of study Bibles. And then, finally, I just wanted to give a word to about another common question that comes up, and that is with the old classic King James Bible, the KJV. Should you have a KJV Bible? What makes it so distinct? I'm not going to go into exactly why there is a segment of Christians out there who believe that the King James Version is actually divinely inspired itself, they're the KJV-oneliest crew, not going to get into that, but I will make note of a distinction between the King James Version, yeah, there's more than one, and other contemporary Bible translations that we have today. We should know about this, and it's an issue of sources. So you have a family of Bibles, King James Version, New King James, and I think it's called the Modern English Version that's out there too, and they use as a source, the original language source, different collections. So imagine out there, and there are, behind the translations we have, there are collections of manuscripts, and you put these collections together, basically to kind of piece together what the Bible is, right, that's how it works. There is a group of texts that, when you compile together, create the original source behind the King James family of Bibles. And this family of texts come a bit later, or come quite a bit later from when the original manuscripts would have been written, it's called the Textus Receptus, and it's really developed around the same time as the Reformation, just before the Reformation, that they are kind of compiled and put together. And now the argument goes, obviously, I'm going to really dumb this down, I'm not a Bible scholar by any means like this, but I also want to get it out as simply as possible. And so the argument goes is that these collections of texts that the King James Version will kind of pull from are, there's a significant amount of texts, but they are later in time, so in the Middle Ages that they're produced. That's when these copies have come about. And so the idea behind it, it's not quite what we call the majority text, but it's similar to the majority text. Now modern translations, by and large, go from a different source. The argument behind that is, well, we found these other collections of manuscripts since the King James Version in the 1600s was translated, and there's not as many of these manuscripts, but they are far earlier. Some of them come even from like 100, 200 years after the events of the New Testament. So the argument goes that even though they're not the majority of the texts that we have, not the majority of the manuscripts that we have, they are, however, the earliest. So the question between these two families, say like, you know, your ESV, CSB, modern translations, NIV, they're kind of leaning on saying the earliest texts are most likely to be the most accurate. So we are going to use the earliest collections of manuscripts. And the other side of the aisle there with the KJV is saying, well, it's not the earliest that we want to go with. It's the majority. It's the largest body of manuscripts, and that's what we want to use as our primary source. And therein lies the rub. Therein lies the difference. And there is a difference. It's a few thousand words difference between these two family groups of translations. I know that sounds like a lot, but really the words are of minimal importance. So sometimes at the end of the day, like, it's like not quite as big a deal as maybe some people make it sound like. But essentially, that's the difference between them. And, you know, I'm going to pause here.