Bible Translation

Bill Mounce: I doubt there is even one verse in the English Bible that actually, clearly, reveals the Greek structure underlying it. The languages are just too different.

N.T. Wright: Hart is welcome to advocate universalism, but to make the New Testament teach it is hard work.

On Matthew 6:13, “A better translation, Francis said, might be ‘do not let us fall into temptation.’ … . The National Catholic Register noted Francis was not calling for any official change in the Roman Catholic liturgy.” BPNews

William Mounce: I have been thinking a lot about some of the general issues of translation, and one of the points that keeps coming up is the issue of metaphors. I would like your opinion … I am asking if the inspired authors chose to use a metaphor to convey meaning, are we required to use a metaphor?

Bill Mounce: There actually are five methods on translation with three sub-categories for the handling of gender language.

Mark Ward: I think it’s time to drop the practice of capitalizing deity pronouns in Christian writing and in (most) Bible translations.

William Mounce: There is a reason for every word, even if we don’t understand why it is used.

Mounce: The ESV writes, “Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.” … how is leniency on Joseph’s part “just”? How does “justice” lead him to not want to shame her? The ESV is translating words, but at the risk of losing sense.”

Mark Ward: [I]f you can’t read Hebrew or Greek, how can you know which differences between English translations are due to textual variants and which aren’t?

William Mounce: My point is that if you want to be clear, you have to be more interpretive. If you want to be less interpretive, you will be less clear and more ambiguous. You simply can’t have it both ways.