Bible Translations

There we go. Welcome to the laborers podcast. We are thankful that you are watching with us and Tonight we're gonna be talking about Bible translations, and I'm excited to have these gentlemen with me.

Stay tuned and we will try to figure out which ones are good. Which ones are bad and what the Lord would have for us.

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Yes, sir. So around the standard studios. You can check out our Weekly just kind of 10 minutes. You know.

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Yeah.

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Fantastic. That sounds great. Let's jump into Bible translation. And we've had. We've skimmed by this conversation as we've talked about other things. Because there's there's stereotypes with different denominations and their attitudes towards certain Translations certain Bible versions, but we want to talk about that tonight.

What our attitude should be. I know we can we could probably walk into some pretty deep waters in this conversation but. And some of you probably can't. I don't think that I have the ability to walk too deep into those waters but I know definitely we want to wade in the waters of Pastoral counseling to where if somebody is asking the question, which Bible translation do I read.

Which one's good? Which one's bad? We want to take that path so. Here's the first question. If anybody is ready for this one a little brief history of.

Bible.

Translation, where did where did we get the Bible order to come from?

The Origin of Scripture and the Need for Translation

I'm gonna defer to brother Tyler. I figured he was gonna be a walking encyclopedia. You're talking about If I'm gonna assume we're taking broad strokes. Sure. Yeah. All right, Holy Spirit breathed on men and The inspired Word of God was pinned down.

Some of these. Some of the earlier books of the Bible would have would have been Orally translated Probably for many years before they were physically written down and I believe that they were written down during the Babylonian exile.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but in that were the with the original five books of Moses and the Chronicles and the Kings was first published in the Hebrew tradition.

Brother Tyler, am I correct in that? I'm sorry. I'm checking a technical issue on. I'm not trying to ignore you. You're good. You're good.

Understanding is that's where those were first pinned in the in the Jewish tradition. But they were they were spoken and quoted orally. So the Bible was is given to us by way of the Holy Spirit. Where it was.

Oh gosh. Inspiring inspiring men to take down his Holy Word. Is that yes. Direction you wanted me to come from? Oh, yeah.

I mean, that's that's absolutely our beginning and I know I said we didn't want to go into the deep waters. So here I am gonna say I'll listen to James White on the subject. He's gonna take you into deep waters, but but he mentioned something that I wasn't as familiar with.

Since you brought up the the Old Testament. He was even talking because he talks a lot about textual variance. Differences in the the manuscripts. Yeah, and how we come to to figure out which one's the correct Copy or which one we should go with looking at the different variants and he was talking about how they were there were variants even in the The Old Testament the copies of the Old Testament or the copies from the Old Testament to the Septuagint the Greek translation Of the Old Testament.

I found that fascinating that even in Jesus time that they faced those issues that we face.

Well, what why do you suppose that might be what it was his answer for that?

He didn't really give an answer for that but um, I would say that even as you were talking about it I was thinking about. There's really only one answer we we know it's it's not God so it's gonna be man.

Either in the oral tradition Passing it down from one person to another or copy copy copy copy. You're gonna make mistakes. Yeah, so.

Does that mean that the the Bible's.

Error then or fallible. So let's go back. We could go back to the kind of to the quick to the original question question of translation and and is the Bible in Aaron and infallible and. So we have to consider and think about two things two words when we talk about Bible translations and Inerrancy that we we have to talk about autographs and manuscripts.

So autographs are. When when the term autographs is used it's referring to the to the actual written words, right. And the reality is that there are zero original autographs. What we have is manuscript Traditions which are like you said John copies or and you know copies of copies of copies.

But there were stringent stringent strong strict Rules for copying the scripture as far as that goes. Well, both both with the with the old and the New Testament, right? So we have that so when we go we see autographs.

There are no original autographs. What we have are manuscripts and that's referred to as manuscript tradition. And so that's why it's so important as we live in the here and the now. Why it's so good for us that there have been so many more manuscripts discovered that proved the continuity and the veracity of the text even more and.

And we're able to weed out what should and shouldn't be there.

So what you're saying is. And obviously I'm being tongue-in-cheek when I say so you're saying it's it's infallible, right? That's for the listener at home that I believe the Bible is 100 without error.

If we were to take and Have a hundred men sit down and transcribe the Bible every day for a year There's a chance Somebody's gonna misspell the word. Correct, right? There's a chance that a man's gonna make a mistake.

So whenever you look at the bulk of those those writings.

The.

I'm gonna call them imperfections in the in the transcription transmission transmission, whatever. Yeah use the word transmissions in truck and the the.

A.

Gives you a Little bit of credibility when you look at the whole of them that you can actually find where the error is that one man made because you can use another person's and compare the two and in and then the comparing of the two you can actually prove that they were.

Their intentions were to transcript or to transmit one copy into more than one copy and. It's kind of like I don't know. Try to think of a modern-day example of that. But I really can't think of a modern-day example of Someone actually caring enough to transcribe a book multiple different times not with copy and paste out there and in the interwebs.

So we don't really have an example of something in a modern day that we can directly compare apples to apples to. But suffice it to say that if. If you're thinking in terms of accuracy, which I may have misunderstood the question and if I did I apologize y 'all brief history of the Bible translation.

Okay, I did misunderstand the question brother Rob, I'm sorry, it's okay the the multiple translations and the multiple transmissions Would would serve to further cement the validity of the one that they were copying from because you would have So many different copies in so many different places the fact that they would be 99 .9 similar wouldn't would mean that there was authenticity to it to begin with.

Correct. Yep. That's what I was stating earlier. So and when we think about the hiss again history of Translation China translations from one language to another but transmission has to be we have to look at transmission as well.

So for example. Just just some numbers. These are actual numbers, right? So within when we talk about Manuscript evidence and things of that nature. We we think about variance. You've heard the term variance used right.

Differences in the text and that happens. Because like what you said because of because of human error human error is a reality in the transmission and Translation of the text however. That's the difference between.

Oh.

Gosh, I. Mean, let me let me back up here. So a variant is any place where there's a difference right. Any place where there's a difference between the handwritten manuscripts from one manuscript to the other.

Right now as we have it because we have such There's such technological advance we know that there are just in the New Testament manuscripts alone 400 ,000 variants. In those manuscripts 400 ,000 but you want to know what percentage of those variants affect the meaning of the text.

Big John you said it a minute ago 99 percent. 400 ,000 variants in 99 percent of those don't change anything. They don't change doctrine. They don't change the truth. They don't like spelling value. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, which is awesome.

It speaks to the brilliance of God. That's exactly right. If he's gonna be working with follow a man like us then.

It.

It will put a halt the intentional error. Intentional intentionally trying to lead people astray because you know, if you've got all these other people making copies and mine doesn't match. Well, they're there.

No, they will know that mine's a fraud. Sure. Yep. Yeah.

So I think we actually answered two questions a little bit. We answered a brief history of Bible translation. The Bible was originally written. Er originally Aramaic. Hebrew and Greek would have been your Three three English or three three languages that the Bible would have been written in.

And there's a Septuagint. Somebody said it a while ago, such as a Greek translation of the Old Testament but the the bulk of the New Testament as far as I know are in Greek aren't they. Is there a Hebrew version of the New Testament that I'm unaware of.

Not confirmed. I think James White will tell you that the book of Hebrews was originally written in Hebrew and Greek. But and that's all I've heard about the New Testament having a Hebrew.

Got you counterpart. So the three. The three original languages would have been Hebrew Aramaic and Greek. Yes.

From the Septuagint to the Latin Vulgate

Go ahead, Tony. And if I can add one thing to that Claude, I'm gonna ask you that just going on here. You're talking about manuscripts. Do you see a blessing. And I'm gonna go back to the original theme of the Old Testament.

You see a blessing in there that we have things like Meseratic text and two different Septuagint traditions Palestinian in Alexandria because then once you get over into the New Testament, does that help verify who wrote things?

What time they would have written them because of how we see them using the Old Testament tradition, so. You see a blessing in that does that help us with absolutely.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. I mean I would I would say it has about has to because. There's the continuity that we see that runs throughout.

Which I think that's an important point. I think the majority of textual.

Yeah.

Not to worry about that. There's different traditions that might use different words and slight nuances.

That's right.

That actually helps us once we get into the New Testament because if you're wondering if Paul actually wrote this and you see while he's Quoting from it. You're like, yes, always consistently. Yeah, exactly.

And it here's gonna be one of the arguments and I want to go back to the original question but here's one of the arguments that they were gonna get from this is that well. Well, God says in his words that he will he will preserve his word.

So so do you see this as God preserving his word because the the people who ask that question do not. They they say that there's a line a straighter line than what we're drawing from from us to the KJV and and then to us.

They don't they don't see it the way we do. But do you guys see that what we're talking about the the multiple manuscripts that we have? Do you see that as legitimate? Legitimately. God preserving his word.

Well, if you read the preface to the King James Version That was written by the translators. They gave credence to the Greek Bible the Latin Bible the Aramaic the Syriac and a couple others. They did not see an issue with drawing from these different wells of all the resources that by God's providence they had access to and.

So they I think they would have drawn a similar line to what we are that they were grappling with all these different traditions and transmissions.

Mm-hmm.

So they use the Septuagint they use the Masoretic text they used everything that had they could get their hands on to try and come to a consensus of what the original said and it's honestly I think it's part of the the wrestling that Makes the versions we have today as reliable as they are is it's not easy.

Translating Greek and English. Mm-hmm. It's not easy to do this. It is work. Mm-hmm. It is a labor to grapple with these dead languages. And I think that adds the level of authenticity to the English translations.

We have is the fact that it's hard.

So let's let's steer back to the original question just to give Those who may be interested an idea and and let's trace a little bit of line that if we can. So would you guys say that so we talked about the the Hebrew Aramaic and Greek?

Would you say that the next language where a Translation would would need to take place would be Latin. Is that where we would go next?

Well first you would have the translation of the Septuagint of the Old Testament into Greek and straight from there into the Latin Vulgate about 500 or so.

Okay, and Explain that who authorized that and all of the Vulgate. Mm-hmm.

That was spearheaded by a gentleman by the name of Jerome I Believe.

And this will be part of the Catholic Church tradition or see before the Catholic Church.

Depends on what you mean by Catholic Catholic and the Pope and some of this right that hasn't quite emerged as we would understand it today. Correct. But the term Catholic you had people using that like the first century just in reference to Universal Church one church.

So Jerome. Well, he's definitely a part of the Roman Catholic tradition. I wouldn't put him in the category necessarily of saying he was a papist or anything. But generally the Latin Vulgate is more familiar with Roman Catholic tradition than say Protestant tradition.

So here's a question and you may not Maybe you guys may not have looked into this or know the answer to but I know throughout that dark period where it was the Catholic Church Transition to the Roman Catholic Church and then you had the papal idea and then you have the two different popes battling out you know, you had this long Catholic tradition and Only the the church knew Latins the the average person did not know Latin.

They had to hear it in Latin didn't know Latin just had to go on what the priest was telling him but I know that there were. They wouldn't call themselves Protestants, I don't know if we would call them Protestants, but there were Churches that were non-catholic like you had the wall.

You had the Waldensians and and other. What would it be Huguenots? I mean you have different different branches. Yeah. Yeah. Did they Have a translation. Did they have a Bible that they could read or what was available to them?

Does anybody know that question? I.

Can't speak to the Huguenots and some of those other ones per se. But when you had like the the Greek Orthodox churches in the east and say 1045 They tended to lean more towards going back to the Septuagint.

It's to this day actually a lot of the Greek Orthodox churches read the Septuagint in English.

Hmm.

There's interesting enough. There's actually a and what they call it an Orthodox study Bible that goes along with that Septuagint text but then the New Testament is the New King James. Hmm, which is interesting.

I've got a handful of followers on Twitter that are Eastern Orthodox. So I get some of this mingled in here. But you did have some of the Septuagint kind of persist with some of those different factions.

I can't speak to all of them.

When was the Ethiopian Bible written? I know it was prior to the King James.

That's probably when Solomon's Son.

Brought the Ark of the Covenant. Ethiopia. Is that right? I think I was watching this. I don't know. I Was just I was going with it. It's okay the I was watching this guy debate on the college campus and there was a lady who's who made a statement to To the preacher that it was Christian nationalists that brought They brought the gospel to Africa where this young man had first heard the the Bible and he stopped her mid-sentence and said The Christians were in Africa before they were in Europe.

I've seen that video. I know exactly what you're talking about. He said the Ethiopian Bible is older than the King James Bible and she was like Smiling because she didn't want to seem like she was being a bigot because she just called everybody else racist in the whole crowd.

You know, and then she just disappeared in between cuts. It was like she just evaporated.

One of the colleges I was at a couple years ago actually had an Ethiopian Bible on campus. Did you have to copyright date? I was not able to because I was stopped by the glass and the librarian but Ethiopian Bible had the the satchel and everything with it still intact.

It was like 1 ,300 years old. Does it start in Isaiah. If you know, you know, if you know, you know, you know, does anybody get it? Nobody gets it. Where was the Ethiopian archbishop reading whenever Philip come up to him?

Clever clever church of God boy. Got him.

Tyndale, Erasmus, and the Textus Receptus

So.

I was just gonna ask what come after the Latin? I know we I guess we want to steer towards what we're familiar with. And. Was it Tindale?

I was gonna I was gonna jump into it. Yeah, that's exactly what I was gonna talk about. So reckless around 1300 something like that. Well, maybe late.

1374.

1374 there we go. Tyler's got it. So 1374 Wycliffe translated Directly from the Vulgate the Latin Vulgate to English now. About a hundred years later Tindale Translated. But he translated into the English.

From the Greek and the Hebrew. So that's an important distinction right, so Wycliffe translated Latin to English. Tindale translated to English from the Greek in the Hebrew. Which gave it a fuller which gave the fuller a fuller sense of the word.

Correct me on that. I may been wrong.

But he didn't translate the Bible. I was just I was pretty sure he did. But he was just a reformer before reformers were cool.

But this was prior to the Texas receptus wasn't it.

There's a Rasmus. Yeah, so yes. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead Tony.

Well Rasmus put out his Texas receptus two years before Luther nailed his theses to the church door. So it was about 1515, I think.

So somebody's to tell them those that don't know they're listening after all these podcasts are designed for people Who may not be familiar with the Texas receptus and where it come from. That's right.

Somebody's gonna throw the gauntlet now. I'm gonna start meeting moderating.

So Rasmus was a theologian around the 1500s who he took the Latin Vulgate. That Latin Bible that had been in play for about 1 ,400 years. Give or take. And he translated it into Greek. To in an endeavor to go as he said ad fontes to the fountain.

Which is part of the motto of bread of the word to the fountain to the Word of God to be nourished and sustained by Allah. God is as he's revealed himself to us. And so that what we call that the Texas receptus was a translation of that Latin into Greek.

So that people could study the New Testament in the original language. It was written. That is actually one of the things that started this thing. We call the Reformation when people could read the New Testament in Greek and found there's nothing in here about a Pope.

What?

Reparations don't exist. And.

Problems in a Pope ain't one.

93 problems.

So the Texas receptus is a kind of a fancy term for that first Greek New Testament that the people could study at that time. There were others before them, but this was much more accessible.

What was done with it? After that.

So the Texas receptus then came became the Baseline for producing the New Testament portion of the King James Bible. There you go. That's what I was fishing 1611.

So is that is the 1611 authorized Bible the King James Bible is known today.

No, I would say there was a major revision of the King James Bible in 1769. So you're telling because when they did the 1611 The English language was still very much emerging that they were still transitioning from the old anglo-saxon to English and so they didn't have 26 letters and spelling and grammar weren't weren't really standardized yet.

You kind of guessed and so when if you read like the the 1611 King James Bible, you'll know because there's a lot of Words in there that aren't spelled like we would today. You know, they spell Jesus with an eye.

Yeah.

Genesis is spelled with an F to read it phonetically would be Genefis. And so the sick the 1611 was went over a massive revision in 1769 to clean it up because now we had No, Webster now we have Webster's Dictionary.

We had some of these ideas. We had a more Standard approach to the English language and so they took the King James and made it more applicable to more modern English.

Well, even the Texas Receptus itself it had like what. Five revisions. Five or six, yeah.

You'll have to repeat that question Tony, I'm sorry, I was gonna say where where did uh, where did Bezos Texas Receptus fit in there.

Well to be honest I was not aware base I did it. Greek New Testament's. Yeah, I wasn't till maybe five six months ago.

I just happen to hear Interesting somebody say that so I didn't. I wasn't sure where his fit in and what future it influenced.

I guess we'll all have to look that up. Yeah, cuz make a note of that. Yeah.

So they were. There were seven major translations though. Mm-hmm. To the English Bible. Right. So to trace the timeline. Coverdale, what is it? Oh the Matthew Bible. The Taberner the Geneva Taberner.

Then there was the great Bible. Then the Geneva Bible gotcha. The bishops Bible. And I can't never say this. Y 'all you need to help me on this Reims. Is it right. Is it pronounced? I'm it sounds country.

When I say it the Reims do way.

That sounds about right, how do you say that. I'm honestly not sure I've never heard anyone actually know that one.

I'm with you fellers. The reason I push for that The reason I push on that is because everybody everybody knows a guy or more than one guy who is Is living and dying that the King James Bible is the only Bible that is worth worth its salt and one of the questions we're getting to So I think we might as well start on that if you're okay with it, brother.

Absolutely is. Why should we not be King James only and I'd like to preface that with saying that I don't think there's a thing wrong with The King James Version myself. I've got I would agree with you I love the King James Bible and I love several different translations of the Bible and I don't really hold one in any higher esteem than I hold another with the exception that I'm I'm country's cornbread wedding cake and I don't know how to pronounce some of the words that come out of the King James Bible and I want to Preface something.

Hang on a second. I Only had a King James Bible when I got saved I didn't know there's any other translations because I'd never really read the Bible I was told to stay away from things like the NIV and I had to buy one of these.

And the first time I read the first time I read the Bible through Took me years just I Didn't know what half the words meant and I had to look every one of them up that I got to that I didn't know because whenever the Bible said That they would not once Moses had came and were gone and when he was coming back, you know what Whitman So I had to look it up.

I didn't know it meant no and then I thought Why didn't they just say I don't know where he went. Then I found a translation that said They didn't know where he went. I said man, you really saved me a lot of looking up since I mean I can read this a lot faster now that it's just in one book I don't have to consult the dictionary to understand what I'm reading.

I'll say it that way because I Think that we need to be humble enough to admit and be honest enough to admit If something's outside of your reading level Read what you can read? Right. Yeah, and I it was outside of my reading level.

I had to really up my game to read the King James Bible.

Well, you just talked about one of the reasons for giving us New versions new new translations, it's because our even our English language changes and you have to. You have to update and form to the new words the new meanings.

I mean, there's there's English words today that that mean totally different things over in England. Yeah and and so and I understand the argument to that. Of you should you should be willing to study the the King James because there there's good.

There's words that they use that help explain the the Greek better than any modern English words that we have so it's good to take the time to study, but there's also yeah I mean you explain it exactly right.

There's reasons to update so we can understand what's going on.

I don't see why you can't read both.

Right.

Here's a word there there's some Theologians that some of us have a lot of respect for like Charles Spurgeon. Martin Lloyd-Jones Felt very strongly. You could not improve upon the King James. That actually might be counterintuitive to do so.

To make the Bible more accessible. Quote-unquote with the changes in language and stuff. Martin Lloyd-Jones Pretty much. Stated in one of his sermons on Romans that the reason people can't understand the Bible has more to do with them being spiritually dead then they're reading comprehension and so he saw a potential caveat to Translation upon translation upon translation that it would actually be almost a hurt to get so far out there.

Then maybe we just come back to the idea of being taught by God what the scriptures mean. But I'm also coming from a different culture. I'm not up in the mountains, but I grew up in public school where we couldn't read Shakespeare.

Where they had to dumb down Shakespeare because we don't know how to read. Well, and so I think you've got to weigh both of those side by side that We didn't know we didn't have a strong Concordance in my public high school.

But we had we had a cliff notes we had no fear Shakespeare and that's what a lot of us were acquainted to. When it got to reading hard books that we just didn't we found we found that the kids Shakespeare and so there's I think I Think you can make a case either way.

But that's that's all I'm saying is I don't think you can make like a hard stance either for or against it like a lot of people have attempted to do that either you're sinning by not reading the King James or vice versa.

Take it away. Well, yeah, I was just gonna interject another word for John. So be some.

Yeah, yes. That's that's whenever you got to be some.

Where.

Out of the raising of Lazarus when they tell Jesus lo he stinketh. Yes, surely.

Surely he thinketh. Yes. So. But on a be some be some is a broom. Ah. So in Isaiah 14 23 The scripture says the Lord said I'm and I will sweep I will sweep it with the be some of Destruction sayeth the Lord of hosts in the King James.

So, yeah.

You definitely have to use con you you really have to focus on context clues in the King James.

And that's not to say that that's a bad thing.

It's not.

But it's been official. Yeah, I think it's slow down sometimes. Yeah, you know, that's there's nothing wrong. There's nothing wrong with saying well I read the Bible once or twice or three times every year from cover to cover and on with that.

But if you're reading just to cover ground, right, you know, what's your what's your objective? So when I read the King James Version, I will say when I read through it, it's slow. Yep, because I I just can't help it.

I just ain't got the I Can't got it to do, you know, you can't do what you got. That's.

Going up going up what you were saying Tyler about you were talking about some of our theologians that we look up to passionately look up to and their view that. There potentially could be some problems with multiple versions and translations.

I don't know if this particular one is Causes a problem or makes it a problem for multiple translations, but it's something that we should be wary of and that it could be a pitfall for the person or or us as people.

And it's the fact that there another reason why there's multiple versions today is because of the Copyrights and and Money. Not wanting to pay somebody else royalty to use their version in your study Bible or your products your devotions Whatever you're making and that's.

That doesn't mean it's a bad that doesn't make it a bad thing to have multiple versions. It just means it's a pitfall for fallen man that we make it about money.

And that's that's true too there's a lot of while we're on the subject of different translations that if I could make a shameless plug I actually did a video a couple months ago on the bread of the word podcast called what's in a translation and I?

Walked through section by section a study that a doctor. Dr. Andy Wu from the global Bible initiative found a way to measure Different translations found a way to take what was good about each of them and Communicated in numbers.

Is there a way we could measure translations because they all say they're the best and so I Just want to put that out there that that is a resource we have available if anyone wants to take a look at that.

Absolutely. Oh Yeah, and if you guys don't mind I'll take a quick break here and say that You guys were talking about being country and Going to the fount and eating cornbread wedding cake big John. At your wedding at your wedding with that cornbread wedding cake.