Which Bible Translation is Best?

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And we know folks are watching with us and listening with us right now, so we're thankful for that.
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We're thankful for everybody who has come tonight to study.
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And the subject of tonight is one that is often debated, often argued, and hopefully will be of great interest to you because we're going to be studying the question of which modern translation is best.
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Which modern translation of the Bible is the best? As you all know, we have been studying the subject of apologetics and in the midst of the study of apologetics, we talked about the fact that oftentimes the attacks against our faith come as attacks against the Bible itself.
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So we have as part of our apologetic study, a study of the defense of the Bible.
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And why do we believe that the Bible is true? Why do we believe that the Bible is accurate? Why do we believe that what we're holding in our hands accurately represents what was written by the prophets and the apostles, you know, three and two thousand years ago when these books were written? So we've gone through many weeks of study.
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We've looked at revelation, inspiration, canonization, the transmission of scripture, textual criticism, and we've looked at the subject of translation.
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And over the last several weeks, we've talked about the argument or the debate or the controversy over the King James Version of the Bible versus the modern translations.
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There are those who would say that we should only use the King James Version, and they're often identified as King James onlyists.
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We discussed that controversy.
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We even watched a debate on the subject.
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One of the objections that the King James advocates often raise is this.
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If not the King James Bible, then which should we use? Which Bible is 100 percent accurate? Where is the true word of God that I can reach out and place my hands upon? This is the argument.
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This is the claim because their argument is that it is the King James Bible.
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The King James Bible is 100 percent accurate and all other versions, according to King James advocates, are actually perversions that the King James Bible is the only one that is 100 percent accurate and true.
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Well, I believe in the last several weeks we've addressed that objection.
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I'm not going to go over that again.
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And if anybody is interested in going back and listening to those, if you haven't been here, I would encourage you to do so.
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But tonight, I want to point out the fact that all translations, including the King James Version, have the inherent issue of not being absolutely authentic because God did not give his Bible to us in English.
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God gave the Bible to his people in Greek and in Hebrew.
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And that is not the language that most of us speak today.
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Does anyone in here speak or read Hebrew fluently? Does anyone in here speak or read Greek fluently? No.
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So we are then bound, if we are to want to read the Bible for ourselves, we're bound to having to read a translation.
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And so our goal should be to find an accurate one, to find one that has been translated well.
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And I will say this, no matter how good it is, it's always going to be a translation.
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And so there are benefits, even if you can't read Greek or read Hebrew, there are benefits to studying those languages so that if there are questions about translational issues, you can consult the original language if you're not quite sure what a passage is saying.
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However, for the most part, we're not going to be holding a Greek Bible next to our English Bible and going back and forth.
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Most of the time we're going to have our English Bible.
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So that brings us to the question, which English Bible should we use? And to some people, that's sort of like asking the question, well, which which football team is the best? If I threw that question out, I'd probably start an argument.
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If I said, which which football team is the best? And we probably have a little bit of a back and forth.
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And in that sense, preference does come into play.
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And in a very real way, when we talk about Bible translations, there is a sense in which preference is going to play a part.
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And I want you to know from the outset, I am not going to in this lesson or hopefully ever in the future try to force my preference on you.
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However, I do want to discuss translational methodologies and the history of some of the most popular modern translation so that we can make an educated decision when we're choosing a Bible for our own personal use and reading.
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So if you have your hand out tonight, I'm going to give you some things to fill in as we're studying along.
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The first thing that we see here is that there are two primary questions which arise when discussing Bible translations.
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There's two primary questions that arise when discussing Bible translations.
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The first one is which manuscripts is the translation based on? So the first one is manuscripts.
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It's a bad marker, so I might try to grab another.
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So which manuscripts is it based upon? Well, let's talk about that just for a minute.
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If you've been here over the last several weeks, you know we've talked about the fact that there is not one Greek manuscript.
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There are not five Greek manuscripts.
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There's not 500 Greek manuscripts, but that there are over 5,000 existing handwritten manuscripts that date partials all the way back to the second century, all the way up to when handwriting of manuscripts became outdated and printing began happening up until about the 15th and 16th century.
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We have over 5,000 handwritten manuscripts.
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So the question becomes, which one should we base our Bible on? Well, the Bible isn't based on any one specific manuscript, but there is what we would call families.
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Does anybody remember the two major families of manuscripts that Bibles are based on? There's the Byzantine family.
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And what was the other one? The Alexandrian manuscript.
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What is it? What is the Byzantine family of manuscripts represent? It represents the much larger group of manuscripts, right? We said the vast majority of handwritten manuscripts that still exist today come from the area around Byzantium, and they are considered Byzantine text types.
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So that's one family.
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What's the other family? Alexandrian.
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What distinctive do they have? They're in the minority, of course, but what distinguishes them? Much older, right? We're looking hundreds of years older, much closer to what we would say is the original autographs or the original writings.
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So we have the Alexandrian manuscripts, which only make up a fraction of those five thousand plus a very small fraction actually go back that far.
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And yet, because of their date, because they are so far back, they represent to us an older witness to what the original actually said.
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And so when we take into consideration the manuscripts, we have to say, OK, there are two family lines.
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The Byzantine manuscript family line tends to be broader.
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If you remember the debate we listened to, Jack Mormon versus James White, Mormon pointed out the fact that there's 2900 words that are in the Byzantine manuscripts that is not in the Alexandrian manuscripts.
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That's a pretty large amount of word difference there.
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And so there was a lot of conversation about which manuscript family should we use.
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Here's what you have to realize.
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When you look at modern Bibles, the only modern Bibles that you're going to find that are based on the Byzantine family manuscripts, at least that I'm aware of and somebody's willing, I'm totally willing to be corrected on this, is going to be the King James Bible and the New King James Bible.
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Outside of that, when you go to the New American Standard Bible, the English Standard Bible, the Christian Standard Bible, the all of these other, the New International version are going to be based on an eclectic text, which includes the Alexandrian manuscripts.
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So if you are a person who wants a Bible that is based on the Byzantine family manuscripts, at least that's the primary basing, then it would be you'd be a King James person or possibly a new King James person.
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Outside of that, you're going to have a Bible that at least has influence from the Alexandrian manuscripts.
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So that's the that's the first thing you have to decide.
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Does that issue matter to you? Is that something that you want to to to base your decision on translation on? Not a lot of people know about that.
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Not a lot of people are going to base their position on that.
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But that's the first question.
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The second question, and I think the more important question for tonight's study, is we've said which manuscripts is the translation based on? The second is what method of translation is used? So this is the second.
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What method of translation is used or employed for translating the text? As I said, for tonight's study, this is the bigger question, the more important question, because there are three different translational methodologies which are used for translating the Bible.
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You have this in your notes.
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There are three primary translational methodologies.
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The first one is formal equivalency, formal equivalency.
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The second is called functional equivalency.
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That sometimes is also called dynamic equivalency.
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So you have formal equivalency, functional equivalency, and the third is paraphrase.
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The paraphrase.
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Now, understanding these is key to understanding which Bible you have and which Bible you want to use.
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And what I decided to do tonight, because I felt like it was the best way to explain this to you, is I want to give you some examples.
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We're going to look at some Bible texts.
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We're going to talk about how language is translated, and then you can get an idea of why these things are important.
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Because if I just say formal equivalent, functional equivalent, and paraphrase, that in your mind might not make a lot of sense.
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So we're going to look at some language and how the language is translated.
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The first thing we're going to do is actually look at a phrase.
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It's not in the Bible.
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This is actually just a common phrase from the German language.
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Now, I want to say I don't speak German.
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So when I read this, if you are a person who is adept in German, if I sound like a little bit of an ignorant person reading German, then it's OK, because I am.
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This is the phrase, Morgenstunde hat gold im Mund.
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I think I said it right.
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And that's all you get is one time me saying it.
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That phrase in German has a formal equivalent.
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Formal equivalent simply means that it translates every word exactly as it's written.
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Right.
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Or a literal translation, word for word, as best as possible.
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Right.
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Essentially literal is what is the new buzzword, essentially literal, the essentially literal for a statement that I gave you in German is this.
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Morning hours have gold in their mouths.
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Morning hours have gold in their mouths.
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Now, if I walked up to you and it was morning time and I said, Jack, morning hours have gold in their mouths, would that make any sense to you? Not a lot.
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Right.
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It doesn't make sense at all.
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Right.
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But that is the formal equivalent of what is being said in German.
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That's the literal translation of what was said.
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Now, the functional equivalent or the dynamic equivalent will probably make a little bit more sense because this is the attempt of taking the original intended thought and translating the thought, not just the words.
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If I came up to you, Jack, and I said, hey, Jack, the early bird catches the worm.
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You know what I mean, and you understand how that works, that's dynamic or functional equivalency.
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I'm making the language function for you.
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So now it's not just a translation of mere words, but it's a translation of thought.
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In fact, it's partially an interpretation.
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That's where it gets to be somewhat difficult, because the more dynamic equivalency happens, the more interpretation also begins to happen.
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Makes sense.
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The third is I paraphrase.
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This is an attempt to help someone understand the original thoughts in a way that we might say them.
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Somebody might say, hey, Jack, early to bed, early to rise makes one happy, healthy and wise.
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Now, that's nothing like the original at all.
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But it conveys a similar idea, and thus it could rightly be called a paraphrase of morning hours, have gold in their mouths, early to bed, early to rise, makes one happy, healthy and wise.
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I did have an interesting thing I did.
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I took the phrase Morgenstuhn, hot golden moon, and I put it in Google Translate because Google Translate will take a word of a different language and will translate it into English for you.
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And it said the early bird has gold in its mouth.
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So it sort of dynamic equivalented half of it and still, it was sort of kind of a mixed bag.
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So you understand now how translating language is not always as easy as one might think.
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Another I mentioned this on Sunday morning.
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There's a Japanese phrase, Juin to Oryo, Juin to Oryo means ten people, ten colors.
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That's that's the exact formal equivalent, functional equivalent, different strokes for different folks.
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Paraphrase, different things appeal to some people and others to others.
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Right.
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Notice, though, in the dynamic equivalent and in the paraphrase, we're not only we're not just translating anymore.
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We are translating and interpreting the translation.
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That's the key, because the more that that happens, as I said earlier, the more you're getting the interpretation done for you rather than you interpreting the text based on your study itself.
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Here's the thing, every translation does some dynamic equivalent, even the King James Bible.
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And here's here's the fun thing, King James Bible proponents will say the King James Bible is the absolutely literal translation of the Greek and the Hebrew.
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It's 100 percent absolutely accurate and literal to the Greek and Hebrew.
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Open your Bibles to Romans chapter six.
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I just want to show you something very quickly.
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I mentioned this on Sunday morning, so if you were here, you've seen this, at least heard me mention it in Romans chapter six.
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It says in the English Standard Version, which is the version that I'm reading from.
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What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may abound? Verse two, by no means.
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Now stop right there.
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That's the relevant portion.
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By no means is the relevant portion.
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I know, Richard, that you carry a New American Standard Bible.
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What is verse two say in your Bible? Romans six to just the first phrase, may it never be.
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So where the ESV says by no means yours says may it never be.
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Who has a King James Bible? All right.
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Who has a new King James? Brother Andy, do you have yours? Certainly not, is what it says.
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Does anybody have a King James? That's OK.
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I brought the translation with me.
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The King James Bible at Romans six, huh? It says God forbid.
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Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid.
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Now, why is it that the King James translators chose to place the word God and the word forbid in that passage when neither one of those words are actually in the Greek? May Ganoito is the phrase that's in the Greek.
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May is the adversative, meaning not.
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And Ganoito means existence or to be.
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So the actual literal is may it never be or may it not be.
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That's that's the that's the literal or not be right is that is harsh, literal.
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Right.
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So if it's may it not be, why is it that the King James translators put God forbid? Because that is a dynamic equivalent to the phrase may it never be.
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So here is at least one place where we see in the King James Bible the use of a term which means the same in the sense of conveying an idea.
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But it's not actually what the underlying there is no theos, there's no word for God there.
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It just is the choice of the translators to translate that particular phrase.
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Are they wrong for doing so? No, it's not wrong necessarily to translate something in a dynamic equivalent.
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It is a choice to do so.
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And they made the choice.
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We may not like their choice, but we can't necessarily say that that was wrong or right to do.
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They had the opportunity to translate it and they did.
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The King James Bible also equivocates on certain words.
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There are different words in the Greek which represent the idea of punishment and eternal punishment.
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Gehenna, Hades.
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These words are all translated by one word in the King James Bible, hell, always hell.
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And so that's another attempt to sort of simplify and in that sense paraphrase the idea of Gehenna and Hades or Hades and putting these things together and making them simply translated as the English word hell.
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Modern translations will often translate or transliterate the word Gehenna, which was a garbage dump and Hades or Hades, which was the the idea of the place of the dead.
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And these words are often transliterated in modern versions where in the King James Bible, it simply uses the generic term hell for all of them, not making a distinction between the use of Gehenna and the use of Hades or Hades.
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Likewise, there are times when translations which are dynamic equivalence.
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Oh, by the way, I didn't do this earlier and I do want to mention this.
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We talk about formal equivalent, functional equivalent and paraphrase.
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We at least need to get an idea of what we're talking about as far as Bibles.
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Under the formal equivalent, we can say the primary methodology of interpretation, formal equivalency, King James Version, New King James Version, New American Standard Bible, English Standard Version.
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And what are some others that are essentially literal? Anybody have any? Vergen, Standard Vergen.
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Yeah, the ASV.
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OK, those are at least some that would fall under formal.
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Oh, there's one other.
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There's a new one.
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Oh, by the way, there's a fourth category now that's been created.
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You might I don't know if you've heard of this, Mike, optimal equivocation or optimal equivalency.
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Yeah, well, optimal equivalency is what the Christian Standard Bible is claiming.
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The CSB, which is the newest, most most modern Bible translation that is out.
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This is what they say about themselves is the Christian Standard Bible employs a translational philosophy known as optimal equivalence, which seeks to achieve an optimal balance of linguistic precision, reflecting the original languages with readability and contemporary English in the many places throughout scripture where a word for word rendering is clearly understandable.
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A literal translation is used in places where a word for word rendering might obscure the meaning for a modern audience.
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A more dynamic translation is favored.
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The process assures that both the words and thoughts contained in the original text are conveyed as accurately as possible.
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That's that's their quote on their website.
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So they've created what they consider to be a fourth category.
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And essentially what they've done is what I think all of these have done.
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I think everyone, King James, New King James, ESV, NASB, I think they all tried to be as literal as possible.
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But there were times where certain phrases or certain words required, as we said with the King James, they used a dynamic equivalent.
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Sure, absolutely.
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And we're going to look in a few minutes at an actual literal translation that can obscure the meaning.
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We're going to talk about that in just a minute.
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But so these would be examples of formal equivalent.
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What are some examples of functional equivalent? NIV, NLT, the NLT is the New Living Translation, the NIV, the New International Version.
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What are some others? Contemporary English Bible, CEB, anyone else? Anybody have one, a different one? I didn't bring a list tonight and I'm kind of pulling a blank in my mind as to other dynamic equivalent translations.
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But those those are certainly the New International Version is the most popular.
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It is at one time, I don't know if it still is, but at one time it was outselling the King James Bible.
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It has been massively successful, the New International Version, and it was translated with the idea that it was going to be translated, and this is their wording, thought for thought rather than word for word.
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So that's where the NIV, that's why some people call the NIV the nearly inspired version.
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Haha, you know, as a little dig at the idea that it's not quite a literal translation.
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Yes, sir.
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The reason is it's now the number one selling, and that makes sense because a lot of churches buy NIVs for the whole church, you know, they buy them to fill the pews and things.
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So obviously that's going to up the sales numbers, you know.
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So we have the NIV, the NLT, the CEB, and there are others.
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But paraphrase, paraphrase is different because paraphrase takes the idea of dynamic equivalency and includes sometimes wildly imaginative ways of expressing certain things within the text.
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What is a pair of what was probably the most popular and most controversial paraphrase of the last century? The Living Bible, right? It's called the Living Bible, the TLB, the Living Bible.
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What is the most popular, at least I haven't done a study on this, but I would guess what is the most popular paraphrase today? The Message Bible, right? So and there are others, but the Living Bible, the message, there was one called the Word on the Street, and that was a very contemporary kind of urban language Bible that was popular for a while.
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So there's all kinds of paraphrases.
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So we have looking here, we've got formal equivalency, functional equivalency or dynamic equivalency, paraphrase and the different types of Bibles.
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So knowing that those are available, let's look at some of the texts and talk about how they would translate certain passages.
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How about this? John 1.1, you shouldn't have to look it up.
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John 1.1 says, In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
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Not a God.
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That's an example of the Jehovah Witness New World translation, adding the indefinite article there, a.
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But in R.K.
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Einhalagos, In the beginning was the Word, that's that phrase in the Greek.
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It is translated absolutely literally in the NIV.
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The NIV says, In the beginning, I read it from the NIV, it says, In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
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So not every passage in the NIV is seeking to have some kind of dynamic equivalent exchange.
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Sometimes it gets it exactly as written.
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And so in that sense, we could say that there are times where a Bible that's based on dynamic equivalent can still be accurate to the original, at least literally accurate to the original.
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And there are times when a Bible that we would call formally equivalent or essentially literal can still have a dynamic equivalent.
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But it's just the idea of methodology, the overall methodology of one versus the overall methodology of another.
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I want to read to you the New Living Translation of John 1.1, because we know what it is.
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In the beginning was the Word.
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The Word was with God.
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The Word was God.
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That's John 1.1.
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Here it is in the New Living Translation.
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In the beginning, the Word already existed.
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The Word was with God and the Word was God.
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In the beginning, the Word already existed.
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The Word was with God and the Word was God.
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Now, I really don't have an issue with that because what they've done is they're translating the Word was, ein in the Greek, in the sense in which it's being written, because when John 1.1 says in the beginning was the Word, the Word was is indicating preexistence.
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It's saying He already was.
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But they add the word already was in the sense to or already existed to to put that idea out front and to make it front and center.
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But that is it's it's not adding to the word, but it's trying in an attempt to make it more clear.
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But that is an example of a dynamic equivalent in John 1.1.
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Now, when we talk about literality, some people would say this, they'll say, well, I just want my Bible to be absolutely literal.
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I don't want any any influence at all for reading.
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And if that is your desire, there is one, at least there's an attempted one.
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It's called Young's literal translation.
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It was translated by a single individual, and he sought to make a literal rendering of the original Greek Bible.
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And I want to read John 3.16, because this is a passage we all are fairly familiar with, likely familiar from the King James Version, which says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but will have everlasting life.
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That's the King James rendering, at least as far as I can remember.
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Here is the Young's literal translation.
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For God did so love the world that his son, dash dash, the only begotten, dash dash, he gave that everyone who is believing in him may not perish, but may have life age during.
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That is one man's attempt to give an absolutely literal rendering of every word.
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And like Mike mentioned before, sort of devoid of syntax, sort of devoid of flow, just taking each word and giving a potential translation of that word and a sentence that then becomes very choppy and very difficult to read.
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Yes, sir.
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Yes, absolutely.
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Yeah.
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The word so there means in this way, not it's not about extent, it's it's it's referring to the manner in which it was done.
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I agree.
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Absolutely.
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Yes.
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So is an expression of amount rather than an expression of manner.
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Yes.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I agree with that.
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So this is an example of, as I said, a literal translation, one that sought to be as literal as possible.
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And in doing so, I think abandons readability.
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But if you're interested, it is available online if you want to just go and see what this man's literal renderings were.
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It's an interesting one.
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Sometimes when I'm studying a passage, I'll just pull it up because I have it on my computer.
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I just pull it up to see what he came up with when.
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Yeah.
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When he when he was when he was.
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Huh? Yeah.
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This is a Star Wars translation.
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It's everything's written backwards.
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But there are times and this needs to be said, even though seeking a literal translation that's so literal, it's unreadable, is is probably not a good idea.
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It's also important that we understand that sometimes a paraphrase or a dynamic equivalent can actually corrupt the meaning of a text, making it.
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Wrong, at least how it would normally be understood, I'll give you an example.
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John, six and twenty nine says this, the rendering says this, Jesus answered them, this is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent.
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This is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent.
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All right.
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Almost every translation, dynamic equivalent or essentially literal says the phrase this is the work of God, except one, the new living translation, which I admitted earlier to liking how it translates John one, one, at least in a sense of the idea that it's putting out.
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But listen to how it how it translates John six and twenty nine.
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This is the only work God wants from you.
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Believe in the one whom he has sent.
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Do you see what the change becomes there? It becomes faith, becomes a work that you do.
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If there's one thing that Paul sought to express in all of his writings is that faith is not a work that we accomplish.
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Faith itself is a gift from God.
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And I think when when Jesus said this is the work of God that you believe, I think there is a point that he's making there that this is something that God's doing.
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But in this particular translation, it says this is the only work God wants from you.
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And insinuating in that text that you are the one who has the capacity and is going to do that work.
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So, again, you see how translational methodology can sometimes run into a proper understanding of the text of the Bible.
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That's in the New Living Translation, as I said, I don't have a major problem with it, but there are times when you get to a passage like that and you say, OK, here's a place where the dynamic equivalent is is causing a problem with how we would understand what this really means.
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And then, of course, there are times where paraphrases and dynamic equivalents can just go off the rails.
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I always jokingly call the Message Bible the Toothbrush Bible, because in the Message Bible in Luke chapter 10 and verse 4, by the way, the ESV of this says carry no money bag, no knapsack, no sandals and greet no one on the road.
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That's what the ESV says in the Message Bible.
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It says travel light, comb and toothbrush and no extra luggage.
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That's what Jesus said in Luke chapter 10, verse 4, travel light, comb and toothbrush and no extra luggage.
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I call it the Toothbrush Bible because it's interesting that the toothbrush is mentioned in a book that's supposed to be translating a 2,000 year old piece of literature.
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Huh? Yeah.
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Yeah, so again, it's a matter of it is a matter of preference, but we have to take our preferences should be based on understanding and knowledge, right? It shouldn't just be based on, well, this sounds better to me or I like the way this one sounds.
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We should be coming up with a reason for why we want to do or want to study what we study because of a particular particularly right reasoning.
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And this is where we're going to get to in our in our last line here, because the Bible and this is reasonable to me because the Bible was given to us by God and we believe in verbal plenary inspiration.
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What that means is that the words and all the words are God inspired.
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We would desire to know what the original said and thus a formal equivalent translation methodology would probably be the best.
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A formal equivalent translational methodology, I go back to the to the quote in German that I mentioned earlier, if I quoted you that in German and you were trying to know what I said, you would want to know that I said morning hours have gold in their mouths, then you could determine what it means by studying the dialect, by studying how that term is used in that land and in that language.
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But if I said to you, the early bird catches the worm and I take that step away from you, then what I've done is help you in a sense, because it allows you to read it and understand it without having to do that study.
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But it also puts into your mind something that actually wasn't what was said.
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And again, I'm having to trust that the translation and interpretation of that translation was done accurately.
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So I think and again, this is a preference and I don't mind telling you what I'm sharing preference, my preference and study and my recommendation, if anyone asks me, is to find a functional equivalent versus a dynamic equivalent or a paraphrase.
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And I would leave it to you as to which one and how you're going to decide which one to choose.
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But I do want to give you five thoughts, and this is not on your notes because I didn't feel like putting five blanks for you to for you to write down.
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You don't have to write these down.
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You can if you want.
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But these are five thoughts when you're choosing your Bible, if you haven't yet or if you're still thinking about it or you're going to Lifeway tomorrow because you're going to go buy a Bible.
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Here are five things to think about.
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Number one, I teach from the ESV.
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That doesn't mean that you have to have an ESV.
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However, if you think that reading along in the sermon and reading along on Wednesday nights when we're studying together, that it would be helpful for you to have on your page the same thing that I'm reading, then I would recommend that you get the ESV.
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Years ago, our church made the decision to use the ESV because of the formal equivalency, because we felt like it was a readable and good translation, and because ultimately it was at the time the one that I was being encouraged to use.
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And I'm not going to to bare bones at all.
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I was being encouraged to use it by some other men.
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I tried it.
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I liked it.
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And so I encouraged the church to go with it.
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And we purchased Pew Bibles.
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So if you come in and you pick up one of the Bibles from the Pews, it's an English Standard Version.
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OK, if you're not interested in that, if that's not what you want, the next recommendation I would make would say the New American Standard Bible is very literal.
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It is very good.
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And so is the New King James Version of the Bible.
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Both of them are essentially literal.
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Both of them do one thing that the ESV does not.
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They both capitalize the pronouns for deity.
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And for some folks, that is a real heart issue.
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They want that done.
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By the way, what am I talking about? When any time the word he is used for God and you know that it's talking about God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit, the he is capitalized.
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That's the methodology of translating was using that capital.
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Some people, that's not an issue.
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Some people, they want that.
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And so if that's what you want, the New American Standard Bible represents the eclectic text.
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The New King James Bible represents the more Byzantine, not complete, but the more Byzantine family.
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So that becomes an issue of choice for you.
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There you go.
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The ESV does not do that.
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And by the way, the King James Version doesn't either.
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The original King James Version did not capitalize the pronouns.
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Just I mean, just throwing that out.
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Not that that matters.
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But number three, as I said, I give five things.
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One, I teach from the ESV.
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Two, if you don't want ESV, New American Standard, New King James are good for those reasons.
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Number three, the King James Bible is always great.
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It's going to stand the test of time.
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It has stood the test of time.
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And if you're a person who loves the language and the grandeur of the King James Bible, then by all means, use it.
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Know that there is one major thing that you're going to have to consider, though.
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It's often not going to read anything like what I'm using when I'm preaching.
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That's fine, as long as you're willing to deal with that.
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The New American Standard Bible and ESV are so close that there's almost, you know, sometimes there's no difference at all.
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And sometimes the differences are very minor.
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But the King James is going to have a major difference.
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So when you're studying, when you're listening to the sermons, that can be something that you'll have to take into consideration.
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Number four, the NIV and the New Living Translation and other dynamic equivalents are great for reading.
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And you can glean truth from them and people have been saved through the New American or the New International Version and the New Living Translation.
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So if you choose to carry an NLT or an NIV, more power to you.
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Just understand that is what you are getting is a dynamic equivalent translation.
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Fifth and finally, the paraphrases.
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I think that paraphrases are not good for study.
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This is my personal opinion.
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As I said, I'm going to share my opinion tonight, take it for what it's worth.
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If you want to use them for devotional reading or if you want to use them to accompany your study of the Bible as a commentary, that's essentially what it is.
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It's a running commentary on what was said.
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And there's nothing wrong with studying with commentaries as long as we understand that they're not the word, they are a comment on the word.
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And I want you to consider these last thoughts as I begin to draw to a close.
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There are all kinds of things that you're going to choose if you go out and buy a Bible.
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One is, do I buy a Bible with red letters or not? That may seem like a small thing, but you know I'm talking about some of the Bibles have red letters for what? To identify the words of Jesus.
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I have a little bit of an issue with that, and I'll tell you what it is.
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Red letter Bibles, to me, seem to put an emphasis that the words of Jesus in some way, way more than the rest of the words of the Bible.
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And I've had people tell me that Jesus's words are more important than any other words in the Bible.
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Every word in the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit of God.
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They are all from God.
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And Jesus said those words.
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Yes, that's true.
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But those words don't contradict anything else.
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And in that sense, if you're using the red letters to contradict or supersede the black letters, then you're actually misusing that particular text.
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So I would say that it's and also this, there are times where it's not certain whether or not Jesus is speaking and the red letter people have to make a decision.
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That's a whole other conversation, really.
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But they're making the decision to decide what's red and what's not.
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And in that sense, making a choice for you.
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Study notes.
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Do you think your Bible should have notes at the bottom? Again, that's a personal preference issue.
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Here's what I want to make mention, though, of that issue.
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If you're going to carry a Bible that has study notes, I have a study Bible.
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I use it for our men's Bible study, and I carry it with me.
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It's the size of a you could kill a horse with it.
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It's huge.
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But here's the only issue I have.
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When we read the Bible, we read hopefully with prayer and a desire for God to show us the truth of his word.
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And oftentimes what people do when they're reading a study Bible is they read the text and they jump down and read the notes and they don't give an opportunity for the spirit to illuminate their heart and their mind.
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They immediately go to somebody else's understanding of the text rather than seeking God to give them an understanding, a right understanding.
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And I do think some in some ways that can circumvent the purpose of study and the communion with God.
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A lot of people said this, and I think it can be true.
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Keep your commentary and your commentary in your Bible and your Bible.
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You know, because that's what you're doing when you have a study Bible, you're taking your commentary in your Bible and you're putting them together.
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I've already mentioned this and I'll close with this.
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I'd never recommend a Bible if this is the only Bible you're going to have, the only Bible you're going to study from.
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And by the way, I don't recommend that you only have one.
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I recommend using as many as you like.
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But if you are going to study from one Bible, I don't recommend a Bible that's translated by an individual.
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Because when you have an individual, you have individual bias.
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At least when you look at the New American Standard Bible, ESV, even the NIV and the NIV have been translated by many hands, not just one.
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And so that seeks to eliminate the possibility of individual and personal bias.
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You have the the one person translating.
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I'm going to end with this.
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Young's literal translation was translated by one person.
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We talked about it earlier.
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How many of you are familiar with Ephesians 2 8? For by grace, are you saved through faith? And that is not of yourselves.
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It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.
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Now, Young's literal translation seeking to give a literal translation of that text reads as follows.
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I'm sorry.
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I'm sorry.
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I keep saying Young's literal, the living Bible, the paraphrase, my mistake.
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The living Bible is also translated by one individual.
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And this is how it was translated.
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Quote, because of his kindness, you have been saved through trusting Christ and even trusting is not of yourselves.
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It, too, is a gift from God.
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They say, where's the issue? For by grace, have you been saved through faith? And that is not of yourselves.
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The word that looks back to an antecedent.
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And we have to decide what is the antecedent of that, for by grace, are you saved through faith and that is not of yourself.
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Well, some people say that that is faith.
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Some people say that that is grace.
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And actually, from a linguistic point, it's all of it.
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It's grace through faith is all of that which is there.
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But he limits it in this paraphrase simply to faith.
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And thereby making a determination, and I would say a wrong one, as to what that text should be saying.
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So that's why I say a paraphrase is has issues, but especially one that is translated by a single individual is going to, by necessity, have the influence of the individual interpreter's biases.
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So I hope this was a helpful lesson to you.
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Hopefully it was encouraging to you.
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And let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for this time to study.
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I pray that it's been an encouragement to your people.
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And I pray that as we leave tonight, that you would bless us to have an even stronger desire to understand your word, to study it for ourselves and to have the word be the lamp unto our feet and the light unto our path.
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In Jesus name, Amen.