Bible Versions
I frequently get asked about what Bible translation I recommend. In fact, I get asked so frequently that I thought I’d briefly post on it.
The first thing I usually say is that the best Bible translation is the one you’ll read faithfully. I am far more concerned with that than staking a position on translation philosophy. I’m even willing to make allowance for paraphrases in this regard, though I really dislike them. You ought to be reading some version with consistency, though.
Second, I always point out that there is no one Bible translation that is consistently superior to all others. (Though paraphrases are consistently unfaithful to the text, but see my caveat above). All translations have problems; they all take liberties; they all have strengths. If you are interested in comparing and analyzing Bible translations, I recommend the Better Bibles blog.
Third, I recommend that everyone read from more than one translation. It’s a good idea to become acquainted with the basic differences in approaches to translating the Bible. I speak here of “dynamic equivalence” and “formal equivalence” (usually referred to as “literal translation”). I prefer formal equivalence, but I recommend reading from at least one translation that follows each approach. The above link contains a listing of how the versions stack up (at least for the writer of that article).
Fourth, you should pick a translation that is textually up-to-date. For example, I want a Bible that adopts readings in its running text from the Dead Sea Scrolls where they are demonstrably superior to the Masoretic Text. My test case for this is Deuteronomy 32:8 and Deuteronomy 32:43. The former should read “sons of God” (ESV; cp. “gods” in NRSV), or something like “heavenly beings” (NET Bible) or “heavenly court” (NLT) instead of “sons of Israel.” Verse 43 should read “bow down to Him, all you gods” (ESV, NRSV) or something akin to it like NLT’s “let all God’s angels worship him.” The preface of the particular version will alert you to such textual issues.
Hope this was informative in some way.
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Rather than about Bible ‘translations’, my question pertains to Bible ‘versions’, proper. I’m looking for information about what post-1833 editions of Biblia Hebraica, if any, were considered reprints of Professor Hyman Hurwitz’s 1833-editing of publishers Duncan & Malcom ‘s 1822 edition? I’ve done the best I can on my own, but I am hitting a dead end. I need a scholar to help me. I thought that I was finding all sorts of subsequent reprints, but they turn out to be edited by Augustus Hahn.
I’ve found an 1839 edition published by J. Duncan (no Malcom), and the frontispiece & preface do not appear to mention who the editor was, though it is considered a “second edition”. Also in 1839 Leipzig published a reprint of Hahn’s 1831 edition (which was considered Hahn’s first edition) ……. so I do not know if J. Duncan’s 1839 London-printing was the British equivalent of Hahn’s German printing and thence was dubbed Editio 2 (as back then ‘edition’ vs. ‘reprint’ was not concretely distinguished); or whether Duncan just so happened to coincidentally publish, in the same year as Leipzig’s Hahn edition, a reprint of Hurwitz’s edition?
If the latter is the case, then I have a rabbi who’s been corresponding with me about this very issue whose edition I’d like to purchase. For all I know, 1833 stands alone as the year that Duncan published Hurwitz’s revision; or, perhaps, he continued to publish it for many years. I have exhausted my own paucity of resources, and this rabbi was kind enough to not only point me to Harvard’s online catalogue listings but also to let me know of its notoriety for mistakes. Neither one of us understands why his particular edition fails to acknowledge an editor, but an answer as to Hurwitz’s printings may very well be the key. I’ve checked the Dictionary of National Biography, but Hurwitz’s bibliography is incomplete. So, any and all help would be gravely appreciated. Thank you.
Have you (1) read the front matter to post-1883 editions? (2) read Wurthwein’s book on the text of the OT?
Hi – thank you for replying. (1) No, I have not, as I do not have access to them. I’ve searched Google Books and they do not display previews for any of Kittel’s BH’s. (2) Yes, I have, and being that its primary aim is at being an introduction to the *Kittel* BH’s, it saw fit to exclude information which I have been looking for. I have also scoured Tov’s handbook, but he seems to mention everybody BUT Hurwitz.
However, I think that I have found the answer. I noticed that J. Duncan did not print beyond 1840. The revised 1822 version appears to be found, from its first printing in 1833, reprinted in 1839 and 1840. The 1839 German editions always mention A. Hahn as its editor. I found an owner of an 1833 Duncan edition and asked him if it mentioned either Hurwitz OR Hahn, and he says, neither! So starting with his 1833 “second edition”, J. Duncan printed his Biblia Hebraica as revised by Hyman Hurwitz without attributing Mr. Hurwitz as its editor. This correlates with the edition that I have been looking into purchasing. Apparently, the German presses ran Hahn’s editions, whilst London’s Duncan ran non-Hahn editions. For that matter, the only reason I know that Professor Hurwitz edited Duncan’s 1833 BH, is because of a mentioning of this fact within an old catalogue advertisement, quoting a book reviewer, within the back of my 1841 Hebrew grammar from which I have been trying to learn Hebrew. Add to this the grief of searching in vain for an “1836” edition as mentioned in the front matter of my grammar, when it appears that either the author or his printer committed a dyslexic mistake of inverting the “9” for a “6” instead. Whew!
All I’ve wanted is to ascertain an edition that will undoubtedly be keyed to my grammar, without any variances. As it stands for now, I am content that I have found the answer to my question. But, thanks again.
If I may impose another question, would you happen to know where a fella could find a copy of Cassuto’s 1953 bible? I’ve searched all the regular online vendors, and I cannot even get a “hit” on this bible within their search engines. Thanks.
I would look on http://www.abebooks.com or http://www.bookfinder.com
After those, I’d Google antiquarian book shops that specialize in Judaica.
Okay… I need help please. I have had a couple of brain surgeries due to brain tumors. I lost 50yrs of memory and I am”challenged” due to them. I have tried to follow what you say and also went on that bible blog, but since I have to write everything down (I forget what I read earlier) and I am not as “brainy” as the commentators.
I am looking for the best bible (I have spent a couple of months reading the Divine Council info) I have to start now. So should I get the ESV and RSV. The NET is okay but I need something to carry around. Someone also mentioned the NLT.
Please please give me you opinion .. in a cheat sheet way, or a Yes, use 1,2,3.
Thank you so much for your understanding. (I am frustrated because I used to be pretty smart… an engineer in fact, now using a calculator is even challenging)
And, Dr. Michael, you have opened up truth to me and I thank you so much. You have no idea how you have turned a light on for me.
There is no “best Bible” — other than the one you will consistently read. Just pick one and stop worrying about it. Then, as you read, consult study Bible notes and other translations if you like. If you find a point of significant disagreement, then you can drill down at that point in some study. My point is that you shouldn’t be looking to avoid problems and disagreements and lack of clarity on passages — those are the places that can be the most interesting, and you will NEVER eliminate them by a translation choice.
Dear Sir: Thank you. I ordered an ESV single column reference bible so I can put my notes/observations in the margin yesterday. I am re-reading the Divine Council (3rd time) but do you have anything on the Holy Spirit?
I have some material on the HS, but not online. It will be included in the Myth book draft when it’s done.
Where should I look for the Myth Book when its done?
I’ll announce it here.
Sorry to bother you again, but I also ordered The Facade….I am excited.
thanks!
For the Old Testament, I’ve taken a liking to the Holman Christian Standard Bible.
Not so much for its translation although it seems good for the most part) but for its footnoting of alternate readings from the Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint, Vulgate, Syriac, Targums, Samaritan Pentateuch, alternate Greek readings from Aquila, Theodotion and Symmachus and how all of these compare with the Masoretic Text (which I’ve heard is actually a family of texts – maybe Michael can elaborate a little more on that for us sometime). I’ve heard that the Aleppo Codex is esteemed more highly than the Leningrad Codex and I can sometimes see why commentators make such a big point of comparing Kennicott’s MSS with De Rossi’s MSS when curious readings cross their paths.
OT textual critics don’t like using the term “family” (unlike the NT side) for technical reasons, but I’ll go with it here (loosely). People tend to think that the MT tradition is basically a single version of the OT transmitted flawlessly, so that there is only one text that goes all the way back to the OT times. That’s a myth. Manuscripts that are within a near total alignment with each other are grouped into one “family” (family being based on the very high % of agreement with each other and harmonious disagreement with other “families”). The MT “family” refers to a textual tradition transmitted by trained “official” scribes since 100 AD or so. Within that grouping the manuscripts are not all completely identical (the differences were actually collected by a German scholar named Aptowitzer, who studied sermons and other rabbinic *writings* looking for places where they quoted the OT text, and then noting when their quotes did not match the “received MT” tradition). Aptowitzer wanted to see if the early rabbis all went along with the “standardized MT” produced in 100 AD and then made official. They didn’t! But there was a high degree of uniformity (just not 100%). B19 (Leningrad) and Aleppo are both MT texts, but the latter is a bit older and it was pointed by the famous Masorete Aaron ben Asher.
Hi there again Mike. What can you say about Codex Gigas? Just saw a program on NatGeo the other day about it; had never heard of it before then. Do you know if Dr. Christopher de Hamel (Fellow Librarian, Corpus Christi, Cambridge) who worked on the Codex Gigas Research Team was allowed to read the entire thing (or transcribe any of it) or not? I am curious as to the pedigree of the Hebrew Text and the Greek Text contained therein – how they stack up against B19/Kennicott /// TR/MT and/or anything else extant – and if it holds high potential for textual criticism or not? I have never read anything on textual criticism which makes mention of this 165lb. behemoth! Yet, the program utilized old line drawings (wood cuts?) depicting clearly some scholars pouring over the 3ft. long monster with copying-pen & paper/parchment in hand! For having a flawless text throughout, how is it that I’ve never seen this Codex mentioned in any book before – am I blind? The dating of it (f. 1130 AD) would make it the second best [complete] witness that I can think of offhand next to the Leningradensis (1008 AD), for the Masoretic Text [Aleppo aside]!!! Can you tell us anything about this?
I only know it’s a very late (13th century) Latin text in the Czech Republic. It doesn’t appear to be a translation, since it usually gets described as consisting of transcriptions of the OT and NT. Here’s a short paper on it:
http://ils.unc.edu/courses/2011_summerI/wildemuth/Wheeler-PragueSeminarPaper.pdf
Hi Mike,
Thank you for this link! Housed in Sweden (not the Czech Republic), this Bohemian codex is described by the article on page 9 thusly:
“Since education was generally controlled by the clergy, it is only appropriate that the largest portion of the manuscript is comprised of the Old and New Testaments. However, the versions chosen by the scribe are much older than the versions that were typically in use during the early 13th century.”
……..and THIS type of information is what motivated my question to you in the first place, knowing from having seen the Codex pages for myself on NatGeo that the Old Testament is in fact transcribed in Hebrew, not a Latin translation. Granted, this article makes updated and valid arguments to depart from NatGeo’s 1130AD dating; however, even a 13th century dating is not insignificant when the Quality of the transcription is taken into account ….. and now this article’s observation that “the versions chosen by the scribe are much older than the versions that were typically in use during the early 13th century”.
This equals a magnificently complete OT and NT that MAY represent [faithfully] a VERY early, and perhaps even therefore accurate, set of canonical Biblical Mss. And, so unfortunately, that’s all that I can find out so far; hence why I decided to reach out and ask somebody if there IS anything else known about its Biblical texts other than what NatGeo reported on. For having once been the 8th Wonder of the world, I can’t believe that I’ve never heard it mentioned before in anything I’ve read on textual criticism.
Btw, I deduced that the OT portion must represent the Masoretic Text, since there existed no Hebrew translation of the LXX, and Jerome’s Latin Vg. is not what we have here; it was some complete Hebrew Tanakh available during this period of time, and that would have been the Masoretic Text ….. hence bearing an important witness (I think) to the Masoretic Text by not only this stage in history, but according to the article: namely a stage “much older than the versions that were typically in use during the early 13th century”. Am I wrong?
the tentative conclusion (and I know the reply just noted a few items) you are drawing on this does not follow (at this point) for several reasons:
1. It still isn’t clear what “transcription” means. If it is comprehensible Latin (i.e., you can actually read it and it makes sense) it would not be transcription (think “transliteration” for THAT meaning of transcription – the act of looking at a Greek or Hebrew text and transcribing it into Latin characters; the result would be incomprehensible *as Latin*, as any transliteration would be).
2. If by “transcribe” what is meant is the act of *copying* Greek and Hebrew characters, that does not seem plausible in this case (since the text is in Latin). Only this task would be useful for knowing if the manuscripts from which the Gigas comes have any value at all for textual criticism.
3. Ruling out #2, if #1 is not the case, then “transcription” must mean translation. In which case, it isn’t going to make any headlines for textual criticism unless it differs markedly from any Old Latin translations. But even then, it is nigh unto impossible for a textual critic to know with certainty whether any such departures reflect a different Hebrew or Greek text, or whether the “transcriber” was inept, given to paraphrase, confused, or truly working with a different text. In short, it’s the same problem as for the LXX.
Other notes / questions:
1. There are no “canonical manuscripts” (the phrase is an oxymoron). BOOKS are considered canonical; manuscripts are copies of said books, and no manuscripts or manuscript “families” have canonical status (though people like to give them such – like the Masoretic Text). The MT is just one of at least four (LXX, SP, and the “unaligned” groups of manuscripts from Qumran) textual traditions of the OT, all of which (because they are found at Qumran) date back to the exactly the same time period.
2. Gigas could either be a translation from a Hebrew text, a Greek text (e.g., something in LXX tradition), or a transcription (copy) of an older Latin text.
3. How does one know that Gigas does not reflect MT? *Where* doesn’t it reflect it? (And even if it does not in places, that still does not mean the base text was different, though it might have been).
Hi again, and thank you for replying. It is “transcription” #2 that we are dealing with here. That is, unless NatGeo fudged (photoshopped) the images of the Hebrew-characters page that its camera once grazed over from a distance. I paused the image, and yep, they’re Hebrew!
By “canonical”, I am referring to the larger-overall agreement within the late MT textual tradition; not to mean *invariably* uniform (as the Massorah well attests). I do mean MT, as opposed to LXX, SP, S, or Tg. But like I said, this is merely my deducement based upon on a single show + the article you linked for me; call it “inference” if you like, though technically yes I could be dead wrong. I gave earlier my reason for not counting it possible to be the LXX or Vg., but that’s precisely the problem here: so few resources detailing further the textual contents of this Codex. I don’t exactly have the phone number for Dr. Christopher de Hamel on speed dial, but he seems the man to really ask, for the show mentioned that he is an authority on ancient Biblical mss. + a librarian at Cambridge. Since I’m not a scholar (with connections), I just thought that I’d ask one
Dear Mike,
I did some fishing around on a website written in a tongue foreign to my understanding, and then it occurred to me: There! at the top of the page was the option to translate the webpage into English! Needless to say, I found all the answers that I (and you) have been asking. BIG disappointment—
“The Old and New Testaments are given in the translation known as the Vulgate ….. But the Acts of the Apostles and the Book of Revelation here are both from an earlier translation, called Vetus Latina ….. The Book of Psalms is iuxta Hebraeos ….. [and finally] The various alphabets of the three biblical languages – Hebrew, Greek and Latin – are reproduced on the first leaf of Codex Gigas, reminding us of the linguistic frames within which Jerome was working.”
*** See here ***
So apparently NatGeo zoomed in on that fraction of a Hebrew Script contained on the first leaf, and that is what led me to conjure false impressions; though in my defense, I watched the program 3 times and read your link scrupulously, and NOT ONCE did anyone ever say that the Old and/or New Testaments were “translations”, and certainly not “in Latin”. When used, the rhetoric of “Latin” was always pertaining to the NON-Biblical texts. But now, here we have it: it is in fact a measly *translation* after all. Bummer!
Case closed. Thanks again for your time.
Btw – you’ll notice that the entire Codex is digitally scanned & available on the above website. Hopefully that compensates for this fox chase.
interesting – thanks!
*** See here ***
http://www.kb.se/codex-gigas/eng/Long/#Translations%20of%20OT%20and%20NT
Has anyone considered that Names don’t get translated?
they don’t get translated or SUBSTITUTED as The Almighty’s Names has been!
why is it that satan gets to keep his name in the scriptures and YHUH(Yahuah) gets a pagan deity’s name (gott later rendered god) Lord is also not his name…………..
so, when choosing your scriptures it’s going to be important to have the correct names as found in the original, which will be transliterated. Names in Ivrit(Hebrew) depict a persons character. In your own studies you can do the translations to get a deeper understanding of the persons character and meaning of the names. When we pray, we should pray in the Character of Yahusha (jesus for some).
Blessed is he who comes in The Name of Yahuah
(Blessed is he who comes in the Character of Yahuah)YHUH
Yes, Barry, it is sad that “YHWH” gets lost in translation. But English translators are just following the tradition initiated by the Rabbinic Jewish scribes. By the way, there is no such word as “Yahusha” in Hebrew. Israel’s Messiah was named “Yeshua” – that is the Hebrew word, if you can read Hebrew; or better yet “Eshoa” if you want to get real technical, since the everyday language and therefore naming-process was in Aramaic.
it’s not Eshoa (the yod is the first consonant in either Hebrew or Aramaic, and it is not part of a compound vowel).
I just don’t understand why there is so much obsession over the name(s) of God. We don’t know precisely how YHWH was pronounced, though the first syllable is certain (“Yah”) due to the fact that the abbreviated name appears in the OT (YH) and is always given the long “a” vowel. If one presumes that for YHWH, the most likely sound for the second syllable has an i-vowel, and “weh” would be choice since the resulting form of Yahweh would be a Hiphil imperfect third masculine singular verb form (meaning, “he causes to be” – the first person imperfect of Qal = ‘ehyeh = “I am”; of Hiphil = ‘ahyeh – “I cause to be” — but ‘ehyeh is the one that is used in Exod 3:14 at the burning bush). F.M. Cross wrote about this decades ago. I like it, but scholars often object to the Hiphil Impf 3rd singular since the lemma in that stem is not found anywhere else in northwest semitic.
If you are wondering about the middle y/w difference, the Semitic w/y were interchangeable (varied by dialect) in the verb hayah / hawah (“to be”).
Sorry for the geek-spasm here.