The question of a Christian translation is an intriguing one. Here I mean a text that reflects the beliefs and practices God has led the church to have rather than the original meanings or texts, which in terms of the OT were "pre-Christian" and in terms of the NT were "pre-orthodox."
What text of the OT would you use? The early Christians did not largely read the Hebrew Bible. Even Paul relied primarily on the Septuagint. I've already mentioned that the Septuagint is what the Greek Orthodox Church considers its OT and not the Hebrew Bible. Would a Christian Bible therefore be a translation of the Septuagint?
On the other hand, if I were Roman Catholic, this question would be easy--an English translation of the Vulgate would be the ticket. So here is the conflict. For the majority of the church's history, the Vulgate has been the Bible of the West. But the Septuagint has been the Bible of the East arguably for even longer!
So I think if I were to make a Christian translation of the OT, I would follow the Septuagint for two reason: 1) it was the OT of the NT and the NT is what makes the OT Scripture and 2) it probably has been the OT for the longest in Christendom, even if the Vulgate may have outrun it in numbers in time. At any points where the NT might have a variant reading, I would follow it.
By the way, that includes the deuterocanonical books, which while they probably should not be accounted equal canonical status to the other books, were considered on a second tier by most Christians throughout history and were variously drawn on by various NT authors.
So what of the New Testament? I would follow the "catholic" text that is largely that of the King James Version. I would include the ending of Mark and the woman caught in adultery in John 8 and Acts 8:37. I'm not sure about the extended reading of 1 John 5:7-8. I think I would include it because 1) it approaches a trinitarian statement and 2) it was in the Vulgate for the bulk of Christian history.
So let's get started translating :) The Canonical Version, translated by Ken Schenck
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2 comments:
From my perspective, the NIV (without knowing it) does a lot of what I'm talking about here. It translates a lot of passages in an "orthodox" way. It does this not because it aims to do so but because that was the faith of its translators.
The NLT is my favorite dynamic equivalence translation that I use sometimes when I'm preaching. It was the next one I was going to look at too :)
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