Bible Translations: Old & New February 4, 2013 ISSUE

Grazing through the Bible

Pauline Hutchinson

The King James Version of the Bible with its beautiful prose and poetry is much loved by many readers, including me. I’ve found that new translations, written since the finding and deciphering of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and scholars’ alternative translations from ancient Semitic languages and Hebrew and Greek texts, can also be enlightening.

Having read the King James Version from cover to cover, my next adventure is to read all the New Revised Standard Version under the title The New Oxford Annotated Bible. The annotations provide the historical background, details of people and times, customs and legends. They include the derivation of certain words, cross-reference text, and give alternative translations of certain passages.

Such translations help throw light on obscure statements or give a fresh understanding of familiar passages in the King James Bible. The Message by Eugene H. Peterson is also very helpful in this regard.

Compare these two translations of Isaiah 40:15 . The first is from the King James Version: “Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing.”

The second is from The Message: “Why, the nations are but a drop in a bucket, a mere smudge on a window. Watch him sweep up the islands like so much dust off the floor!”

Both translations give us a wonderful sense of God’s greatness and power, and the nothingness of matter. But the more modern translations often speak in everyday language. They reveal God in ways each of us can understand through the Christ, “the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 332 ).

As Peterson states in his introduction to The Message, “The reason that new translations are made every couple of generations or so is to keep the language of the Bible current with the common speech we use, the very language in which it was first written” (p. 10).

Mary Baker Eddy chose the King James Version as her standard text, but also used other translations. For example, the words on the Cross and Crown seal are adapted from the Revised Version of the Bible (see Matthew 10:8).

For me, the reason for comparing alternative translations is to gain inspiration, increase my interest in Bible reading, and to have fun!

I also love reading about how the different translations were put together. A useful book about the King James Version is In The Beginning by Alister McGrath.

As an Australian, I enjoy The Aussi Bible. Here’s author Kel Richards’s retelling of Psalm 23:

God is the Station Owner [Ranch Owner]
And I am just one of the sheep.
He musters me down to the lucerne flats,
[rich pastures for sheep in Australia]
And feeds me there all week.
(The Aussie Bible (Well, bits of it anyway!); retold by Kel Richards, Bible Society NSW, p. 78)

And from Science and Health,: