ARTICLE TOOLS

Print this article Bookmark this article

Kenneth N. Taylor—writer of the Living Bible, founder of Tyndale House Publishers, and spiritual godfather to the New Living Translation (NLT)—died earlier this month. Thankfully, his passing proved far more pleasant than that of his company's namesake. But we should not mistakenly assume that because Taylor was lauded—even while still living—as a "modern hero" for his accomplishments, this means his legacy in the field of Bible translation has ceased to be controversial. In many ways, the translation wars have continued unabated.

Three years ago, Christian History & Biography published the brief article "Translation Wars." The article reviewed the history of two of the earliest, most famous, and most controversial English Bible translations in history: John Wycliffe's in the late 1300s and William Tyndale's in the early 1500s. In both cases the translators were condemned as heretics. Tyndale was executed; both had their corpses burned to ash.

Shortly after Tyndale died, a slew of new translations surfaced: first the Coverdale Bible, then the Matthew Bible, and finally the Great Bible—edited by Miles Coverdale using the Matthew Bible as baseline—which was the first "official" translation in England. Catholics even produced a Bible (Douai-Rheims) to compete with them. By this time, Catholics were far more worried about the "heretical" (read: anti-Catholic) margin notes of the Protestant translations than the very idea of an English translation of the Bible. And by the end of Elizabeth's reign, a scant 60 years later in 1603, the three previous Protestant editions had been replaced by two new competing Bibles: the official Bishop's Bible and the popular Geneva Bible.

Given this history, and the tension between the Episcopal clergy and the Puritan reformers, it's amazing that any translation should have gained universal acceptance—much less one that was accused even then of employing archaic language. But that's what the King James Version (KJV) did. Published in 1611, it still holds sway over the English literary imagination, and remains in use as the primary translation for millions of English-speaking Christians.

To understand this accomplishment, witness today's controversies. The venerable Revised Standard Version (RSV)—issued in the 1950s as an ecumenical update of the KJV—was accused of being both "papist" and "communist." The RSV's failure to achieve ecumenical consensus among Protestants prompted the creation of the New International Version (NIV), the first translation to overtake the KJV in usage among English-speaking Christians. Partly in response to the RSV, the NIV is also the first where the translators gave signed a declaration of faith to demonstrate their commitment to an elevated view of Scripture.

During the interim between the RSV and the NIV, the Living Bible arrived. Paraphrases had been done before, but the stigma against them was still so great that Taylor, who first wrote the paraphrase for his children, had to publish the Living Bible himself. More recently, Tyndale published the NLT, successor to the Living Bible and a translation that has been trumpeted for its readability and usage of the "dynamic equivalence" model of translation.

But the drive for readability has created new controversies. The most well-known issue is the use of "gender-inclusive" language. While such language is employed both in the New Revised Standard Version and the NLT, Today's New International Version spawned the current level of sharp criticism. The Southern Baptist Convention rejected this gender-inclusive NIV update, effectively calling for a boycott and encouraging the use of the SBC's own Holman Christian Standard Bible. The level of rancor reached such levels that Christianity Today, as it published a TNIV debate between Wayne Grudem and Grant Osborne, twice reminded that the two debaters were personal friends and warned against either side labeling the other as "the enemy."

The gender-inclusive issue, however, is not Bible translation's ultimate controversy. Gender inclusiveness serves as a proxy war between supporters of the dynamic equivalence and "essentially literal" methods of translation. Speaking for essentially literal translations, Leland Ryken argues in The Word of God in English that all translations using dynamic equivalence (a category in which he includes the original NIV) inherently fail to properly communicate God's Word. The recent English Standard Version (ESV)—the translation of choice among the essentially literal supporters—was produced with exactly those concerns in mind.

The controversy over what translation method produces the better Bible continues to divide Christian communities—and individuals. (Disclosure: The author has worked for Tyndale marketing the NLT to pastors. He also attends a church that uses the ESV for its Scripture readings.) Given the issue at stake—the integrity of the very Word of God—controversy is hardly surprising. Those who are convinced that gender-inclusive Bibles actually do distort Scripture, or that only dynamic equivalence properly communicates the meaning of the Bible to modern readers, will continue to speak up. But it would be a mistake for either side to demonize their opponents.

The history of English-speaking Protestants is in many ways of history of their Bibles. Such history is full of controversial translations eventually winning acceptance and praise—and once-popular translations falling into disuse mere decades after their publication. (Does anyone use the Geneva Bible anymore?) It remains to be seen how the current controversies will be resolved, or whether any of the flock of new translations will achieve the level of universal acceptance that the KJV did. But as Christianity Today suggested nearly 30 years ago, the prevalence of many translations might actually be a good thing.

Will Reaves, a recent Wheaton College graduate, works as a freelancer for Christianity Today International and Tyndale House Publishers.

Related Articles:

1611 Publication of the King James Bible
Which Version Should We Use?
Do Inclusive-Language Bibles Distort Scripture?