Next week is finals week, so I’ve been spending my Thanksgiving “break” trudging through the Old Testament, Hebrew, the Greek of 2 Corinthians, and Systematic Theology (Note: actual amount of energy spent studying is minimal). I was reading through some select passages of 2 Corinthians, when I read:

προνοοῦμεν γὰρ καλὰ οὐ μόνον ἐνώπιον κυρίου ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐνώπιον ἀνθρώπων

Which I translated “For we attempt to do what is good, not only before the Lord, but also before people.” They want a rather literal translation on the final. As usual, I try to gauge my translation against several others, including the ESV, TNIV, NLT, etc, though this isn’t really a hard passage at all. I was a bit confused at why the ESV decided to render the two genitive phrases differently however. The ESV says in 21b: “not only in the Lord’s sight but also in the sight of man.” I think the translation “sight” renders the ideal well (see also the TNIV’s “in the eyes of”), but see how differently the two phrases are rendered? This seems to ruin the parallelism of the verse to me. In rendering the word “before” as “in the sight of,” the ESV correctly translates the first phrase as a subjective/possessive genitive “in the Lord’s sight,” but then switches to “in the sight of man.”

Now, this isn’t an ESV hate post. The translation is correct (well, there is that issue of people/men). Just wondering why they inconsistently translated the two phrases, seemingly breaking up the parallelism. It just seems a bit soppy, or perhaps they decided to go with stylistic variation? I know, this won’t mean anything to some others, and that’s fine; it’s just that this kind of stylistic things jump out at me.

In his latest roundup of ETS, Dr. Bill Mounce has responded to Dr. Mark Strauss’ paper entitled “Why the English Standard Version Should Not Become the Standard English Version: How to Make a Good Translation Much Better.” Dr. Mounce is the New Testament Chair for the ESV and a friend of Dr. Strauss. As I was reading his reaction to the paper, I couldn’t help but have a few questions.
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I’ve began working on my paper on 2 Corinthians 3:1-18, and thought I would give you my (wooden) translation, and breakdown of verses 1-3.

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You can ignore the [middle or passive] and <<ministered>>, those were idea “placeholders” as I translated through the text the first time.

This passage is a transition passage, connecting 2:17 with 3:4ff. The ὥς τινες (like some others) clause connects back to 2:17 (ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ καπηλεύοντες τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ, “like many others, who peddle the word of God for profit”). διακονηθεῖσα (ministered), πλαξὶν λιθίναις (stone tablets), and πλαξὶν καρδίαις σαρκίναις (tablets of human hearts) all anticipate the verses that follow: Paul as a minister of the new covenant, as well as a contrast between the old and new covenants.

Certainly nothing scholarly or hard, but simply a glimpse into what’s going on at the moment.

On my last blog, I did a short study on Mark’s view of Christ according to his prologue. Soon, I hope to incorporate that article on this blog and maybe take it a little more in-depth, but when I translated Mark 1:3 I strayed from the traditional rendering. In this entry, I am going to look at why I did so.
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Nope, its not on 1 John, which I was working on after Philemon. That translation is on hold until after the semester is over. Instead, it is a section of scripture from 2 Corinthians, more specifically it is 2 Corinthians 1:15-24. This semester I am taking a class on Paul’s second (extant) letter to the church at Corinth, and I will be posting my translations here. Because we are only doing sections of the letter each week, it won’t be a complete translation (yet), but it will be a large bulk of the letter.

In this particular section, Paul is defending his change of plans of delaying a visit to Corinth.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”
John 1:1

Some have made the argument that the greek word λογος (logos, “word”) in the opening verses of John’s Gospel should be better translated as “logic.” Gordon H. Clark, Christian theologian and philosopher, once wrote “Any translation of John 1:1 that obscures this emphasis on mind or reason is a bad translation. And if anyone complains that the idea of ratio or debate obscures the personality of the second person of the Trinity, he should alter his concept of personality. In the beginning, then, was Logic.”

However, this hardly follows. Why should we assume that a translation is faulty, or outright wrong, for using “word” over “logic?” Presuppositions notwithstanding, I see no reason why every English translation that has been used by the Church since TyndalWycliffe has been a wrong translation. In fact, I believe the context of 1)the prologue (verses 1-14) of John, and 2) the Gospel of John en toto suggests that our translations have it correct.
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The following quote from the publisher’s note to the readers in the NLT Study Bible, and I think it hits the nail right on the head:

“The goal of any Bible translation is to convey the meaning and content of the ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts as accurately as possible to contemporary readers. The challenge for our translators was to create a text that would communicate as clearly and powerfully to today’s readers as the original texts did to readers and listeners in the ancient Biblical world.”

I have updated the translation of 1 John through chapter 2, verse 23. In so doing, I realized that this theme doesn’t allow comments on pages- so if you want to leave a comment or suggestion, please feel free to do so on this post.

Per the discussion from a few posts back, I have decided to go with “because” in verses 12-14, with a footnote. Feel free to leave a comment.

There is an interesting issue that creeps up in 1 John 2:12-14. Here is the passage in the NLT:

“I am writing to you who are God’s children
because your sins have been forgiven through Jesus.
I am writing to you who are mature in the faith
because you know Christ, who existed from the beginning.
I am writing to you who are young in the faith
because you have won your battle with the evil one.
I have written to you who are God’s children
because you know the Father.
I have written to you who are mature in the faith
because you know Christ, who existed from the beginning.
I have written to you who are young in the faith
because you are strong.
God’s word lives in your hearts,
and you have won your battle with the evil one.”

Certainly, the repetition in the passage catches our eye. The Greek is equally, if not more so, eye-catching. Before I actually get into the issue at hand, I do want to add that I really like NLT’s rendering of father and young men as “mature in the faith” and “young in the faith” respectively. The issue that I mentioned comes with how we translate the word ὅτι (hoti), which can be either causal (which the NLT, and most other translations, take it as), which would warrant a translation of “because,” or we it could be showing the content of John’s writing, which would be rendered “that.” In other words, is John giving the reason for writing or is he giving a summary of what he is writing?
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Keith at the NLT Blog has recently posted about a book from Tyndale publishers entitled “The Many Gospels of Jesus” written by Philip W. Comfort and Jason Driesbach.

This book looks very interesting, because, other than “the four canonical Gospels, Comfort and Driesbach have offered new translations of 17 other ancient Jesus texts, all in a style similar to the accessible New Living Translation.” This includes both the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Judas (which was in the news quite a bit last year). In addition to these 17 translated Gospels, another 18 more are discussed, and summarized, bringing the total count of gospels covered to 35!

Philip and Jason have also included a few essays, as well as a testimony of how Philip came to discover Jesus himself (which is promised to be quite exciting). Both Philip and Jason are involved with the NLT:

“Phil Comfort is the NT Coordinating Editor for the NLT and has been involved with the translation from the beginning, and Jason Driesbach is intimately involved with the Cornerstone Biblical Commentary series as an editor and author.”

This certainly looks to be a great volume, where the differences between the canonical gospels and the other gospels can be seen in juxtaposition. If anyone is feeling particularly charitable, I would certainly have my day brightened by receiving said book. Christmas isn’t that far away is it?

Now, if only we could get some NLT apocrypha… *cough*