In addition to the many translations of the Bible into different languages, some 371 by the opening of the twenty-first century,1 there are many versions of the Bible in English. The majority of these appeared in the twentieth century. It seems self-evident as to why the Bible has been translated into so many languages and dialects. In the words of John Wycliffe, creator of the first complete Bible in English, “It helpeth Christian [people] to study the Gospel in that tongue in which they know best Christ’s sentence.”2 Reasons for the proliferation of English versions are more complicated. To understand them, we need to go back to the King James Version (KJV).
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the KJV acquired the stature of the standard English Bible. First, the KJV was known as the Authorized Version because it was authorized by the king, who, in his view and the view of his subjects, held his position by divine right. A Bible authorized by one invested with divine authority, as it were, seemed to be endowed with special authority. Second, the KJV “captured the best of all the preceding English translations and far exceeded all of them.”3 The Authorized Version “gathered to itself the virtues of the long and brilliant royal line of English Bible translations; it united high scholarship with Christian devotion and piety. It came into being at a time when the English language was vigorous and young, and its scholars had a remarkable mastery of the instrument which Providence had prepared for them. Their version has justifiably been called ‘the noblest monument of English prose.’”4
Indeed, the influence of the KJV was monumental, not only on the spirituality of English-speaking peoples but also on the English language, English literature, and English culture. “No other translation has touched the lives of so many English-speaking people for centuries and centuries, even until the present day,”5 including Latter-day Saints.
The King James translators did exceptional work given their charge and the resources available to them. The fifty-plus scholars called upon to make the new translation were trained in Hebrew and Greek and were people of deep spirituality. “They have a ghost presence in our lives, invisible but constantly heard, enriching with the ‘civility, learning and eloquence’ of their translation.”6 They formed subcommittees, each tasked with translating a portion of the Bible. The work of each subcommittee then passed through several reviews by other members of the greater team of translators.
In addition, all the scholars were instructed to follow the Bishop’s Bible as their template but to consult the Tyndale, Matthews, Coverdale, Great, and Geneva Bibles when they thought those versions reflected better or more accurate renderings of the original languages. Possessing this mandate, the King James translators recognized that they needed the work of previous translators to complete their task. Their dependence on the work of those who went before was emphasized in the original KJV preface: “Truly (good Christian Reader) we never thought from the beginning that we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make a bad one a good one, . . . but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones one principal good one.”7
But over time, biblical scholars found that the KJV possessed some deficiencies. For the Old Testament, the translators relied upon the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible. It was adequate, but the translators’ thorough understanding of the Hebrew language was deemed lacking. For the New Testament, “the Greek text [used was] an inferior” one, known as the Textus Receptus (Latin for “received text”), which was based on the work of the great northern Renaissance humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536). He compiled “the first Greek text to be produced on a printing press” using “five or six very late manuscripts dating from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries” that “were far inferior to earlier manuscripts.” This Greek text was printed around 1516. Both Martin Luther and William Tyndale used a version of this Greek text in making their translations. Luther’s version was completed in the 1520s, and Tyndale’s translation appeared in 1525.8
Erasmus’s Greek text went through a few more revisions, most notably undertaken by Robert Stephanus and Theodore Beza. The latter’s work was published in 1624 and again in 1633 by the Elzevir brothers. The preface to the second edition announced that it contained “the text which is now received by all, in which we give nothing changed or corrupted.”9 Thus it received the name Textus Receptus and thereafter was used by translators of the King James New Testament.
Not long after the KJV was published (1611), older, superior manuscripts began to be discovered. “Around 1630, Codex Alexandrinus, a fifth-century manuscript of the Greek Bible, was brought to England” and gave scholars a text that was considered closer to the original New Testament witness.10
Two hundred years later, the German scholar Constantin von Tischendorf (1815–1874) made his famous discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus in the library of St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of the traditional Mount Sinai. This manuscript is dated to the fourth century and is one of the two oldest vellum (treated animal hide) manuscripts of the New Testament. The Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus are considered by most modern scholars to be the best available texts of the Greek New Testament. The Codex Vaticanus, named after the Vatican Library, where it has been held since at least the fifteenth century (c. 1475 or 1481), is usually regarded as the oldest extant manuscript of the complete Greek Bible (Old and New Testaments), dating to the fourth century as well.11
Nineteenth-century scholars began to produce versions of the New Testament based on these earlier manuscripts. Samuel Tregelles, for example, published a Greek text in which he sought “to exhibit the text of the New Testament in the very words in which it has been transmitted on the evidence of ancient authority.”12 Disfavor toward the Textus Receptus, and hence toward the King James New Testament, was solidified by the work of two British scholars, Brooke Westcott and Fenton Hort, who produced an edition entitled The New Testament in the Original Greek (1881).13 They argued that Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, along with other early manuscripts, represented the version of the New Testament that most closely replicated the original writings of the ancient authors. Westcott and Hort stated that Codex Vaticanus “preserved not only a very ancient text, but a very pure line of very ancient text.”14
In the twentieth century, second- and third-century New Testament manuscripts written on papyrus were discovered. Several of these present a text very similar to Codex Vaticanus; others are more similar to Codex Sinaiticus. Among the most important early papyrus manuscripts is 𝔓75, dated to around AD 175–200. It bears a close resemblance to Codex Vaticanus.15 These manuscripts are invaluable to New Testament text critics—that is, those who strive to produce the most accurate Greek text of the New Testament.
Also at the beginning of the twentieth century, Eberhard Nestle used the best manuscripts and editions of the Greek New Testament that were produced in the nineteenth century and compiled a version of the Greek text that won wide acceptance. This project was carried on for several years by his son and then by Kurt Aland. The latest edition (28th) of Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece appeared in 2012.16 The same Greek text of Nestle-Aland was used to produce a volume published by the United Bible Societies entitled simply The Greek New Testament.17 Most modern scholars and translators today use one of these two critical editions.18
Because most modern English versions of the New Testament use one or the other of the two Greek editions mentioned above, they are shorter than the KJV and the New King James Version (NKJV) by as much as a thousand words in some instances. As one scholar notes, “The New Testament of the King James Version has fifty more verses than do most modern versions. This is because the King James Version is based on an edition of the Greek New Testament known as the Textus Receptus, which has about fifty more verses than do other modern critical editions of the Greek New Testament, such as the text of Westcott and Hort, or the Nestle-Aland text.”19
The fact that the current Nestle-Aland edition of the New Testament is a far better representation of the original text than the Textus Receptus or the KJV raises the issue of theological differences. Does this mean, practically speaking, that readers of modern English versions of the New Testament that are closely based on the Nestle-Aland Greek text are reading a different gospel or receiving different theology than readers of the KJV? Perhaps in some instances. (This becomes an important argument in support of modern revelation.) Maybe a better way of stating the issue is to say that readers of the KJV are reading a version of the New Testament text that was not read in the first three centuries of the Christian church. “Most of the significant theological differences between the TR [and the KJV] and modern critical editions of the Greek text pertain to issues of Christology, especially as reflected in titles or descriptions of Christ.”20 Here again the richness and importance of restoration theology is highlighted against the backdrop of the KJV.
Another matter that is highlighted when comparing various versions of the New Testament in English is the philosophy of translation. Some translators employed a literal word-for-word translation methodology, while others preferred a thought-for-thought approach. For example, the Revised Standard Version (RSV) and the New American Standard Bible (NASB) “are more literal than most versions.” The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) is still a fairly literal translation but with revisions leaning toward a freer thought-for-thought approach when deemed appropriate. The New International Version (NIV) was produced by a translation committee seeking a thought-for-thought creation. Some modern versions are based on a “dynamic equivalence” methodology, seeking to produce a translation in the idiom of the modern speech of certain population segments.21
Philip Comfort has categorized some well-known English versions of the Bible to help us get a sense of the methodologies employed.22
Strictly literal: New American Standard Bible
Literal: King James Version, American Standard Version, New King James Version, Revised Standard Version, New American Bible
Literal with freedom to be idiomatic: New Revised Standard Version
Thought-for-thought: New International Version, New Jerusalem Bible, Revised English Bible
Functional equivalent (modern speech): Today’s English Version, New Living Translation, Comtemporary English Version
Paraphrastic: The Living Bible, The Message
As Comfort notes, “A word-for-word rendering can be executed more easily than a thought-for-thought one; for in doing the latter, the translator must enter into the same thought as the author—and who can always know with certainty what the author’s original, intended meaning was? Therefore, a dynamic-equivalent or thought-for-thought translation should be done by a group of scholars (to guard against personal subjectivism).”23 In my view, it is critical to emphasize that a translation is axiomatically or self-evidently an interpretation!
John Beekman and John Callow proffer a profound summary of the foundational principle which lies at the heart of all translation efforts: “Translating faithfully involves knowing what Scripture means. This is fundamental to all idiomatic translation, and it is at this point that exegesis comes in. . . . In other words, its immediate purpose is to ascertain, as accurately as possible, using all the means available, just what the original writer, ‘moved by the Holy Spirit,’ meant as he dictated or penned his words, phrases, and sentences. Exegesis thus lies at the heart of all translation work, for if the translator does not know what the original means, then it is impossible for him to translate faithfully.”24
By the last decades of the twentieth century, the English-speaking world seemed to have enough new Bible translations that the time had come for committee revisions of existing versions, as was seen in 1605–1611 when the KJV was produced. An excellent example is the New Revised Standard Version of 1990. The chair of the committee, the late and great dean of New Testament text critics, Bruce M. Metzger, spoke of three reasons revisions are made, which also apply to the rationale behind the Brigham Young University New Testament Commentary series: requisition of still older biblical manuscripts, further (closer) investigation of linguistic features of the text, and changes in the usage (meaning) of the English language.25 To these we may add a fourth reason: the flood of light, truth, and knowledge of God’s intended meaning for his children that has proceeded forth from the Restoration of the gospel, beginning with Joseph Smith. To this end, the BYU New Testament Commentary series was inaugurated.
