Which Bible translation is best for you?

A Bible meme is making the rounds, and I’ve been asked by Peter Kirk to respond. The meme is appallingly superficial and contains more than one false alternative. I’m not going to perpetuate it, but I will answer a few of the questions by mocking them and turning them upside down. Here is question #1:

1. What translation of the Bible do you like best?

The likely answer: the one that reinforces my own biases. It doesn’t take much effort to think of a better question: Which translation of the Bible teaches you new things every time you use it?

The answer to that question, for those who read English at a 12^th grade level or higher, is the following:

The Jewish Study Bible. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, editors. Michael Fishbane, consulting editor. Jewish Publication Society tanakh translation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

The NJPSV translation, if read in conjunction with the notes and introductory essays, illuminates the text in ways no other translation and study Bible does.

I’m still waiting for a translation of the New Testament with accompanying notes that brings out its relationship to the Jewish matrices of which it is an expression, and its continuities and discontinuities with subsequent patristic tradition.

If someone does not read the Old or New Testaments in the original languages, but is fluent in language X though language Y is her mother tongue, a second answer to the question is the following: read the Bible in language X. If you know Latin, read the Bible in the Vulgate. If you know Spanish, read it in the excellent translation of Luis Alonso-Schökel (the three volume Edición de Estudio published by Verbo Divino is the one I use, but is a bit pricey). If you know French, the gold standard is the TOB (the Pentateuch has recently been issued in a revised form). If you know German, the translation everyone is talking about, and which I have on order, is the new Zürcher Bibel.

Finally, if you read the Tanakh in the original languages, the next step is to read deeply in the Septuagint, the Aramaic targums, or some other ancient version. The same answer is appropriate if you read the New Testament in Greek: you will learn all kinds of things about the New Testament if you read as background the Septuagint or one of the Aramaic targums.

When I read someone’s comment on a passage from the Tanakh / Old Testament, often the first thought that comes to mind is the following: if only the interpretation of the passage reflected in the Septuagint, a Targum, or another ancient version had been considered. Or: if only the interpreter knew how much the New Testament passage under consideration depends on a stream of tradition or an emphasis reflected in an ancient version of the Old Testament.

Reading the Tanakh in an ancient version - the Septuagint, one of the Targums, the Syriac, the Vulgate – often challenges the preconceptions and biases of the modern reader, and fills lacunae in one’s knowledge of the history of interpretation. The ancient versions, furthermore, serve as gateways into highly complex and cohesive religious cultures each of which continues on to the present day. If thoughtful biblical interpretation today involves drawing from treasures old and new – the importance of literacy in the old as well as the new is difficult to overestimate.

It is always helpful to read a familiar text through the prism of a culture and a language other than one’s own. The problem we face when reading the Bible is that we think we already know what the text is saying. Nine times out of ten, we do not. Nine times out of ten, the translation we use serves to reinforce preconceptions we have and shield us from the “raw” text.

True, there is no such thing as a “raw” text. Furthermore, the goal of an excellent translation will be to serve the text “cooked” – though I prefer that it be cooked medium rare, not well done.

Nonetheless, the goal of an informed interpreter will be to go behind available translations, and, with the help of auxiliary disciplines, wide reading in cognate literatures, and the school of hard knocks (a grasp of life itself), retrieve the text in as uncooked a form as possible. Then comes the task of cooking the text all over again.

If the interpreter is an excellent cook, the proffered meal will not pander to the tastes of those for whom it is intended, but treat them to a taste or two they are unfamiliar with. A tall order, but the one who fills it provides a delicious and unexpected gift.

Comments

[Lingamish]

Excellent post full of good ideas. Reading a variety of translations together with as much of the original as you can digest is a good way to see new things and also shake you out of the hypnotic effect of a long-cherished translation. I'll be responding to this meme soon and also using it as a platform for my personal agenda. ;-)

[Sam Norton]

Fascinating, and thank you. I've ordered the JSB.

[Peter Kirk]

I'm glad I succeeded in rubbing you up the wrong way, because that was my explicit intention! Well, I said "winding up", but that is perhaps a more British way of saying the same thing.

[Peter Kirk]

"the goal of an excellent translation will be to serve the text “cooked” – though I prefer that it be cooked medium rare, not well done."

That's a great analogy, although I prefer my translations like my steaks, well enough done that there is no blood oozing out of them, although not burnt to a crisp which is what so many cheap restaurants around here call "medium".

[JohnFH]

You did wind me up, Peter.

And, to continue the analogy, FE translations sometimes offer uncooked fare, and DE translations sometimes burn the steak to a crisp.

[Peter Kirk]

Yes, I agree with your analogy. But I don't like and can't digest raw steak, whereas at least overdone meat is edible. The problem with translators as well as chefs is that they don't know how to find a happy medium.