Has The Bible Been Translated Too Many Times? — Dewayne Bryant, Ph.D.

There are lots of Bible translations on the market. Any religious bookstore will likely have such a diverse selection that it that could bewilder Christians young and old alike. Most stores will carry the KJV, NKJV, ESV, NASB, NIV, and NRSV. Some, like The Voice, are dynamic translations unsuitable for serious Bible study. Idiomatic versions like The Message and The Passion Translation are equally unusable for Bible study. Some versions use undignified language and are rarely seen today (for some examples, see Acts 8:20 in the Cotton Patch Version or 1 Samuel 20:30 in The Living Bible).

With so many translations available, Christians often have difficulty choosing which one to use. Some are more literal than others and may sound stilted or wooden. Others sound more like the common vernacular. Older versions use archaic language foreign to English speakers today. Finding the right Bible version can be a journey involving many different steps.

With all of the versions available not only today but throughout the last two millennia, some have questioned the trustworthiness of Scripture. The primary objection is often stated like this: “We can’t trust the Bible because it’s been translated and re-translated too many times.” Similarly, “The Bible has been translated from one language into another so many times that nobody knows what it said originally.”

This claim appears often enough that Christians should be familiar with it—and how to answer it. For example, in a 2014 Newsweek article titled “The Bible: So Misunderstood It’s a Sin,” author Kurt Eichenwald wrote:

No television preacher has ever read the Bible. Neither has any evangelical politician. Neither has the pope. Neither have I. And neither have you. At best, we’ve all read a bad translation—a translation of translations of translations of hand-copied copies of copies of copies of copies, and on and on, hundreds of times.

How accurate is this claim, and what do Christians need to know when they hear it?

Fundamental Difficulties In The Translation Process

Translating a text from one language into another makes for an interesting adventure. Anyone who has studied a foreign language knows that the meanings of words can get lost in translation. This tends to happen when a person takes a text in the “source language” and translates it into the target, or receptor, language. For instance, translating the Hebrew word hesed (“love”) is incredibly difficult because no close parallel exists in English. The word is so rich and meaningful that it can only be captured in terms like “tender mercies” or “loving-kindness.” It includes the ideas of covenant, loyalty, grace, and kindness. English Bibles usually render it in several ways because they have no choice!

Sometimes, a term might be translated precisely but seems much weaker than the original. For instance, when Jesus stands outside the tomb of Lazarus, John states, “he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled” (John 11:33, also v. 38). This sounds like an emotional but relatively tame response, and especially so when we consult the Greek text. The word John uses is embrimomenos, which carries the meaning of “furious indignation.” Jesus was not merely weepy or disconsolate at the death of his friend; he was enraged.

These examples demonstrate some of the difficulties in bringing an ancient text from one language into another. The Bible is no different. However, when we uncover minor issues like this, does it mean they eventually lead to more significant problems? In other words, when all of these things begin to accumulate, does it undermine our faith in the reliability of the Bible?

Misunderstanding Translation

One of the most problematic misconceptions about Bible translation is that the original meaning has been lost over time. How much has been lost in countless translations from one version to the next? If modern Bibles are nothing more than translations of translations of translations, then the Bible is little more than history’s most famous game of telephone. According to this idea, the original teachings of Jesus, Paul, or any other biblical writer have become increasingly garbled over time and should be irrecoverable. Who knows what they taught originally?

This misconception occasionally appears but is utterly mistaken about how versions are produced. Virtually every Bible translation made in the last two or three centuries—with very few exceptions, such as paraphrases (The Living Bible) or defective versions (Clear Word Bible, New World Translation) do not build upon previous versions. Most translators go back to the original languages.

Making an accurate translation requires more than just the ability to read the language. It also means interacting with the available manuscripts. Sometimes these copies differ, requiring scholars to decide how a verse might read when the manuscript evidence may have more than one reading. Ancient scribes did make mistakes when copying the biblical text. But before Christians worry about whether their Bibles are accurate, they must know that the overwhelming majority of these mistakes are easily detected and corrected.

In antiquity, a scribe may have merely misspelled a word, reversed two letters within a word, omitted or duplicated part of the text, or accidentally inserted a marginal note into a passage. These are just a few of the possible errors ancient scribes could have made, but most of them are quite obvious. Further, they have no bearing on any significant matter of doctrine.

Again, when scholars produce a translation of the Bible, they go back to the original manuscripts, where they pour over the text, noting any and every significant issue that might have a bearing on the final product. They do not base their work on previous English versions; they return to the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic texts.

If someone claims the Bible is untrustworthy because it has been translated too many times, they have some serious misconceptions about how the translation process works. If that stops them from taking the Bible seriously, perhaps we can enlighten them.