The Incarnational Thrust of Biblical Translation Part 1 | Translation as a Theological Task

Not so long ago I wrote a blog about the issue of translation whereupon I borrowed a quote from Gordon Fee where he advises serious exegetes to: “use almost any modern translation rather than the King James Version or the New King James Version. 1”

I realized that it is quite supercilious of me to assume that such position should be put upfront without giving ample space for explanation and that is why I would like to use this space to explain why I have said such.

Please note that much of this post this borrows to a large extent from the lecture on Biblical Translation that Professor Noli Mendoza, has given at our Hermeneutics class at the Asian Theological Seminary.

The not so inspired version...

Not long ago I had this conversation with a fresh convert to born again Christianity about Bible translations where he was thrilled to inform me that he bought his first Bible –the King James Version (KJV) upon the advice of more mature Christian mentors that he had at his local church.

What’s interesting about it is the reason why he chose the KJV over other translations is because it is the oldest English translation (I mean 1611!), and that it is closer to the original manuscripts. Personally I have nothing with the KJV I also grew up reading it, in fact I even when I was being discipled by a ‘mature’ Christian church mate I was given a series of Bible studies (mostly from articles written by C.I. Scofield) about how the KJV is the English equivalent of the inspired Word of God.

I am no expert at the area, but now that I’m older I realized that such is a audacious (at worst outrageous!) claim. Since if we were to talk about inspiration we are to talk about Scriptures in the original manner upon which they were delivered –that is in their original language that is why in this fashion we can say that the inspired Bible is that of its text in the original: Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic languages.