Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored

Gospel
Volume 15 | Number 1 Article 5

1-2014

Why Bible Translations Differ: A Guide for the

Perplexed
Ben Spackman

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 Photo by Berthold Werner. Dead Sea Scroll 4Q175, Jordan, Amman.

Translators frequently consult the Dead Sea Scroll texts, particularly in problematic passages.
Why Bible Translations
Differ: A Guide for
the Perplexed
be n s pac k m a n

Ben Spackman ([email protected]) received an MA in Near Eastern Languages and

Civilizations from the University of Chicago, where he pursued further graduate work. Currently
a premedical student at City College of New York, he will apply to medical schools in 2014.

B righam Young once said that “if [the Bible] be translated incorrectly, and
there is a scholar on the earth who professes to be a Christian, and he can
translate it any better than King James’s translators did it, he is under obli-
gation to do so.”1 Many translations have appeared since 1611, and modern
Apostles have profitably consulted these other Bible translations, sometimes
citing them in general conference or the Ensign.2 Latter-day Saints who
likewise wish to engage in personal study from other Bible translations will
quickly notice differences of various kinds, not only in style but also in sub-
stance. Some differences between translations are subtle, others glaringly
obvious, such as the first translation of Psalm 23 into Tlingit: “The Lord is
my Goatherder, I don’t want him; he hauls me up the mountain; he drags me
down to the beach.”3
While the typical Latter-day Saint reads the Bible fairly often,4 many are
unfamiliar with “where the [biblical] texts originated, how they were trans-
mitted, what sorts of issues translators struggled with, or even how different
types of translations work, or even where to start finding answers.”5 Generally
speaking, differences arise from four aspects of the translation process, three

31
32 Religious Educator · VOL. 15 NO. 1 · 2014

of which are rooted in the original languages. An introduction to these four

categories as well as a bit of background on biblical languages can go far in
helping readers understand and evaluate different translations. Various Bible
versions will be cited by common abbreviation, explained either at the first
reference (e.g., KJV), or by an endnote. Due to my own academic training,
the following discussion focuses mainly on the Old Testament, but similar
issues are involved in translating the New Testament.

Category 1: What Are the Textual Sources of the Translation?

Translators must choose a base text from which to translate. Until the 1947
discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (often abbreviated as DSS), the oldest and
best Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament were dated back to the ninth
century AD, far closer in date to modern translators than to the Hebrew
authors and editors. This traditional Hebrew text, called the Masoretic Text
(or MT), serves as the source of most Bible translations of the Old Testament,
including the KJV.6 Scribes copied biblical texts by hand for generations.
Consequently, changes to the text crept in by nature of imperfect copying7 as
well as by intention.8 On occasion scribes would “correct” a text to the way
they thought it should read.9 If one read a story in which a dog chases a man,
the dog catches him, the man bites the dog, but then the man goes to the hos-
pital, you would reasonably assume that it was the dog that bit the man, not
the other way around and correct the corrupted text. Scribes also sometimes
made changes in pronunciation (e.g., to make sure Yahweh was pronounced
as Adonai), made theological changes,10 or bowdlerized the text.11 (This term
comes from a Dr. Thomas Bowdler, who produced an edition of Shakespeare
in 1807 with offensive or inappropriate passages for women and children
removed. Ophelia’s suicide, for example, became merely an unfortunate
drowning.) Minor textual errors in the Hebrew text are relatively common,
obvious corrections or major theological changes much less so. Translators
frequently consult the Dead Sea Scroll texts, particularly in problematic pas-
sages.12 The books of Samuel are held to be two of the more textually corrupt
books, with many difficult decisions to be made about which text should be
used in which passage.13 Whether translators decide to use the MT, DSS, or
both as the basis of the translation is a philosophical decision based upon
theological commitments and scholarly presuppositions. Using a different
base text will result in differences in the translation.
Why Bible Translations Differ: A Guide for the Perplexed 33

The base text is often supplemented by reference to ancient translations

of the Hebrew scriptures, known as “versions.”14 These include the Greek
translations known as the Septuagint, or LXX;15 Aramaic translations known
as targums or targumim; the Samaritan Pentateuch; and more in Latin,
Syriac, and other languages. Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
some of the existing copies of these versions predated our oldest copies of
the Masoretic Hebrew text, resulting in the odd situation of translations that
were older than the “original” text. Translators often consult the versions at
difficult or ambiguous passages because they show how ancient translators
understood the text, and sometimes attest to a textual tradition different
than that handed down in the MT. One example is Deuteronomy 32:8–9, in
which the MT was apparently “corrected” in a monotheistic direction, while
the Septuagint preserved a very different text that was then largely confirmed
by the Dead Sea Scrolls Hebrew text of Deuteronomy.16
The standard editions of the original language texts17 provide the most
relevant variations between manuscripts and the versions in what is called the
textual apparatus, a densely abbreviated technical tool.18 Good modern Bibles
often include footnotes that say something like “other manuscripts read X” or
“Hebrew uncertain.” The NET Bible often explains its translation in terms of
the base text and includes text-critical notes labeled TC.19 (“Text criticism” is
the study of textual variants.) English translations of the versions are avail-
able, such as the recent and free New English Translation of the Septuagint
(NETS)20 or The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible, which includes the biblical texts
of the DSS with some textual commentary.21 How much weight should be
given to the versions, and under what circumstances are questions of transla-
tion philosophy that directly affect the translation. Most Bibles thus include
a preface explaining the general choice of texts and other decisions.22

Category 2: How Does the Translator Understand the Grammar and

Syntax?
While the details are complex, a simple overview of a few of the sig-
nificant ways Biblical Hebrew differs from English will help the reader gain
appreciation for the difficulties of translation. Those unfamiliar with these
Hebrew difficulties may wonder how anyone can firmly derive meaning from
the text under such circumstances, but the Hebrew is rarely as ambiguous as
this section makes it appear.
34 Religious Educator · VOL. 15 NO. 1 · 2014

Like many other ancient languages, Biblical Hebrew had no formal

punctuation, no capitals, and variable word order.23 Consequently, a Hebrew
translator cannot always easily determine if a word is a proper name24
or if it belongs to the ending of one phrase or the beginning of the next.
Deciding where one sentence ends and another begins can be difficult, par-
ticularly since Hebrew uses “and” much more frequently and differently than
English.25 Translators have to decide where the breaks are in the text, and
then how to represent that in the target language.26 James Kugel provides one
example from Genesis 22:8: “Since biblical Hebrew was originally written
without punctuation marks or even capital letters marking the beginnings of
sentences, Abraham’s answer to Isaac could actually be read as two sentences:
‘God Himself will provide. The lamb for the burnt offering [is] my son.’ (Note
that Hebrew does not use “to be” in the present tense; thus, this last sentence
would be the same whether or not the word ‘is’ is supplied in translation.)”27
Another significant way Hebrew differs from English is that it has only
two verb “conjugations,” one that adds suffixes and one that adds prefixes.
Whereas English makes liberal use of words to indicate tense and mood,
Hebrew does not grammatically indicate tenses such as future, past, or pres-
ent, let alone those nightmarish tenses like future perfect progressive (“you
will have been doing X”).28 This is not to say Israelites weren’t concerned with
time; what English indicates explicitly either within the verb itself (e.g., “eat”
versus “ate,” “run” versus “ran”) or by ancillary words (“he will work” versus
“he did work”), Hebrew indicates less explicitly via syntax or word order.29
This again means translators must both decide what the Hebrew means and
then how to represent that in English. The lack of explicit grammatical tense
and scholarly consensus over the verbal system explains why one translation
may interpret a verse in the past tense, another in the future, and another
in the present.30 While perhaps an extreme example, compare the variety of
tenses in Isaiah 9:6 in table 1(emphasis added).
Another issue with Hebrew is that, like Spanish, it does not require pro-
nouns with verbs; one can simply say “ate” instead of “he ate.” Thus, lacking an
explicit subject, translators must decide if the subject is new and assumed (he?
it? God?) or carried over from something in the previous phrase. Ambiguities
of this nature combined with lexical difficulties described in the next section
occur significantly more often in poetry. Indeed, the ambiguities of Hebrew
lend themselves frustratingly well to poetry. It poses particular difficulties,
as it is often less concrete and more elliptical than prose. Because poetry in
Why Bible Translations Differ: A Guide for the Perplexed 35

KJV NRSV NJPS NASB

For unto us a child For a child has For a child has For a child will be
is born, unto us a been born for us, been born to us, born to us, a son
son is given: and a son given to us; A son has been will be given to us;
the government authority rests given us. And And the govern-
shall be upon his upon his shoul- authority has ment will rest on
shoulder: and his ders; and he is settled on his His shoulders;
name shall be named Wonderful shoulders. He And His name
called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty has been named will be called Won-
Counsellor, The God, Everlasting “The Mighty God derful Counselor,
mighty God, The Father, Prince of is planning grace; Mighty God, Eter-
everlasting Father, Peace. The Eternal Father, nal Father, Prince
The Prince of a peaceable ruler.” of Peace.
Peace.

Present perfect, Past, past, Past, past, past, Future, future,

present perfect, ­present, present. past. future, future.
future, future.
Table 1. Comparison of Tenses in Isaiah 9:6

English-speaking cultures tends to be used for aesthetic reasons instead of as

a practical or common mode of communication, these difficulties may seem
irrelevant. However, poetry is the primary form of prophetic texts such as
Isaiah and Jeremiah, as well as Psalms, the Old Testament book most quoted
in the New Testament. Learning how to understand poetic structures and
parse out its ambiguities thus takes on much more importance.31

Category 3: How Does the Translator Resolve Ambiguities on the

Word Level?
Due to the evolution of the Hebrew writing system, the relatively small num-
ber of Hebrew texts, and the nature of Semitic languages, a translator may be
very uncertain of the meaning(s) of a word. Ambiguity over one word here
or there may seem inconsequential, but the amount of variance possible and
the import of one lone word can change a passage significantly. To choose one
theological example, considerable ink has been spilled over the translation
of ‘almah in Isaiah 7:14. “Behold, [the] ‘almah shall conceive and bear a son,
and call his name Immanuel.”32 Should ‘almah be “virgin” (the traditional
translation conservative evangelicals still argue for) or “young woman” (the
translation heavily supported by usage and lexical research)?33 How is such
word-level ambiguity possible?
36 Religious Educator · VOL. 15 NO. 1 · 2014

The first cause of ambiguity is the nature of the writing system.34 The
Hebrew alphabet was originally an abjad, a writing system that represented
only consonants, likely based on a rebus principle. This means that each
Hebrew letter is also the name of an object. To write the word ’ab (“father”),
for example, one would draw an ’aleph (the word for ox) and a bet (or house).35
All Hebrew words begin with consonants. (Those words English speakers
would consider to begin with a vowel begin with something like a glottal stop,
in which airflow is cut off in the throat, as between the two syllables of uh-oh.)
A later stage of Hebrew began to indicate long vowels at the end of words,
using y, w, and perhaps h. Later still, y and w became inconsistently used indi-
cators of long vowels inside a word as well as at the end. For example, David
is written DWD (w as a consonant) before the Babylonian exile, but consis-
tently in texts afterward as DWYD, with y indicating the long i-vowel (the
name is pronounced dah-VEED in Hebrew today). The Dead Sea Scrolls
expand on this trend of using a few consonants to represent certain vowels.36
Roughly one thousand years after the close of the Hebrew Bible, Jews
who had memorized the traditional text improvised a system of indicating
the pronunciation with marks above, below, and inside the consonants, called
“vowel pointing” or just “pointing.” Until that time, Hebrew did not indicate
doubled consonants, which can change the meaning of a word, nor the full
range of vowels.37 Scholars vary in how much weight should be assigned to
the traditional pointing, but at times greater sense can be made of a text by
replacing the vowels (“repointing”) or redividing a key word or phrase.38
For example, if a text had the consonants GDSNWHR in God’s appear-
ance to Moses, and the tradition pointed and divided as “GoD iS NoWHeRe,”
it might be thought a bit odd for an Israelite to say. A scholar might repoint
and redivide as “GoD iS NoW HeRe” since it better fits the context of a
divine presence. Just as BT in English could give us BuTT, BiT, BaT, ByTe,
BuT, aBet, or BeT, many Hebrew words vary only in their pointing. In Amos
6:12, the NRSV prefers to repoint the masculine plural marker of “oxen,” -iym,
as a separate word yam, or “sea.” Contrast the KJV “Shall horses run upon
the rock? will one plow there with oxen?” with the NRSV “Do horses run on
rocks? Does one plow the sea with oxen?”39
One of the more common and complex examples involves whether lō “to
him” or lō’ “not” is the correct reading. This entirely changes the meaning of
Job 13:15, an old scripture mastery passage; compare the KJV “Though he
Why Bible Translations Differ: A Guide for the Perplexed 37

slay me, yet I will trust in him (lō)” with the NJPS, “He may well slay me; I
have no (lō’) hope” (emphasis added).
Here is the Hebrew text of Isaiah 9:5 (English numbering) without
pointing.

Here is the same text with pointing added.

Finally, here is the same text with the pointing and marks indicating
accents and how to “sing” or chant the text, the role of the cantor in a modern
synagogue.
38 Religious Educator · VOL. 15 NO. 1 · 2014

Second, assuming the traditional pointing is largely accurate, as it prob-

ably is in most cases, another issue deserves consideration: It is usage that
determines a word’s meaning. (This, combined with tradition, is the issue
with “virgin”/”young woman” in Isaiah 7:14.) The more often a word occurs,
the more examples and contexts we have to establish its meaning. However,
the Old Testament does not have many words—less than 7,000, many of
them related to each other—and words often have multiple meanings.40 Add
to the small sample size the fact that usage, and therefore meaning, shifts over
time, and it can become quite difficult to know just what a word means in a
given passage. We can’t haphazardly assume a word with legal or technical
meaning will bear the exact same meaning when used in a different genre at
a different time. Indeed, conclusions and word studies of this kind require
extreme caution.41
Particularly when a word is rare, scholars cautiously turn to the versions as well
as comparative Semitics. Do Aramaic, Ugaritic, Arabic, or Assyrian/Babylonian
use a related word in a similar context? Do the usages there shed any light on its
usage in the Old Testament?42 The combined corpus of these languages dwarfs
that of Biblical Hebrew, and is often useful.
Here again the genre of poetry magnifies the difficulties, since poetic
texts tend to use more obscure vocabulary and use it in less concrete ways.
If the words of Isaiah are great, they are equally rare and semantically dif-
ficult. Job is arguably the most difficult text in the Hebrew Bible, with a high
concentration of words that occur only once and nowhere else (called hapax
legomena) and many other rare words.43 Indeed, in Job 24:18, the NJPS
translation notes that “From here to the end of the chapter [verse 25] the
translation is largely conjectural.”44
The bottom line is that even with centuries of tradition and scholarship,
ancient translations, and modern lexicons, sometimes meaning cannot be
established with any degree of certainty. For some passages, that has seri-
ous implications. When reading through the list of non-kosher animals in
Leviticus 11, the Jewish Study Bible notes a high degree of uncertainty as
to what particular birds are intended. Jews have a practical need to know
which birds are kosher and which are not.45 But again, translations must
say something, and good scholarship recognizes its own limitations. One
scholar has suggested that gaining interpretive humility is one of the advan-
tages of learning biblical languages. “Seeing the messiness of the text—the
text-critical problems, the ambiguities, the instances (particularly if reading
Why Bible Translations Differ: A Guide for the Perplexed 39

in Job or Proverbs) in which you stare at a line but you have no idea what it
means and neither does anyone else but the translations have to say some-
thing so they grab a phrase out of thin air—causes you to be more humble
in your interpretive approach. You come to realize that you are not the mas-
ter of the text.”46
At both the word level and higher, the structure of Hebrew lends itself
to ambiguity, multiple meanings, puns, and subtle allusions. While lending
itself easily to poetry, this tendency also makes it infuriatingly difficult at
times to understand and to translate. One of my graduate professors joked
that every Semitic word has at least four meanings: the primary meaning, its
opposite, something to do with sex, and something to do with camels! He
was exaggerating, but not by much.

Category 4: What Conscious Choices are Being Made about

Translation Philosophy, Style, and Register?
Translation is a tricky process, but particularly so when involving religious
sensitivities. After resolving textual issues (category 1), working through the
grammar and syntax (category 2), and weighing lexical ambiguities (category
3), a translator might have a good idea what a passage means in Hebrew, but
must still work out what it should convey in the target language and how it
should convey it. This means that even if two Bible translations used the same
underlying text (e.g., MT versus DSS), and the translators understood that
text the same way, and agreed on the meanings of every word, the English
from each translator could still vary greatly. One could simply charge “trans-
lator bias,” but this is not often the case, and examples of flagrant bias tend
to be publicized and debated.47 To English-only readers, all these decisions
and issues remain below the surface. An illuminating example of the diffi-
culty Bible translators have in weighing these issues is available on YouTube.48
Translations can rarely indicate the debates, the deliberate or unconscious
choices made by the translator(s), or that the Hebrew text in question may
be terribly difficult to understand or fraught with textual issues; regardless
of the difficulties involved, at the end of the day a translator must provide a
translation.49
Translating involves an original language and a target language. No
language exists in isolation; each is embedded in and reflects its cultural
matrix. The more “distance” there is between the original and the target lan-
guages in terms of linguistic similarity,50 time, and culture, the more difficult
40 Religious Educator · VOL. 15 NO. 1 · 2014

translational decisions become. This also means that evaluation of a transla-

tion’s accuracy and utility can change; an excellent translation for 1611 may
become a terrible translation by 2013 because the target language and culture
have shifted.51

Formal or Dynamic Translation

Translation is not a science, but has begun to be studied like one. Those intro-
duced to foreign language for the first time often fall into thinking that it’s
simply a matter of substituting the equivalent words. An elder in my district
in the Missionary Training Center once exclaimed, “Il est à propos le temps!”
Intending to convey a frustrated “It’s about time!” he had simply looked up
each English word in his dictionary, substituted the French word he found
there, and strung them together. His final phrase was good French (“It con-
cerns the time!”), but did not mean what he intended. (A propos has since
made its way into English, meaning “relevant to the matter at hand.”) All
translation, particularly Bible translation, is much more complex than the
word-for-word substitution he performed, particularly where idioms and cul-
tural references are concerned.
Beginning in the mid-twentieth century with Eugene Nida, a linguist
and Greek scholar, Bible translators today talk about two endpoints on the
spectrum of translation theory. On one end is “word-for-word,” “formal
equivalence,” or “text-oriented” translation, which is more literal but less
understandable. The translator chooses to preserve more of the original lan-
guage at the cost of being less accessible to the target language and culture. On
the other end is “thought-for-thought,” “dynamic/functional equivalence,” or
“reader-oriented” translation, which is more understandable but potentially
less reliable.52 The translator does more interpreting in order to smooth and
adapt to target language and culture, intending to create the same under-
standing and response among the new audience as among the original.
If a translator has misunderstood the meaning embedded in the cultural/
language matrix of either the original or target language, than the meaning
will be deformed.53 For example, Isaiah 1:18 reads, “Though your sins be as
scarlet, they shall be white as snow.” How should one translate “snow” for a
tropical culture that has no concept of winter? “White as wool”? Since the
text says “white as snow,” could one translate “white as wool” and footnote
(if a translation allows) saying “white symbolized purity for the Israelites”?
What if in the target culture, the color white represents death instead of
Why Bible Translations Differ: A Guide for the Perplexed 41

purity or sinlessness? If blue were the paradigmatic color of purity, would

“blue as the sky” be acceptable? And so on. Essentially, is it the words that
matter or the concepts? How much can, must, or should one deform the text
to be true to and accurately convey the message of the text? Sometimes one
must translate what the text means instead of what it says.54 Every translation
is a traitor, goes the saying, and this difficulty was recognized long ago by the
rabbis. “One who translates literally (according to its form) is a liar, while one
who adds [to it] is a blasphemer.”55
Continuing this example, let us assume a thought-for-thought transla-
tion philosophy; most translations understand “white” in Isaiah 1:18 to
represent purity, sinlessness, or forgiveness. What if this equation is mis-
taken? One scholar concluded that “the formula to be made white as snow
is not a blessing in the Hebrew Bible. Rather it is a curse. Thus, also in Isaiah
1:18 we have a judgment speech or rîb [pronounced reeve], which calls the
people to judgment. The signs of the judgment are red, as the sign of guilt,
and white, the sign of punishment. Come to judgment, if your sins are as bad
as scarlet, they shall be made white as snow, a sign of curse and disease.”56 If
this is true, the thought-for-thought translation has seriously mistranslated
as “purity” where it should indicate “judgment.” (It may also provide new per-
spective on Miriam being turned white in Numbers 12:10–12 after speaking
against Moses.) A word-for-word translation that simply read “white as snow”
would not convey either concept, but allow all interpretation to the reader.
In other words, a word-for-word translation puts the onus on the reader to
construct a meaning for the passage, whether through tradition, research
and study, or problematic “face value”57 readings. The responsibility for any
misunderstanding also falls upon the reader. A thought-for-thought transla-
tion offloads much of the responsibility in understanding original contextual
meaning onto the translator.
To the left, right, and in between the two points of word-for-word/for-
mal and thought-for-thought/dynamic translation, three more positions can
be identified. More literal than formal equivalence is “literal,” between formal
and dynamic is “mixed,” and even more interpretive and loose are “para-
phrases.” Though every translation is somewhat eclectic depending on the
passage, each one generally falls into a particular category, and online guides
show generally where a translation falls along this spectrum of translation
philosophy.58
42 Religious Educator · VOL. 15 NO. 1 · 2014

On one side of the spectrum, there is the literal extreme; Everett Fox’s
commendable The Five Books of Moses attempts to capture more of the flavor
and rhythm of Hebrew, with the result that the English is sometimes odd. A
familiar passage reads, “At the beginning of God’s creating of the heavens and
the earth, when the earth was wild and waste, darkness over the face of Ocean,
rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters—God said: Let
there be light! And there was light.”59
At the other extreme, paraphrases like The Message risk sounding too
loose and disconnected from their original context, too casual, perhaps even
non-scriptural60: “Our Father in heaven, Reveal who you are. Set the world
right; Do what’s best—as above, so below. Keep us alive with three square
meals. Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others. Keep us safe from our-
selves and the Devil. You’re in charge! You can do anything you want! You’re
ablaze in beauty! Yes. Yes. Yes.”61 Thus reads the Lord’s Prayer.
The KJV is far towards the word-for-word/formal end of the spectrum;
however, its target language was English of the 1500s. The instructions to
the KJV translators to revise Tyndale’s version (1526) and the Bishop’s Bible
(1568) and leave their text unchanged unless necessary resulted in the KJV
already sounding archaic when published in 1611.62 For example, by the
end of the sixteenth century, -eth endings on verbs were still written but had
dropped out of speech and were pronounced as -s as standard practice.63
Four hundred additional years of linguistic shift has not made the KJV more
accessible, and this has definite effects on such fundamental LDS matters as
missionary work.64

Choice of Register
Register is a broad sociolinguistic term that refers to different kinds of lan-
guage appropriate for a given audience and context. For example, I would
speak to a close group of friends at a casual gathering differently than I
would to the President of the United States in a formal presentation. I would
explain a concept differently to a Primary class, than to my Institute class,
than to a missionary contact. The choice of “register” also affects translation.
Translators must know their purpose in translation and their audience, and
then further decide what kind of language is contextually appropriate for that
combination.65
One example of this is the reading level chosen for a translation. The NIV
has been translated at an eighth-grade reading level, whereas The Message
Why Bible Translations Differ: A Guide for the Perplexed 43

(quoted above with the Lord’s Prayer) is around a fourth-grade reading level.
A different kind of example concerning register and genre comes from a cri-
tique of a recent anthology of ancient Near Eastern texts:
The [Ugaritic] Baal Cycle is a larger than life tale and its ancient readers likely read
it as such. When translators render epics like this in immediately accessible, com-
mon vernaculars they inescapably fail to translate aspects of how these stories were
received and preserved. These were and are grand, expressive stories; encountering
the Baal cycle should feel different from reading legal texts or proverbs.66

Should a Bible translation be formal or informal? Archaic or modern? Should

it reflect differences in style, tone, genre, and dialect that exist in the origi-
nal? For modern readers of the KJV, both the nature of the translation and
non-fluency in its archaic language contribute to a very flat reading;67 that
is, imagine a movie in which every character spoke in the same voice, energy,
emotion, and tone, never raising the pitch or lowering the volume regardless
of the setting.
The original language texts are not so flat, but vary in many ways. The
Gospel of Mark, for example, is low, common “street” Greek with grammati-
cal infelicities, in contrast to the educated and refined Greek of Luke. Esau’s
grunt for grub, “Let me gulp down some of this red red stuff ” starkly con-
trasts Jacob’s careful and lawyerly response.68 Hebrew had different geographic
accents and/or dialects, both a Northern Hebrew and a Southern Hebrew
(perhaps like Texan, Brooklynite, or Midwestern English).69 Both Jacob’s
servant and then Jacob himself travel north into Aramaic territory to meet
Laban, and their own language changes to match Laban’s Aramaic “accent.”70
I have an American friend with an Indian mother and grandparents; in con-
versation with them, her English takes on a different accent, vocabulary, and
cadence. Changing registers is something speakers often do unconsciously
based on audience and context, and the original texts reflect such changes.
Reading the original languages or modern translations which try to capture
some of the text’s original “flavor” can thus provide a very different experience
than the lordly but flat monotone of the KJV. Perhaps this is what led Joseph
Smith to exclaim, “My soul delights in reading the word of the Lord in the
original, and I am determined to pursue the study of the languages, until I
shall become master of them, if I am permitted to live long enough.”71 Should
a translation attempt to capture the flavors of the underlying text?
44 Religious Educator · VOL. 15 NO. 1 · 2014

Appropriate Language
Another issue of register concerns differing cultural expectations in terms of
sacred writing and language. That which is taboo, shocking, or offensive in
one culture may not be in another. While a few originally inoffensive pas-
sages became so by translation into a different time or culture, sometimes the
prophets intended to shock and offend. One scholar even advises, “If you do
not wish to be shocked and disgusted, then stay away from reading the pro-
phetic texts.”72 Some of these difficult passages have been bowdlerized in the
past, some overlooked due to archaic language, and some just never noticed
due to their relative obscurity.73 For example, “The Hebrew Bible regularly
uses the root ŠKB . . . ‘lie (with)’ as a euphemism for sexual intercourse. But
on four occasions the more direct verb ŠGL . . . occurs. Scholars agree that
ŠGL was a word for sexual intercourse, but it may or may not have been vul-
gar (therefore, we cannot supply an exact English translation). In each of the
four instances, ŠGL appears as part of a threat or condemnation, and always
with the clear intention of shocking the audience . . . Obviously, the authors
of these lines [in Deuteronomy 28:30, Isaiah 13:16, Jeremiah 3:1–2 and
Zechariah 14:2] deliberately chose strong language—if not actual vulgarity—
in order to horrify, upset and rattle their audience.”74
The English in 1 Samuel 25, involving David, Nabal (“Fool”), and “every
one that pisseth against the wall,” was not offensive when first published,75
but has now become so as American English has shifted. Translating in such
a way as to avoid offending readers, as most modern translations do, turns out
to obscure important connections within the story.76 Even if justifiable “to
provoke revulsion and disgust” and contextualized within its own time and
culture, the graphic sexual, violent, or scatological imagery used by several
prophets, particularly Ezekiel, challenges scholars and those who hold the
Bible in high esteem.77
How should translators deal with these passages, far more numerous
and problematic than most readers realize? They are not limited to the Old
Testament. For example, Paul’s use of “you foolish Galatians” may be delib-
erate use of an ethnic slur to forcefully grab the attention of his audience,
equivalent to “you stupid rednecks!”78 In Philippians 3:8, he disdainfully
describes as “dung” (KJV) all he gave up to gain Christ (potentially a con-
siderable amount)79 but some scholars bluntly suggest a different four-letter
word is a more accurate translation. The NET Bible notes that skubalon “was
often used in Greek as a vulgar term for fecal matter. As such it would most
Why Bible Translations Differ: A Guide for the Perplexed 45

likely have had a certain shock value for the readers.”80 Complicating mat-
ters, the same skubalon letter contains “the admonition of Paul” to seek out
whatever is pure and commendable, among other adjectives (Philippians 4:8).
How does Paul reconcile his use of language with this admonition?
Why are these passages so troublesome? Setting aside those examples in
which prophets intended offense, other reasons exist. Modern readers have
come to apply certain assumptions and expectations to the idea of “Holy
Scripture” which were foreign to its authors. John J. Collins remarks, “When
[certain Old Testament] stories are read as Scripture, they become more prob-
lematic, because of a common but ill-founded assumption that all Scripture
should be edifying,” i.e., positive and uplifting.81 Ancient prophets did not
labor under many of the assumptions we attach to scripture today, because
they are largely modern assumptions. The contents of our “Holy Scriptures”
did not become such until long after they were written or preached. “Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, Isaiah et al. had no sense of the white-covered, gold-cross embossed
Bibles in which their prose was to be packaged, nor had they been briefed on
the standards of Western literary decorum against which they would inevita-
bly offend.”82 Even our basic concept of “scripture” today would be somewhat
foreign to them.83 Certainly they would have thought they were operating
under the Spirit of the Lord, but they were rarely conscious of authoring
something that would become canon or “Holy Scripture,” because it did not
exist as such. Few prophets have ever written with the idea of “I am adding
to the canon,” because there was neither a formally established canon nor a
concept of canon (generally in the Old Testament period), or because the
canon was something other and past; in the New Testament period, “scripture”
referred broadly to the writings of Old Testament prophets (as in 2 Timothy
3:15), not things such as Paul’s letters or the Gospels which were being writ-
ten at the time. Indeed, Peter and Paul (and sometimes Joseph Smith in the
Doctrine and Covenants) were simply writing letters to congregations, not
attempting to produce canonized and inspired writing fit for all Christians
in all times.
The writings eventually canonized as the Bible accurately reflected life
in its variety, with language humorous and serious, sacred and profane. But
once combined with other books (Greek ta biblia, source of the term “Bible,”
means “the books,” not The Book) and canonized as “Holy Scripture,” certain
expectations and assumptions came to be applied to each book and passage as
though these criteria existed at the time, and prophets had written with them
46 Religious Educator · VOL. 15 NO. 1 · 2014

Kent P. Jackson

Leaf from a 1611 King James Bible showing Psalms 130–33, chapter headings, illuminated letters, and
marginal notes.
Why Bible Translations Differ: A Guide for the Perplexed 47

in mind. Consequently, the kind of language expected by the target commu-

nity does not always match the kind of language used by the prophets. Should
the translator privilege sensitivities of the target community, who may expect
“Holy Scripture” to use elevated, archaic, antiseptic language, or should they
provide culturally accurate translations of the text, which would create the
same kind of reaction among its readers as among its native audience?

Suggestions for Personal Study

The typical Bible reader who is aware of differences between versions cannot
directly investigate the reason for those differences in the original languages.
However, a multitude of useful tools are available to attack this problem from
a different direction.

Multiple Translations
The easiest and first step is to become familiar with several translations, not-
ing what each appears to say and areas of agreement or disagreement. Most
modern Bible translations have been produced by committees of translators,
and represent some degree of scholarly evaluation of textual variants and
other relevant issues. Where multiple modern translations agree with each
other but differ significantly from the KJV (textual scholars would say “agree
against” the KJV), as a general rule I would favor the rendering of the modern
versions. My personal recommendations would be the NRSV (scholarly/ecu-
menical), NJPS ( Jewish), NIV (evangelical, various editions), NAB or New
American Bible, Revised Edition (Catholic), and the NET Bible (discussed
below).84 For those that include them, check each translation’s footnotes of
for useful indicators such as “Hebrew uncertain” or “other versions read X.”

Single-Volume Resources
Besides the various translations of the Bible, there is also a range of acces-
sible resources that can explain to some degree what is taking place under the
surface of the English text. While certainly not necessary to consult with any
frequency, simple awareness that these resources exist means the interested
student knows where and how to search for answers when the need arises.
• The most accessible of these is the NET Bible with its myriad foot-
notes at www.netbible.org. Study Bibles based on reputable translations
will provide more footnotes of this kind than simple translations. For
example, the Jewish Study Bible comprises the NJPS translation with
48 Religious Educator · VOL. 15 NO. 1 · 2014

notes, maps, introductions, and more from a Jewish perspective. Other

good recommendations include the NIV Study Bible (evangelical),
the New Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV, scholarly/ecumenical),
and the Jewish Annotated New Testament (NRSV, commentary from
a Jewish perspective).
• Robert Alter, a Jewish professor of Literature and Hebrew at UC–
Berkeley, often explains his translational decisions in difficult areas by
referencing other versions and the original languages.85 Moreover, his
translations are enlightening and enjoyable to read, often capturing
literary nuances lacking in others.86
• Another potentially useful volume is The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible.87
Authored by several prominent scroll scholars, the text contains a
heavily annotated translation of the biblical scrolls with commentary
focused on textual differences between the traditional Hebrew text,
DSS, and other ancient versions. Differences between the Hebrew
manuscripts and scrolls are printed in italics. The authors also provide
a helpful introduction to the primary ancient translations.
• Bruce Metzger, a notable scholar of the Greek New Testament, pub-
lished a one-volume layman’s guide to textual variants of the New
Testament.88 Arranged by chapter and verse, this should be a go-to
resource for New Testament questions.

Multivolume Resources
Multivolume works that are often available in public and college libraries
can also address these issues in great depth. The UBS Handbook Series by the
United Bible Societies (UBS) is one such work. These books were written
primarily “to assist Bible translators but are also helpful for others who wish
to study, reflect on and communicate the Scriptures. Although the commen-
taries are based on the original biblical languages, it is not necessary to know
these languages to benefit from the commentaries.”89 These go verse-by-verse,
avoid technical language, compare multiple translations, and discuss major
textual differences. Like other UBS publications, they are relatively expensive.
Also in this category are the most powerful and most difficult references,
namely, commentaries, which vary greatly in length, focus, intended audience,
and perspective. One-volume commentaries will rarely prove useful since
they lack the space necessary to comment verse-by-verse. The greater depth
of multivolume commentaries brings issues of greater expense, bulk (unless
Why Bible Translations Differ: A Guide for the Perplexed 49

purchased electronically), and unevenness, as each volume is usually written

by a different author. The most suitable commentary will offer a translation as
well as discussion of and justification for it. The strength here is also the weak-
ness: depth enough to explain these issues often means technicality, which is
likely to lose or confuse readers without technical training.
As space prevents making specific recommendations for each book of the
Bible, a few general suggestions and brief notes on series must suffice.90 Many
of these are available at local public and university libraries.
• Anchor Bible Commentary—Now published by Yale University (and
renamed accordingly as the Anchor Yale Bible Commentary), no
denominational orientation, academic. Older volumes are being
updated, so more than one volume may exist for a given book.
• JPS Torah Commentary—Jewish Publication Society, scholarly Jewish
perspective, covers Genesis through Deuteronomy under this title. A
selection of other Old Testament books and passages such as Ruth and
Jonah are covered under the series title JPS Bible Commentary.
• New International Commentary—Eerdmans, Protestant perspective,
semi-technical, conservative.
• New Interpreters Bible—Abingdon Press, variety of perspectives. (I
find the commentary on Romans by N. T. Wright to be particularly
illuminating.)
• NIV Application Commentary—Zondervan, conservative evangeli-
cal perspective, less technical, and more useful “modern application”
suggestions as Latter-day Saints tend to expect. The authors provide a
bridge between ancient and modern perspectives.
• Word Biblical Commentary—Thomas Nelson, Protestant perspective,
semi-technical.
Samples of these commentaries are often available on Amazon.com, the
website of the publisher, or Google Books.

Original Language Resources

The last category involves those resources dealing with words in the original
source language. It is possible to research the underlying Greek and Hebrew
without any formal training; however, the risk of misunderstanding and mis-
using this information cannot be overemphasized! Even students with a year
or two of formal training tend to fall into common errors. The serious Bible
50 Religious Educator · VOL. 15 NO. 1 · 2014

reader who delves into these should begin by reading John Walton’s essay on
word studies and D. A. Carson’s Exegetical Fallacies.91
The following process allows the non-specialist to make use of some
accessible lexicons. As BYU philosophy professor James E. Faulconer devotes
a chapter to this process in his excellent short volume Scripture Study: Tools
and Suggestions (now available online), what follows is a brief summary.92
Essentially, one looks up the English word, then chapter/verse reference in
Strong’s Lexicon, which assigns a unique number to every Greek and Hebrew
word. This indicates what original language word is behind the English in any
given passage. Several recent Hebrew lexicons are keyed to Strong’s numbers,
making them accessible to the nonspecialist; in other words, Strong’s can pro-
vide a bridge from the English word to the proper Hebrew entry in one of
these other lexicons. Free tools allowing Strong’s Lexicon lookup are available
online, such as at www.blueletterbible.org.
There is a caveat to this approach—I cannot recommend relying upon
Strong’s for any but the most general interpretive guidance. Besides being
outdated, Strong’s provides only brief translational equivalents which can
mislead, since the translation of a word is not always its meaning. That is,
a simple translational equivalent cannot always adequately convey a native
understanding of a word, particularly when it bears technical or cultural
meaning. For example, the root PQD occurs some three hundred times in
the Old Testament, with a bewildering variety of translational equivalents,
including “to visit” (Genesis 21:1), “to appoint” (Genesis 41:34), “to muster
troops,” (Numbers 1:3), “to be numbered” (Exodus 30:13), and “to punish”
(Isaiah 10:12). The meaning of PQD that contextually demands such differ-
ent translational equivalents in English is “to assign a person or thing to what
the subject believes is its proper or appropriate status or position in an orga-
nizational order.” 93 Israelites had no need to say that. They just said “paqad.”
Since Strong’s does no more than list the confusing array of seemingly-unre-
lated English translational equivalents, it should be used only as a stepping
stone to more complete tools.
Of all the volumes keyed to Strong’s numbers, I recommend these: the
Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (or TWOT, 3 volumes, evan-
gelical), Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (or TLOT, 3 volumes,
translated from German scholarship), and the New International Dictionary
of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (or NIDOTTE, 6 volumes, evangeli-
cal). The last is the most extensive, containing essays on each word as well as
Why Bible Translations Differ: A Guide for the Perplexed 51

some more general background essays. All three are available for electronic
purchase from Logos, Accordance, or Bibleworks.94 Electronic editions
greatly facilitate the process, since one can go directly to the desired Hebrew
lexicon from English words.95 None of these lexicons includes every Hebrew
word; hapax legomena would not generally be included.96 The standard aca-
demic lexicons97 do contain those references, but are probably inaccessible to
nonspecialists because of their highly technical and abbreviated nature. They
are also not keyed to Strong’s, making it very difficult to look up a Hebrew
word without knowing the language. In spite of not treating every word,
TWOT, TLOT, and NIDOTTE remain excellent tools accessible to the
non-specialist.

How Relevant are the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith Translation
in Evaluating Translation Differences?
In many and perhaps most cases where modern translations vary significantly
from the KJV, I would follow modern translations on the basis of the infor-
mation above. However, modern revelation complicates this issue. In some
passages, the Book of Mormon and KJV agree against modern translations.
In others, the Book of Mormon and KJV agree against the JST.

The Book of Mormon

While this is a complex issue largely outside the scope of this paper, two
general points can be made. First, as a result of his text-critical work, Royal
Skousen has determined that many of the Isaiah variants between the 1981
Book of Mormon and the KJV result from copying or scribal errors in the
Book of Mormon publication history, instead of a different underlying
Hebrew text.98 This suggests that the brass plates version of Isaiah was closer
to the traditional Hebrew text than LDS have often assumed. Second, our
text explicitly represents a Nephite interpretation and recontextualization
of Isaiah. Although Nephi explains this clearly in 1 Nephi 19:23, its signifi-
cance is often overlooked. Elder McConkie understood Isaiah in the Book
of Mormon to be an expansive translation. “Nephi gave, not a literal, but an
inspired and interpreting translation.”99 Thus, some textual differences could
be attributed to Nephi interpreting instead of differences in the Hebrew
text. Lastly, one’s view of the relationship between the KJV and the Book
of Mormon will vary greatly based on how one understands the nature of
the Book of Mormon translation and process. Several reputable LDS scholars
52 Religious Educator · VOL. 15 NO. 1 · 2014

come to differing conclusions, and the wise student will be aware of the range
of opinions.100
In my view, the Book of Mormon is a sufficient translation, not a per-
fect one (if indeed, the idea of a perfect translation has any meaning); that is,
regardless of how it was translated, the end product was sufficient for God’s
purposes, despite grammatical infelicities,101 archaic language, or other less-
than-perfect aspects. The “most correct book” statement by Joseph Smith
does not apply to its textual characteristics (such as spelling or verb-subject
agreement), does not preclude scribal errors,102 cannot rule out historical
errors, cannot guarantee doctrinal correctness,103 nor, most relevantly, can it
affirm some kind of ultimate accuracy of the translation in the Isaiah pas-
sages or elsewhere. Rather it is “most correct,” as Joseph went on to say, in its
capability to bring us closer to God through living by its precepts.104 Thus, I
believe a translation of Isaiah that is better or more accurate than Nephi’s
Isaiah is theoretically possible.105

The Joseph Smith Translation

Many Latter-day Saints seem to approach the Joseph Smith Translation
(or JST) as pure restoration of original text, replacing text that was “incor-
rectly translated,” a concept which serves on the popular level as an escape
from any text which causes discomfort or doesn’t seem to represent cur-
rent doctrinal understandings. In my view, God’s commandment to Joseph
Smith to retranslate the Bible had little to do with returning the Bible to an
uncorrupted state; rather, God intended Joseph’s intensive study to serve as
a catalyst for revelation as he came across puzzling passages, pondering and
inquiring about them. Many distinctive and divisive LDS doctrines come
from just such a process. Joseph’s study of the patriarchs led to the revela-
tion of D&C 132 and plural marriage. Study of John 5:29 in February 1832
resulted in D&C 76, revealing three divisions in the heavens. Study of 1
Corinthians led to baptism for the dead. If this is correct, the purpose of
the JST translation process was to engender thought, understanding, and
revelation, not original text. It “was not a simple, mechanical recording of
divine dictum, but rather a study-and-thought process accompanied and
prompted by revelation from the Lord.”106 This theory also has the advan-
tage of accounting for Joseph Smith translating the same passages differently
on different occasions.107
Why Bible Translations Differ: A Guide for the Perplexed 53

The conclusions and cautions of much recent LDS scholarship explor-

ing the nature of the JST have not yet reached popular consciousness in the
Church. Robert J. Matthews was the first LDS scholar to receive permission
to study the JST manuscripts, which belonged to the RLDS Church (now
Community of Christ). His work in the 1950s served to validate the reli-
ability of the text, overturning suspicions that the RLDS had tampered with
them.108 At that time, Matthews concluded that the JST represented a variety
of things. In 2004, Kent P. Jackson, Scott Faulring, and Matthews reiterated
his conclusions, categorizing the JST changes within these categories:109
1. Editing to make the Bible more understandable for modern readers.
“Many of the individual JST changes fall into this category  .  .  . An
example might include 1 Thessalonians 5:26, in which ‘Greet all the
brethren with a holy kiss’ is changed to ‘Greet all the brethren with a
holy salutation’ . . . It is likely that the King James text here accurately
represents Paul’s original word and intent. Yet to modern Western
readers, unaccustomed to Mediterranean displays of friendship and
brotherhood, Paul’s word might miscommunicate and misdirect, and
thus the Prophet made a change.” Note that in this category, the JST’s
solving of a difficulty (not textual, but cultural) is not a restoration of
original text or cultural setting. The JST solves a problem that arises
because the passage is now being read in a new context; the original
context had no such issue.
2. Restoration of original text. “Joseph Smith did not restore the very
words of lost texts, because they were in Hebrew or Greek (or other
ancient languages), and the new Translation was to be in English. Thus
his translation, in the English idiom of his own day, would restore the
meaning and the message of original passages but not necessarily the
literary trappings that accompanied them when they were first put to
writing.” Regarding this category, the authors bluntly state that the
assumption “that all JST changes are intended to restore original text
[is] a claim made neither by the JST itself nor by the Prophet Joseph
Smith.”110
3. Restoration of what was once said or done but which was never in the
Bible. This would extend to include “material of which the biblical
writers were unaware or which they chose not to include or neglected
to record (cf. 3 Ne. 23:6–13).”
54 Religious Educator · VOL. 15 NO. 1 · 2014

4. Editing to bring biblical wording into harmony with truth found in other
revelations or elsewhere in the Bible. “Where modern revelation had
given a clearer view of a doctrine preserved less adequately in the Bible,
it was appropriate for Joseph Smith to add a correction-whether or not
that correction reflects what was on the ancient original manuscript.”111
5. Changes to provide modern readers teachings that were not written by
original authors. For example, “there is an important JST change at
Romans 13 in which Paul’s teaching regarding the Saints’ submission
to secular political power is changed to submission to the authorities
of the Church. Perhaps both versions are correct. If the Bible preserves
accurately Paul’s original thoughts and intent, then the JST revision
would be viewed as a latter-day revelation intended to instruct us on a
topic not anticipated by Paul.”
The conclusions by those who have studied the JST most extensively run
counter to the assumption that the JST is monolithic textual restoration. As
Kevin Barney demonstrated in a preliminary paper, few of these changes of
the JST are based in the original texts.112 This is not to discount the JST, but to
recognize that its contribution is primarily doctrinal, not textual or historical;
it does not address the problems that give rise to differences between the KJV
and non-KJV translations. In other words, while the JST and other Bibles
vary from the KJV, they do so for very different reasons. Other translations
are working from the original languages, with all the problems entailed by cat-
egories 1–3 above. The JST was working from the English and Joseph Smith’s
prophetic understanding, rarely taking account of any of those difficulties.
If neither the Book of Mormon nor the JST represent some kind of
Platonic ideal of purely original and perfectly translated text, but a sufficient,
prophetic, line-upon-line text, then we should not expect the JST, Book of
Mormon, and KJV to match up. Furthermore, if God so directed, another
prophet could provide a new and different retranslation in accordance with
new revelation. As Brigham Young expressed, “Should the Lord Almighty
send an angel to re-write the Bible, it would in many places be very differ-
ent from what it now is. And I will even venture to say that if the Book of
Mormon were now to be re-written, in many instances it would materially
differ from the present translation.”113 The ambiguity and discontinuity inher-
ent in some of these ideas tend to discomfit many Latter-day Saints, but such
is the unavoidable nature of these texts and processes.114
Why Bible Translations Differ: A Guide for the Perplexed 55

Conclusion
Translations vary for multiple reasons: different underlying texts and influ-
ence of the versions, different understandings of the text on the grammatical
and syntactic level, as well as on the semantic or word level, and differing phi-
losophies of how to best to express one’s understanding of these differences in
the target language, taking the intended audience and context into account.
Before actually getting on to providing a translation, translators must
examine, weigh, and make difficult decisions on each of these issues, often
multiple times in one verse. Once translators understand a passage or at least
know that they cannot solve its issues, they must determine how best to
express that understanding in the target language and appropriate register for
its audience, itself a difficult question. Every translation is an interpretation.
The differences between translations can confuse readers, but armed with the
understanding of why differences arise and the tools described in this paper,
readers can learn to parse those differences profitably.

Notes
Prompted by a frustrated friend’s question about comparing Bible translations, I began
this article as a series of informal blog posts at timesandseasons.org, and I am grateful for the
feedback offered there and on various drafts of the paper. Due to the nature of my train-
ing, the original question’s Old Testament examples, and the course of study for 2014, the
principles laid out are specific to the Old Testament, though similar issues apply to the New
Testament.
1. Brigham Young, in Journal of Discourses (London: Latter-day Saints’ Book Depot,
1882), 14:226–27.
2. For a few examples, see Neal A. Maxwell, “Lest Ye Be Wearied and Faint in Your
Minds,” Ensign, May 1991, 90; “The New Testament—Matchless Portrait of the Savior,”
Ensign, December 1986, 23; Jeffrey R. Holland, “Miracles of the Restoration,” Ensign,
November 1994, 34; and Robert D. Hales, “In Memory of Jesus,” Ensign, November 1997, 26.
3. As cited in Joe Stringham, “The Bible—Only 4,263 Languages to Go,” Ensign,
January 1990, 20.
4. A 2001 study by the Barna Group found that “Mormons are more likely to read the
Bible during a week than Protestants.” See “Protestants, Catholics and Mormons Reflect
Diverse Levels of Religious Activity,” Barna Group; https://www.barna.org/barna-update/
article/5-barna-update/54-protestants-catholics-and-mormons-reflect-diverse-levels-of-
religious-activity (accessed July 5, 2013).
5. Grant Hardy, “The King James Bible and the Future of Missionary Work,” Dialogue:
A Journal of Mormon Thought 45, no. 2 (Spring 2012): 5. A different version was posted
earlier at http://bycommonconsent.com, http://bycommonconsent.files.wordpress.
com/2011/02/king-james-bible-and-missionary-work.pdf (accessed August 1, 2013).
6. One notable exception was the Catholic Douay-Rheims version (completed by
1610), which took as its base the Latin Vulgate, itself a translation of the Hebrew. See Bruce
56 Religious Educator · VOL. 15 NO. 1 · 2014

Metzger, The Bible in Translation—Ancient and English Versions (Baker Academic, 2001),
67–69. Modern Catholic translations are now based on the Greek and Hebrew texts. On the
Masoretic Text, see E. J. Revell, “Masoretic Text,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David
Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 4:597–600; “Masoretes,” in The Anchor Bible
Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 4:593–94; hereafter
abbreviated as ABD.
7. The common kinds of errors inherent in hand copying have been well studied, and
occur in Latter-day Saint texts as well. See Paul D. Wegner, A Student’s Guide to Textual
Criticism of the Bible (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2006), 44–50; P. Kyle McCarter,
Textual Criticism: Recovering the Text of the Hebrew Bible (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986).
8. I include in these examples both changes made in the text itself as well as in the
authoritative tradition of scribal notations and comments known as Masorah, including
kethib/qere, which instructed the reader to make a verbal substitution (qere, “read!”) for what
was written (kethib, “it is written”). See ABD, “Masorah,” “Kethib and Qere.” See also Page
Kelley, Daniel Stephen Mynatt, and Timothy G. Crawford, The Masorah of Biblia Hebraica
Stuttgartensia: An Introduction and Annotated Glossary (Eedrmans, 1998).
9. One scribe wrote angrily in a marginal note at Hebrews 1:3 of codex Vaticanus, criti-
cizing a previous scribe for making a change: “Fool and knave, can’t you leave the old reading
alone and not alter it!” Wegner, Student’s Guide, 54.
10. See note 16 below.
11. See note 76 below and the other references in that section.
12. The Dead Sea Scroll community often had more than one copy of a book.
13. S. R. Driver, Notes on the Hebrew Text and Topography of the Book of Samuel, with
an Introduction to Hebrew Paleography and the Ancient Versions, 2nd, revised and enlarged ed.
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913).
14. As the LDS Bible Dictionary was a revision of the Cambridge Bible Dictionary, it
includes brief sections on “Septuagint” and “Vulgate.” See also Wegner, Student’s Guide,
88–103; Metzger, Bible in Translation.
15. Multiple translations were made into Greek. “The term Septuagint, which has been
used in a confusing variety of ways, gives the inaccurate impression that this document is a
homogenous unit . . . Strictly speaking, there is really no such thing as the Septuagint.” Karen
H. Jobes and Moises Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic,
2000), 29–30; emphasis in the original.
16. The LXX reads “according to the number of the angels,” against the MT’s “accord-
ing to the number of the sons of Israel.” The DSS confirmed the Hebrew origin of the
LXX, reading “sons of God” (≈angels). See notes at Deuteronomy 32:8 and Excursis 31
“Text and Theology in Deu 32:8 and 43,” in Jeffery H. Tigay, Deuteronomy, The JPS Torah
Commentary (The Jewish Publication Society, 1996).
17. These are published by the United Bible Society, and known as Nestle-Aland or NA
for the Greek and Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia or BHS for the Hebrew. A new edition
of the MT with a different apparatus, known as Biblia Hebraica Quinta or BHQ, is being
published in sections.
18. These are usually presented in the original language, with abbreviated Latin
commentary.
19. The NET Bible is the New English Translation, freely available online at www.bible.
org, and in study Bible form at NETBible.org. Produced by a committee of scholars, the great
advantages of the NET are its free availability and over 60,000 translator notes, which “show
Why Bible Translations Differ: A Guide for the Perplexed 57

major interpretive options and/or textual options for difficult or disputed passages . . . [and]
allow a running commentary on the translators’ decisions to a degree never seen.” See list of
translators and discussion of translation philosophy at http://bible.org/article/preface-net-
bible-first-edition (accessed November 5, 2012).
20. See “New English Translation of the Septuagint”; http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/
edition/ (accessed November 5, 2012).
21. Martin Jr. Abegg, Peter Flint, and Eugene Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible: The
Oldest Known Bible Translated for the First Time into English (HarperCollins, 1999).
22. The KJV itself originally contained a lengthy preface addressed to King James and
then the reader, which is not included with the LDS edition, but reprinted online at various
sites. The NRSV preface includes this translational maxim and explanation among other
statements: “‘As literal as possible, as free as necessary.’ As a consequence, the New Revised
Standard Version (NRSV) remains essentially a literal translation. Periphrastic renderings
have been adopted only sparingly, and then chiefly to compensate for a deficiency in the
English language—the lack of a common gender third-person singular pronoun.”
23. Masoretic tradition does punctuate, but as with the vowels, this tradition long post-
dates the consonantal text. Differences in punctuation can change meaning. See Grant Hardy,
“Of Punctuation and Parentage,” Insights 24, no. 2 (2004). For more info on textual divisions,
see Kent P. Jackson, Frank F. Judd Jr., and David R. Seely, “Chapters, Verses, Punctuation,
Spelling, and Italics in the King James Version,” Religious Educator 7, no. 2 (2006).
24. For example, KJV Jeremiah 38:6 refers to Malchiah the son of Hammelech, but now
most translate hammelech instead of treating it as a proper name, i.e., Malchiah son of the king
(hammelech). All Hebrew names have meanings, though we may not always be able to recover
them. For a quick list, see Jay A. Parry and Donald W. Parry, “Israelite Names—Witnesses of
Deity,” Ensign, December 1990, 52–54.
25. If translated as a word, Hebrew v may be many things, including “and,” “but,” “while,”
“then,” or “now.” However, a given translation may not even represent it by a word, since v may
also signal a change in tense (the so-called waw conversive), a circumstantial clause, or a variety
of other things. For a discussion of how this may affect English translations and potentially
the awkward syntax of the Book of Mormon, see Brian Stubbs, “A Lengthier Treatment of
Length,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 5, no. 2 (1996): 82–97; and Brian Stubbs, “A
Short Addition to Length: Some Relative Frequencies of Circumstantial Structures,” Journal
of Book of Mormon Studies 6, no. 1 (1997): 39–46. The translation of v does matter, even to
topics as apparently unrelated as attitudes towards skin color. Should Song of Songs 1:5 be
translated as “I am black but beautiful” suggesting beauty in spite of blackness or “I am black
and beautiful”? See David M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton University Press, 2003), 79–90.
26. For example, Ephesians 1:3–14 constitutes one long complex sentence in Greek.
27. James L. Kugel, “Early Jewish Biblical Interpretation,” in The Eerdmans Dictionary
of Early Judaism, ed. John J. Collins and Daniel C. Harlow (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2010), 136; brackets in original.
28. This is the majority position. A small minority argues that Hebrew does represent
tenses.
29. Scholars argue over whether the verbal system preserved in written Hebrew reflected
spoken Hebrew or whether it was a specialized “literary” form. If so, it would be analogous,
for example, to the French passé simple, a preterit tense rarely used in speech, but present in
books and magazines.
58 Religious Educator · VOL. 15 NO. 1 · 2014

30. For LDS writings, see “I Have a Question,” Ensign, August 1988, 27–28, answered
by Stephen D. Ricks. Some Hebrew scholars argue that this view seriously mischaracterizes
the nature of verbal tense/aspect, since it presupposes that the form represents a “perfect” or
past tense and that it is deliberate rhetorical or prophetic usage. For a historical overview of
these issues, see Bruce K. Waltke and Michael Patrick O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical
Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), §29.
31. See Kevin Barney, “Understanding Old Testament Poetry,” Ensign, June 1990,
51–54. John Gammie looks at three recent books on biblical poetry in “Alter vs. Kugel—
Taking the Heat in Struggle over Biblical Poetry,” Bible Review 5, no.1 (February 1989):
26–33.
32. Note that the KJV represents this as an indefinite noun, “a virgin” whereas the
Hebrew is clearly definite, suggesting a particular ‘almah who was present. This explains why
the NET Bible translates this as “this young woman.”
33. Contrast the conservative and apologetic treatment in Walter C. Kaiser Jr. and oth-
ers, eds., Hard Sayings of the Bible (Downer’s Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1996), 300–302;
with the Hebrew lexical data in Charles D. Isbell, “Does the Gospel of Matthew Proclaim
Mary’s Virginity?,” Biblical Archaeology Review 3, no. 2 ( June 1997).
34. In general for this section, see E. Y. Kutscher, A History of the Hebrew Language
( Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1982). Waltke and O’Connor, Syntax, §§1.5–1.6.
35. This is partially speculative, but long-held. See Herbert G. May, “Moses and the
Sinai Inscriptions,” Biblical Archaeologist 8, no. 4 (1945). A recent discussion is available
online; see Orly Goldwasser, “How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs,” Biblical
Archaeology Review 36, no. 2 (March/April 2010). The article, Anson Rainey’s critiques, and
replies by Goldwasser are available at http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/scholars-study/
who-really-invented-the-alphabet—illiterate-miners-or-educated-sophisticates (accessed
August 6, 2013).
36. Francis I. Anderson and Dean A. Forbes, Spelling in the Hebrew Bible, Biblica et
Orientalia (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1985).
37. In reality, three systems emerged. Tiberian became the dominant tradition, with
Palestinian and Babylonian the other two. Some Emmanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the
Hebrew Bible, 3rd rev. expanded ed. (Fortress Press, 2011), 43–49; Shlomo Morag, The
Vocalization Systems of Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic. Targumim are traditionally vocalized
using the Babylonian system. Joshua Blau, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (Wiesbaden: Otto
Harrassowitz, 1976), §3.1ff.
38. Pointing plays a role in some LDS historical discussion, such as Joseph Smith’s com-
ments on Genesis 1:1. See Kevin Barney, “Joseph Smith’s Emendation of Hebrew Genesis
1:1,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 30, no. 4 (Winter 1997): 109–10; “Examining
Six Key Concepts in Joseph Smith’s Understanding of Genesis 1:1,” BYU Studies 39, no. 3
(2000): 107–23.
39. Heb. bāqār “cattle” is a collective noun and does not require the plural ending. Other
than Amos 6:12, bāqār appears with the plural marker only in 2 Chronicles 4:3.
40. This is not the total word count, but the total number of distinct words, as calculated
with BibleWorks 9.
41. The most common problem with word studies is proof-texting. As eloquently put
by B. H. Roberts, proof-texting is “a selection of separate and disconnected texts marshalled
together [often by the presence of the same word] in support of a given subject without
sufficient care being taken to know the context and historical association of the scriptural
Why Bible Translations Differ: A Guide for the Perplexed 59

utterances, often attended with great danger of forming misconceptions of such texts, result-
ing in wrong deductions and conclusions.” Seventy’s Course in Theology 5 vols. (Salt Lake
City: Deseret Book, 1907–1912), 1:i. For a brief overview of other problems with word
studies, see D.A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic,
1996), 27–64; James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Languages (London: SCM Press, 1961);
and John H. Walton, “Principles of Productive Word Study,” in New International Dictionary
of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, ed. William A. VanGemeren (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan, 1997), 1:161–71.
42. John Lundquist provides some accessible examples in “The Value of New Textual
Sources to the King James Bible,” Ensign, August 1983, 42–47.
43. On translation and hapax legomena, see Frederick E. Greenspahn, “Words That
Occur in the Bible Only Once—How Hard Are They to Translate?,” Bible Review 1, no. 1
(1985). See also his entry in ABD under “Hapax Legomena” and his published dissertation,
Hapax Legomena in Biblical Hebrew, Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series (Chico,
CA: Scholar’s Press, 1984).
44. As quoted in Metzger, The Bible in Translation, 144.
45. As with Catholicism and the LDS Church, Judaism is not directly dependent upon
its texts but has an intermediary of authoritative interpretation, i.e., rabbinic tradition, the
LDS prophets and Apostles, and the Magisterium. In this case, the question of which birds
are kosher is settled by rabbinic tradition, instead of better lexical understanding.
46. Charles Halton, “What Hebrew Professors Don’t Tell You”; http://awilum.
com/?p=1407 (accessed November 5, 2012).
47. All translators are biased. The question is, how much does that bias affect the transla-
tion? Does the translation run against the bias or in favor? N. T. Wright offered this critique
of the NIV, after discovering “that the translators had had another principle, considerably
higher than the stated one: to make sure that Paul should say what the broadly Protestant
and evangelical tradition said he said. I do not know what version of Scripture they use at Dr.
Piper’s church. But I do know that if a church only, or mainly, relies on the NIV it will, quite
simply, never understand what Paul was talking about.” Such is the danger of using only one
translation. Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (London: SPCK, 2009), 35–36.
48. “ESV Bible Translators Debate the Word Slave at Tyndale House, Cambridge,”
YouTube video, posted by “DavidIBHardwick,” September 20, 2011, http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=Mx06mtApu8k (accessed August 15, 2013).
49. Many translations now offer footnotes saying things like “Hebrew uncertain” or
“other translations read X.” The LDS KJV tends to offer Greek/Hebrew footnotes where the
English is too archaic, but not where the original language is unclear.
50. By similarity, I mean relatedness. It’s relatively easy to learn related languages such
as Spanish and Portuguese and translate between them. As languages diverge, they share
fewer and fewer features in terms of grammar, syntax, vocabulary, etc. English is a mix of
Latin (through the French of the Normans) and Germanic (Anglo-Saxon), both belonging
to the large Indo-European family of languages. Hebrew belongs to the completely different
Hamito-Semitic family, including Aramaic and Arabic, as well as (more distantly) Egyptian,
Berber, and Somali. See Robert Hetzron, The Semitic Languages, Routledge Language Family
Descriptions (New York: Routledge, 1997).
51. McGrath writes, “The King James Bible may indeed be esteemed as an excellent
translation of the word of God by the standards of 1611 and beyond. Yet translations eventu-
ally require revision, not necessarily because they are defective, but because the language
60 Religious Educator · VOL. 15 NO. 1 · 2014

into which they are translated itself changes over time. Translation involves aiming at a
moving target, which has accelerated over the centuries . . . When a translation itself requires
translation, it has ceased to serve its original purpose.” Alister McGrath, In the Beginning:
The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture
(Anchor, 2002), 308–9. Joel Hoffman identifies three problems with the KJV as a transla-
tion: (1) English has changed in 400 years. (2) The KJV translators didn’t always understand
the Hebrew. (3) Due to their concept of translation, their English didn’t always convey
the correct understanding of the Hebrew. And God Said: How Translations Conceal the
Bible’s Original Meaning (Thomas Dunne Books, 2010), 5–10. In the case of the KJV New
Testament, the Greek manuscripts used were quite late and deficient.
52. See, for example, Y. C. Whang, “To Whom Is a Translator Responsible—Reader
or Author?” in Translating the Bible, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Richard S. Hess (Sheffield:
Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 46–62. Other essays in the volume take opposing positions
on Nida’s theories of translation.
53. For other examples, see Harvey Minkoff, “Problems of Translations: Concern for the
Text Versus Concern for the Reader,” Bible Review 4, no. 4 (August 1988).
54. See chapter 3, “Just Words? Language,” in E. Randolph Richards and Brandon
J. O’Brien, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better
Understand the Bible (IVP Books, 2012).
55. As translated in Steven D. Fraade, “Targum, Targumim,” ed. John J. Collins and
Daniel C. Harlow, The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: William B.
Eerdmans, 2010), 1279.
56. Randall C. Bailey, “‘They Shall Become White as Snow’: When Bad Is Turned Into
Good,” in Semeia 76: Race, Class, and the Politics of Bible Translation, ed. Tina Pippin and
Randall C. Bailey (Society of Biblical Literature, 1998), 99–114.
57. The problem with reading something at “face value” is that such meaning is not uni-
versal, but culturally dependant. The “face-value” meaning of a given datum is only obvious
because we fit it into a preexisting cultural matrix. Face-value meaning will only be the same if
the two cultural matrices around that datum are identical. For example, our Nazi-influenced
“face-value” understanding of the swastika is very different from the pre-Nazi “face-value”
meaning in the west, where it was used as one hockey team’s good luck emblem (the Windsor
Swastikas), to say nothing of its past or current meaning in Hinduism, Jainism, or Buddhism.
58. See, for example, “Bible Version Chart,” AllBibles.com; http://www.allbibles.com/
bibleversions.asp (accessed August 6, 2013), or “Bible Translation Chart,” Zondervan;
http://zondervan.com/sites/default/files/m/bibles/translation_chart_poster.pdf (accessed
August 6, 2013).
59. Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers,
Deuteronomy; a New Translation with Introductions, Commentary, and Notes, The Schocken
Bible (New York: Schocken Books, 1995).
60. Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary Language
(Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2003). Bruce Metzger opines that Peterson “goes beyond the
acceptable bounds of dynamic equivalence in that he will often divest passages from their
first-century Jewish context, so that Jesus, for example, sounds like a twentieth-century
American.” Metzger, Bible in Translation, 182–83.
61. As quoted in Metzger, Bible in Translation, 184.
62. McGrath, In The Beginning, 173–75. “The King’s translators were thus forbidden
to depart to any significant extent from the text of the Bishop’s Bible of 1568. Yet what were
Why Bible Translations Differ: A Guide for the Perplexed 61

the instructions given to those who prepared the Bishops’ Bible? To use the Great Bible of
1539 except where it did not accurately represent the original texts. The directions given to
the translators over the years 1539–1604 were thus virtually guaranteed to ensure continu-
ity of language over a period in which the English language itself underwent considerable
change and development. The inbuilt conservatism of the translation process . . . thus led
directly—yet unintentionally—to the retention of older English ways of speaking in religious
contexts, creating the impression that religious language was somehow necessarily archaic. But
the Great Bible of 1539 is in reality little more than Miles Coverdale’s revision of Matthew’s
Bible, which [in] turn was a revision of Tyndale’s translation—at least, those parts of the
Bible that Tyndale managed to translate” (p. 269). “In other words, this was to be a deeply
[linguistically] conservative text.” Stephen Prickett, “Language within Language: The King
James Steamroller,” in The King James Bible after Four Hundred Years: Literary, Linguistic,
and Cultural Influences, ed. Hannibal Hamlin and Norman W. Jones (Cambridge, 2010), 30.
63. McGrath, In The Beginning, 270–76; Charles Barber, Joan C. Beal, and Philip A.
Shaw, The English Language: A Historical Introduction, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2009), 195.
64. On the KJV, see Royal Skousen, “Through a Glass Darkly: Trying to Understand the
Scriptures,” BYU Studies 26, no. 4 (1986). On its effects on missionary work, see Hardy, “The
King James Bible and the Future of Missionary Work” (see note 5 above).
65. For example, some denominations prefer a particular Bible translation for public
reading and liturgy, often more formal, archaic, and traditional, but then encourage different
translation(s) for personal study.
66. Halton, Charles. “Has Michael Coogan Seized His Opportunity?” Review of A
Reader of Ancient Near Eastern Texts by Michael Coogan; http://themarginaliareview.
com/archives/202 (accessed January 30, 2013), in Marginalia: A Review of Books in History,
Theology & Religion.
67. LDS scholar Phillip Barlow, author of Mormons and the Bible (Oxford Press), wrote
that “the elegance of the [KJV] warps for the modern ear the tone of the original texts, thus
distorting our perception of the very nature of biblical scripture, which our additional scrip-
tures then echo. One can hear no King James-like cathedral bells ringing in the background
when one reads the Gospel of Mark in koine Greek. Mark’s writing is raw, fresh, breathless,
and primitive. The lordly prose of the KJV, as it is heard by twenty-first-century ears, is for
many texts an external imposition, shifting the locus of authority away from the power of the
story itself and toward an authority spawned by the partially artificial literary holiness suffus-
ing our culturally created notion of scripture. This exterior authority in one respect gilds the
lily of the original message, then construes respect for the gild rather than the lily as a mark of
orthodoxy.” See Melissa Proctor, “12 Answers from Phillip Barlow, part 1,” Times and Seasons;
http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2005/03/12-answers-from-philip-barlow-part-1
(accessed February 6, 2013). Some Latter-day Saints who encounter modern Bible transla-
tions reject them for not sounding scriptural, which apparently means “not like the KJV.”
68. Translation of Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with
Commentary (W. W. Norton, 2004). The verb translated as “gulp down” is a Biblical hapax
legomenon, but “[i]n rabbinic Hebrew [this verb] is employed for the feeding of animals. Its
use here, unique in the Bible, is suggestive of Esau’s boorish manners.” Nahum Sarna, Genesis,
JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989).
69. Besides the infamous shibboleth/sibboleth incident in Judges 12:6, see Gary
A. Rendsburg, “Morphological Evidence for Regional Dialects in Ancient Hebrew,” in
62 Religious Educator · VOL. 15 NO. 1 · 2014

Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew, ed. Walter R. Bodine (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1992),
65–88.
70. Gary Rendsburg has explored this theme repeatedly. See “Some False Leads in the
Identification of Late Biblical Hebrew Texts: the Cases of Genesis 24 and 1 Samuel 2:27–36,”
Journal of Biblical Literature 121 (2002): 23–46; “Aramaic-like Features in the Pentateuch,”
Hebrew Studies 47 (2006): 163–76; “Linguistic Variation and the ‘Foreign’ Factor in the
Hebrew Bible,” in Israel Oriental Studies XV: Language and Culture in the Near East, ed.
Shlomo Izre’el and Rina Drory (Brill, 1995), 177–90.
71. Joseph Smith, The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, ed. Dean C. Jessee (Salt Lake
City: Deseret Book, 1984), 161.
72. Robert P. Carroll, “YHWH’s Sour Grapes: Images of Food and Drink in the
Prophetic Discourses of the Hebrew Bible,” in Semeia 86: Food and Drink in the Biblical
World, ed. Athalya Brenner and Jan Willem van Henten (Society of Biblical Literature, 1999),
122n10.
73. McGrath, In The Beginning, 305–8; Marvin H. Pope, “Bible, Euphemism and
Dysphemism,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (Doubleday, 1992),
1:720–25.
74. Harvey Minkoff, “Coarse Language in The Bible? It’s Culture Shocking!” Bible
Review 5, no. 2 (1989): 26.
75. The KJV apparently followed earlier translations, which also include “piss” in vari-
ous passages. See “Piss” in Geoffrey Hughes, An Encyclopedia of Swearing—The Social History
of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-speaking World (M.E.
Sharpe, 2006). The Oxford English Dictionary lists examples in medical books from the 14th
and 15th centuries.
76. See Peter J. Leithart, “David’s Threat to Nabal—How a Little Vulgarity Got the
Point Across,” Bible Review 18, no. 05 (2002). “Nabal and His Wine,” Journal of Biblical
Literature 120, no. 3 (2001).
77. Daniel Bodi, “Ezekiel,” in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, The Zondervan
Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), 65.
78. See Richards and O’Brien, Misreading Scripture, 57–58. Regarding “Galatians” as a
derogatory term, Paul nowhere else uses it, and the title of the epistle “To the Galatians” was
not original, but added later.
79. John Welch, “How Rich Was Paul? . . . And Why It Matters,” in Bountiful Harvest:
Essays in Honor of S. Kent Brown, ed. Andrew D. Skinner, Morgan D. Davis, and Carl Griffin
(Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2011), 425–53.
80. In “Reader’s Reply,” Bible Review 19, no. 1, Peter Leithart responds to a reader’s ques-
tion about his article in note 76 by saying “the only English word that captures the vulgarity
of the Greek [skubalon] is ‘shit.’”
81. John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible: An Inductive Reading of the Old
Testament (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2004), 90.
82. Yvonne Sherwood, “Prophetic Scatology: Prophecy and the Art of Sensation,” in
Semeia 82—In Search of the Present: The Bible Through Cultural Studies, ed. Stephen D.
Moore (Society of Biblical Literature, 1998), 192.
83. That is, the written word was subservient to the oral word. “Scripture” meant “writ-
ing” and only secondarily takes on elevated and religious meaning.
84. See also Leonard J. Greenspoon, “The Holy Bible: A Buyers Guide,” in Bible Review
21, no. 4 (Fall 2005): 37–44.
Why Bible Translations Differ: A Guide for the Perplexed 63

85. Alter has worked his way through the Bible piece-meal, resulting in overlapping
publications. One can purchase Genesis: A Translation and Commentary (published in 1997),
which was then included in The Five Books of Moses: A Translation and Commentary seven
years later. Alter’s works now cover the Pentateuch, Joshua–Kings, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, and
Ecclesiastes.
86. Roger G. Baker, “Review of Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses: A Translation
with Commentary,” BYU Studies 49, no. 1 (2010): 180–83.
87. See note 21.
88. Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd rev. ed.
(Hendrickson, 2006).
89. Quotation from http://www.ubs-translations.org/publications/ubs_handbook_
series (accessed January 29, 2013). Both the Old Testament and New Testament series are
available electronically for purchase, as individual volumes, sets, or included in various pack-
ages from http://www.logos.com. Logos is available both on Apple and PC devices.
90. For an overview of the many different commentaries and series out there, see http://
bestcommentaries.com/, which provides a ranked-by-vote list of “best” commentaries as well
as categorical divisions by kind (technical, pastoral, devotional) and other useful introduc-
tory material. Most reviewers seem to come from a Protestant perspective. John Welch
provides useful advice. “Toward Becoming a Gospel Scholar,” This People, Summer 1998,
42–56. Printed by permission at http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/
Toward-Becoming-a-Gospel-Scholar.html (accessed March 21, 2013).
91. See references in note 41.
92. http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/books/?bookid=125, accessed
March 20, 2013.
93. See Stuart Creason, “PQD Revisited,” in Studies in Semitic and Afroasiatic
Linguistics Presented to Gene B. Gragg, ed. Cynthia L. Miller, Studies in Ancient Oriental
Civilization (2007), 27–42. Available from https://oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/saoc60.pdf
(accessed March 20, 2013).
94. www.logos.com, www.accordancebible.com, and www.bibleworks.com. Bibleworks
includes the TWOT for free, but the other two are not available.
95. The process and ease depends on the program and which text(s) one is using.
96. See note 43 on hapax legomena.
97. Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, eds., A Hebrew and English
Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), known as BDB. Koehler,
Ludwig, Walter Baumgartner, and M. E. J. Richardon, eds., The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon
of the Old Testament (Leiden: Brill, 2000), known as HALOT.
98. Royal Skousen, “Textual Variants in the Isaiah Quotations,” in Isaiah in the Book of
Mormon, ed. Donald W. Parry and John W. Welch (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1998), 379ff.
99. See “Keys to Understanding the Bible” in Sermons and Writings of Bruce R.
McConkie, ed. Mark L. McConkie (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1989), 290–91.
100. See the many essays by Royal Skousen, as well as Brant Gardner, The Gift and
Power: Translating the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2011); Kevin
Barney, “A More Responsible Critique,” The FARMS Review 15, no. 1 (2003); “Isaiah
Interwoven,” FARMS Review 15, no. 1 (2003); Stephen D. Ricks, “Translation of the Book of
Mormon: Interpreting the Evidence,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 2, no. 2 (1993); “The
Translation and Publication of the Book of Mormon” (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1994).
64 Religious Educator · VOL. 15 NO. 1 · 2014

101. For example, B. H. Roberts falls into the translational camp which holds that
“Joseph Smith imparted certain characteristics to his translation of the Nephite record,
notwithstanding the use of Urim and Thummim and the inspiration of the Lord that rested
upon him.” New Witnesses for God, 3 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1909), 3:423.
Consequently, he offered this thought. “I suppose if the Lord had revealed the existence
of the Book of Mormon to a man who had a perfect knowledge of the English language, a
grammarian, and perfect in literary attainments, then no doubt we would have had a transla-
tion of the Book of Mormon without fault or blemish so far as the grammar is concerned;
but it pleased God in his wisdom to appoint that mission to one who was not learned in the
English language, whose use of the English language was ungrammatical, through failing of
opportunity to obtain the necessary instruction in his youthful days, and consequently we
find errors in grammar in the translation of the Book of Mormon, such as this: ‘Whoredoms
is an abomination to the Lord.’ Marvelous, is it not?” Defense of the Faith and the Saints (Salt
Lake City: Deseret News, 1907): 519.
102. Transmission errors are likely among both the ancient and modern people involved
with the text of the Book of Mormon, given the process of dictation, hand-copying the
Original and Printer’s Manuscripts, and the issues in printing at the time. On the latter, see
M. Gerald Bradford and Alison V. P. Coutts, eds., Uncovering the Original Text of the Book
of Mormon: History and Findings of the Critical Text Project (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2002).
Available at http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/jbms/?vol=11&num=2 (accessed
July 5, 2013).
103. Given the core LDS principles of continuing revelation, line upon line, and that
God shall “yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God,”
doctrinal accuracy is a bit of a moving target. The question of doctrinal accuracy is similar
to that of the quality of a translation; both are measured against a non-static standard. A
good translation at one time may, because of language changed over time, be found less so. A
doctrinally accurate statement at one time may, because of further revelation, no longer be as
accurate. LDS should therefore not treat the Book of Mormon as some Protestants approach
the Bible, as a static and de facto infallible doctrinal handbook that matches in every way what
has been revealed today. Such a degree of doctrinal harmonization does violence to the text
and context, as well as LDS doctrinal principles.
104. For background on Joseph’s statement, see Scott C. Esplin, “Getting ‘Nearer to
God’: A History of Joseph Smith’s Statement,” in Living the Book of Mormon: Abiding by
Its Precepts, ed. Gaye Strathearn and Charles Swift (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center,
Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2007), 41–54.
105. This applies as well to the Sermon at the Temple, Jesus’ repetition of the Sermon
on the Mount in the Book of Mormon. See John W. Welch, Illuminating the Sermon at the
Temple & Sermon on the Mount (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1999). Available online at http://max-
wellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/books/?bookid=113&chapid= (accessed July 5, 2013).
106. Robert J. Matthews, “A Plainer Translation” Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible:
A History and Commentary (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University, 1985), 39.
107. Kent P. Jackson and Peter M. Jasinski, “The Process of Inspired Translation: Two
Passages Translated Twice in the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible,” BYU Studies 42,
no. 2 (2003).
108. See Matthews, Plainer Translation; Robert L. Millet, “Joseph Smith’s Translation
of the Bible: A Historical Overview,” in The Joseph Smith Translation: The Restoration of
Plain and Precious Truths, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Robert L. Millet (Provo, UT: Religious
Why Bible Translations Differ: A Guide for the Perplexed 65

Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1985), 38–41; Thomas E. Sherry, “Robert J.
Matthews and the RLDS Church’s Inspired Version of the Bible,” BYU Studies 49, no. 2
(2010): 93–119.
109. I have reordered these categories from the three authors’ arrangement found in
Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts (Provo, UT: Religious
Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2004), 3–13.
110. Kent Jackson reiterates elsewhere, “Even though I believe that the JST restores orig-
inal text, it is likely that most changes have other explanations.” In “New Discoveries in the
Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible,” in By Study and by Faith: Selections from the “Religious
Educator,” ed. Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and Kent P. Jackson (Provo, UT: Religious Studies
Center, Brigham Young University, 2009), 169–81.
111. The assumption in the phrase “preserved less adequately” appears to be that any
lack of doctrinal harmony between the Bible and modern revelation is explained by asserting
the original presence of that doctrine and its subsequent loss. This is not a necessary assump-
tion, as Latter-day Saints also have the idea of line-upon-line and continuing revelation. See
comment in note 103.
112. “The Joseph Smith Translation and Ancient Texts of the Bible,” Dialogue: A Journal
of Mormon Thought 19, no. 3 (1986): 85–102.
113. Brigham Young, in Journal of Discourses, 9:311.
114. On Latter-day Saint discomfort with ambiguity, see Bruce C. Hafen, “On Dealing
with Uncertainty,” Ensign, August 1979, 63–67. Peter Enns addresses a similar issue about
assumptions and textual/theological diversity in the Old Testament, Inspiration and
Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker
Academic, 2005), 65–112.