Review of “What Makes a Bible Translation Bad?”

Review of “What Makes a Bible Translation Bad?” by Mark Ward, posted on the Text and Canon Institute site June 13, 2023.

A few days ago, Christopher Yetzer called attention to “What Makes a Bible Translation Bad?,” an article by Mark Ward posted on the Text and Canon Institute web site. In it, Mark creates two categories in which to dump Bibles that he is unwilling to recommend: sectarianism and crackpottery.[i] Ultimately this article (“What Makes a Bible Translation Bad,” part 1) comes off as “yes, I know I in principle recommend all kinds of translations, but here is a way to get around recommending translations I do not like.”

In doing so, Ward creates a strange mix of “sectarian” translations. Surely one who likes many translations still wouldn’t want to recommend a sectarian translation, would he?

Ward defines sectarian translations as “those that have more than the natural bias inherent in the effort of any person or group to do something as complex as translating the Bible.” Isn’t this definition somewhat circular and subjective? Your translation shows a bias that does not fit my bias, so your bias is biased toward a certain position that is not my position. There is no solid objective method of judgment. In the final analysis, it boils down to: “I do not like it,” and/or “my friends do not like it.” Working that way, one should be able to exclude any translation he does not want to recommend, even though in theory he should be able recommend all kinds of translations.

The strange mix of translations in this essay is:

• The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NWT). It is published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, an arm of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, an unorthodox sect that denies the eternity and deity of Jesus Christ.
• The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition Bible (NRSVue). It was managed by the Society of Biblical Literature and published by the liberal ecumenical National Council of Churches. They sought broad representation of “faith-based constituencies” and consideration of “modern sensibilities.”
• Certain Bible translations for Muslim nations. Ward mentions a couple by name, The True Meaning of the Gospel of Christ and The Honored Injil. These translations compromise the deity of Jesus Christ in deference to Muslim preferences (including references to Allah easily interpreted as Islam’s god).
• The Tree of Life Version of the Holy Scriptures (TLV). It is produced by the Messianic Jewish Family Bible Society[ii] and The King’s University. It is created by Messianic Jews with a flavor of Messianic Jewish Christianity, a Bible that “speaks with a decidedly Jewish-friendly voice,” sprinkling in lots of transliterated Hebrew words not in common use in English.

Mark Ward begins well. Step No. 1 – Start with the NWT. Everyone except the Jehovah’s Witnesses will get on board. He seems to scrawl a fairly clear X over the NWT and “certain Bible translations for Muslim nations,” but equivocates regarding the NRSVue and TLV. Ward wants to keep folks “from using the NRSVue as the main pulpit Bible in our churches,” but “will happily check the renderings in the NRSVue in my Bible study in years to come.” He is “not saying that the TLV is a ‘bad Bible’,” but rather “mostly a traditional Protestant translation with a bunch of Hebrew transliterations bobbing up and down on the surface.” The conclusion is subjective: “But I will say that the effort falls completely flat for me.”

Mark thinks “Bible translations need to do what they can to avoid the appearance of sectarianism.” So does Shively T. J. Smith, a professor at Boston University School of Theology who worked on the “sectarian” NRSVue.[iii] She said that the NRSVue project “attempts to reverse the historic trend in translation history from the 19th and 20th centuries in which some Christian communities and scholars of the Bible were historically excluded from the translation endeavors of our English Bibles.”

Mark writes, “I like the tradition, going back at least to the NIV, of involving many Christian denominations—from complementarians to Messianic Jews—in a Bible translation committee, as a method of both eliminating and of appearing to the public to eliminate denominational bias.”

The “sectarian” NIV translation committee’s membership was restricted to those who were willing and able to subscribe to biblical inerrancy. The “sectarian” NRSVue update was a product “carefully reviewed and updated by a wide variety of the finest scholars in the academy today,” that welcomed “teams of translators that were both ecumenical and interfaith in their composition.” What makes one team more inclusive or more sectarian than the other? The subjective bias by which we assess the process and the product.

This piece is quivering with equivocation, and necessarily so. For example, Mark points to one bad or biased translation in the NRSVue, 1 Corinthians 6:9–10. However, he can also admit to a bad or biased translation in his own beloved “sectarian” English Standard Version in Genesis 3:16. Why recommend one and not the other? Our subjective bias.

Mark acknowledges that we have passed the stage of enjoying one standard English translation, but advises that “translators (or rather revisers, because we don’t need any more mainstream translations) should still aim for that possibility instead of giving in to the temptations of sectarianism.” I would argue that the fact we produce “New Bible Galore” is a testimony that we are “giving in” to something in a bad way.

The “sectarian” Bible claim is something of a misdirection. Mark needs more carefully crafted categories. But might such nuance defeat his purpose? The cited Bibles certainly are not all sectarian in the same sense, and in a broad sense all Bibles might be called “sectarian.” The issue finally comes down to how a person who happily encourages using multiple translations can restrict which of those multiple translations one uses. I don’t like it. My friends don’t like it.

Mark Ward is a regular chider of King James Defenders. He must criticize us for criticizing multiple Bible translations. Now he criticizes multiple Bible translations. Pot, meet kettle. Watch where you step.

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[i] Sectarianism, “excessive devotion to a particular sect, especially in religion.” Crackpottery, “the behavior of a crackpot or loony person, madness.”
[ii] Apparently now called The Tree of Life Bible Society.

[iii] The NRSVue is founded on the RSV of 1952. Its translators had degrees from some big-name institutions, such as Harvard, Yale, and University of  Chicago. The guy criticizing the NRSVue got his degree from a school started by a man who called the RSV the biggest hoax the Devil ever pulled on Bible-believing Christians. If the average American decides for or against this version based on Credentialism, who wins?