The Five Gospels uses as its basis a new translation of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Thomas. The translation is nearly as intriguing as the commentary. What follows is a rather long excerpt answering the question “Why a new translation?” along with a few comments of my own.
The translators of the Scholars Version—SV for short—have taken as their motto this dictum: a translation is artful to the extent that one can forget, while reading it, that it is a translation at all. Accordingly, rather than attempt to make SV a thinly disguised guide to the original language, or a superficially modernized edition of the King James Version, the translators worked diligently to produce in the American reader an experience comparable to that of the first readers—or listeners—of the original. It should be recalled that those who first encountered the gospels did so as listeners rather than as readers.Why a new translation?
Foremost among the reasons for a fresh translation is the discovery of the Gospel of Thomas. The scholars responsible for the Scholars Version determined that Thomas had to be included in any primary collection of gospels. Early translations of Thomas were tentative and wooden; the SV panel has produced an accurate version in readable English.
Traditional English translations make the gospels sound like one another. The gospels are leveled out, presumably for liturgical reasons. In contrast, the Greek originals differ markedly from one another. The SV translators attempt to give voice to the individual evangelists by reproducing the Greek style of each in English.
The translators agreed to employ colloquialisms in English for colloquialisms in Greek. When the leper comes up to Jesus and says, “If you want to, you can make me clean,” Jesus replies, “Okay—you’re clean!” (Mark 1:40-41). They wanted to make aphorisms and proverbs sound like such. The SV panelists decided that “Since when do the able-bodied need a doctor? It’s the sick who do” (Mark 2:17) sounds more like a proverb than “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” They shunned pious terms and selected English equivalents for rough language. Matt 23:13 reads:
"You scholars and Pharisees, you imposters! Damn you! You slam the door of Heaven’s domain in people’s faces. You yourselves don’t enter, and you block the way of those trying to enter."
Contrast the New Revised Standard Version:
"But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them."
“Woe” is not a part of the average American’s working vocabulary. If a person wants to curse someone, that person would not say “woe to you,” but “damn you.” Moreover, the diction of New Revised Standard Version strikes the ear as faintly Victorian. In sum, the translators abandoned the context of polite religious discourse suitable for a Puritan parlor and reinstated the common street language of the original.
Modern translations, especially those made by academics and endorsed by church boards, tend to reproduce the Greek text, more or less word-for-word. English words are taken from an English-Greek dictionary—always the same English word for the same Greek word—and set down in their Greek order where possible.
In Mark 4:9 and often elsewhere, this admonition appears in the King James Version: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” In addition to being sexist, that is the rendition of a beginning Greek student who wants to impress the instructor by reproducing the underlying Greek text in English.
I found the section above particularly interesting because a year or so ago Jason BeDuhn, then an assistant professor at Indiana University, was quoted in one of the WTS publications in praise of the Kingdom Interlinear Translation (KIT). BeDuhn used the KIT with his beginning Greek students and praised it for the very qualities the translators of the SV wish to avoid—a literal, word-for-word translation with little change in syntax. I understand now how this would be helpful to students of Greek who do want to wrestle with the meaning behind the literal words. Not being a student of Greek, I would rather rely on scholars who are knowledgeable of idioms, colloquialisms, and proverbs, and who are alert to spot puns and plays on words.
There are many humorous examples on the net of what happens when someone translates literally word-for-word. A few of my favorites:
Outside a Hong Kong tailor shop: Ladies may have a fit upstairs.
In a Bangkok dry cleaner's: Drop your trousers here for best results.
In a Copenhagen airline ticket office: We take your bags and send them in all directions.
More at:http://www.fortunecity.com/business/moo/1132/Jokes.html#Butchery%20of%20English
Naughty heiroglyphics:http://www.fortunecity.com/business/moo/1132/Jokes.html#Hieroglyphics
Back to our text . . .
In Mark 4:9 and often elsewhere, this admonition appears in the King James Version: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” In addition to being sexist, that is the rendition of a beginning Greek student who wants to impress the instructor by reproducing the underlying Greek text in English. One scholar among the SV translators proposed to make this substitution: “A wink is as good as a nod to a blind horse.” The panel agreed that this English proverb was an excellent way to represent the sense of the Greek text. However, the translators did not want to substitute an English expression for one in Greek. They decided, rather, to represent not only the words, phrases, and expressions of the Greek text, but also to capture, if possible, the tone and tenor of the original expression. As a consequence, SV translates the admonition: “Anyone here with two good ears had better listen!” “Two good ears” is precisely what “ears to hear” means, except that it is said in English, and “had better listen” replaces the awkward English “let him hear.” “Had better listen” sounds like something parents might say to inattentive children; “let him hear” would strike the youngster like permission to eavesdrop. . . .In addition, SV has attempted to reproduce the assonance of the Greek text. The term “here” is a homophone of “hear”: because the two words are pronounced alike, one reminds the English ear of the other. “Anyone here with two good ears” has the succession sounds -ere, ear, which suggests the assonance of the Greek text, which may be transliterated as ota akouein akoueto (the succession of akou-, akou-, and of ota, -eto, with a shift in vowels). The panelists were not always this successful, but it does illustrate what they were trying to achieve.
Style is another significant aspect of translation. The style of the Gospel of Mark, for example, is colloquial and oral; it approximates street language. Mark strings sentences together by means of simple conjunctions and hurry-up adverbs, which gives his prose a breathless quality. Both sentences and events follow each other in rapid succession. His account of Peter’s mother-in-law is typical (Mark 1:29-31):
"They left the synagogue right away and went into the house of Simon and Andrew accompanied by James and John. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her right away. He went up to her, took hold of her hand, raised her up, and the fever disappeared. Then she started looking after them."
The Gospel of Luke, on the other hand, will sound more literary to the English ear than Mark, because Luke writes in a more elevated Greek style.
Mark often narrates in the present tense rather than in the simple past. He also frequently switches back and forth. Mark makes use of what is called the imperfect tense in Greek, which is used to introduce the typical or customary. By turning Mark’s present and imperfect tenses into simple past tenses, translators in the King James tradition misrepresent and mislead: Mark’s typical scenes are turned into singular events and the oral quality of his style is lost. In contrast, Mark 4:1-2 is translated in SV as:
"Once again he started to teach beside the sea. An enormous crowd gathers around him, so he climbs into a boat and sits there on the water facing the huge crowd on the shore.
He would then teach them many things in parables. In the course of his teaching he would tell them. . . ."
This translation faithfully reproduces Mark’s present tenses. The imperfect is represented by “would teach” and “would tell,” which in English connotes the usual, the customary. This is a typical scene for Mark, one that happened on more than one occasion. On such occasions, Jesus would teach in parables. Among the parables he uttered on those occasions was the parable of the sower.
At the conclusion of the parable, Mark adds: “And as usual he said, ‘Anyone here with two good ears had better listen!’” According to Mark, Jesus habitually appended this admonition to his parables.
In another posting, I will share a few of the translations and commentaries that I found particularly interesting.
Ginny