Quotes & Sayings About Bible Translation

My personal life is as monotonous as ever; but they have given me permission to walk in the garden, where there are almost seventeen trees ! This is a great happiness for me. Moreover, I am given a candle in the evenings - that's my second piece of luck. The third will be mine if you answer as soon as possible, and send me the next number of the 0. Z. I am in the same position as a country subscriber, and await each number as a great event, like some landed proprietor dying of boredom in the provinces. Will you send me some historical works ? That would be splendid. But best of all would be the Bible (both Testaments). I need one. Should it prove possible, send it in a French translation. But if you could add as well a Slav edition, it would be the height of bliss. Of — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

When the Bible used that very expression about fighting with principalities and powers and depraved hypersomatic beings at great heights (our translation is very misleading at that point, by the way) it meant that quite ordinary people were to do the fighting. — C.S. Lewis

I read the Bible to myself; I'll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is. — Maya Angelou

Whatever your Bible translation is, it stands on the shoulders of one man - William Tyndale. — Steven J. Lawson

That's a waste of time. If you really understand Zen ... you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because ... the sound of the rain needs no translation. — Alan Watts

Readable, faithful, accurate-what more could you ask for in a modern translation of the Bible? GOD'S WORD Translation is a great version for enhancing your love for God's Word. I recommend it. — Ann Spangler

The Bible is still the only dirty book I've ever read, at least in its current incarnation as a weapon of the homophobes. Bible scholarship keeps trying to catch up, proving that all the hatred of gay is just stupid translation, though the snake-oil preachers don't want to hear it. — Paul Monette

Preface WITH THE ADVENT OF multiple modern English translations of the Bible being published over the last fifty years, Christians have come to realize that there can be a wide range of meanings and renderings of various words from the Bible in the original language. As a Hebrew teacher and student of ancient languages one of the most common questions I get is, "What is the best translation?" This is usually followed by the question, "Which translation is the closest to the original Biblical language?" The answer I give to both questions is, "All of them." With few exceptions, every translation and paraphrase of the Bible is done with much scholarship and prayer by the translators. Every translator is convinced that he or she has presented the best renderings for each word and firmly believes they have given the rendering that is closest to the original language. So we now ask the question as to why there are — Chaim Bentorah

God Child is a free and inspirational translation of Adam. Adam means 'human', not 'man'. The Hebrew for 'man' is 'aish'. In English man can mean both man and human, which may have caused the confusion in the first place. If Adam isn't the first male Homo sapiens, who or what is he? — Stefan Emunds

Daily Bible reading has always been a deep help for daily spiritual growth. But millions of Christians got bogged down and give up by the time they read Leviticus! However, reading 15 minutes a day from The One Year Bible gives you the entire Bible in a year of daily variety, interest, and growth in God. — Kenneth N. Taylor

When you translate the Bible with excessive literalism, you demythologize it. The possibility of a convincing reference to the individual's own spiritual experience is lost. (111) — Joseph Campbell

He who reads the Bible in translation is like a man who kisses his bride through a veil. — Hayim Nahman Bialik

The Bible has been through at least half a dozen translations by the time you read it. Plus, when the word of God is infected by the hand of man, that is, written down, it is tainted. — Craig Ferguson

For example, most editions of the Old Testament, intended for a Christian readership (obtained from a Greek translation of the original Hebrew), will translate Isaiah 7:14 to state that "a virgin shall conceive . . ." The English translation of the original Hebrew, used in the corresponding passage in the Hebrew Bible, states that "a young woman shall conceive. . . . — Anonymous

[On the New Testament:] I ... must enter my protest against the false translation of some passages by the men who did that work, and against the perverted interpretation by the men who undertook to write commentaries thereon. I am inclined to think, when we [women] are admitted to the honor of studying Greek and Hebrew, we shall produce some various readings of the Bible a little different from those we now have. — Sarah Moore Grimke

Dynamic equivalence is a central concept in the translation theory, developed by Eugene A. Nida, which has been widely adopted by the United Bible Societies...Purporting to be an academically linguistic concept, it is in fact a sociocultural concept of communication. Its definition is essentially behavourist: determined by external forces, such as society--with strong pragmatist overtones--focusing on the reader rather than the writer. [M]ost twentieth-century American philosophical endeavours are predominantly pragmatist, dwelling in the shadows cast by William James and John Dewey. — J. Cammenga

Few people realize that the Bible discourages people from studying foreign languages. They story of the tower of Babel informs us that there is one humanity (God's one), only that "our languages are confused." That has always meant that, say, any German philosopher could know exactly what the Chinese people were thinking, only that he couldn't understand them. So instead of learning the foreign language, he demanded a translation. — Thorsten J. Pattberg

Translation is so important. The new American translations of the Bible sound like a Judith Krantz novel. — Rabih Alameddine

Thomas Merton, of course, constitutes a special threat to Christians, because he presents himself as a contemplative Christian monk, and his work has already affected the vitals of Roman Catholicism, its monasticism. Shortly before his death, Father Merton wrote an appreciative introduction to a new translation of the Bhagavad Gita, which is the spiritual manual or "Bible" of all Hindus, and one of the foundation blocks of monism or Advaita Vedanta. The Gita, it must be remembered, opposes almost every important teaching of Christianity. His book on the Zen Masters, published posthumously, is also noteworthy, because the entire work is based on a treacherous mistake: the assumption that all the so-called "mystical experiences" in every religion are true. He should have known better. — Seraphim Rose

Fear is a scheme that the devil uses to great effect. From my personal study, the words "do not be afraid" or "fear thee not" (depending on the Bible translation) appear over one hundred times in the Bible! The message from God is quite clear: we need not be afraid! — Pedro Okoro

To be sure, all translation is interpretation. ... Be that as it may, functional-equivalence translations, which presume that ambiguity, multivalence, and contradiction are by definition not part of the Bible, take far more creative and interpretive license than formal ones in eradicating those features. In so doing, they too often try to make the Bible into something it's not. — Timothy Beal

If your goal is to be a disciple of Jesus Christ and most of your focus has been on finding the church that will best meet your needs, figuring out which translation of the Bible is the best, or reading the best books on discipleship that you can find, but your life is the same as it was before - I would argue that you aren't becoming a disciple. Nothing other than following Jesus Christ can make you his disciple. — Kevin Watson

In the first book of the Bible it is written that: "The Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart."
In another translation it is written like this: "God was sorry that he had made the human race in the first place; it broke his heart."
"It grieved him to his heart."
"It broke his heart."
We grieved him to his heart.
We broke his heart.
God's heart can be ... broken?
You cannot love without being vulnerable - because love involves the risk of the person you're loving not loving you back, of rejecting you - and that hurts.
That grieves you to your heart.
God had created man, and He loved them - but they didn't love Him back, and it broke His heart. — Cole Ryan

The goal of Bible translation is be transparent to the original text - to see as clearly as possible what the biblical authors actually wrote. — Leland Ryken

You may be the only Bible some people ever read. So the question is: Are you a good translation? — Mark Batterson