What's in Your Translation?

There are many, many translations of the Bible out there; some of them have gotten a lot of criticism. I think the important thing is that it be accurate, and that you can understand it.

The King James Version is quite possibly the most controversial. Almost everyone seems to think that it is accurate, but, it was translated 400 years ago. The English language has changed since then, it's hard to understand now. There's a lot of truth to that, but, at the same time, William Shakespeare was writing plays at the time the KJV was translated, and you very rarely see the language in his plays updated (with the notable exception of West Side Story). It does take some work to understand the KJV, but most things worth doing require some effort.

The version has also taken a number of attacks based on the personal qualities of King James, himself. A little research will show that King James did not translate the KJV himself. He merely understood that the British people wanted an accurate translation that they could read. Protestantism was still fairly new in England, and the Catholic church had discouraged people from reading the Bible for themselves, telling them that they wouldn't be able to understand it (if you have a question, ask your parish priest). King James promised protection to the translators, made resources available, and ordered them to make sure that their translation was accurate. I think we can be assured that whatever bad habits the King had, they didn't creep into the translation that bears his name.

I had someone argue the accuracy of the translation once, on the grounds of Joseph's coat of many colors. They told me that they had done some research and determined that the word translated as 'colors' really meant 'long sleeved.' They went on to tell me that it made more sense that way anyway, because many colors simply meant using dye. Long sleeves would have made the coat more valuable, that was why Joseph's brothers were so jealous. I put forth the question, "But isn't a coat long-sleeved, anyway?" "Oh, well, not necessarily. You could have a short-sleeved coat." I don't remember ever seeing one... But I did a little research. First I went into a store and compared prices on shirts. In general, a solid colored, short-sleeved shirt from a given manufacturer costs less than either a solid-colored long-sleeved shirt or a patterned, short-sleeve shirt from the same manufacturer. The solid-colored, long-sleeved shirt and the patterned, short-sleeved shirt cost about the same (in fact, the first store I looked at, they cost exactly the same). Now, Joseph's father Jacob was a shepherd. Getting wool for long sleeves shouldn't have been such a big deal. Buying dye would have been more difficult. Also, we tend to take dye for granted, these days. All kinds of companies make all kinds of dyes available at your local market at very reasonable prices, but it wasn't always that way. In Jacob's day, a person who could gather the right berries or flowers or whatever to extract a permanent dye was considered to be an artisan--a highly skilled worker. Dyes were expensive. But, in looking at a parallel Bible, and comparing the English words to the Greek words, I saw that the word translated as 'colour' really does mean 'long sleeved tunic.' What the... So what does the word translated as coat mean? Well, it does mean coat (or robe)--and I have to believe that, in the days before Larry the Cable Guy, that meant having long sleeves. So what is this business about a coat of many long-sleeved tunics? What does that mean exactly, why were the brothers so jealous, and why did the translators translate tunics and colours? After a great deal of thought and prayer, I have come to the conclusion that it comes down to this:

Jacob had thirteen children, twelve boys and a girl. Joseph was, in fact, the twelfth child, but the first son of Rachel. When Jacob was a young man, he fell in love with Rachel. He fell very hard. He agreed to work for Laban (Rachel's father) for seven years if Laban would give him Rachel to be his bride. Apparently, Laban thought that during those seven years, that he would be able to marry off Leah, Rachel's older sister. When the seven years were complete, Laban made sure that Jacob imbibed to excess at the wedding. When Jacob awoke the next morning, he not only had a terrible hangover, but he found that he had spent the night with the wrong sister. Laban was apologetic, but explained that it was not the custom to marry off the younger sister first. A lesser man might have made a case for justifiable homicide, but Jacob agreed to work another seven years for Rachel's hand. The next few years get very involved, suffice it to say that only the last two children were birthed by the woman that Jacob loved. Those two, Joseph and Benjamin, became his clear favorites. So, one day the time came that Joseph needed a new coat. Times were hard, and Jacob had a big family to take care of. There's no money in the till to buy a new coat; there's not even spare wool to make a coat, they need to sell all the wool they've got, just to eat. So what does Jacob do? What can he do? Well, there are several hand-me-down coats that he could give to Joseph, but each of them has something wrong with it. Levi stumbled into the brambles wearing this coat, the left sleeve and the back are badly torn. Reuben fell on some rocks wearing this one, the front is all torn up, and there are bloodstains over much of the rest of it. Asher fell out of tree wearing this one, and it's a mess. And so on. But Jacob realizes that if he takes a part of each coat, and then sews the parts together, that he will have a fine coat for Joseph. The colors will be mis-matched, of course, so he's going to have to put some extra effort into making this coat look nice for Rachel's son; he's not about to let Joseph roam the countryside wearing a raggedy old coat--this coat needs to be the absolute best. But he can't take time away from the sheep to work on this coat, either, that means that he's burning oil in his lantern working late into the night making sure that this coat is everything it could be. And all of his children know what he's doing. And most of them know he wouldn't have done it for them. Jealous? You bet. Wouldn't you be? That's all supposition, you say. Okay, it is; but I have to think that it's pretty close to what actually happened. It wasn't the colors or the sleeves that Joseph's brothers were jealous of, it was their father's love.

Another argument has been made about some of the expression used in the KJV. for example, there are a few times in the Bible where it talks about 'fetching a compass,' and it sounds like a reference to a navigational instrument, but that instrument wasn't invented until around 1000. The compass that they are referring to would be used to draw circles (or half-circles) on a map or chart, the expression refers to circling around. I will not deny that this passage is clearer in every other version I have looked at.

Another passage that has inspired more than a little controversy is 1 John 5:7-8. In the King James, this reads, "For there are three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. (8) And there are three that bear witness in the earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one." Most modern versions have a much shorter passage, for example, the New International Version reads: "For there are three that testify: (8) The Spirit, the Water and the blood; and these three are in agreement." I read somewhere that the most common type of error when copying long texts by hand is the error of omission, particularly when the same (or a similar) phrase is repeated soon after the first time it is used. The book that I read this in went on to give a long explanation as to why that couldn't be the reason that 1 John 5:7-8 read the way it does it most modern versions. To be honest, I was so surprised by the lack of logic in that, I don't even remember what his reasoning was. If you look at these in the original Greek then it makes even more sense. Five of the first six words of each verse are the same in Greek (1 John 5:7 "Οτι τρεις εισιυ οι μαρτυρουντες εν ...", 1 John 5:8 "Και τρεις εισιυ οι μαρτυρουντες εν ..."). It would be a very simple mistake to start copying 1 John 5:7, read a few words from the original, write a few words in the copy, glance back at the original and find those words just copied, read a few more words, and copy a few more words. That one word for bear witness or bear record, μαρτυρουντες, looks like a key word to me. If I were copying this, I would look for that word when I went back to the original. One piece of reasoning often used to explain ignoring the text is that it isn't found in the older manuscripts. Of course, frequently a manuscript was copied because the old one was wearing out, so the old manuscript was destroyed once the copy had been checked for accuracy. Of course, if a manuscript wasn't used, then, not only would the omission not be noticed, but it wouldn't wear out, so the defective manuscript might be older...

I've made my case. If it doesn't make sense to you, then okay, fine, that's your decision. If it does, good. Either way, I think that it's important that you have an accurate translation that you can understand. If you have to work at understanding it, that's not necessarily a bad thing. If it's easy to understand, but it's wrong, then it doesn't help you at all.