Reliable Translations

Craigbythesea · Jun 25, 2004

A position which is changing as newer and better scholars come on the scene who are not willing to swallow the previous theories without evidence or even examination. A careful look at UBS/4 will tell you that Alexandrian readings are on the wane and Byzantine reading are being added.
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I believe that these words are much more prejudicial than they are objectively accurate. The fact is that the very large majority of Biblical scholars favor the Alexandrian Text-Type over the Byzantine Text-Type. Yes, in recent years a few readings of the Byzantine Text-Type have been given more weight by scholars than they had been in the past, but there certainly is not a growing consensus that the Byzantine Text-Type is more reliable than the Alexandrian Text-Type.

Craigbythesea · Jun 25, 2004

Originally posted by skanwmatos:
Gayla, in my opinion there are three criteria which assist in determining the reliability of a translation.

The first is the textual basis. I prefer bibles based on the Byzantine text type for I believe that text type is best attested to by both manuscript and historical evidence.

The second criteria is the translational philosophy used by the translators. There are three primary philosophies evident in English bibles. The first (A) is form equivalence which simply means that the form of the Hebrew or Greek word is carried over into English whenever possible. (Nouns are translated as nouns, verbs as verbs, pronouns as pronouns, singulars as singular, plurals as plurals, masculines as masculines, etc.) That preserves, in my opinion, the concept of verbal inspiration better than the other philosophies. The second (B) translational philosophy is dynamic equivalence which means that the translators felt free to change the form of the words to better suit commonly used English grammatical standards. The third philosophy (C) is that of paraphrase which is nothing more than the translators opinion regarding the meaning of the verse not necessarily the actual wording of the verse.

The third criteria is the translators themselves. In the case of bible translation the old saying "the more the merrier" applies. The larger the group the more likely they will come up with a reliable translation. Translations done by a single person, although often very good, are usually less reliable than those done by large committees simply because personal biases are less likely to influence the entire committee.
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I agree that these three criteria are the most important, but I strongly believe that the “second” criterion is the most important. The “third” criterion is less important, but nonetheless very important. The “first” criterion is much less important than either of the other two, and I must agree with the large majority textual critics and other Bible scholars (rather than Scanwmatos) that the Alexandrian text-type is superior to the Byzantine text-type.

If anyone wants to study the issue of New Testament text-types, I suggest the reading of the following book:

The Byzantine Text-Type & New Testament Textual Criticism written by Harry A Sturz and published by Thomas Nelson Publishers

mioque · Jun 25, 2004

Just to disagree with Philip for a moment.

"As for the Old Testament there is little doubt that we have accurately defined the manuscripts to where they are very, close to the originals."
''
The differences between various types of OT texts are larger than between NT text types.
I will be polite for once and not speculate about why there is less debate on message boards on different OT readings.

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