Featured Defense of the NIV

I study off the nas 1977/esv/Niv 1984...

 

Aren't the translators doing here what they noted, in that they are trying to get the original into what a modern reasder would understand it to mean?

And that why it seems they have rendering tht make more sense in modern english, but less so in original language written in?

 

"More sense in modern English" is something that seems to elude you.

 

On another thread you said something similar, and Rippon then asked if you believe in dynamic equivalence. Trying to get the original into understandable modern English is one thing, but DE does more than that. It seeks for the same response (not just understanding) from the modern reader as the ancient reader would have. This is a function of DE being based on Neo-orthodoxy.

Personally I don't think that "dear friend" makes more sense than "beloved." It makes different sense, not more sense. The words mean different things.

 

Now you know that is completely false. Here are just some of the translators of the NLTse. There is not a hint neo-othodoxy among them: Gordon Wenham,Daniel Block,Carl E.Armerding,Richard Platt,Ray Ortlund,Willem Van Gemeren,Grant Osborne,Robert Stein,Philip Comfort,D.A.Carson,Doug Moo,Harold Hoehner,Moises Silva and Robert Mounce.


They certainly did not buy into neo-othodoxy while translating the NLTse.

You might as well charge Martin Luther and John Purvey of neo-orthodoxy while you're at it. Their versions were not so literal. They were ahead of their times with their dynamic equivalency approach long before Nida came on the scene.

 

You think I made this up? You are making a false accusation. I am not accusing conservative translators of being Neo-orthodox, just pointing out what Nida himself said about the method he invented. As you know very well, I have proven Nida's existentialism right here on the BB at: http://www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=54801

Philip Stine was Nida's close friend, co-worker and biographer. My son has heard him lecture, and he is very partisan about Nida. He would say nothing he thought was negative about Nida. Stine wrote:

"Nida drew on the existentialist philosophers, particularly Ludwig Wittgenstein, who held that the meaning of any word is a matter of what we do with our language. Knowing the meaning of a word can involve knowing to what objects (if any) it refers, recognizing whether the word is slang or figurative language, knowing what part of speech it is, and also being aware of its connotative values. Essentially, then, to oversimplify somewhat, the meaning of a word stems from its use. Functional equivalence as an approach to translation depends on this idea.

"The concept of functional equivalence found some confirmation in theological developments of the period, especially in neo-orthodoxy. The Swiss theologian Karl Barth, for example, asserted that the starting point for theology rests not with humankind or human thoughts about God, but rather with God and God’s word. Revelation provided the foundation of theology for Barth, and he placed primacy on the word of God preached, written in Scripture, and revealed in Jesus Christ. Barth’s concern lay not with the historical Jesus but with the Christ of faith, the risen Christ who was testified to and proclaimed by the apostles. In regard to the word as Scripture, Barth argued that the Scripture contains the word but is not the word. Stressing Scripture as the container of the word, neo-orthodoxy emphasized the unity of Scripture and helped to precipitate a renewed interest in hermeneutics, the science of interpretation of the Scripture.

"Nida had read Barth’s work as well as the writings of other prominent theologians such as Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich, though he never referred to them in his writings. As a member of one of the commissions of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States, Nida once met with Richard Niebuhr of Yale, an important American neo-orthodox theologian, to discuss developments in theology as they related to effective communication of the Christian message (1991 letter to Ellington)" (Stine, Philip C. Let the Words Be Written. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004, pp. 143-144).

Eugene Nida was an existentialist who based his translation method on Neo-orthodoxy, that is clear. He said so himself, and his close friend and biographer said the same. You are calling Nida and Stine liars, not me. I'm just following what they themselves said.

You know, I'm amazed at how much you defend DE while at the same time insisting that the NIV is not DE but only occasionally renders with the DE method. I suggest that with all of your reading you read the works of Eugene Nida so you can at last write with authority on his method.

 

I believe that the translation philosophy adopted by the NASB team best, going for a as formal /literal version as possible...


DO those holding to more Dynamic way even hold to verbal plenary inspitation view of the bible?

 

John holds to the Bzt text as best to what the originals were, but don't think that he is a KJVO!

 

Nida was simply a modern day proponent of functional equivalence--not the originator of that method of Bible translation. I gave Martin Luther and John Purvey as examples --there are many others in Church History who employed dynamic equivalence as their way of translating Scripture. The concept exited for centuries even if Nida cointed the terms.

How radical! Who would disagree with this premise of dynamic equivalence?

What is clear is that you tar the translators of dynamic equivalent translations with the smear that they are into neo-orthodoxy along with your buddy Ryken.

Stand amazed! I have always said that the translational method of the NIV is a mixture of formal equivalence and functional equivalence. It's at the midway point. I am not saying anything new at all. I never said it does so occasionally. It does so often. It does it with more frequency than the ESV and NASBU --although both of them do it more than is advertized.

Again,if you wish to paint a neo-orthodox view of Scripture by the translators of the NLTse you are barking up the wrong tree.

 

To even suggest that they don't is irresponsible and reckless of you.

 

Dr. Maurice Robinson is KJVO? That's an outright lie, showing your ignorance of textual criticism. His position is Byzantine priority, not KJVO. His office is full of other versions. Did you even read the link you put up? The KJV Only
Debate Blog that interviewed Dr. Robinson is anti-KJVO, not pro!!

Sorry, that's not my point. My point is that they did not take it out of the text, not about anything in the footnotes.

Why do you insist on coming back to the KJV? I'm not arguing from a KJVO position, but from a Byzantine priority position. Both the Robinson/Pierpont Byzantine Textform Greek NT and the Hodges/Farstad Majority Greek NT have the longer ending. Do you understand what these texts are about? Do you understand the difference between the eclectic text on which the NIV is based and the Byzantine/Majority Greek text?

Why can't you get with the program and realize that the eclectic Greek text is not the most reliable?

 

Prove it.

No they don't. The Byzantine Textform Greek NT is more recent and reliable.

No he is not KJVO, and it is offensive for you to suggest that he is. He is a well-known textual critic, with a Ph.D. from Southwestern, which is SBC. He is a prof at the SBC's Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, where no one is KJVO.

He has no agenda approaching the text. He started out with a critical text position but after extensive research he came to the Byzantine priority position. His Ph.D. thesis (which I have in PDF) deals with scribal habits in the book of Revelation. So stop making careless accusations, and go back to the link you gave and actually read the interview with Dr. R.

I'm the one lacking a balanced education in textual criticism? Wow, that's a laugh. So far you've shown zero knowledge of the subject. And by the way, I was taking New Testament Intro before you were even dreamed of by your parents, young man. And I've taken a grad school course on it with this as the textbook, and read it through. So get a grip.

 

Thank you for admitting your mistakes. Most on the BB do not. :thumbs:

There are many, many IFBs, even here on the BB, who are not KJVO. I'm surprised that you don't realize this after being at BJU, which teaches a critical/eclectic text position. And by the way, Dr. Robinson is not IFB, but SBC. And there have been many Byz/Maj advocates in textual criticism who were not IFB. It's a whole different ballgame from the KJVO position.

As for myself, it is literally impossible for a missionary to Japan to be consistently KJVO. The Japanese version all conservatives must use here is called the Shinkaiyaku (新改訳), was paid for by the Lockman Foundation, and was done from critical texts using the NASB translation theory. There is not and never has been any version in modern Japanese from the TR or Byz/Maj, and there are none currently in print from these texts in the Classical Japanese.

 

You are making the same mistake Rippon does in saying that DE is all about getting the same meaning into the modern language as the original has. All translators do that, including me.

The difference is the DE seeks for the same response from a modern reader as the ancient reader had to the text, which is a different matter entirely.

 

I'll agree with you when you prove with quotes that Luther, Purvey et al believed in the linguistic and philosophical bases of DE: transformational grammar, the code theory of communication, and reader response theory. Until then, This is simply your opinion, and not a well thought out one, and certainly not proven.

This charge is completely illogical. Let me give an example. There is a martial art in Japan called Nippon Shorinji Kenpo that was created after WW2 by Zen Buddhists for Buddhists, and along with fighting techniques based on a traditional style of jujutsu, they teach Buddhist principles. Now, as a martial artist I'm interested in their techniques By your logic, as soon as I learned and used some of their fighting techniques, I would no longer be a Christian but a Buddhist.

Now, if you would like to stop the rhetoric and actually debate, please refute my extensive quote from Nida's close co-worker and chief advocate Philip Stine. As I said before, it's not me who is saying Nida's method was based on neo-orthodoxy.

 

Eugene Nida did not hold to verbal plenary inspiration nor inerrancy. Robert Bratcher was the translator of the first completely DE version, the GNB, and he was an out and out liberal.

As for anyone else such as the translators of the NLT, etc., I can't say.

 

Let me be blunt. Do you think that the most well-known and popular English translation (NLTse)that uses primarily dynamic equivalence as their translational method is essentially following a neo-orthodox approach --or not?