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The Big Idea
As we seek to remain faithful to the Sacred Scriptures as they have been handed down to us by our ancestors in the faith, questions of Biblical translation can become deeply important from time to time.
The Official stance of our Synod concerning translations of the Bible is:
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The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod has not “adopted” nor does it officially promote any particular translation of the Bible. Each translation must be judged by its faithfulness to the original texts (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek) in which Scripture was originally written, and by its helpfulness in communicating what the Bible actually says in language that people today (of various cultures, languages and dialects) can understand.
A helpful discussion of this issue is contained in an article written by LCMS professor Dr. Jeffrey Gibbs titled All Those Translations! which appeared in the November 1998 issue of The Lutheran Witness.
A Brief History of Biblical Translation
Therefore, according to the wisdom of God, He chose for Holy Scripture to be written in two distinct languages: Hebrew and Greek.
As Christianity spread to more and more people groups an interesting problem began to arise. How are people who do not speak or understand Greek and Hebrew supposed to hear the word of God?
Fortunately for us as English speakers, the answer of our ancestors in the faith was to translate the Bible! The Vulgate was the first widely used and recognized translation of Scripture into the then commonly used language of Latin.
Unfortunately, after this initial translation many centuries passed without any major additional language translations arising. What this meant was that fewer and fewer people had access to read Holy Scripture in a language they understood. This was the state of affairs Luther found within the church of his day. This lead him to complete his now famous translation of Scripture into German, so that once again the average Christian could read the Bible themselves.
From this point the history of Biblical translation explodes in many directions with English translations like the King James Version finding large acceptance and use. Many other details belong to this important history but for our purposes a broad overview of the three major approaches to Biblical translation will suffice.
Thought for Thought
On one end of the spectrum are translations that adhere to a thought for thought method of translation. This methodology seeks to generate a clean translation that is easily read in the target language (in our case English). The way this is achieved is by taking the basic thought conveyed by the original text and putting it as nicely into English as possible. What this does in practice is that sometimes words will be added to the English to help is sound smoother, or particular words from the original text may be dropped for the same reason.
An example of this is the Hebrew phrase: “Hot Nosed.” Which to an English reader makes no sense. But was a way of expressing the physical reaction of our bodies to being angry. So in Hebrew if someone is angry they are “Hot Nosed.” Therefore in many English translations this phrase is simply translated as “angry.”
In a thought for thought translations this happens on a larger scale taking the thought of a sentence, or even sometimes a section, and translating it as best as possible according to the translation committee. The problem these types of translations can run into is that there are a lot of interpretative decisions that get “baked in” to the translation. Meaning that in verses that may be more ambiguous (like sections of poetry or prophecy) the translation committee chooses a particular option in order to maintain the smoothness of the translation. In our context the most notable translation that adheres to this methodology is the NIV with a number of problematic interpretative decisions becoming a part of later editions.
Word for Word
On the other end of the spectrum are word for word translations. These translations directly translate from the original language every single world into an English equivalent. The focus in this methodology is not on readability but is preserving as much of the original language structure as possible in translation. Which sounds great in theory but ends up becoming very stilted and hard to understand.
Here is an example from the NASB: and they spoke, saying to Him, “Tell us by what authority You are doing these things, or who is the one who gave You this authority?” - Luke 20:2
Greek uses a doubled verb to add emphasis and make clear the aggressive nature of this question being asked Jesus. But a literal word for word translation does not get that across very well in English and ends up sounding redundant.
Grammatical Construct for Grammatical construct
A kind of happy medium approach takes distinct grammatical units and translates them as close to the original language while still making the translation readable. This approach keeps the translation faithful to the original language while also acknowledging the need for English speakers to actually be able to read it with understanding.
The most widely used translation of this type within LCMS circles is the ESV. A bellwether for this can be seen in the transition Concordia Publishing House’s transition to using the ESV in the widely published Lutheran Study Bible.