For almost two decades I taught from the New American Standard Bible. As a translation, I “connected” to it, when I was only 13 years old. It was a constant companion. And over the years, although I read other translations devotionally, I only taught from the NASB. I believed that a formal equivalent translation method--a word-for-word literalness--produced the best translation. So what if the NASB was on a higher reading level than most translations! So what if some people found the phrasings wooden! What was important was that it clearly communicated the original biblical language texts as closely as possible in the English language...right?

I'll admit that at least as far as five or six years ago from my own study, I realized that the NASB, while technically literal, was somewhat lacking in some places--especially in Old Testament poetic sections--when it came to bridging the language gap between the biblical culture and context and ours. Literal translations have difficulty communicating metaphors and symbolic imagery. It's easy for the meaning to become lost. But I continued teaching from the NASB nonetheless. Then my confidence in the NASB was completely shattered in early 2005 when in the middle of a half-year study on Romans I was teaching at my church, I realized that the translation itself was getting in the way. This was a study separate from any curriculum. It was all me. The problem arose, however, when I found I was having to explain the English of the NASB in order to explain the meaning of the biblical text. That was clearly an unnecessary step. Communication was impeded by the translation itself. Did that make sense? Translations are supposed to be bridges, but what if the bridges themselves are in disrepair?

I knew that there were two primary philosophies of translation: formal equivalent (word-for-word) and dynamic equivalent (thought-for-thought or meaning-driven). At the very least I knew that I needed to move a bit further down the spectrum toward dynamic equivalence. But how far? After spending weeks considering various translations, I settled on the Holman Christian Standard Bible for my Sunday morning translation of choice. It was a good bridge as a translation between the two methods because it was literal when it could be literal, but dynamic when that didn't work quite as well. Plus, our Sunday School literature uses HCSB. So I was teaching from the translation used in my class' quarterly.

And now we're in Hebrews. And I'm using curriculum this time. But sometimes I don't like certain turns the curriculum makes. Today's frustration came from the curriculum writer's decision to leave out nearly half of the verses in ch. 7. Hebrews itself is a complicated book in my opinion which may explain why very few ever touch it outside of the eleventh chapter. In my understanding, the writer is developing a carefully crafted, but complicated argument of why Jesus is better than the angels, the prophets, Moses, the High Priest, the Levitical priesthood, etc., and there's no possible way to go back to an earlier form of faith pre-Messiah.. I suppose that the curriculum writer chose to simplify things for the readers by leaving out a large section of the chapter. But in my opinion, he short-circuited the biblical author's argument in the process.

So I saw my task this morning as one of making my class understand the writer of Hebrews' argument--without leaving out any verses--and in the end creating room for some kind of practical application they could leave with. It's easy to get bogged down in Hebrews and forget that last part. I wrote in this blog a few weeks back that the KJV rendering of Hebrews seems unintelligible in places. I believe this is probably due to the difficulty of the Greek. And while the HCSB was good, and certainly better than the KJV or even the NASB would have been, I was still having some doubts, even as late as this morning about whether I was using a translation that made Heb 7 crystal clear. Somehow between the translation, my teaching ability, and the power of God's Holy Spirit, I wanted my class to have a clear understanding of Hebrews ch. 7 by the time they left the study. And so at the last minute--right around 8:30, a half hour before we had to be at church--I switched translations. I grabbed my TNIV, a translation that I although I have promoted on this blog, I have only used in public for devotional purposes.

Don't tell my pastor, but in the middle of his sermon on Romans 6, I stole over to Hebrews 7 and familiarized myself with the TNIV text. I had looked at it during my preparation, but I had not originally been planning to teach from it. Then when we got to our class after the sermon I began walking my class (the best metaphor for it) through the end of Hebrews 6 and into the seventh chapter. The fact that I was using the TNIV didn't really become a factor until the end when I read the last passage of our study, Heb 7:20-28, myself because we were short on time. Now, it was probably because of momentum built from our journey through the text thus far (I believe they were understanding), but as I read from the TNIV, I felt like they were extremely engaged and fully understanding the words--which in the latter part of ch. 7 do serve as a powerful summation and application of the writer's arguments.

“And it was not without an oath! Others became priests without any oath, but he became a priest with an oath when God said to him:

          “The Lord has sworn
                 and will not change his mind:
                 ‘You are a priest forever.’”

         Because of this oath, Jesus has become the guarantor of a better covenant.
         Now there have been many of those priests, since death prevented them from continuing in office; but because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.
        Such a high priest truly meets our need—one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. For the law appoints as high priests men in all their weakness; but the oath, which came after the law, appointed the Son, who has been made perfect forever.”

                          (Heb 7:20-28, TNIV)

I actually heard amens and other verbal affirmations while I was merely reading the biblical text (with enthusiasm, mind you). There was an excitement in the room simply as I read the Scripture passage. Amazing--I don't know if I've ever had so many people in tune before with what was being read from the Bible, with only minimal comment from me. Now, while there are quite a few factors involved, I have to think that the translation itself--the TNIV--was a primary contribution to my class' understanding of Hebrews today.

And I didn't plan to write about any of this, although it's been on my mind and heart all day. Then I read Richard Rhodes' post tonight on Better Bible Blogs, titled "What's the Joke?" In this wonderful blog entry, he skillfully demonstrates why literal word-for-word translation is not always the best means for communicating meaning from one culture to another. He does this merely by trying to translate a newspaper cartoon from German to English. The entire article is well worth your time and demonstrates succinctly what's taken me a few years to learn through my experience teaching: literalness ≠ good translation.

Again, please read his entire post, but I must at least repeat his final thoughts here:

Our long use of translations that only approximate the meaning of the Greek (or Hebrew) has dulled our senses. It’s only in live cross-linguistic situations that we are confronted with the fact that language is regularly used with a precision we fail to appreciate from the inside. And it’s that precision that gets washed away in most Bible translations by our preference for literalness. Ironically, that preference all but guarantees that we will get it wrong.

If I think I'm teaching God's Word, but my students can't understand me, ultimately it's my fault. I have not actually taught; I've merely performed, and I've performed poorly at that. A Bible translation is like a tool. Certain jobs demand different tools, and some tools are right for the job while others aren't. I still recommend students of the Bible study in parallel with both formal and dynamic translations. But perhaps, for me, it's again time to go a little bit further down that translation spectrum regarding the tool...the translation I use on Sunday mornings.

Tags: Translations, HCSB, TNIV