Translation

A Newly Digitized Bible Reveals the Origins of the King James Version

A one-of-a-kind Bible used by the King James translators offers a rare glimpse of their textual decisions.

Though often thought to be a fresh translation, the King James Bible is, at heart, a revision of the 1602 Bishops’ Bible that was produced in three stages (translation companies, General Meeting, and final revisions). It was a monumental feat and one that has influenced English Bibles ever since. Fortunately, we know more about the process that produced the King James Bible (KJB) than just about any other translation of its time.

One key source involves the actual Bibles used by the revisers. According to an extant bill dated 10 May 1605, King James I purchased “40 large church bibles for the translators” from Royal Printer Robert Barker for the translators to use.¹ The translators worked directly on these unbound pages in the first stage of work. As far as we know, only a single copy remains.

This remaining copy, a 1602 Bishops’ Bible in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, collects handwritten notes reflecting alterations made while crafting the KJB. Thankfully, it has recently been digitized and made completely accessible online for the first time ever.² The document’s importance to scholars studying the history of the English Bible is hard to overestimate. This article introduces the history of its study and gives a small sample of its value for understanding the work of the KJB translators.

The document’s importance to scholars studying the history of the English Bible is hard to overestimate.

The 1602 Bishops’ Bible with the translators’ notes (left) and the final product in the 1611 KJB (right). Images from Bodleian Library and UPenn

Previous scholarship

The Bodleian Library acquired the volume in 1646 when it was described as “a large Bible wherein is written downe all the Alterations of the last translacōn.”³ The first critical notice was in 1868 by B. F. Westcott. When preparing his history of the English Bible, he requested a summary of its notes from John Wordsworth, Bishop of Salisbury, and Bodleian Librarian Henry Coxe. Unfortunately, Westcott mistakenly thought it represented “a scholar’s collation of the [KJB] and Bishops’ texts” rather than the source for the KJB itself.

In 1888, Nicolas Pocock pronounced Westcott’s judgment “very doubtful,” and Edwin Willoughby later took the document more seriously as a genuine draft and brought it to public attention.⁴ In the 20th century, Edward Jacobs examined the Old Testament annotations in detail in his 1972 dissertation but, sadly, had to rely on microfilms; he extended this study in later articles to its New Testament annotations.⁵ As Jacobs finished his dissertation, Irena Backus started a thesis studying Theodore Beza’s impact on the KJB New Testament which also employed the document, their different conclusions interacting only in a footnote.⁶ A decade later Jacobs published, with Ward Allen, a transcription of the Gospels with an introduction and, more recently, David Norton has used the document to sift translators’ intentions from printers’ errors while editing the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible for Cambridge University Press.

What’s in this Bible?

What’s in the document and what makes it so important to scholars? The answer is the handwritten notes themselves. In the Old Testament, these annotations cover almost every book, though in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, they end after chapter four. (Lamentations and the Apocrypha are unannotated.)

Letters were used to identify other translations as the sources for suggested changes. Source

The notes also reveal other translations used by the revisers besides the Bishops’ Bible itself. Back in 1868, Westcott described a set of miniscule letters (g, t, and j) which identify these other sources. He correctly identified “g” as the Geneva Bible, the KJB’s famous predecessor. Other scholars have suggested that “t” is for Tremellius and “j” is for Junius or Jerome’s Vulgate.⁷

Dating the translators’ notes

Dating the Old Testament annotations is complicated as they stretch across text assigned to all three translation companies and are written in what Jacobs believed is the same hand. This means, as Miller points out, that “the Old Testament annotations, in the aggregate, must postdate the company stage of the translation process, since one person could not have been part of three different translation companies in three different locations.”⁸

Several dates have been proposed, including ones that suggest the notes are an actual printers’ master copy, a copy of the printers’ master copy, notes made at the General Meeting, or a revision sent to the General Meeting. Miller argues that, most likely, “the annotations were made in preparation for the general, revisory meeting in London, assimilating into a single working manuscript the changes that had been separately proposed by the three Old Testament translation companies.” This would mean the handwriting is likely that of a scribe, though it is also possible they “could have been made at the general meeting itself.”⁹

The New Testament annotations are less extensive. The text of Matthew, Mark, and Luke is heavily revised, but in John, only chapters 17–21 are annotated. Elsewhere, only brief notes are found in a handful of places (Eph. 4:8; 2 Thess. 2:15; 1 Cor. 9:5; Gal. 3:13; and 2 Pet. 1:10).

Dating the New Testament annotations is simplified by the fact that they occur across text assigned to only one company. Even here, however, the dating is complicated by the fact that the annotations are in three separate hands.¹⁰ Miller gives this as a reason why “the draft of the Gospels seems to be assignable to the company stage of the translation process, distinct from the draft of the Old Testament now bound together in the same Bodleian volume.”¹¹ The different hands would then represent either the company internally critiquing its own draft or the input of one or more of the other companies upon it. The process of producing the most famous English Bible in history was obviously not a simple one!

Insights into the translators’ decisions

One of the most interesting and unexplored areas of the translators’ work that this document illuminates is how they wrestled with textual issues. Here are four examples.

1. Mary’s purification (Luke 2:22)

I have noted before that, in the Christmas story, the translators’ base text for Luke 2:22 explains that Mary brought Jesus to the temple because it was the time of “her purification,” without any notes. Virtually all the textual data read “their purification” (including either Joseph or Jesus in the purification). Greek editions at the time differed, particularly those of Erasmus and Beza.

What did the KJB translators do? This document shows a complex back-and-forth. First, “Or, theyr” was added to the main text (which read “her”) to indicate a textual variant. Then they changed their minds on the base text but still wanted a note. “Her” was crossed out in the text, “theyr” written above it, and in the margin “theyr” was replaced by “her.” Now the main text would read “theyr” with a marginal note giving the alternative: “Or, her.” This revision too was apparently overturned, presumably at the General Meeting. In the end, the KJB ended where it began: “her” in the text and nothing in the margin.

The text at Luke 2:22, showing a series of changes from “her” to “their” and back to “her.” Source

2. Jesus’ rebuke of Satan (Matt. 4:10)

Another example appears in Matthew 4:10 in the case of Jesus’ rebuke of the Devil, a rebuke later echoed after Peter’s confession (Matt. 16:23). The translators’ base text has “get thee hence behind me” (opisō mou). But they crossed out this last phrase. Why? Because the editions of the Greek New Testament they had available from Erasmus (1535), Stephanus (1550), and Beza (1598) all have the shorter reading in the text (though each mentions the longer reading).

The words “behinde mee” are crossed out in Matt 4:10. Source

3. Greeting our friends (Matt. 5:47)

Matthew 5:47 provides an example of how the translators wanted their readers to see more textual variation than what ultimately made it into the final version. The Bishops’ text has Jesus asking if his followers only greet “your brethren”—with no note. The KJB revisers added a marginal note that read “Or, frendes,” indicating the variant in Greek (philous vs. adelphous). As before, the two readings were known to them because of the Greek New Testaments of Erasmus and Beza. But, this note was not to survive. It was struck down by later revisers and didn’t make it to the published 1611 KJB.

The words “or friends” were added to the margin but never made it into the final King James. Source

4. Two longer marginal notes (Luke 17:36; Matt. 26:26)

Other marginal changes did make the cut. In Luke 17:36, the Bishops’ Bible has no marginal note, but the revisers wanted to alert their readers to a variant by adding a note saying: “The 36 verse is wanting here in the most of the Greeke copyes.” The revisers at Stationers’ Hall made a few minor changes in wording to the note but included it in the published text.

A note added in the left margin about manuscripts missing Luke 17:36. Source

Likewise, in Matthew 26:26 the text of the Last Supper says that he broke the bread when he had taken it and “given thankes,” without a note. The revisers crossed this out, added “blessed and” beside it, and added the marginal note, “Many Greeke copies have, given thankes.” This switched the base text from “given thankes” (eucharistēsas) to “blessed” (eulogēsas) and alerted the reader to the variant. The note was tweaked slightly but still published.

The note added in the left margin for Matthew 26:26. Source

This is just a sample of what this Bible reveals about the translators’ textual work. All the KJB’s notes that reflect textual variants were collected by F. H. A. Scrivener and his list remains the best treatment of the translators as textual critics. Scrivener, however, never examined this document.

Conclusion

For the translators, textual variants like these were part of a larger category they called “differences of readings.” This category included not only textual uncertainties but also lexical uncertainties, where words could have several different meanings. Today, we tend to think of these as separate categories. But applying our distinction to the KJB translators would be an anachronism.¹² Perhaps detailed examination of the document in the future from a text-critical perspective can catalogue all annotations reflecting textual decisions, painting a clearer picture of the KJB translators as textual critics.

Viewing the images online is a visual reminder of how many decisions Bible translators have to make.

This is just a small sample of the kind of insight that can be gained from studying this source of the most important English Bible in history. Viewing the images online provides an immediate, visual reminder of how many decisions Bible translators have to make. Further study will undoubtedly bring to light further insights into how the translators made their decisions. May we all be grateful for the push towards open access upon which human knowledge thrives!

An earlier version of this article could have given the impression that F. H. A. Scrivener’s list of the KJB’s notes was collected by him in 1910. What was meant is that his list was last published, posthumously, in 1910.

Notes

1
“MS. Don. c. 88” (Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, n.d.); Paul Morgan, “A King’s Printer At Work: Two Documents of Robert Barker,” The Bodleian Library Record 13, no. 5 (1990): 370; A massive cache of documents relating to the King’s printing house, the largest collection of manuscript materials relating to any single printing house in the Jacobean period, have recently been studied by Graham Rees and Maria Wakely, Publishing, Politics, and Culture: The King’s Printers in the Reign of James I and VI (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
2
Previously catalogued as BL Bib. Eng. 1602 b.1, it was given a new pressmark in Sep. 2013: Arch. A b. 18. My thanks to Chris Yetzer for informing me about its digitization.
3
William Dunn Macray, Annals of the Bodleian Library, Oxford: With a Notice of the Earlier Library of the University, 2nd ed. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1890), 102.
4
Nicholas Pocock, “The Bishops’ Bible of 1568, 1572, and 1602.,” The Athenaeum, no. No. 3148 (February 25, 1888): 243–45; Edwin Eliott Willoughby, The Making of the King James Bible: A Monograph with Comparisons from the Bishops Bible and the Manuscript Annotations of 1602, with an Original Leaf from the Great “She” Bible of 1611 (Los Angeles: Printed for Dawson’s Book Shop at The Plantin Press, 1956); Adam Nicolson, Power and Glory: Jacobean England and the Making of the King James Bible (London: Harpercollins, 2003), 151–52.
5
Edward Craney Jacobs, “A Bodleian Bishops’ Bible, 1602 (Bib. Eng. 1602 b. 1): A Preliminary Study of the Old Testament Annotations and Their Relationship to the Authorized Version, 1611.” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Alabama, Auburn University, 1972), 14; Edward Craney Jacobs, “Two Stages of Old Testament Translation for the King James Bible,” The Library S6-II, no. 1 (March 1, 1980): 16, fn. 2; Jacobs, “A Bodleian Bishops’ Bible, 1602 (Bib. Eng. 1601 B. 1)”; Edward Craney Jacobs, “An Old Testament Copytext for the 1611 Bible,” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 69, no. 1 (1975): 1–15; Jacobs, “Two Stages of Old Testament Translation for the King James Bible”; Edward Craney Jacobs, “King James’s Translators: The Bishops’ Bible New Testament Revised,” The Library s6–14, no. 2 (June 1, 1992): 100–126.
6
Irena Dorota Backus, “Influence of Theodore Beza on the English New Testament” (DPhil Thesis, University of Oxford, 1976); Irena Backus, The Reformed Roots of the English New Testament: The Influence of Theodore Beza on the English New Testament, ed. Dikran Y. Hadidian (Pittsburgh: Wipf & Stock, 1980), 28, fn. 63.
7
See Jacobs, “A Bodleian Bishops’ Bible, 1602 (Bib. Eng. 1601 B. 1),” 30–31, fn. 44; Jeffrey Alan Miller, “‘Better, as in the Geneva’: The Role of the Geneva Bible in Drafting the King James Version,” Journal of Medieval & Early Modern Studies 47, no. 3 (September 2017): 517–43.
8
Jeffrey Alan Miller, “The Earliest Known Draft of the King James Bible: Samuel Ward’s Draft of 1 Esdras and Wisdom 3–4,” in Labourers in the Vineyard of the Lord, 2018, 216.
9
Miller, 216.
10
Allen and Jacobs, The Coming of the King James Gospels, 5–7.
11
Miller, “The Earliest Known Draft of the King James Bible,” 216.
12
As seen in the comments of Miles Smith defending the KJB’s marginal notes, which discuss both textual and lexical differences in the same section, and in the report of translator Samuel Ward to the Synod of Dordt, suggests. Samuel Ward, “SSC MS Ward L1” (Sidney Sussex College, n.d.), fol. 5r; Anthony Milton, ed., The British Delegation and the Synod of Dort (1618–1619), vol. 13, Church of England Record Society (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 2005), 138–40; Christian Moser, Donald Sinnema, and Herman J. Selderhuis, eds., Acta of the Synod of Dordt, vol. I, Acta et Documenta Synodi Nationalis Dordrechtanae (1618-1610) (KG, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 17, 203; Samuel Ward, “British Statement on the Method of Bible Translation,” in Early Sessions of the Synod of Dordt, ed. Anthony Milton, vol. II/2, Acta et Documenta Synodi Nationalis Dordrechtanae (1618–1610) (KG, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), 69, 70.

The Bible in the Language of Jesus

The Syriac Peshitta is an early Bible translation that is key to textual criticism and offers insights into the teaching of Jesus.

Philip M. Forness

It may not be as obvious to modern readers, but the earliest Christian communities attached significance to the actual words spoken by Jesus in the Aramaic dialect of first-century Palestine. The Gospels do this several times, drawing attention to the original language used by Jesus and his disciples.

Here we can think of Jesus’s quotation of Psalm 22:1 on the cross “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?,” translated as “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46; cf. Mark 15:34). Mark also records Jesus’ Aramaic words while he raises a girl from the dead: “Talitha cumi” (Mark 5:41), and John specifies that Jesus gave Simon the name Cephas “which,” he notes, “means Peter” (John 1:42). All these show interest on the part of the evangelists in the actual Aramaic words of Jesus. But what is Aramaic and what is the history of the Bible in Aramaic?

Syriac translations of the Bible

The Aramaic language has been in use for over 3,000 years and remains a living language today. Many varieties or dialects of Aramaic existed in Jesus’ day, and Christian communities used Bible translations in two different Aramaic dialects in antiquity: Christian Palestinian Aramaic and Syriac. The Aramaic dialect known as Syriac developed in the region around the city of Edessa which is located in modern-day southeastern Turkey.

The Bible was translated several times into Syriac. News about the Old Syriac Gospels translation circulated widely in popular media in early 2023, reporting on fragments of a fourth manuscript containing this version that are identified in two articles from 2022 and 2023. But the most commonly used Syriac Bible translation is known as the Peshitta, meaning the “simple” or “straightforward” version. A new English translation of the Peshitta is nearly complete, and another English translation project is just getting underway. This Bible translation remains in use today in Christian communities of the Syriac heritage.

The opening of Matthew in the Old Syriac. BL Add MS 14451, f. 1v (5th c.)

Produced in the second century AD, the Peshitta Old Testament forms one of the earliest monuments of Syriac literature. Since it was translated directly from the Hebrew and exhibits knowledge of some Jewish interpretive traditions, scholars used to make the argument that the translation was produced by a community of Jewish converts to Christianity from the city of Edessa. This argument has been called into question, and the current opinion is that the translation was produced by a Jewish community and subsequently used by Christians who also knew Syriac.¹

The Peshitta New Testament emerged around the year 400 and forms a revision of the Old Syriac Gospels. Interestingly, five of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament are not included: 2 Peter, 2–3 John, Jude, and Revelation. Syriac translations of these books only appeared in the sixth or seventh centuries. The Peshitta also omits the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 7:53–8:11, suggesting that the passage must have been absent in the Greek manuscripts available to the translators.

A translation in the language of Jesus

When reading the Peshitta, one is immediately struck by the fact that this work was written in a dialect of the language used by Jesus. So, what do they do when the Greek source presents Jesus’ Aramaic words noted above? Peshitta Matthew, for example, does not translate Jesus’ Aramaic words on the cross. Peshitta Mark includes the same words of Jesus found in Matthew and then offers a translation that corresponds to the Peshitta version of Psalm 22:1. Further, Mark 5:41 offers no explanation of Jesus’ Aramaic words to the girl in Mark 5:41, and Peter is simply known as Cephas (Kepha in Syriac) throughout the Gospels without any attempt to represent the Greek petros.

Even more fascinating are the instances where the Peshitta seems to give insight into the original Aramaic spoken by Jesus. Jeff Childers suggests that the Peshitta may reveal a pun in Jesus’ language in John 8:34. Jesus states in Childers’s translation: “Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.” The Syriac words for “commits” (ʿabed) and “slave” (ʿabda) share the same three-letter root in Syriac. One can imagine how this phrase would have stuck in the ears of Jesus’s audience. Childers identifies another possible wordplay in Luke 12:7. Jesus says to the disciples in Childers’s translation: “But as for you, even the separate hairs of your head are all numbered.” In Syriac, “hairs” (mene) and “numbered” (manyan) share many of the same consonants, suggesting that the original phrase in Aramaic may well have featured alliteration.

Translation choices and interpretive traditions

Quite beyond the recovery of Jesus’ words in Aramaic, the Peshitta led to distinctive interpretive traditions. In Genesis 2:2, God is stated to have finished the work of creation not on the “seventh day” as in the Hebrew Bible, but on the “sixth day.” Craig Morrison points out that the translators of the Septuagint—the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible—made the same decision. The reason for this translation choice seems to be its theological or practical significance. God was completely finished with the work of creation by the sixth day. There should be no confusion that the seventh day, the Sabbath, was entirely reserved for rest.

The Peshitta’s rendering of Genesis 2:2 had an effect on the Syriac tradition of biblical interpretation. Several early Christian authors wrote works on the six days of creation. The fourth-century Greek author Basil of Caesarea’s sermons on the six days became very popular and were translated into Syriac in the fifth century. The extensive homily on creation by the sixth-century Syriac poet and preacher Jacob of Serugh covers 151 pages in its modern edition. Jacob treats all seven days, dedicating over twenty pages to God’s rest on the seventh day. The focus on God’s rest does not feature so prominently in any other work on the six days of creation in antiquity. Here the Peshitta translation of this passage may have inspired Jacob.

The Peshitta also offers a window into how early Christians wrestled with theological terminology, as with Paul’s theology of justification. The Hebrew word ṣedeq, often translated into English “justice” or “righteousness,” was translated in the Septuagint as dikaiosune. Paul uses this term both to refer both to God’s own righteousness and to God’s act of making humanity righteous. As Daniel King and J. Edward Walters discuss, the Syriac text uses two words for the Greek term dikaiosune and related forms: zaddiquta with a semantic range from acquittal to righteousness, and kenuta meaning just or innocent. We can look to the Peshitta to see how ancient translators tried to translate important theological ideas into their language that still challenge modern translators today.

We can look to the Peshitta to see how ancient translators tried to translate important theological ideas that still challenge modern translators today.

Encountering the Bible through the Peshitta

In addition to the text of the Peshitta, its transmission in manuscripts show different ways that Christian communities encountered and read the Bible. The books of Ruth, Susannah, Esther, and Judith circulated in the first millennium as a collection called the “Book of Women.” In a sixth-century manuscript, the early Christian writing the Acts of Thecla which focuses on a female follower of the apostle Paul appears at the end of the collection. As Catherine Burris has discussed, this collection invites readers to hear the stories of virtuous women stretching from the time of the judges through the Jewish communities in Assyria, Babylon, and Persia to the earliest Christian communities.²

By the sixth and seventh centuries, Syriac Christianity had spread as far as China and India bringing the Peshitta with them. These Christian communities had a continuous presence in India down to the Portuguese colonial period. At a synod held in India in 1599, the Portuguese colonizers condemned the omission of five books from the New Testament used by the Syriac Christians of India. Interestingly, they also noted that the Bible used in India did not include a longer version of 1 John 5:7. This extended version reads as follows, with the additional words in italics: “For there are three that testify in heaven: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one.” In this way, the Peshitta Bible used by the Syriac Christian communities in India—rather than the Bible of the colonizers—was closer to what is now considered the earliest known version of the New Testament.

The East Syriac tradition developed a distinct way of organizing the Bible. In addition to the Psalter, they divided the Old and New Testaments into five volumes: (1) the Book of the Pentateuch, (2) the Book of Sessions, (3) the Book of the Prophets, (4) the Book of the Maccabees, and (5) the New Testament.³ The contents of the Pentateuch, Prophets, and New Testament are clear. But the Book of Sessions combines an interesting array of historical and poetic books: Joshua, Judges, 1–2 Samuel, 1–2 Kings, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Ruth, Song of Songs, Sirach, and Job. The Book of the Maccabees features a mixture of histories and wisdom literature: 1–3 Maccabees, 1–2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Wisdom, Judith, Esther, Susanna, Epistle of Jeremiah, Epistle of Baruch, and Baruch. How might this organization encourage different ways of encountering and reading the Bible?

Conclusion

The Peshitta represents a fascinating early translation of the Bible. It has proven important for textual criticism, as the Old Testament was based directly on the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament translation was carried out at an early date. As a dialect of Aramaic, the Syriac may offer insight into wordplays used by Jesus. Finally, the Peshitta has served as the Bible for Christian communities for more than 1,500 years. This translation inspired different interpretation traditions, which we can glimpse in the rich literature of the Syriac Christian communities.

An earlier version of this article said the Syriac Bible used in India omitted the addition to the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6:13, but it actually omitted the longer version of 1 John 5:7.

Notes

1
Simcha Gross, “A Long Overdue Farewell: The Purported Jewish Origins of Syriac Christianity,” in Jews and Syriac Christians: Intersections across the First Millennium, ed. Aaron Michael Butts and Simcha Gross, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 180 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 131–33.
2
Catherine Burris, “The Syriac Book of Women: Text and Metatext,” in The Early Christian Book, ed. William E. Klingshirn and Linda Safran, CUA Studies in Early Christianity (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 86–98.
3
Heleen Murre-van den Berg, Scribes and Scriptures: The Church of the East in the Eastern Ottoman Provinces (1500–1800), Eastern Christian Studies 21 (Leuven: Peeters, 2015), 228–29.

The Bible of the Woman at the Well

The Samaritan Pentateuch offers a fascinating chapter in the Bible’s history and sheds light on Jesus’ ministry.

Bradley J. Marsh Jr.

John 4 relates the now-famous story in which Jesus has an involved conversation with a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well just outside of the Samarian town of Sychar. In the ensuing discussion, both Jesus and the unnamed woman describe several theological beliefs which he and his fellow Jews, and she and her fellow Samaritans, do not share. As John explains in a narrative aside: “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.” Among other matters, they discussed the correct location for worship (vv. 20–24) and Jesus’ status as a (or, “the”) prophet (John 4:19, 25–26).

Lurking beneath the surface of this exchange, however, is one major difference which they do not discuss: Samaritans and Jews at the time differed—and still do—on the number of books accepted in their biblical canon. Moreover, even the very text contained often reads very differently.

So, who are the Samaritans and why does their Bible differ from that of the Jews?

The Samaritan’s and their canon

The group known today as the “Samaritans” amounts to approximately 850 people, most of whom live in the modern cities of Nablus (ancient Shechem) and Ḥolon (a city south of Tel Aviv). This group, who call themselves “Observant Ones,” formerly a much larger group, holds only the first five books of the Bible or Torah as Scripture. As such, they differ greatly from wider Judaism in a number of beliefs. Most especially, they maintain that the proper location for worship (see John 4:20), including any associated temple or sacred precinct, should be on Mount Gerizim near biblical Shechem not on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Early Church Fathers (e.g., Origen, Epiphanius of Salamis) would occasionally point out some of these disagreements, especially the Samaritans’ putative rejection of the resurrection of the dead (akin to the Sadducees); although this is a doctrine that they would eventually accept (documented from the 14th c. onwards).

Dr. Marsh’s new book on the Samaritan Pentateuch

Perhaps most pointedly, the Samaritans’ rejection of the remainder of the Hebrew canon (or Old Testament) meant that Moses alone is their foremost prophetic figure. Indeed, Samaritan theology holds that post-Mosaic “prophecy” cannot really exist as such. Nevertheless, since the Pentateuch records Moses predicting that the Lord would raise up a prophet for Israel like himself (Deut. 18:18), the Samaritans also believe in a prophet subsequent to Moses, one whom they call the Taheb (Aramaic for “Returning One”). This prophet is an eschatological figure, akin to but not identical with the Jewish or Christian concept(s) of the Messiah, who will restore all things, uniting the tribes of Israel and reestablishing proper worship on Mount Gerizim. It is in this broader context that the Samaritan woman’s words with Jesus in John 4:25 should be read.

In summary, the differences in the Samaritan Bible are substantive. But how was this distinct Bible recovered by Western scholars?

The study of the Samaritan Pentateuch

From the 17th c. until 1947

The Samaritan Pentateuch (SP) was first “discovered” by westerners in 1616 when an Italian traveler named Pietro della Valle (1586–1652) acquired a manuscript of the Samaritan Hebrew Pentateuch when traveling in Damascus. This manuscript made its way to Europe in 1623 and would eventually be published in the famed Paris and London polyglots, the latter of which gained a very wide circulation. Scholars immediately noticed the many textual variations which the Samaritan Pentateuch bore when compared with the traditional Jewish Hebrew or Masoretic Text.

The London Polyglot (1657) included the Samaritan Pentateuch (right page, second column from left). Source

Since the flames of the Protestant Reformation were still roaring when the Samaritan Pentateuch arrived, naturally the previously unknown text was deployed in debate by both sides of the Catholic–Protestant divide. Initially, some Roman Catholics defended the Samaritan Pentateuch as a means to prop up the Septuagint (with which the Samaritan Pentateuch bears many shared readings against the Masoretic Text) so as to bolster ecclesiastical authority; Protestants, on the other hand, severely depreciated the Samaritan Pentateuch for the sake of fortifying the Masoretic Text in service to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Eventually, however, the Samaritan Pentateuch would gain admirers and detractors on both sides.

Nevertheless, after less-than-purely-scientific disputation, H. F. Wilhelm Gesenius (1786–1842) published a short, seminal study in 1815 which seemingly ended the debate. Gesenius argued much more forensically that the Samaritan Pentateuch indeed formed a different recension of the Hebrew Pentateuch and agreed it bore much resemblance to the Septuagint (LXX).

Illustration by Peter Gurry. Images from iStock
The Most Important Bible Translation You’ve Never Heard of
Used by the Apostles and the early church, the Greek translations of the Old Testament may be the most important ever made.
William A. Ross

However, according to his analysis, this SP-LXX recension was secondary to the Masoretic Text in every conceivable way, especially textually, as many of these variations appeared to remove textual or grammatical difficulties or were literarily harmonistic in nature. Furthermore, he claimed that the textual branch represented by the Samaritan Pentateuch had been further corrupted by “half-learned scribes” who added long sections from parallel passages and other more nefarious changes, such as reading “Gerizim” rather than “Ebal” in Deuteronomy 27:4, 12 as a means of promoting their sacral temple mount over and against Jerusalem. Gesenius’s arguments won the day, and, with very few exceptions, scholars subsequent to him more or less followed suit.

Research since 1947

Then in 1947 the textual landscape of the Hebrew Bible completely changed with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The caves of Qumran revealed ancient Hebrew scrolls that were not Samaritan but still agreed textually with the Samaritan Pentateuch against the later Masoretic Text. These included a scroll with the expanded Plague Narrative in Exodus, such as 4QpaleoExodus^m (4Q22), and others evincing passages from Deuteronomy inserted into the parallel accounts in Numbers, as in 4QNumbers^b (4Q27).

As a result, Gesenius’s thesis had to be reconsidered. Although the last 30 years have seen much debate amongst specialists as to precise nature of these scrolls and their exact textual relationship to the Samaritan Pentateuch, since these manuscripts (and others like them) were Jewish, they are now, as a group, generally described as “pre-Samaritan” (some prefer “proto-”) since they are not sectarian in nature. Apparently, the Samaritans adopted a recension of the Pentateuch, which had a much wider circulation in the Judaism of the Second Temple period, and only added a “thin layer” of sectarian readings favoring Gerizim as the proper location of worship.

However, many questions remain involving the proper descriptor of this recension (was it a “popular” or “academic” version?); the nature of the Samaritans’ adoption of it (was it intentional or incidental?); and the number of readings belonging to the “thin layer” (they differ from scholar to scholar). Most pointedly, based on the trends of the last few years, scholars may dispense with even this “thin layer” in the near future.

A somewhat inelegant English translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch was published in 2013 by Benyamim Tsedaka, himself a native Samaritan, entitled The Israelite Samaritan Version of the Torah: First English Translation Compared with the Masoretic Version. The differences from the Masoretic Text, against which it is set in parallel columns, are printed in bold.

At present, a new critical edition of the Samaritan Pentateuch is being issued under the editorial leadership of Prof. Dr. Stefan Schorch. The volumes for Leviticus (2018) and Genesis (2021) have been published so far. The volume for Exodus is due to be published next.

Yet while the Dead Sea Scrolls greatly add to our knowledge of the Samaritan Pentateuch, the primary witnesses to it remain those from the Middle Ages.

The text of the Samaritan Pentateuch

Today, the Samaritan Pentateuch exists in codices from the 12th century. Written in a distinctive form of ancient Hebrew script, its text has a number of features which are no longer deemed unique or sectarian. Many shared readings with LXX do exist, although scholars now believe the agreement with the Greek and disagreement with the Masoretic Text is far less so than was previously described. We can list just a few of the more noteworthy features.

Expansions and harmonizations

As noted above, throughout the Plague Narrative (Exod. 7–12) the narrative is “expanded” by means of repetition, in order to explicitly describe Moses’ execution of each of God’s commands. Thus, at Exodus 7:18, the Samaritan Pentateuch has seven additional verses that detail Moses actually going to Pharaoh and relating God’s exact words. Insertions of parallel materials are also prevalent. For instance, at Numbers 27:23, the Samaritan Pentateuch supplies the dialogue with which Moses commissions Joshua as recorded in Deuteronomy 3:21–22, seemingly shaping the former as the source for the latter. The result is a kind of harmony of the two passages. Altogether, there are approximately 40 such passages from the Samaritan Pentateuch that either seem to expand or harmonize the text.

Altogether, there are approximately 40 passages from the Samaritan Pentateuch that either seem to expand or harmonize the text.

Yet, Qumran manuscripts also record most of these same passages (or can be reconstructed as containing them), and indeed some textual evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls show expansions or harmonizations beyond those found in the Samaritan Pentateuch.

Scholarly explanations for these sorts of passages known from the “pre-Samaritan” recension differ. Some contend that they are merely formalistic editorial devices, while others argue they are meant to increase the credibility of prophetic speech and/or action. It has even been suggested that these passages form a “Moses layer” (this is Magnar Kartveit’s terminology) which reinforces Moses’ position as the prophet par excellence over and against the later prophetic corpus. Since the Samaritans reject post-Mosaic prophecy, this could explain why they would adopt the pre-Samaritan recension as their preferred Bible text.

The Samaritan tenth commandment

One of the “expansions” or “harmonizations” found in SP Exodus 20 merits special consideration, the so-called Samaritan Tenth Commandment. Immediately after the Commandment against coveting, the Samaritan Pentateuch contains a passage comprised of Deuteronomy 11:29, 27:2–7, and 11:30. Together, it states that, after entering the Holy Land, the Israelites are to write the Law (= the Decalogue) on stones, set them up, build an altar on Mount Gerizim, and celebrate before the Lord. The rendition also specifically locates Gerizim as “opposite Shechem” reading with SP Deuteronomy 11:30 (all other versions lack this specific locative).

This passage, also recorded in SP Deuteronomy 5, is traditionally understood by the Samaritan community to be the Tenth Commandment, and indeed it is marked as such in some, though not all, Samaritan codices. (The earlier Commandments are differently numbered to achieve this effect; it is not an Eleventh Commandment as it is sometimes called.)

The so-called Samaritan Tenth Commandment in a Samaritan manuscript from AD 1215–1216 (Schorch J1/Jerusalem National Library Sam. 2° 6, ff. 106–107). Photo from The National Library of Israel

Initially, the modern editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls insisted that any reconstruction of 4Q22, which is fragmentary at this point, could not possibly be reconstructed as containing the passage. After all, based on the traditional Samaritan exegesis, the passage was then presumed to be the chief part of the “thin layer” which the Samaritans added to the pre-Samaritan recension, specifically meant to justify their worship on Gerizim. Such has been the consensus in the majority of recent scholarship.

However, most recently scholars have begun to question this, and a recent article by Hila Dayfani argues, based on a digital reconstruction of 4Q22, that the scroll did originally contain the passage.¹ If her ground-breaking, new study persuades other scholars, then it may very well be that there is really nothing Samaritan about the Samaritan Pentateuch after all.

The Samaritan Pentateuch and Christian Bibles

Today, the majority of Christian English translations stick rather closely to the Masoretic Text. Nevertheless, these translations utilize the Samaritan Pentateuch to varying degrees to emend the Masoretic Text, most often in conjunction with other witnesses (e.g., LXX, Dead Sea Scrolls). For example, the NRSV reads at Genesis 4:8: “Cain said to his brother Abel, ‘Let us go out to the field.’” The footnote explains that this translation comes from the Samaritan Pentateuch, LXX, Syriac Peshitta, and Latin Vulgate while the Masoretic Text lacks the phrase Let us go out to the field. This means that the Samaritan Pentateuch is cited as the only direct Hebrew evidence for the reading, even though it is reflected by other versions.

The ESV, however, treats this verse in the opposite manner, omitting Cain’s words to Abel but supplying them in a footnote: “Samaritan, Septuagint, Syriac, Vulgate add Let us go out to the field.” (The NET Bible follows NRSV with a more comprehensive textual explanation in the footnote.) Altogether the footnotes of the first edition of the ESV cite the Samaritan Pentateuch thirteen times. The Samaritan Pentateuch’s reading is preferred in eight of these cases,² again mostly in conjunction with other evidence. By contrast, the NRSV cites the Samaritan Pentateuch 25 times (five times in Deut. 32 alone), preferring it over the Masoretic Text each time, again largely in conjunction with other witnesses.

Conclusion

Whether Christians may or should adopt Samaritan Pentateuch readings for their Bibles is an interesting question, and a number of theological considerations must be taken into account, especially if a given ecclesial community explicitly vests authority in one text or another. However, in light of recent research, the Samaritan Pentateuch certainly merits consideration when weighing textual variants. In any case, the Samaritan Pentateuch represents a fascinating chapter in the history of the Bible and one that sheds light on key biblical episodes like Jesus’ encounter with a woman in need of living water.

Notes

1
See her, ‘4QpaleoExod^m and the Gerizim Composition’, Journal of Biblical Literature 141.4 (2022): 673–698.
2
Gen. 47:21; Exod. 1:22; 13:19; 14:25; 20:18; Num. 21:30; Deut. 11:14; 33:17

How Was the Divine Name Translated in the Reformation? Part 4

Translators have wrestled with the divine name for centuries. Some have used it only to reverse course later.

Andrew Case

The previous articles in this series considered God’s desire for us to use his name, how the pronunciation was lost, and how the New Testament writers handled the matter. It remains, finally, to consider how it has been handled by translators since the Reformation. In that time there have been various departures from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, which rendered the divine name as Dominus (“Lord/Master”), while others have maintained the tradition, which goes back to the Septuagint.

The Reformers’ view

Luther and Calvin were not in agreement on this. Luther followed the tradition of the Septuagint and used the German title “Herr” (Lord) in all caps, while Calvin’s choice was to use “Jehovah” for his French translation of the Psalms. Calvin explained his decision as follows:

It would be tedious to recount the various opinions as to the name “Jehovah.” It is certainly a foul superstition of the Jews that they dare not speak, or write it, but substitute the name “adonai;” nor do I any more approve of their teaching, who say that it is ineffable, because it is not written according to grammatical rule … Nor do I agree with the grammarians, who will not have it pronounced, because its inflection is irregular; because its etymology, of which all confess that God is the author, is more to me than an hundred rules.¹

The Wycliffe version of the Bible in English used “the Lord,” as did Tyndale’s unfinished translation of the Old Testament, but in a few places, like Exodus 6:3, he rendered “Iehouah.” This set a precedent for all early Protestant bibles, except Coverdale’s translation (1535). The King James Bible printed “Lord” in all caps when it represented YHWH, except in four places (Exod. 6:3, Ps. 83:18, Isa. 12:2; 26:4) where the translators felt the need to render it as a proper name, and in these places the name “Iehouah” appeared in the first printing (spelled as “Jehova” in later editions).

Casiodoro de Reina, the first translator of the most famous Spanish version of the Bible (the Reina-Valera), took particular interest in avoiding the substitution of a title for the divine name. In the prologue to the 1569 publication of his work, he wrote the following:

We have retained the name (Iehovah), not without serious reasons. First of all, because wherever it will be found in our version, it is in the Hebrew text, and it seemed to us that we could not leave it, nor change it for another without infidelity and singular sacrilege against the law of God, in which it is commanded “Do not take away from it, or add to it” (Deut. 4:4 and Prov. 30:5) … It also seemed to us that this mutation cannot be made without contravening God’s advice, and in a certain way wanting to amend it, as if He had done wrong all the times that his Spirit in Scripture declared this name, and it was to be another. And it is true, that not without particular and very serious advice, God revealed it to the world, and wanted his servants to know and invoke him; it would be a reckless thing to abandon it, and reckless superstition to neglect it, on the pretext of reverence.

Someone could argue to us here that neither Christ nor the Apostles in their writings made amends for this error, etc. To this we answer, that they were never in charge of making versions, or correcting the facts, but attentive to a greater and more central matter, which was the announcement of the advent of the Messiah, and of his glorious Kingdom. They used the common version, which was then in use, which seems to have been that of the Seventy [the Septuagint], because they had plenty of it for their main purpose.

Casiodoro De Reina’s 1569 Spanish translation used “Iehoua” throughout as seen here in Exodus 3.

Modern translations

By the nineteenth century, German scholars began to point out that the name “Jehovah” was a mistaken pronunciation, but many scholarly works in England continued to use “Jehovah.” In spite of these trends, English Christians did not see the necessity to produce an altered version of the Bible.

By the nineteenth century, German scholars began to point out that the name “Jehovah” was a mistaken pronunciation.

It wasn’t until the 1880s that “Yahweh” became a more frequently used pronunciation among scholars and students. Then, in 1901, American scholars prepared their own edition of the Revised Version (a revision of the KJV) for publication in the USA, known as the American Standard Version (ASV). In this version they decided to use “Jehovah” consistently. Even though they were aware that Jehovah was not an accurate pronunciation, they decided it would be received better because it was still more well-known than Yahweh. They explained in their preface:

The American Revisers, after a careful consideration were brought to the unanimous conviction that a Jewish superstition, which regarded the Divine Name as too sacred to be uttered, ought no longer to dominate in the English or any other version of the Old Testament, as it fortunately does not in the numerous versions made by modern missionaries.²

Benjamin B. Warfield, who was influential at the time of the publication, expressed strong approval of this decision. But the public had a harder time accepting the change. As the Princeton Seminary Bulletin later remarked, “However correct this practice might be in scholarly theory—for the word in Hebrew is indeed a proper name, not a title—it was disastrous from the point of view of the liturgical, homiletical, and devotional use of the Bible, and was almost universally disliked.”³ Thus, when it came time to revise the ASV, the committee decided to revert to using “the Lord” instead of Jehovah. The resulting RSV was published in 1952.

This would not be the last time modern versions flipflopped on the divine name. The Catholic NJB version (1966) used “Yahweh,” but the revision switched to “the Lord” in 2019. The Holman Christian Standard Bible (2004) used “Yahweh” (albeit inconsistently), and then decided to reverse their decision only five years later with the Christian Standard Bible revision.

To date, only one mainstream English Bible is committed to translating God’s name as a name: the Legacy Standard Version (2021), which is a revision of the NASB. The revisers write: “The effect of revealing God’s name is His distinction from other gods and His expression of intimacy with the nation of Israel. Such a dynamic is a prevalent characteristic of the Scriptures.” That said, since 1960 there are other (not mainstream) bibles that have arisen specifically to restore the translation of God’s name (more about that here). It should also be mentioned that the World English Bible (public domain) uses “Yahweh” consistently.

Conclusion

History shows us how the winds of market forces, fickle human opinions, ignorance, and tradition can toss modern versions to and fro and blow them about, especially regarding the translation of God’s name.

Will translations like the LSB suddenly fall out of vogue and turn course as others have done? My hope is that the English Bible publishers rise to the task of taking a clear, systematic, robustly biblical stand on what they are going to do with the divine name and why. It is not an issue that can be resolved in a few paragraphs of a version’s preface or a few pages on a website. Rather, it calls for a decision based solidly on Scripture’s teaching that leaves no stone unturned, documented exhaustively, and open to the public.

Notes

1
John Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony by John Calvin, trans. Charles W. Bingham (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1843), 127.
2
Preface to the ASV, 1901, accessed January 16, 2021, https://biblia.com/books/asv/offset/389.
3
Robert C. Dentan, “The Story of the New Revised Standard Version,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin vol 11, no. 3 (Nov 1990): 212.

Why Didn’t the New Testament Authors Use God’s Name? Part 3

The use of “Lord” for the divine name probably helped identify Jesus with the God of the Old Testament.

Andrew Case

We know that the inhibition for pronouncing God’s name came before Christianity, although we don’t know how widespread it was. It’s possible that rendering the divine name as “Lord” (kurios) had already been a strong tradition for centuries by the time we get to Jesus and the apostles. What’s clear is that the New Testament manuscripts we have all follow the tradition that the Septuagint set, which was to substitute the title “Lord” (kurios) for God’s name (YHWH). So, the fact that the New Testament never uses God’s personal name as revealed in the Old Testament, or even an approximation of it, is crucial.

Why did the New Testament authors choose to do this? Was it because they thought God’s name was too sacred to write out in Greek transliteration and feared that God might strike them down if they did so? Or, had its pronunciation already been forgotten to history? Were they afraid that the Jews might be angry about it? Or, was it some other reason(s)? The writers never tell us why, so everything that follows here is speculation. Nevertheless, it’s an honest attempt to grapple with the issue.

The New Testament authors knew the Old Testament

Because the New Testament authors knew their Hebrew Bible better than we do, it’s highly unlikely that they were ignorant of God’s desire expressed in Exodus 3:15, the way David and the prophets freely spoke to God, calling him by name, and other passages we looked at in part 1 of this series. So, it’s safe to say that they didn’t consider God’s name too sacred to use in transliteration. Finally, we can eliminate the idea that they did so out of fear of the Jews, since they consciously did many other things that infuriated the Jews and brought persecution on them. So, let’s explore some other possibilities.

The influence of the Septuagint

First, it should be understood that the Septuagint became the standard for Jewish communities that were forgetting Hebrew in the midst of a world increasingly dominated by other languages like Greek, Aramaic, and Latin. The New Testament writers quoted from the Septuagint extensively, and it was a beloved text to the early Church. When a text is used as a standard for centuries like the Septuagint was, many things become ingrained in tradition.

So it’s highly probable that the Septuagint’s use of the title kurios in the place of God’s name came to be a strong tradition in many circles. And because of this, it’s also probable that kurios came to be treated as a proper name, even though it’s not technically or lexically accurate to call it a name. (A modern example of a proper name would be “Joe,” and his title is “Mr. President”) If a community treats a title like a proper name for long enough, it will inevitably begin to feel like a proper name. Subsequent generations will continue to use it, not because they believe it’s wrong to pronounce the actual name, but simply because it feels like God’s name. This has happened in English and many other languages with the title “the Lord.”

So it’s plausible that the New Testament authors upheld the tradition of kurios as a centuries-old tradition that people were accustomed to using to refer to God in a personal way. Since they were trying to communicate clearly to a wide range of listeners, some of whom didn’t speak Hebrew and were already familiar with calling the God of Israel kurios, they kept it as a convention for avoiding confusion in their message.

At the same time, they were interested in heralding a new covenant in which a new name came to be exalted: Jesus. In Philippians 2:9–11 Paul writes: “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

I am convinced, along with many other scholars, that bestowing on Jesus the name/title “Lord,” as the equivalent of Yahweh, is how Jesus has been exalted to the highest place. The twofold result clause that makes up verses 10 and 11 is a direct borrowing of language from Isaiah 45:23, where Yahweh (the Lord) says that “before me every knee shall bow, and every tongue will swear [Septuagint has ‘confess’]” that “in the Lord alone are righteousness and strength.” This emphasis on “the Lord” (YHWH) as the one unto whom all shall give obeisance, seems to certify that what Paul has in mind is none other than the name, YHWH itself, but in its Greek form of “the Lord,” which has now been “given” to Jesus.

So, “the name that is above every name” is Yahweh. And this probably has another layer of significance: the name Jesus, Yeshua (in Hebrew) means “Yahweh is salvation.” The divine name is historically embedded within Jesus’ name, and this is evident to those who understand Hebrew. But most of the people the New Testament authors were trying to reach were more familiar with Greek, so kurios served as a better way to show the relationship between Jesus/Yeshua and Yahweh.

Intertestamental hyperlinks

It seems that Martin Luther understood that the New Testament authors upheld this tradition of using kurios so that people could “draw the strong conclusion that Christ is the true God,”¹ by associating Christ the kurios with the kurios of the Old Testament instead of having two different proper names Yahweh and Yeshua.

In other words, the Septuagint’s use of kurios was paving the way for a seamless, convenient, intelligible way to connect Jesus with Yahweh. The ability to use the same title for both Yahweh and Jesus throughout the New Testament made the overlap natural and more apparent to a Greek-speaking world. It facilitated a high Christology, and effortlessly infused the statement “Jesus is Lord” (Rom. 10:9) with a double meaning (see how this convention made Paul’s teaching possible in 1 Cor. 8:5–6).

Just as Jesus saw himself all throughout the Old Testament (Luke 24:44), and just as the apostles consistently identified Jesus with Yahweh through allusion and direct quotation of Old Testament passages, the use of kurios allowed early Christians to see and hear that continuity between the testaments, identifying Christ as the God of Israel with a hyperlink across covenants (see another example in Rom. 10:13).

So, it would seem that the apostles saw a few advantages in using kurios/Lord in place of God’s name: (1) it preserved an old tradition spread by the loved and respected Septuagint; (2) most probably treated kurios as a name; (3) it may have served to make extra clear that Jesus is Yahweh, the God of Israel.

Does this mean that they ignored God’s desire in Exodus 3:15? Not at all.

Does this mean that they ignored God’s desire in Exodus 3:15? Not at all. Since they were Jews and could read the scriptures in Hebrew, they were probably satisfied that God’s name was preserved there, in its natural habitat. They weren’t trying to publish a new translation of the Old Testament at the time. If they had, they may have made some different decisions than the original translators had concerning God’s name. Likewise, if they had written the New Testament in Hebrew, they probably would have used YHWH for God’s name.

It’s important to approach this issue with humility. There are some people who would disagree with my hypothesis. Some believe that much of the New Testament was originally written in Hebrew (which is what multiple Church Fathers claimed), and therefore contained the divine name. Others believe that early Christian scribes changed what the original authors wrote to kurios/Lord for reasons unknown to us. There is no physical evidence for either of these claims.

An idea for modern versions

This brings us to the question: Is it possible to help contemporary readers enjoy the same advantages in a new translation of the whole Bible while rendering God’s name in the Old Testament as a name? Yes. God is called by the title adonai (“Lord”) over 700 times in the Old Testament, which maintains the hyperlink between both testaments. Thus, modern versions could simply translate those occurrences of adonai as “Lord” and render all 6,800+ occurrences of yhwh as “Yahweh.” The overlap the apostles enjoyed would be preserved while still honoring God’s desire in Exodus 3:15 and making clear to the reader that God actually has a name.

In conclusion, the New Testament authors probably used kurios because it ended up being a naming convention that helped identify Jesus with the God of the Old Testament. Modern Bible publishers should feel at liberty to break with the Septuagint’s tradition, since the title “Lord” occurs so many times in the Hebrew Bible in reference to Yahweh. Over the centuries some English versions have chosen to render God’s name as a name in different ways, and this fascinating history is the topic of the final installment in this series.

Illustration by David Fassett
How Was the Divine Name Translated in the Reformation? Part 4
Translators have wrestled with the divine name for centuries. Some have used it only to reverse course later.
Andrew Case

This article is in the public domain. You may freely use, share, and reproduce it. For a more in-depth treatment, see here.

Notes

1
Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 35: Word and Sacrament I, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 35 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999), 248–249.

What Makes a Bible Translation Really Bad?

No translation is perfect. But really bad translations are idiosyncratic and mislead innocent Bible readers.

Mark Ward

If you find an English Bible translation on your Christian bookstore shelf, it’s almost certainly good. Buy it. Read it. Trust it.

But there are some “bad Bibles” out there, Bibles you won’t find careful evangelical biblical scholars recommending. In my last article I discussed Bible translations that give in to sectarian impulses. In this article, I discuss the second major category of bad Bibles: crackpot translations.

I’ll drastically qualify that word “bad” for some of these; and “crackpot” is about as nice a thing to say as “sectarian,” I’m afraid. Perhaps I should say instead, “idiosyncratic.” Some Bibles are indeed just odd; they rely on ideas about Scripture that are just weird—the kinds of ideas that make you purse your lips and glance from side to side, looking for a way out of this conversation ASAP, the kinds of ideas that get weeded out when translators must have accredited degrees and work in a group with checks and balances.

I have a soft spot in my heart for idiosyncratic evangelical Bible translations. I think they are, from one perspective, a great problem to have. The Bible is such an absorbing interest of American evangelicals that we produce extraneous Bible study resources. (I don’t see Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox doing this, though I admit I may simply be ignorant here.) And I assume these idiosyncratic projects usually don’t do much harm. But if they’re not “bad” in the consequentialist sense, they’re not good either. And they merit our attention here. I will give, again, four examples.

The Bible is such an absorbing interest of American evangelicals that we produce extraneous Bible study resources.

1. The Amplified Bible

I hope I don’t offend anyone, but the Amplified Bible is a good example of what I’m talking about. When I first encountered this Bible edition as an 18-year-old, I was intrigued to have provided for me in such a convenient format the “fuller meaning” of the Hebrew and Greek I hadn’t yet studied at the time. It was as a young college student that I bought the Comparative Study Bible, a four-version parallel Bible including the KJV, the NIV, the NASB, and the Amplified. But I didn’t end up using that last one much; it came to feel like the editors were just piling on English synonyms in all those many brackets that fill (and clutter) the Amplified Bible. Who possibly is helped by adding that parenthetical to the following sentence?

We ourselves (you and I) are Jews by birth. (Gal. 2:15a AMP)

And how many readers will understand that systematic theology, and not “the true meaning of the Greek,” has been inserted in a bracket into this statement?

If, in our desire and endeavor to be justified in Christ [to be declared righteous and put in right standing with God wholly and solely through Christ] … (Gal. 2:17 AMP)

(I chose the first two examples my eyes fell upon when I opened the Amplified at random.)

What I came to like about the Amplified was actually that, because its interpolations made it so much longer than the other Bible translations, it opened up margin space at the bottom of pages for me to take notes in. My purposes would have been better served, however, if the column taken up by the Amplified had simply been left blank.

The Amplified Bible was published in 1965 to provide “clarifying shades of meaning” to Hebrew and Greek words. Source

After I learned Hebrew and Greek, I came to feel that the Amplified was mostly harmless but that it raised false expectations among readers—readers who thought they were getting deeper insight than they really were. This isn’t entirely its fault, but the Amplified Bible inserts interpretation into the text in a way that, I discovered, misleads lay readers into thinking that they’re being told something from the Hebrew or Greek that traditional English translations obscure.

2. את Cepher

Cepher is an English Bible translation far weirder than the Amplified. The progenitor of Cepher—whose name I don’t care to give but who, I note, claims to have a doctorate but provides no details regarding it that I could find—is fascinated with the alleged power and depth of the Hebrew language in a way that echoes the Tree of Life Version (discussed here). But he takes his fascination to a level I can only call, well, idiosyncratic—and he places his most eccentric idea on the very cover of his Bible edition. We’ll get there; first, some other oddities in Cepher.

In the introduction to Cepher, we are given examples of the many Hebrew words that are transliterated rather than translated in this volume.

Another wonderful [Hebrew] word we have elected to use in the text is the word yachiyd (יחיד) which in its use declares tremendous meaning. In its first use, we find it in Bere’shiyth (Genesis) with the instruction to Avraham, saying: … “Take now your son, your yachiyd Yitschaq, whom you love.”

But yachid just means “only.” It does not have tremendous meaning. It should not be transliterated in an English Bible at all; it should be translated. But Cepher gets weirder as it traces this “wonderful word” throughout the Hebrew Bible and into the New Testament. At the end of its discussion of the Hebrew word for “only,” Cepher’s introduction says,

It is with these considerations that we have made the following change: “For Elohiym so loved the world, that he gave his yachiyd, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

So a Hebrew transliteration into Roman characters is inserted into an English translation of a Greek sentence. From the middle of this language mélange, two key ideas are dropped out: where is the word “Son”? And where is the “begottenness” that forms such an important part of the doctrine of the eternal generation of that divine Son? I’m not saying the editors in charge of Cepher undercut Trinitarianism on purpose; I doubt that, honestly. My guess is that they are so fascinated with the nifty possibilities provided by faux insights into Hebrew that they got carried away.

Cepher does this with other Hebrew words that, it alleges, “carry … additional meaning” beyond what English is capable of communicating. This is why we get Hebrew transliterations elsewhere in the Cepher New Testament. In John 17, for example, Cepher has Jesus praying that his disciples “all may be yachad,” the Hebrew word for “one.” Exactly whom or how this helps is to me very much unclear.

Cepher also “restores” many Hebrew names by making more tortuous transliterations of them than we already possess in the English Bible tradition (is Avraham really more deep or accurate or even Jewish than Abraham?). Moses is Mosheh in Cepher; Joshua is Husha; Jesus is Yahushua. And Jesus’ name gets a fanciful etymology that contradicts what the angel Gabriel told Mary. Instead of “Yahweh saves,” Cepher says that Yahushua means “Yah is He who makes equal.”

The Cepher translation claims to “restores the Hebrew את” for English readers. Source

The Cepher intro also finds impossible phonemic connections between Hebrew and English, connections that aren’t really there—like seeing the English word “hell” in the Hebrew word the KJV translates as “Lucifer.” This is a game a clever person could play all day long in every language of the world. It is crackpottery.

My last complaint about Cepher (though I could go on, I assure you) regards a Hebrew word on its cover. It’s just two characters long; you could pronounce it “et.” But it’s actually not a word, per se; it’s a grammatical marker indicating that what follows is a direct object. It’s kind of like the practice in German of capitalizing nouns. It’s rare that this is truly needed; it’s just something biblical Hebrew does. But Cepher’s introduction finds great importance in this little non-word—and by doing so it falls into a very, very old Bible translation trap. Cepher’s intro says that this Hebrew word “has escaped translation in all English texts.” I regard that as a very misleading claim. English just doesn’t need the direct object marker to communicate which element of the sentence is the direct object. The word is “translated” properly by simply making good English sentences with proper Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) word order. In “God created the heavens and the earth,” the direct objects are utterly clear. We don’t have—because we don’t need—a direct object marker in English.

But there is an almost superstitious idea abroad—and I’ve seen it among Christians who ought to know better, I’m afraid—that if there’s a “word” in the Hebrew or Greek, there needs to be at least one word reflecting it in any English translation that wishes to regard itself as faithful. This is an old trap because a Jewish Bible translator, Aquila, did almost exactly the same thing twenty centuries ago while moving from Hebrew to Greek, producing impossible sentences.¹ Cepher dials this tendency up to 11. The Cepher intro alleges that the first letter of this two-letter “word” is “a symbol of strength and is often construed as a crown of leadership.” The second letter allegedly “means the mark, or sign, or covenant.” Put all these tea leaves and animal entrails together into a pot with a crack in it, and this is what you get: meaningless untranslated and even untransliterated Hebrew in the middle of English Bible verses:

In the beginning Elohiym created את the heavens and את the earth. (Bere’shiyth 1:1)

This is beyond bizarre. And it is double beyond bizarre—like, actually setting up shop in a real-live bazaar—that Cepher does this even in the New Testament:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with את Elohiym, and Elohiym was the Word. (Yochanon 1:1)

I feel rather confident that no plow boys will understand this, because there’s nothing there to understand. I, for one, cannot make any sense of it: “God” is not the direct object in that sentence, so why does it need a direct object marker?

At the foundation of the Cepher superstructure, lying underneath the stratigraphic levels archaeologists have excavated so far, are thousands of cracked pots. I deny flatly—and I actually find this to be theologically important—that Hebrew carries “tremendous additional meaning” that English or Russian or Sara Kaba Dem or Lamogai or Urdu cannot. There is not—there is not—something you can know about onlyness or oneness or Jesus or hell or Paul or direct objects (!) that you have to know Hebrew to really understand.

And hear me, brothers and sisters: you don’t have to say any name in Hebrew, including the name of God, to get the full power of that name. That’s Harry Potterism, not Christianity. The God who knows what you need before you ask does not demand that you pronounce everything right before he’ll listen. He’s not telling us, “You said, ‘Wingardium leviosa,’ and your prayer will not work until you say, ‘Wingardium levioSA.’ ” You can relate to God in your heart language without fear that you’re missing something essential. Projects like Cepher don’t exactly prey on this fear; they are manifestations of it.

You can relate to God in your heart language without fear that you’re missing something essential.

The things you’ll miss in Scripture if you don’t know Hebrew or Greek are almost always minor grammatical niceties—or, perhaps, technical details that help interpretation mainly at that technical level. You can know God and love him and obey him and have good theology without direct reference to the biblical languages—though, of course, I’m not discouraging you at all from learning them! I’m just trying to encourage those who haven’t had the opportunity not to enter a rabbit trail full of traps.

3. Pure Word

Now to the third crackpot/idiosyncratic Bible: the Pure Word New Testament. This one is so odd that I think it has to be pretty harmless. But I think it has something to teach us, as sort of a reductio ad crackpottem.

The Pure Word is endorsed by the president of One Path Publishing, who said,

There are over 450 English New Testament translations, all containing inaccuracies that never fully reference the original Koine Greek definitions and each word’s original parsings. The Pure Word research project did just that.

And what is One Path Publishing? It’s not a publisher; it’s a website for the Pure Word New Testament. And who is the president of One Path? The same man who made the Pure Word New Testament—and who just claimed that all the other English New Testaments contain “inaccuracies” and “never fully reference the original Koine Greek definitions.” The progenitor of the Pure Word—itself an arrogant title, I must say—speaks with deep gravity in his promo video, insisting that “English is a very imprecise language” and that “only recently, with breakthroughs in monadic-based translation” can we really understand the Bible “exactly the way the early church understood it 2,000 years ago.” This is all uncomfortably close to rhetoric I’ve heard among more responsible Christians; let this be a warning to us. None of this is true.

And yet he sings the same note all idiosyncratic translations love to play so loudly: if we study his translation, he says, we will “receive the full meaning and blessing that Christ always meant for us to have.”

But when you actually look at the Pure Word, searching for the incredible insight its marketing materials promise (or for any kind of serious definition of “monadic hermeneutics”), you get not even a cracked pot, which maybe you could piece together with superglue, but instead one of the potsherds with which Job scraped his skin.

Because, God has Loved in such a manner the satan’s world, so that He Gave His Son, the Only Begotten Risen Christ, in order that whoever is Continuously by his choice Committing for the Result and Purpose of Him, should not perish, but definitely should, by his choice, be Continuously Having Eternal Life. (John 3:16 The Pure Word)

This is ham-handed bunkum, from the awkward capitalization to the first-year-Greek-student over-specificity to the unexpected appearance of Satan in a verse where he actually wasn’t prowling for once. The search for the holy grail of literalness, the translation that has no errors or even that can’t be misunderstood—these are all understandable impulses, but they run aground on reality. God made translation a usually straightforward but sometimes vexingly difficult and imperfect science. And he’s still good. We don’t have to—and we can’t—step in to solve problems God does not regard as problems.

4. The Passion Translation

But we’re not done. I’ve got a fourth idiosyncratic Bible to mention. It’s time to examine The Passion Translation. YouTuber Mike Winger has already done an excellent job critiquing this English Bible translation, even hiring major evangelical biblical scholars to help him. I myself have made some effort at describing the eccentric and impracticable linguistic ideas that were used to create TPT. I’ll add only a few thoughts here.

I could probably have placed this version in the “sectarian” category; it does come from a portion of Pentecostalism considered extreme even by other continuationists. But I think that one of the points I’m slowly making inductively in this long article is that good Bible translations will demonstrate that they have paid attention to the way God’s gift of language actually works. They won’t propose impossible linguistic ideas or promise special insight into “what God really meant” in the originals, insight no other translations provide. They won’t baptize one language as specially divine.

TPT does all these things. Briefly:

TPT translator Brian Simmons’ idea of Hebrew homonymy is simply linguistically impossible. To say that Hebrew words that sound the same can mean both things is somewhat like my joke about “bizarre” and “bazaar” earlier. Ha ha. Dad joke. It’s like going to the Pe’e Pe’e (peh’-ay peh’-ay) Falls in Hawaii—literally around the corner from my sister’s house—and giggling because it “also means” Pee-Pee falls.
Simmons claims special insight into the “passionate heart of God,” insight he allegedly placed into his translation. But anytime I’ve actually looked at real verses Simmons wrote down in TPT, the passion of God is not something he pulls out of the text but something he adds in. Even the simple “Greet one another with a holy kiss” becomes, “Greet each other with a holy kiss of God’s love” (Rom 16:16 TPT). I’m not quite sure what that means, but I am sure that “of God’s love” is not in the Greek (nor in the Aramaic—I checked). Simmons did us the favor of italicizing these words, and there’s nothing wrong with commentary as long as people know it’s commentary—but Simmons has repeatedly claimed that these insights were actually divinely given to him and/or found in the “original Aramaic.”
Simmons at least chose a new candidate for the most holy and insightful and theologically accurate language. He chose not Hebrew, not Greek, but Aramaic, a relative of Hebrew. He is no more successful in this effort than anyone else has been. We have no good reasons to believe that the New Testament was originally written in Aramaic, as Simmons alleges.

Conclusion

I recently saw a funny meme that showed pictures from old TV shows I grew up watching. In the picture from each show, our hero is buried waist-deep in sand, struggling and in deadly peril. The caption read, “When I was a kid I thought quicksand was going to be a much bigger problem on a daily basis than it really is.” This word is truth.

In like manner: for all the terrible warnings people make about the perfidy and error of other people’s Bible translations, I’ve literally never once encountered a Bible-believing Christian who was misled in the ways predicted by the discernment gurus. I’ve never seen someone go soft on sexual sin, or on the exclusivity of Christ’s atonement, or even on dispensationalism or the rapture or whatever the fear-mongers might be concerned to protect—simply because that someone read an allegedly erroneous rendering in a Bible translation. When it comes to Bible translation: never have so many complained so much about so little.

I’ve literally never once encountered a Bible-believing Christian who was misled in the ways predicted by the discernment gurus.

But that doesn’t mean that everything out there is completely hunky or dory. There are some problems to spot. And I think those who are best equipped to spot erroneous or even simply idiosyncratic renderings in modern Bible translations are those who have come to appreciate, positively, why multiple Bible translations exist, and how they can help sincere students of Scripture. To such people, the “bad” Bibles out there will not pose a serious threat. Those who have the best discernment exercise that discernment as part of an overall positive vision. They don’t live in fear or believe all the conspiracy theories they hear.

So I think it’s important now to say something positive about all of the Bibles I’ve called “bad” in this and my last article. Not a single one of them is completely bad. Some of the more fruitcakey ones are mostly harmless; they’re so obviously impossible that I don’t think very many people will take them seriously. And I can often make myself believe that they arise from a good but misguided impulse, an impulse to really know God’s word.

Illustration by Peter Gurry. Photo from iStock
What Makes a Bible Translation Bad?
Sectarian translations go too far beyond the natural bias inherent in something as complex as translating the Bible.
Mark Ward

And even the more dangerous translations are still chock full of truth. Justin Taylor once gave the gospel from the New World Translation. I do not personally think that people are often led astray by “bad Bibles”; I suggest instead that it’s teachers who lead people astray.

I try to keep a taciturn, academic exterior while evaluating Bible translations. But sometimes my righteous soul is qatsared nearly unto death by the kind of linguistic silliness people perpetrate upon the Bible. I feel defensive for the sheep who are distressed and confused by some of the ideas that give rise to the “bad” Bibles I’ve surveyed in this article on crackpot Bibles and my previous one on sectarian ones. Sometimes I just want to nakah some Pilishtim.

I do just want to see regular Christians reading and trusting all the good English Bible translations we have.

You can watch this as a video.

Notes

1
See William A. Ross and Gregory R. Lanier, The Septuagint: What It Is and Why It Matters (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021), 90–91.

Topics

Levels

Translation

Previous scholarship

What’s in this Bible?

Dating the translators’ notes

Insights into the translators’ decisions

1. Mary’s purification (Luke 2:22)

2. Jesus’ rebuke of Satan (Matt. 4:10)

3. Greeting our friends (Matt. 5:47)

4. Two longer marginal notes (Luke 17:36; Matt. 26:26)

Conclusion

Notes

Syriac translations of the Bible

A translation in the language of Jesus

Translation choices and interpretive traditions

Encountering the Bible through the Peshitta

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Conclusion

Notes

The Samaritan’s and their canon

The study of the Samaritan Pentateuch

From the 17th c. until 1947

Related

Research since 1947

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The text of the Samaritan Pentateuch

Expansions and harmonizations

The Samaritan tenth commandment

The Samaritan Pentateuch and Christian Bibles

Conclusion

Notes

The Reformers’ view

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Modern translations

Conclusion

Notes

The New Testament authors knew the Old Testament

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The influence of the Septuagint

Intertestamental hyperlinks

An idea for modern versions

Related

Notes

1. The Amplified Bible

2. את Cepher

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3. Pure Word

4. The Passion Translation

Conclusion

Related

Notes

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