 Excerpt about the Scholars Versions
translation from The Acts of Jesus
The translators of the Scholars Version—SV for
short—have taken as their motto this dictum: a translation is artful to the extent that one can forget, while reading it, that it is a translation at all. Accordingly, rather than attempt to make SV a
thinly disguised guide to the original language, or a superficially modernized edition of the King James Version, the translators worked diligently to
produce in the American reader an experience comparable to that of the first readers—or listeners—of the original. It should be recalled that those
who first encountered the gospels did so as listeners rather than as readers. Why a new translation?
Foremost among the reasons for a fresh translation is the discovery of new
gospels and gospel fragments in the twentieth century. The scholars responsible for the Scholars Version determined that all the gospels had to be included in any primary collection.
Traditional English translations make the gospels sound like one another. The gospels are leveled out, presumably for liturgical reasons. In contrast,
the Greek originals differ markedly from one another. The SV translators attempt to give voice to the individual evangelists by reproducing the Greek style of each in English.
The translators agreed to employ colloquialisms in English for colloquialisms in Greek. When the leper comes up to Jesus and says, "If you want to, you
can make me clean," Jesus replies, "Okay—you're clean!" (Mark 1:40–41). They wanted to make aphorisms and proverbs sound like such. The SV panelists decided that "Since when do the able-bodied need a
doctor? It's the sick who do" (Mark 2:17) sounds more like a proverb than "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick."
They shunned pious terms and selected English equivalents for rough language. Matt 23:13 reads:
You scholars and Pharisees, you impostors! Damn you! You slam the door of Heaven's domain in people's faces. You yourselves don't enter, and you block the way of those trying to enter.
Contrast the New Revised Standard Version:
But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them.
"Woe" is not a part of the average American's working vocabulary. If a person wants to curse someone, that person would not say "woe to you,"
but "damn you." Moreover, the diction of New Revised Standard Version strikes the ear as faintly Victorian. In sum, the translators abandoned the
context of polite religious discourse suitable for a Puritan parlor and reinstated the common street language of the original. Modern translations, especially those made by academics and endorsed by
church boards, tend to reproduce the Greek text, more or less word-for-word. English words are taken from an English-Greek dictionary—always the same English word for the same Greek word—and
set down in their Greek order where possible. In Mark 4:9 and often elsewhere, this admonition appears in the King James Version: "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." In addition to being
sexist, that is the rendition of a beginning Greek student who wants to impress the instructor by reproducing the underlying Greek text in English.
One scholar among the SV translators proposed to make this substitution: "A wink is as good as a nod to a blind horse." The panel agreed that this
English proverb was an excellent way to represent the sense of the Greek text. However, the translators did not want to substitute an English
expression for one in Greek. They decided, rather, to represent not only the words, phrases, and expressions of the Greek text, but also to capture, if
possible, the tone and tenor of the original expression. As a consequence, SV translates the admonition: "Anyone here with two good ears had better
listen!" "Two good ears" is precisely what "ears to hear" means, except that it is said in English, and "had better listen" replaces the awkward English "let
him hear" "Had better listen" sounds like something parents might say to inattentive children; "let him hear" would strike the youngster as permission to eavesdrop.
The New Revised Standard Version also sounds quaint by comparison: "Let anyone with ears to hear listen." But then, the New Revised Standard Version is a revision of the King James Version.
In addition, SV has attempted to reproduce the assonance of the Greek text. The term "here" is a homophone of "hear": because the two words are
pronounced alike, one reminds the English ear of the other. "Anyone here with two good ears" has the succession sounds -ere, ear, which suggests
the assonance of the Greek text, which may be transliterated as ota akouein akoueto (the succession of akou-, akou- and of ota, -eto, with a
shift in vowels). The panelists were not always this successful, but this example does illustrate what they were trying to achieve. Grammatical form is also an important function of translation. The New
Revised Standard Version renders Luke 10:15 this way:
And you Capernaum,
will you be exalted to heaven?
No, you will be brought down to Hades.
The question in Greek is a rhetorical question, anticipating a negative response. Consequently, SV translates:
And you, Capernaum,
you don't think you'll be exalted to heaven, do you?
No, you'll go to Hell.
It is clear that the town of Capernaum could not, in the speaker's judgment, expect to be exalted to heaven. SV also replaces the archaic "Hades" with
"Hell": in American English we don't tell people to "go to Hades," unless we want to soften the expression in polite company; we tell them to "go to Hell." That is what the Greek text says.
Style is another significant aspect of translation. The style of the Gospel of Mark, for example, is colloquial and oral; it approximates street language.
Mark strings sentences together by means of simple conjunctions and hurry-up adverbs, which gives his prose a breathless quality. Both sentences
and events follow each other in rapid succession. His account of Peter's mother-in-law is typical (Mark 1:29–31):
They left the synagogue right away and went into the house of Simon and Andrew accompanied by James and John. Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her
right away. He went up to her, took hold of her hand, raised her up, and the fever disappeared. Then she started looking after them.
The Gospel of Luke, on the other hand, will sound more literary to the English ear than Mark, because Luke writes in a more elevated Greek style.
Mark often narrates in the present tense rather than in the simple past. He also frequently switches back and forth. Mark makes use of what is called
the imperfect tense in Greek, which is used to introduce the typical or customary. By turning Mark's present and imperfect tenses into simple past
tenses, translators in the King James tradition misrepresent and mislead: Mark's typical scenes are turned into singular events and the oral quality of
his style is lost. In contrast, Mark 4:1–2 is translated in SV as:
Once again he started to teach beside the sea. An enormous crowd gathers around him, so he climbs into a boat and sits there on the water facing the huge crowd on the shore.
He would then teach them many things in parables. In the course of his teaching he would tell them. . . .
This translation faithfully reproduces Mark's present tenses. The imperfect is represented by "would teach" and "would tell," which in English connotes
the usual, the customary. This is a typical scene for Mark, one that happened on more than one occasion. On such occasions, Jesus would teach in parables. Among the parables he uttered on those occasions was
the parable of the sower. At the conclusion of the parable, Mark adds: "And as usual he said, 'Anyone here with two good ears had better listen!"' According to Mark,
Jesus habitually appended this admonition to his parables. The Scholars Version attempts to capture Mark's oral style and to represent Mark's scenes as typical and repeated rather than as specific and
singular. The translators believe that excessive capitalization gives the gospels an old-fashioned look. Pronouns referring to God are no longer capitalized as
they once were. The term "son" is not capitalized when referring to Jesus. The word "messiah" is not capitalized in ordinary use; SV employs "the
Anointed" when it is used as a Christian epithet for Jesus. (The translators decided to avoid "Jesus Christ," since many readers take "Christ" as a last
name.) Similarly, "sabbath" is always left in lowercase, as is "temple," even when referring to the Jerusalem temple. The translators saw no reason to
capitalize "gentile," which, after all, in contrast to "Jew" means "foreigner, or stranger, or non-Jew" (We capitalize "Greek," but not "barbarian"; the two
terms represent a comparable division of humankind into two categories.) Part of the rationale in avoiding overcapitalization was the desire to
desacralize terms that in the original were common and secular; English translators have given them an unwarranted sacred dimension by capitalizing them.
The Scholars Version has been formatted in accordance with modern editorial practice. Paragraphing is employed to set off the change in
speakers in dialogue. Lengthy quotations, such as parables, are extracted and made to stand out from the surrounding narrative terrain. Punctuation
follows modem practice. The goal of the panel was to make SV look and sound like a piece of contemporary literature. For readers' ears only
The translators have made readability the final test of every sentence, every paragraph, every book. They have read the text silently to themselves,
aloud to one other, and have had it read silently and aloud by others. Every expression that did not strike the ear as native was reviewed and revised, not once but many times.
Translation is always a compromise, some say even a betrayal. If translators strive to make the Greek of the Gospel of Mark sound as familiar to the
modem American ear as the original did to its first readers, will they not have translated out many cultural expressions unfamiliar to contemporary
readers? Will they not have eliminated the archaic in the interests of readability? The panel agreed at the outset not to translate out the social and cultural
features of the text that are unfamiliar—worse yet, distasteful—to the modern reader. That would be to deny the contemporary reader any direct
experience of the world, the social context, of the original. On the contrary, they have tried to put those features, as alien and as distasteful as they
sometimes are, into plain English. So there are still slaves in the text, the Pharisees and the Judeans are often turned into uncomplimentary
stereotypes, Jesus gets angry and exasperated, the disciples are dim-witted, and the society of the Mediterranean world is male-dominated, to mention
only a few. At the same time, the translators have avoided sexist language where not required by the original. Male singulars are occasionally turned
into genderless plurals. The language of SV is inclusive wherever the text and its social context refer to people, not to a specific male or female. The tradition of translations
Translations of the Bible become necessary when users no longer read the original languages with ease. Early Christian communities adopted the Greek version of the Old
Testament as their own because most members who were literate read Greek, but not Hebrew. The New Testament was composed in Greek because that was the common language of the day, the lingua franca, of
the Roman world. But the Western church soon lost its facility with Greek and so switched to Latin, which then became the sacred language of both
Bible and liturgy The Eastern church has continued the ancient Greek tradition. One central issue in the Reformation was whether the Bible was to be made
accessible to the general population, or whether it was to remain the private province of theological scholars and the clergy. Martin Luther's translation
of the Bible into German marked a radical departure from the Latin tradition. His translation had one other major consequence: it provided the
German people with a single, unifying language for the first time in their history. The appearance of the version authorized by King James in 1611 continued
and advanced the tradition of translations into English, and it also put the English church on a firm political and cultural footing. The King James
Version helped canonize Shakespearean English as the literary norm for English speaking people everywhere. It also united English speakers worldwide.
The beauty and cadence of the King James Bible has retarded any interest in replacing it with a more accurate rendering. Theological conservatism also
functioned as a retarding factor, since many cardinal points rested on the English vocabulary of that version. However, even the elevated English of
the King James Version could not dam up progress forever. Toward the close of the nineteenth century, numerous English translations and revisions appeared. The tide became a flood in the twentieth century.
The English Bible tradition has been firmly established. Many English-speaking people do not even know that the original languages of the Bible were Hebrew (Old Testament) and Greek (New Testament).
Hebrew, Greek, and Latin are in use primarily among scholars and a decreasing number of clergy. Many seminaries no longer require candidates
for ordination to learn either biblical language. As a consequence, the English Bible has rapidly become the only version of the Bible known to
most English-speaking people, including many clergy. The Bible in English occupies the same position today that the Greek Bible did for the early
Christian movement and the Latin Bible did for the Roman Catholic church at an earlier time. Greek and Latin were replaced first by German and then by English. Based on ancient languages
The Scholars Version is based on the ancient languages in which the gospels were written or into which they were translated at an early date: Greek,
Coptic, Latin, and other exotic tongues. In some instances, the only primary source is a translation into a secondary language. The Gospel of Thomas,
for example, has survived in full form only in Coptic, though its original language was Greek. In other cases, derivative versions are the means of checking the understanding of the original language.
Authorized by scholars
The Scholars Version is free of ecclesiastical and religious control, unlike other major translations into English, including the King James Version and
its descendants (Protestant), the Douay-Rheims Version and its progeny (Catholic), and the New International Version (Evangelical). The Scholars Version is authorized by scholars. The Complete Gospels
The Scholars Version of the gospels has been published as The Complete Gospels (revised and expanded edition. Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press,
1994). The Scholars Version of the complete letters and the complete acts of the apostles is being prepared by the Fellows of the Westar Institute. Copyright © 1998 Polebridge Press. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced or
reprinted without permission in writing from the copyright holder.Top of page |
