The King and I – a Look at Bible Translation

Part of overcoming the fear of reading the Bible for direction and insight is to find a translation that you can understand.  Typically, your church will have a favored translation – the one usually used by the pastor during preaching on Sunday or the translation found slipped into the rack on the back of the pew in front of you.  Churches might debate the validity of different translations, so I wanted to help you understand a bit more about where that Bible you hopefully read originated.

Let’s begin by looking at what the Bible says about itself:

All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.   2 Timothy 3:16-17

…When you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe.   1 Thessalonians 2:13

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.  (2 Peter 1:20-21)

To summarize, God spoke through men by the power of the Holy Spirit to reveal His heart and will to us, so we can live the lives He intended.  Now that’s helpful, isn’t it?

But the Bible was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.  That would be עִברִית

and Ελληνικά, and Google translate can’t even do English to Aramaic!  Obviously, translation is critical for us to understand.  But God’s effort in bringing His Word to us was targeted first at His beloved Hebrews using their wonderful picture-language that showed us images of things to come.  The meaning-specific Greek that connected the whole world of Jesus and the Apostles brought the truths of Christ to the four corners of the earth.  It doesn’t matter to us that many of the Greek texts were written SOTHEYWOULDREADSOMETHINGLIKETHIS!  All caps and no spaces.  Many others were written in a kind-of lower case cursive.  But all in all, the Word of God was written, preserved, and now translated into a form that can make sense to all of us.  Especially if we speak English. 

But what about the rest?  While more than 1,300 languages have access to the New Testament and some portions of Scripture in their language, and more than 550 languages have the complete translated Bible, there are about 7,000 languages known to be in use today.  That means up to 180 million people still need Bible translation to begin in their language.  Just under 2,300 languages across 130 countries have active translation and linguistic development work happening right now.  But up to 1,800 languages still need a Bible translation project to begin. Maybe that’s YOUR calling?  If you’d like more information, or to make a difference in reaching out to our world with the Word of God, check this out:  https://www.wycliffe.org/about/why

Happy I can read my Bible in English!

Jacob