CAN MODERN BIBLE TRANSLATIONS BE TRUSTED?

I want to purchase a Bible, but I understand that modern translations can't be trusted. For example, one site on the internet said that Robert Murdoch bought Zondervan so that he could promote his atheistic agenda through the 2011 NIV translation. And I have read that most new translations have purposely deleted the reference to the Trinity in I John 5:7. Why would you take out that verse? Also, where the King James translation has “brothers,” some modern translations now have “brothers and sisters,” even though “sisters” is not in the original. Are these accusations correct?

You bring up some good questions regarding Bible translations, and I commend you for wanting to look into the matter more closely. You are also correct in noting that there is an awful lot of information out on the internet that is hard to sort through.

Regarding conspiracy theories, you are rightly suspicious of them. For example, if Robert Murdoch purchased Zondervan, it wasn't to promote any atheistic agenda—it was simply to make more money. And someone as shrewd as Murdoch realizes that Zondervan only makes money because of evangelical readers. He would not purposely jeopardize his profits by trying to foist off on them a liberally-slanted translation. In addition, he would not have been able to influence the translation even if he had wanted to. The NIV translations, old and new versions, are both the products of a very responsible board of evangelical Bible scholars carefully chosen from a variety of Christian denominations.

BIBLE TRANSLATION

Now, down to the root of the matter. The best way to really understand the process of translation is to read a good book on the subject, or at least to read the translator's introductions found at the start of most Bibles. A good study Bible might even have a short essay on the subject. In lieu of that, I will try to briefly cover the subject below, discussing the case of the New Testament only for the sake of brevity. Your two specific examples of differences in New Testament translations are good ones since they can be used to demonstrate each of the two steps involved in translating the Bible.

First Step of Translation

In order to translate a book from Greek to English, you first need an agreed-on Greek text to start with. You might think that we only have to go to the Vatican Library and dig out the Epistle to the Romans in Paul's own handwriting, for example. Unfortunately, we do not have any manuscripts (i.e. handwritten documents) written by the New Testament authors themselves. But we do have the next best thing—over 10,000 manuscripts containing all or part of the New Testament. These are copies of copies, etc. but some date to only a short time after the original was written.

 There are many differences in wording between these thousands of copies (although almost all are minor) due to “typos” creeping in. Therefore, during the Renaissance, scholars put together one standard Greek text which could be used for future translators. It has been called the Majority (or Authorized) Text since the scholars basically went with whichever reading seemed to be present in most of the Greek manuscripts they could find. The KJV of 1611 was based on this Majority Text, and many conservative Christians still swear by it.

There are several problems with sticking to this Majority Text today. In the first place, we have discovered thousands of additional manuscripts since that time and they need to be taken into account also. However, the biggest deficiency of the Majority Text is that it gives equal weight to extremely old manuscripts and those written hundreds of years later. It is much more likely that later documents will have accumulated more errors over the many years of copying of copies (etc.) than will copies made closer in time to the original writing. So the standard Greek text used as the basis of most modern translations (i.e., since the KJV) differs in many small ways from the Majority Text.

When Christians who treat the KJV as sacrosanct see variations in different translations due to these textual changes, they accuse the translators of watering down the Word. In fact, the translators are just making an honest effort to better reflect the wording and meaning of the original Greek writings.

Your example of the missing Trinity in I John 5:7 is an example of a translation change due to use of a different Greek text. You ask, “Why would you take out that verse?” Actually, it is more appropriate to ask, “Why was that verse ever included in the King James Version to start with?” Because the fact is that there are no Greek manuscripts that contain that verse, only a couple of later ones written in Latin. The Vatican put pressure on the scholars compiling the Majority Text to include that verse even though it was probably just a marginal note by some monk in the Middle Ages that had crept into the Latin text. This is a unique example, but it is still quoted by Mormons to prove that we can't trust the New Testament used by Christians since it was tampered with by the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, all of our modern translations rely heavily on manuscripts that were written down before the Roman Catholic Church came to power.

Second Step of Translation

Once you have settled on a Greek text, you can now begin to translate it into English. There are several reasons why the editors of a translation such as the NIV would feel the need to periodically update their translation, and actually there have been 3-4 different editions of the NIV since the original one in 1973. One is that archeologists are constantly uncovering new ancient documents and inscriptions that help us better understand the meaning of certain Greek words and phrases. Secondly, the usage of the English language itself changes with time.

It is this last point that gives rise to the addition of gender-inclusive language in some modern translations. This is a controversial subject that I won't attempt to get into. There was a great article in the October 27, 1997 edition of Christianity Today magazine entitled “Do Inclusive Language Bibles Distort Scripture?” that argued both sides of the issue. You can view parts of it on-line but have to get an on-line subscription to the magazine to view the entire article. The bottom line is that sincere and knowledgeable evangelical Bible scholars disagree on this issue.

My suggestion is that if translating “brothers” as “brothers and sisters” bothers you, by all means choose a translation that sticks better to the literal Greek. The New Revised Standard Version which I have been using recently translates it as “brothers and sisters” but also has a footnote each time explaining that the original Greek just reads “brothers.”  Good modern study Bibles will have similar footnotes whenever their translation departs from the original Hebrew or Greek, as well as notes whenever the textual evidence is not clear or whenever alternative translations are possible. That way you can take your choice.

 Let me know if you have any more questions on the subject or need clarification of anything I have written.