The Great Commission is one scriptural passage that believers have cited as justification for making Bible translations.
KJV defender Thomas Strouse asserted: “The Great Commission requires the translation of the Scriptures into various languages” (Brandenburg, Thou Shalt Keep Them, p. 250). KJV-only advocate H. D. Williams wrote: “Our Lord commanded the church to make His inspired, preserved Words available in other languages (Matthew 28:19-20, Rom. 16:25-27, 1 Cor. 14:21, Jer. 23:28-29)“ (Pure Words, p. 58).
What is one Biblical principle that would apply to Bible translation and one purpose of Bible translation? "And how hear we every man in our tongue, wherein we were born?" (Acts 2:8). "So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air." (1 Cor. 14:9). "Write the vision and make it plain" (Hab. 2:2). "Therefore if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me" (1 Cor. 14:11). "Understandest thou what thou readest?" (Acts 8:30). “Whoso readeth, let him understand” (Matt. 24:15). “They [the words] are all plain to him that understand” (Prov. 8:9). On such verses as these and others, believers have built one aspect of their views concerning the translation of God's Word.
Many and likely most Bible-believers have consistently contended that God's Word should be in the language of the common people. Lawton maintained that “Tyndale, Coverdale and the translators of the Geneva Bible after him believed that the language of English Bible translation should be strong and colloquial” (Faith, pp. 80-81). William Tyndale "perceived that it was not possible to establish the lay people in any truth, except the Scriptures were so plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue, that they might see the meaning of the text" (Foxe's Book of Martyrs, p. 141). Tyndale commented: “For if I understand not the meaning, it helpeth me not” (Answer, p. 97). William Whitaker wrote: "We say that the scriptures should be translated into all the languages of Christendom, that all men may be enabled to read them in their own tongue" (Disputation, p. 211). John Diodati is translated as writing: “Scriptures can and must be translated into all the languages of all nations, so that they may be read and understood by all” (Ferrari, Diodati’s Doctrine, p. 47). One of the Irish Articles adopted in 1615 stated: “The Scriptures ought to be translated out of the original tongues into all languages for the common use of all men” (Bray, Documents, p. 439). Brian Walton wrote: “Because all cannot understand the original tongues; therefore, translations serve as many pipes or channels to convey the living waters of salvation from the fountains to every particular nation and people, that so all may read and hear the wonderful works of God in their own tongue” (Todd, Memoirs, II, p. 92). Edwin Smith observed: “The desire to enable people to read God’s Word in their own tongue has been the chief motive in studying strange tongues and writing them down” (UnSealing the Book, p. 2).
In his 1876 book on Baptist distinctives, pastor John Quincy Adams wrote: "The correct principle of translating them [the Scriptures] is to make them speak to all nations just what they spoke to those who had them from the hand of God--just what the originals express" (Baptists Thorough Reformers, p. 130). Pastor Alexander Carson wrote: "The readers of a translation ought to have as far as possible all the distinctions of the original" (Baptism: Its Mode and Subjects, p. 317). About the KJV, John Quincy Adams commented: "This being a translation, partakes more or less of the imperfections of the translators; and, in every instance where the original is not clearly and fully translated, it is the word of man, and not the Word of God" (p. 129). Laurence Humphrey (1527?-1590) as translated by Gordon Kendal asserted: “We need to be at pains all the time to make use of words that are customary and proper within the language into which we are translating” (Rhodes, English Renaissance Translation, p. 272).
As Gordon Clark proclaimed: "If we cannot understand or conceive what God tells us to do, of what use is the revelation?" (The Trinity, p. 79). In the introduction of his translation of Jeremiah, Benjamin Blayney, editor of the 1769 Oxford edition of the KJV, asked: “Can any Scripture be profitable except it be understood? And if not rightly understood, may not the perversion of it be proportionably dangerous?“ (p. xv). Laurence Humphrey as translated by Gordon Kendal asked: “For what is the point of language if it is so indistinct that nobody can understand it, so obscure as to be incomprehensible?“ (Rhodes, English Renaissance, p. 272). George Wither (1588-1667) observed: “That is ever best translated, and with most ease understood, which we express in words and phrases suitable to our own tongue” (Rhodes, p. 207). Charles Spurgeon noted: “Unless we understand what we read we have not read it; the heart of the reading is absent. We commonly condemn the Romanists for keeping the daily service in the Latin tongue; yet it might as well be in the Latin language as in any other tongue if it be not understood by the people” (Spurgeon’s Expository Ency., 15, p. 209). Since translation is so necessary to all who do not understand Greek or Hebrew, what legitimate objection can there be to the translation of God's Word into present-day English?
This was the argument of the KJV translators themselves in their preface to the 1611. They wrote: "But we desire that the Scripture may speak like itself, as in the language of Canaan, that it may be understood even of the very common people." There is no valid Scriptural reason why God's Word should be frozen in seventeenth-century English than there is why it should be frozen in Latin. As Noah Webster stated in the preface to his 1833 revision of the KJV: "Whenever words are understood in a sense different from that which they had when introduced, and different from that of the original languages, they do not present to the reader the Word of God."
