James D. Price Theory of Bible Translation

Dr. James D. Price, Hebrew scholar extraordinaire, went to Heaven on Dec. 12 at age 100. His wife had gone on before. He was my Hebrew prof. at Temple Baptist Seminary in the fall of 1976, and I got to know him more after that. I went soul winning with him, asked for his advice on Greek and he asked for mine on Hebrew--both of us being asked to help in our areas of non-expertise, so we turned each other down!

Here is his obituary: Dr. James David Price III Obituary December 12, 2025 - Companion Funeral & Cremation Service. Here is his website: James D. Price

Now, KJVO advocates attack Dr. Price mercilessly about his textual criticism. But the truth is he was not expert in Greek. I've read some of his stuff on textual criticism, but I do not take it seriously; he simply did not have the training for that, especially for understanding Byzantine priority. On the other hand, his knowledge of Bible translation, especially from the Hebrew, was wonderful! On this thread I will be talking about that from his two books on the subject, not on his textual criticism. So please refrain from posting about his textual criticism or his position on the KJV.

Dr. Price was a good, godly man and a wonderful Hebrew scholar and professor, and he does not deserve the attacks on him by some KJVO advocates, including Ruckman and Riplinger. When your argument against someone's position becomes invective, you have lost the argument and some of your integrity!

He called his translation theory Optimal Equivalence. His first book on the subject was Complete Equivalence in Bible Translation (Nashville: Nelson, 1987). He told me once that even then he was using the term Optimal Equivalence for his theory, but the publisher did not want to let him use that term for some reason. So "complete equivalence" does not really describe his view. That first book did not develop his theory much; it was primarily against the dynamic equivalence theory of Eugene Nida (later changed to functional equivalence due to misuse of the original term).

His second book was his magnum opus on translation with the title A Theory for Bible Translation: An Optimal Equivalence Model (Lewistown: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007). I sold our car and house to be able to buy this back when it was published--it's very expensive! (Dr. Price did send me a first draft of the book, though.)

Here is Dr. Price's definition of his theory: “Optimal Equivalence—a theory of translation that focuses on the equivalence of words, kernel clauses, transformations, and literary form” (A Theory..., p. 336). This only helps if you know a linguistic theory called transformational grammar! So try this definition: "Price's theory of optimal equivalence translation, which falls between dynamic, literal, and formal equivalence, seeks to maintain optimum equivalence between the languages at the word, phrase, clause, sentence, and discourse levels, while still maintaining good literary idiom in the receptor language" (forward of "A Theory..." by David L. Brooks, p. viii).

This translation method was used for the NKJV and the HCSB. Now many will say that to be incorrect, since the NKJV is more conservative and literal than the HCSB. (Dr. Price was an OT editor on both.) But remember that this is a method, not a set of rules. And it is not a strictly literal method as we will see. The same translation method can be used differently while still being the same translation method and/or philosophy.

For example, see the difference between the NIV and the GNB, both of which are DE translations, though the NIV is more conservative in the use of the method. Caveat: The Message, The Living Bible, and other paraphrases are not DE. Eugene Nida changed the name of his method to functional equivalence for the very reason that people were calling these paraphrases DE, which offended him and proved to him that people did not understand DE.

By the way, as long as I mentioned DE, I'll say that many websites and books misunderstand the method. It is not "thought for thought," but simply aimed at what is called "reader response" rather than "authorial intent." This difference is to me the most important thing to understand about the comparison of Bible translations rather than "word for word" and "thought for thought." So, DE wants the reader to understand and apply the Scriptures rather than know what the divine Author intended us to understand. This means that sometimes DE dumbs down a rendering. The divine Author of the Scriptures sometimes says very difficult things (2 Peter 3:16, John 6:60, all of Proverbs, etc.). He wants us to work at what He says, not dumb it down.

I'm going to give some principles of OE. Here's the first.

“Seeks to preserve all of the information in the text, while presenting it in good literary form.” (Preface, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982, p. v.)

This is an important principle, followed by the original KJV translators, and almost any modern translator you want to talk to. If you want to willy nilly get every single word into the target language without taking this into account, you end up with the hyper literal Young's Literal Translation, which renders "eternal" as "age-during," which makes no sense in English.

Recently I was translating from Job when I ran across שִׁמְע֣וּ שָׁ֭מוֹעַ in Job 21:2, which is "Hear, hear...," the same word twice. Fortunately I remembered that this is a Hebrew idiom wherein the meaning in English is not repetitious, but strengthening. In other words, when you run across this idiom, you don't translate it with the same English word twice, but you say it once but make it stronger. The KJV correctly has, "Hear diligently...." (Note that "Hear hear" in English is actually a different idiom, meaning "I agree," as in: "The Braves are the best baseball team." Response, "Hear hear, they sure are!") I translated the idiom into Japanese with よく聞きなさい。meaning "Hear well."

Here's another OE principle:

“Optimal equivalence as a translation philosophy recognizes that form cannot be neatly separated from meaning and should not be changed...unless comprehension demands it” (Holman Christian Standard Bible, “Foreword.” Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2009, v.).

This is contra DE, which advocates ignoring the forms of semantics (word meanings) and syntax (sentence structure) in the source document and concentrating on transferring the meaning as discerned by the translator. This ignores the fact that meaning is tied to the forms of the original! In other words, if the source text is a passive voice, that has meaning in the target document too. Granted, there are languages without a passive voice, but the point still stands. Even if the exact nuance of the original form can't be rendered in the target language, the meaning of the form should be considered.

You may notice that I don't use Nida's term "receptor," but instead I use the secular term "target," which I consider to be more accurate. Few who discuss Bible translation know that this term was deliberately invented by Nida to represent his theory, which is weighted towards the reader rather than the divine and human Authors. Be aware that Nida's theory is based on the philosophy of existentialism, expressed in theology as neo-orthodoxy. Unfortunately, some who oppose Nida's method still use his terminology (receptor, formal equivalence, etc.). However, secular theorists almost never do unless they are discussing Nida's theories, which by the way never caught on in the world of secular translation.

Philip Stine, Nida’s friend and chronicler, wrote,
"Nida drew on the existentialist philosophers, particularly Ludwig Wittgenstein, who held that the meaning of any word is a matter of what we do with our language. Knowing the meaning of a word can involve knowing to what objects (if any) it refers, recognizing whether the word is slang or figurative language, knowing what part of speech it is, and also being aware of its connotative values. Essentially, then, to oversimplify somewhat, the meaning of a word stems from its use. Functional equivalence as an approach to translation depends on this idea." (Philip Stine, Let the Words Be Written. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004, 143-144).

Here's a quote from Dr. Price about DE. If someone wants me to I'll do my best at explaining transformational grammar.

“It is quite clear that paraphrase is unavoidable with dynamic equivalence theory. Glassman wrote, ‘It is, in fact, impossible to analyze, transfer and restructure without paraphrasing, at the level of the underlying kernel structures; and that, in turn, shows up at the final level of the surface structure.’ (Quoting Eugene Glassman, The Translation Debate, p.66—JRH.) This is primarily true because of the subjectivity involved in the transfer step. The failure to employ transfer rules, but rather to depend on the translator’s subjective judgment, makes it almost certain that the information transferred to the receptor language will lack complete equivalence with the information of the source message. Thus the theory fails to accomplish equivalence; it is instead scientific paraphrase” (James Price, Complete Equivalence in Bible Translation, p. 17).

So the OE translator does his or her best to preserve the semantic and syntactical forms of the source document in the target document. This takes away the need for the translator to ruminate and come up with the linguistic meaning of the rendering. This is essentially what Dr. Price meant. There were times in our translation work when Uncle Miya and I could not comprehend the source text. We could translate it grammatically and with the right vocabulary, but sometimes that's all you can do. However, DE translators feel the need to give the proper meaning for it all! This results sometimes in a DE translation dumbing down the meaning.

After all, it's God's Word, right? If anyone thinks they understand it all they are fooling themselves!

Here is another principle of Optimal Equivalence.

“The primary goal of translation is to convey the sense of the original with as much clarity as the original text and the translation language permit” (Holman Christian Standard Bible, “Foreword.” Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2009, v.).

In other words, OE concentrates on Authorial intent rather than reader response. This has theological ramifications. Read what Millard Erickson wrote: “The neoorthodox insistence that there is no revelation without response ignores the fact that while a message may be available for others, they might not as yet be prepared to receive it.” ( Millard Erickson, Christian Theology, 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1983, 1998, 2013, p. 164).

John of Japan said:

Dr. James D. Price, Hebrew scholar extraordinaire, went to Heaven on Dec. 12 at age 100. His wife had gone on before. He was my Hebrew prof. at Temple Baptist Seminary in the fall of 1976, and I got to know him more after that. I went soul winning with him, asked for his advice on Greek and he asked for mine on Hebrew--both of us being asked to help in our areas of non-expertise, so we turned each other down!

Here is his obituary: Dr. James David Price III Obituary December 12, 2025 - Companion Funeral & Cremation Service. Here is his website: James D. Price

Now, KJVO advocates attack Dr. Price mercilessly about his textual criticism. But the truth is he was not expert in Greek. I've read some of his stuff on textual criticism, but I do not take it seriously; he simply did not have the training for that, especially for understanding Byzantine priority. On the other hand, his knowledge of Bible translation, especially from the Hebrew, was wonderful! On this thread I will be talking about that from his two books on the subject, not on his textual criticism. So please refrain from posting about his textual criticism or his position on the KJV.

Dr. Price was a good, godly man and a wonderful Hebrew scholar and professor, and he does not deserve the attacks on him by some KJVO advocates, including Ruckman and Riplinger. When your argument against someone's position becomes invective, you have lost the argument and some of your integrity!

Click to expand...

Same author as this book currently reading now?

JesusFan said:

Same author as this book currently reading now?

https://jamesdprice.com/images/33_King_James_Onlyism.pdf

Click to expand...

Yep, that's him. And he knew the KJV OT better than anyone.

I remember once he was walking down the college halls with a facsimile copy of the 1st ed. KJV. A KJV-Only student saw it and said, "Oh, can I read it?" Of course he said yes, but then the student couldn't figure it out!