"God's Word" before 1611

No translation NEEDED to be made (i.e. correcting some terrible wrong) after an early English like Tyndale.

But as English evolved from late Middle into early Modern English there were dramatic changes in word, spelling, use, etc. Geneva, Great, Bishops, Douay, AV, then a variety of revisions of the AV until the language stabilized about 1770.

After 100 years it was obvious that the revisions SHOULD have continued. As more Greek texts were unearthed further revisions were done. These WERE needed to update accuracy as much as to update language (RSV, ASV1901).

The modern revisions again were not NEEDED, but desired to make the language flow or employ different translation techniques (dynamic instead of the traditional formal equivalence). NASB updated the ASV; NRSV update the RSV.

But no idea as why the great number of new ones today. Certainly not NEEDED. (ESV, Holman, even the NIV, TEV, etc etc)

 

"Honestly, it would probably be better to write a Christian oriented book containing scriptures about the subject, but that isn't the 'selling' item."

While may be true that there are too many new translations coming down the pike, I don't regret it too much. I'd rather have another Bible than another Tim LaHaye book or a "Prayer of Jabez" any time.

It also is worthwhile to note that the revolution sparked by Tyndale created a multitude of versions that culminated with the KJV. And it is illuminating to note that history is littered with other translations that have been consigned to the dustbin of history and theology.

"O Thou great governour and parent of universal nature - who manifestest thy glory to the blessed inhabitants of heaven - may all thy rational creatures in all the parts of thy boundless dominion be happy in the knowledge of thy existence and providence, and celebrate thy perfections in a manner most worthy of thy nature and perfective of their own!"

— The beginning of the Lord's Prayer, by Edward Harwood, "A Liberal Translation of the New Testament; being An Attempt to translate the Sacred Writings with the same Freedom, Spirit, and Elegance, With which other English Translations from the Greek Classics have lately been executed ... with select Notes, Critical and Explanatory," 1768.

And Alexander Campbell edited a NT that attempted to rid the Scriptures of Calvinism in "The Sacred Writing of the Apostles and Evangelists of Jesus Christ, Commonly Styled The New Testament. Translated from the Original Greek," 1826.

While polemical in his Arminianism, Campbell has some very modern things to say about translations.

"But this constant mutation in a living language, will probably render new translations, or corrections of old translations, necessary every two or three hundred years. For although the English tongue may have changed less during the last two hundred years, than it ever did in the same lapse of time before: yet the changes which have taken place since the reign of James I., do now render a new translation necessary. For if the King's translators had given a translation every way faithful and correct, in the language then spoken in Britain; the changes in the English language which have since been introduced, would render that translation, in many instances, incorrect. The truth of this assumption will appear from a few specifications: ..."

" It is probable that a new translation into our language will never again be undertaken by public authority. The people would not now submit to any that would be imposed upon them by such authority, and they will not agree among themselves to select persons, in whose judgment and fidelity they might repose confidence. Individuals will occasionally make their corrections and amendments, and the number of translations may greatly increase; until, at length, that obtains, whose merits shall give it the ascendant. ..."

" We would also remind the same class of readers, that an intimate acquaintance with the Septuagint Greek of the Old Testament, is of essential importance in translating the New. The seventy Hebrews who translated their own scriptures into the Greek language gave to that translation the idiom of their vernacular tongue. Their translations, if I may so speak is a sort of Hebrew Greek. The body is Greek, but the soul is Hebrew, and, in effect, it comes to this, that, as we have no other Hebrew by which to understand the Hebrew scriptures, but the Hebrew of the Old Testament; so, we have no Greek by which to understand the apostolic writings, but the Greek of the Jewish and Christian Prophets. The parallelism is so nearly exact, that it subtracts but little from it to allow, that there is much advantage in having a correct knowledge of the Greek classics. The Septuagint being read for nearly three centuries prior to the Christian era, in all the synagogues of the Hellenistic Jews, and being generally quoted by our Lord and his Apostles, must have especially affected the idiom of all the inspired writings of the Christian Apostles; consequently, incomparably more regard should be paid to the Septuagint, than to the classic use of Greek terms. ..."

" 'It has been said, that the introduction of different translations tends to unsettle men in their principles, particularly with regard to the authority of sacred writ, which, say they, is made to speak so variously in these productions. For my part, I have not discovered that this is, in any degree, the effect. The agreement of all the translations, as to the meaning, in every thing of principal consequence, makes their differences, when properly considered, appear as nothing. They are but like the inconsiderable variations in expression, which different witnesses, though all perfectly unexceptionable, employ in relating the same fact. They rather confirm men's faith in the scripture, as they show, in the strongest light, that all the various ways, which men of discordant sentiments have devised, of rendering its words, have made no material alteration, either on the narrative itself, or on the divine instructions contained in it. People are at no loss to discover, that the difference among interpreters lies chiefly in this, that one renders the account of things, which the book exhibits, more intelligible, more perspicuous, or even more affecting than another. These differences are, I acknowledge, of great moment to readers; they are such, as may show one version to be greatly superior to another, in point of use; yet as they are all compatible with justness of representation, in every thing essential to the historical and didactic parts of the work, they are so far from affecting the credibility of the whole, that they serve not a little to confirm it.' "

Pardon the length of the post, but I found it interesting.

 

Interesting. Some strange birds in times past, eh?

Present company excepted, of course!