James D. Price Theory of Bible Translation

[John of Japan]

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!

 

[John of Japan]

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).

 

[John of Japan]

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.

 

[John of Japan]

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."