How To Choose A Good Bible Translation, Part 1

People sometimes ask about choosing a good Bible translation. “How do I know what is the best translation of the Bible?” “I need a new Bible; what translation should I get?” In this series of posts, I’m going to talk about Bible translations. What are they? How does a Bible translation work? What is a good translation for me to buy? People also sometimes ask, “How can I be sure that the translation I am reading is reliable?” We are going to look at that question too.

The first thing to realize is that unless people read Hebrew and Greek, everyone reads the Bible in a translation. The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, with a few small sections written in Aramaic. The New Testament was originally written in Greek. There are some traditions that say that some parts of the New Testament, such as Matthew, may have originally been written in Hebrew then translated into Greek. All our early New Testament manuscripts however are in Greek. For this reason, unless we are a scholar in ancient languages, we will read the Bible in a translation.

There is one interesting thing to point out about the words of Jesus right from the start. All four gospels are written in Greek, but Jesus spoke Aramaic during his ministry. Aramaic is a language in the family of Hebrew but not exactly like ancient Hebrew. Aramaic has a long history and is still spoken by some people in northern Iraq, northwest Iran, and southwest Turkey. This was the language of the Babylonians at the time of the exile into captivity, which lasted over 60 years, in the 6th century B.C. The Jewish people went into exile in Babylonia and were there for over a generation. Because they were there so long, all the Jewish children grew up speaking Aramaic instead of Hebrew. When they came back to the land of Israel, they came back speaking Aramaic. This was the language most everyone spoke in Jesus’ day in the land of Israel.

It might not be surprising to us that, even at the time of Jesus, there were regional differences in the way Aramaic was spoken. Just as today there are regional differences in the way English is spoken, so there were with Aramaic in Jesus’ day. The Galilean dialect in the north was different from that spoken in Jerusalem to the south. We see an indication of this in the story of Peter’s denial of Jesus, as recorded in Matthew, chapter 26. One of the bystanders asserted that Peter must be a disciple of Jesus because his dialect was Galilean. Matthew 26, verse 74, says, “Certainly you are also one of them, for your accent betrays you.”

The interesting thing then is that all the words of Jesus are translations from Aramaic into Greek. By the time the gospels were written, Greek had become the language everyone throughout the kingdom knew. It must have seemed best to the gospel writers to consider what language would make for the widest possible distribution. Greek was that language.

We might ask if it is problematic that we do not have the exact original words of Jesus? Does this mean that we do not understand the words of Jesus accurately today? The answer of the New Testament is, “No.” All the gospels, perhaps with the exception of Matthew, were originally written in Greek. The authors apparently had no hesitation about translating Jesus’ words into Greek from Aramaic and felt they could do so accurately. Interestingly the Greek of the New Testament is not modern Greek. The Greek language has continued to evolve over the last 2,000 years. The language of the New Testament is called “Koine” (common) Greek. This “common” Greek was spoken throughout the Roman Empire in the first century. This is the language in which the gospel writers wrote.

We are just getting started in our discussion of Bible translations. In the next post, we will examine some traces in the gospels of the original Aramaic language of Jesus.

With Warm Regards,

Robert Bohler, Jr.