The first half of the 20th century was marked by a succession of brilliant private enterprises in translation - both for the New Testament alone and for the whole Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible. The earliest of these was the Twentieth Century New Testament, a project conducted by a group of intelligent laypersons who used Westcott and Hort's edition of the Greek New Testament (1881) as their basic text. They were concerned that no existing version made the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible plain to young people, and they set out to supply this need. They completed their work in 1901; a revised edition appeared in 1904.

Richard Francis Weymouth, a Greek scholar, published an edition of the Greek New Testament called The Resultant Greek Testament in 1886. Later he issued a translation of this text, The New Testament in Modern Speech, which appeared in 1903, shortly after his death. The "modern speech" into which this translation was rendered was dignified contemporary usage and it paid special attention to accuracy in the translation of details such as the definite articles and tenses.

Much more colloquial than Weymouth's version was The New Testament: A New Translation (1913) by James Mofatt. Moffatt was a Scot, and his translation bore traces of the idiom of his native land. While his unique expressions shocked readers accustomed to more dignified Scripture/Bible English, they brought home the meaning of the text with greater clarity than ever before. In 1924 Moffatt added The Old Testament: A New Translation; in 1928 the whole work appeared in one volume, entitled A New Translation of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible. In both Testaments, Moffatt occasionally took greater liberties with the wording and order than was proper for a translator; yet to this day one of the best ways to get a quick grasp of the general sense of a book of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible is to read it through in Moffatt's translation.

Edgar J. Goodspeed of the University of Chicago produced The New Testament: An American Translation (ASV) in 1923. He was convinced that most Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible versions were translated into "British English" so he tried to provide a version free from expressions that might be strange to Americans. A companion work, The Old Testament: An American Translation, edited by J. M. Powis Smith and three other scholars, was issued in 1927. In 1938 Goodspeed's translation of the Apocrypha appeared. This was the final contribution to The Complete Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible.

The Revised Standard Version (RSV) is one of the last versions in the long line of English Scripture/Bible translations that stem from William Tyndale. Although it is North American production, it had been widely accepted in the whole English speaking world. The RSV was launched as a revision of the king James Version (KJV) 1611, RV (1885) and ASV (1901) The New Testament first appeared in 1946, the two Testaments in 1957. A new edition in 1962 incorporated 85 minor changes in wording.

A Catholic edition of the RSV New Testament appeared in 1946, followed by the whole Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible in 1966. In 1973 a further edition of the RSV appeared (including revisions made in the 1971 edition of the New Testament) This version of the Scared Scripture/Holy Bible was approved for use by Protestants, Roman Catholics, and the Greek Orthodox Church, making it an English Scripture/Bible for all faiths.

Several new versions of the English Scripture/Bible designed especially for Catholic readers have appeared during the 20th century. In 1940 Ronald Knox, an English priest with exceptional literary gifts, was commissioned by his superiors to undertake a new Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible translation. At that time, it was out of the question for a translation for Catholic readers to be based on anything other than Latin Vulgate. The Vulgate served as base of Knox's version, but he paid attention to the original Greek and Hebrew texts. His New Testament appeared in 1945, followed by the Old Testament in 1949.

Ronald Knox had a flair for adapting his English expressions to the rigid restrictions of the Latin Vulgate style. But the progress of scriptural/biblical movement in the Catholic Church in recent years has made all Catholic versions of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible be based on the Latin Vulgate.

The Jerusalem Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible was originally a French translation of the Scripture/Bible sponsored by the Dominican faculty of the Ecole Biblique et Archeologique in Jerusalem. A one volume edition of the work, with fewer technical notes, was issued in 1956. The English counterpart to this volume, prepared under the editorship of Alexander Jones, was published in 1966. The scriptural/biblical text was translated from the Hebrew and Greek languages, although the French version was consulted throughout for guidance where variant readings or interpretations were involved.

The Jerusalem Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible is a scholarly production with a high degree of literary skill. While it is the work of Catholic translators, it is nonsectarian. Readers of many religious traditions use the Jerusalem Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible.

The New American Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible (NAB) was launched as a revision of the Douai (or Douay) Scripture/Bible for American readers. In Episcopal Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, and the resulting work was called the Confraternity Version. The translators were scholars who belonged to the Catholic Biblical Association of America.

The New Testament of this translation first appeared in 1941. While it was a revision of the Douai text, which was based in turn on the Latin Vulgate, the translators at times went back to the Greek text behind the Latin. They drew attention in their notes to places where the Greek and Latin texts differed. As the project progressed, the translators moved away from the Latin Vulgate as their text, basing it instead on the Greek and Hebrew text. So radical was this fresh approach that a new name seemed appropriate for the version when the entire Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible was completed in 1970. It was no longer called the Confraternity Version but the New American Bible. This new name may have been influenced also by the title of the New English Bible, which had appeared earlier in the same year.

In 1935 they consulted scholars about the possibility of a revision to bring this translation, rather than a revision of an old translation, was commissioned. The initiative in this enterprise was taken by the church of Scotland in 1946. It approached other British churches, and a joint committee was set up in 1947 to make plans for a new translation of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible into modern English. The translator's goal was to issue a version 'genuine English in idiom......a 'timeless' English, avoiding equally both archaisms and transient modernism.

The New Testament of the New English Bible (NEB) was published in March 1961; the whole Scripture/Bible, together with the Apocrypha, appeared in March 1970. Between 1961 and 1970 the New Testament received some further revision.

In one respect the New English Bible reverted to the policy of the translators of the king James Version; sometimes they rendered the same Hebrew or Greek word with different English words. This means the readers who cannot use the Hebrew or Greek texts will be unable to use this version for the detailed word study.

Some translators have attempted to bring out the meaning of the scriptural/biblical text by using either simplified or amplified vocabularies. Other translations that fall into this category are those that use lists of words considered basic to the English language.

Charles B. Williams, in The New Testament in the Language of the People (1937) tried to express the more delicate shades of meaning in Greek tenses by using a fuller wordings. What Williams did for Greek tenses, Kenneth S. Wuest did for all parts of speech in his Expanded Translation of the New Testament (1956-1959)

In The Amplified Bible (1958-1965) a committee of 12 editors working for the Lockman Foundation of La Habra, California, incorporated alternative translations or additional words that would normally appear in margins or footnotes into their translation of the text. One fault of this translation is that it gives the reader no guidance to aid in choosing the proper alternative reading for specific passages.

Basic English is a simplified form of the language, created by C.K.Ogden, which attempts to communicate ideas with a simplified vocabulary of 850 words. In the 1930s Ogden's foundation, the Orthological Institute, commissioned an English scriptural/biblical scholar S.H.Hooke, to produce a Basic English version of the Bible. For this purpose the basic vocabulary of 850 words was expanded to 1,000 by adding special Bible words and others helpful in the reading and understanding of poetry. The New Testament in Basic English appeared in 1940; the complete Scripture/Bible was published in 1949.

Charles Kingsley Williams who had experience in teaching whose native tongue was not English, produced The New Testament; A New Translation in Plain English in 1952. He used a 'plain English list' of less than 1,700 words in this translation.

J.B.Phillips, an Anglican clergyman, relieved the tedium of fire watching and similar night time duties during World War II by turning Saint Paul letters or epistles into English. This work is not a strict translation but a paraphrase that made the apostle's letters or epistles meaningful for younger readers. He published Letters to Young churches in 1947, and it became an instant success. The style was lively and forceful; the apostle Paul came across as a real person who had something important to say. Phillips followed up on his initial success by releasing other parts of the New Testament. The Gospels in Modern English followed in 1952; The Book of Acts appeared in 1955; and The Book of Revelation was published 1957. In 1958 the whole work appeared in one volume, 'The New Testament in Modern English.' A completely revised edition of this paraphrase was issued in 1972, but many readers prefer the earlier edition.

Like J.B.Phillips work, 'The Living Bible' is a paraphrase that began with a rendering of the New Testament letters - Living Letters (1962). The translator, Kenneth N. Taylor, prepared this paraphrase initially for his own children, who found it difficult to follow the apostle Paul's thought when his letters or epistles were read in family worship. Taylor went on to paraphrase the rest of the New Testament, then the Old Testament, until The Living Bible was published complete in 1971. This paraphrase is especially popular with young people. Many adults have also found that it brings the message of the Sacred Scripture/ Holy Bible home to them in languages they can understand.

In 1966, the American Bible Society issued Today's English Version (also entitled Good News for Man Man) a translation of the New Testament, in simple, contemporary English. The aim of this version was similar to the preceding basic English and plain English versions, but The Good News Bible used no limited vocabulary list. In 1976 the entire Bible in Today's English Version was published.

The translators of the Good News Bible worked to achieve 'dynamic equivalence.' They wanted this translation to have the same effect on modern readers that the original text produced on those who first read it. The Good News Bible has gained wide acceptance, and similar translations have been produced in a number of other languages.

On simplified translation of the Scripture/Bible include Clarence Jordan's Cotton Patch Version (1968-1970) which renders portions of the New Testament into the unique idioms of the American South. Also included in this category is Carl Burke's God Is For Real, Man (1967) and Treat Me Cool, Lord (1969). These were written in the unique language of prison inmates while Burke was serving as a jail chaplain.

An editorial board of 54 scholars began work on the "New American Standard Bible" (NASB) translation in the 1960s. They were determined to issue a new and revised translation based on the American Standard Version of 1901 in order to keep that version alive and usable among the Scripture/Bible reading public. Sponsored by the Lockman Foundation, the complete Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible of the NASB was published in 1971 after 11 years of careful, scholarly work. The translators used most dependable Hebrew and Greek texts available. The editorial board has continue to function since publication of the Bible, making minor revisions and refinements in the translation as better texts of the original languages of the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible became available.

The New International Version (NIV) is a completely new translation of the Bible, sponsored by the New York International Bible Society. It is the work of an international and trans-denominational team of scholars, drawn mainly from the United States but also including scholars from Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. The sponsors of the NIV claim it is 'written in the language of the common man' but its language is more literary than the 'common English' of the Good News Bible.

The translators of the NIV were familiar with traditional Bible English. They used the language of the king James Version where it was accurate, clear, and readable. But they made many significant changes. Unlike the RSV and NEB (which retained "thee", "thou" and "thy" when God was being addressed) the NIV uses "you" and "your." The New Testament of this version was published in 1973; the whole Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible appeared in 1978.

The original king James Version, first published in 1611, has been the favorite translation among English speaking peoples for more than three centuries. During its long history, the king James Bible has been updated and revised several times to reflect changes in speech as well as growing knowledge of the original text of the Scriptures. Previous major revisions of this translation were issued in 1629, 1638, 1762, and 1769.

During 1970s, Thomas Nelson Publishers of Nashville, Tennessee, sensed the need for a fifth major revision. Over 130 Scripture/Bible scholars were selected to work on the New king James Version. The translators worked from the earliest and most trust worthy Hebrew and Greek texts available and also used the 1769 king James revision as a general guide to make sure the new edition preserved the majestic style and devotional quality of the original one.

The most noticeable change in the New king James is replacement of the "thee's" and thou's" and other archaic pronouns with their modern English equivalent. The "-est" and "-eth" verb endings also were eliminated in favor of more contemporary idioms. The New Testament with Psalms was released in 1980, followed by the Old Testament in 1982.

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -