Accuracy is the Goal of Translation

Tom Balzamo co-hosts the Reason Together podcast with my friend Dan Fox, and he recently published a critique of my article "Bibles and Plowboys." I've never met Tom, but I have enjoyed listening to him on the podcast. I've found that I agree with him on many issues, but his recent critique demonstrated that we disagree on the issue of Bible translation. You can read Tom's critique at this link, and you can find my response to Tom below.

Tom,
 
I appreciate you taking the time to read my response to Nathan. It is clear that you thought deeply about my rebuttal and did not simply dismiss it out of hand. Unfortunately, you seem to have misunderstood several parts of the article. I’m not saying this is your fault. My first draft was fourteen pages long, and I whittled that down to a mere seven pages for the final production, and it’s possible that some of the content I cut out was more essential than I thought. In any case, I feel that the issue is important enough to warrant a response to your article in the hopes that it will clarify my position and aid you in further studies.
 
The first two sections of your article don’t address me personally, so I won’t spend much time responding to the claims made in those sections. I would, however, like to point out that the arguments made in these two sections are essentially fallacious. There are two fallacies that dominate these sections. The first is the appeal to motive which is a type of ad hominem fallacy, and the second is the hasty generalization fallacy. Nearly everything said in the first two sections falls under one or the other of these two fallacies, but as I said, neither of these sections were addressed to me personally, so I’ll move on to the rest of the article.
 
You began by accusing me of attacking a straw man.
 
When Fortenberry says “Tyndale did not suggest we use less accurate but more easily understood English words” he is by implication suggesting that Nathan and other proponents of modern updates are arguing in favor of “less accurate…” English words. This is another straw man.
 
You read my implication correctly, but it is not a straw man argument. Nathan actually is advocating for translations that sacrifice accuracy in favor of readability. The easiest way to prove this claim is to notice that none of Nathan’s approved translations retain the distinction between the singular and plural second-person pronouns. This distinction is an inherent feature of the original languages of Scripture, but it does not have an equivalent in English. The KJV translators chose to use thee, thou, and thy to represent the singular second-person pronouns and to let ye, you, and your represent the plural. This allowed them to translate the originals more accurately even though they had to sacrifice a small amount of readability in the process. To argue in favor of eliminating the distinction between the singular and the plural second-person pronouns is, by definition, to argue in favor of a less accurate translation. That is not a straw man. It is an irrefutable fact. The modern translations of the TR are irrefutably less accurate than the KJV.
 
For more information on this topic, read my article, “You vs. Thee: The Importance of Second-Person Pronouns in Bible Translation,” which is available here: http://www.increasinglearning.com/blog/you-vs-thee.
 
You also wrote of me that “by his assertion, modern English contains no accurate words that can convey the words of Scripture.” That was not my assertion at all, but I think this misunderstanding is my fault. I’m afraid that a crucial section from my first draft was left on the cutting floor and never made it to the final product. Perhaps I can mend the error by supplying that section here:
 
One of the foundational points in Nathan’s article is his claim that “Jacobean and Elizabethan English are not the English of the 21st century.” There is a glaring error in this claim, and that is that there are no such things as Jacobean and Elizabethan English.
 
The English language has gone through four major periods of development. The Old English era lasted from 450 to 1066. If you’re at all familiar with British history, you’ll recognize that this era ended with the Battle of Hastings and the beginning of the Norman Conquest. The English language of the period extending from 1066 to 1450 is known as Middle English. The decline of this period coincides with the reforms introduced by Richard, Duke of York, but that may be mere coincidence. In any case, the next period of the English language extending from 1450 to 1690 is known as Early Modern English, which was succeeded by what we call Modern English. What Nathan referred to as Jacobean and Elizabethan English is more properly know as Early Modern English.
 
Early Modern English is only differentiated from Modern English by the word early because the two are really the same language. The Early Modern English period was marked by a constant trend toward standardization. This move toward standardization began with the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, and it was advanced further by the Great English Vowel Shift and the reformation of the Church of England in the sixteenth century. The shift toward standardization culminated in the production of the KJV in 1611, which was then published throughout England as the official Bible of the nation. The distribution and acceptance of the KJV was the single most significant influence on the standardization of the English language.
 
By 1690, this period of standardization was essentially complete, and Early Modern English became Modern English. It is true that the KJV was translated at the end of the phase identified as Early Modern English, but it was the KJV that propelled the English language out of that phase and into the Modern English era. Like the Norman Conquest in 1066, the KJV was the catalyst that propelled the English language into a new era.
 
Modern English is the English of the KJV, and the KJV has been the most printed and most quoted book of the entire Modern English era. If Nathan wants to claim that the English of the twenty-first century is a different English than that of the KJV, then he needs to prove that the English of the twenty-first century is not Modern English.
 
I hope this makes my position more clear. I am not asserting that Modern English lacks the words to accurately convey the thoughts of Scripture. That was not my point at all. My position is that the KJV is a Modern English translation. It is a translation into the same form of the English language that we use today.
 
Your misunderstanding of my position led you to ask a question that was probably intended to be rhetorical, but I think that it needs to be answered. You asked, “Don’t we all listen to preaching in which men use accurate modern English words to explain the words of the KJV so we can understand it?” The focus of this question seems to be on the word accurate, but what would happen if we changed the word accurate to the word other?
 
Do we listen to preaching in which men use other modern English words to explain the words of the KJV? Yes. That is one of the jobs of the preacher. The preacher is supposed to teach the people knowledge (Eccl. 12:9) and give the sense of the Scriptures that are read (Neh. 8:8). This responsibility is accomplished in part by using other words than just the words in the Bible to help the people understand. That is true of preachers who use the KJV, and it is just as true of preachers who use modern translations. All preachers should find words that their listeners already understand and use those words to help them understand the Bible.
 
At this point, you veered into a topic that I did not address in my article.
 
If Fortenberry’s basic premise is right, the governing principle the Bible must teach is that struggle is the necessary cost of edification, that God conceals his meanings from us unless we struggle harder and find mentors.
 
That’s not what I was attempting to say, but it is a great summation of a principle that is taught in the Bible. Growth requires struggle. Muscles only become stronger when they are stressed. The Bible tells us that “much study is a weariness of the flesh” (Eccl. 12:12). It teaches us that the search for wisdom is a “sore travail” that we are to be “exercised” with (Eccl. 1:13, 3:10). The Hebrew Christians were rebuked for not being able to stomach “strong meat” because they had failed to attain the “full age” that they should have reached by having “their senses exercised” (Heb 5:14). We are told that we must “increase learning” and “attain unto wise counsels” before we can properly interpret a proverb or understand the dark sayings of the wise (Prov. 1:5-6). And the Bible tells us plainly that we find the “knowledge of God” by searching for it “as for hid treasures” (Prov. 2:4-5). Yes, struggle is the necessary cost of edification, and “it is the glory of God to conceal a thing” (Prov. 25:2). That’s not just something drawn from my premise. It’s what the Bible teaches.
 
You continued in the same paragraph to say that under my view, “it seems God must have insufficient desire left to want the rest of His Word to be understood by those who call him Abba.” I always find it humorous when people calling for simpler translations pepper their dialogue with Greek and Hebrew terms, but laying aside my warped sense of humor, it should be noted that God designed the world in such a way that some things cannot be simplified enough for every man to understand. In God’s mercy, He made sure that the Gospel does not fall into that category, but there are many things in the Bible that do.
 
When I read Albert Einstein’s book Relativity: The Special and General Theory, I appreciated how well he was able to convey his thoughts in simple terms. However, much of Einstein’s work could not be simplified to the level of the common man without failing to teach the concepts that Einstein wanted to preserve for future generations. This is simply the nature of complex thought. Certain ideas and concepts cannot be simplified enough to be understood by the average reader, and the Bible is filled with such ideas and concepts. There will never be a translation that can overcome that difficulty. That is why God chose to use human individuals to explain those concepts to others.
 
You then said that “when we speak of the Bible, we use its own descriptors like ‘light’ and ‘revelation’. We likely never think of it as secret knowledge known only by struggle.” It may perhaps be true that you never think of the Bible as a source of secret knowledge that is only known through struggle, but I can assure you that those who spend hours studying a single passage of Scripture realize that the Bible contains knowledge which can only be discovered by diligent study.
 
This is not a form of Gnosticism as you assert. The Bible tells us that the “words of the wise” are often conveyed in “dark sayings” (Prov. 1:6), and since no one is wiser than God, it follows that at least a few of God’s Words can be classified as dark sayings. We are supposed to search for the wisdom that God has hidden for the righteous (Prov. 2:4, 7). Where do we search for this wisdom? It is not found in ourselves as the Gnostics taught, but in the Bible that God has given us to study (Jer. 8:9, Deut. 4:6, Psa. 19:7).

This view is also different from the Catholic view of Scripture which you suggested would be the ultimate conclusion of my argument. Consider how you depicted this supposed conclusion:
 
You end up teaching that it’s more accurate and virtuous to be Greek and Hebrew only, and simply find a Christian leader who can teach you those languages. The notion of having to always rely on someone like this sounds more Catholic than Baptist.
 
I used a very important and carefully chosen word in my article that seems to have escaped your attention. That was the word “insurmountable.” I said of the plowboy of Tyndale’s day that learning Hebrew, Greek, or Latin would have been an insurmountable task, and I said that it is likely to be an insurmountable task for modern English speakers to do the same thing. It is my position that our translations should be as accurate as possible so long as the task of understanding them is not an insurmountable task. That is the opposite of the traditional Catholic view that the Bible should be kept out of the common tongue because laymen are incapable of understanding it correctly.
 
I was somewhat surprised to see you adopt Mark Ward’s unique view of I Corinthians 14:9. As far as I’ve been able to determine, no one ever thought that this passage applied to the concept of readability before Ward began to promulgate his theories. You paraphrased Ward’s view as “a very fair application of 1 Corinthians 14 is that a translation (or simply any communication) should be understandable in order to provide edification,” but that application is neither “very fair” nor even fair at all.
 
It was interesting to note that you skipped over and did not challenge my refutation of Nathan’s “very fair” application of this passage. As I pointed out in the article,
 
The error in this application of I Corinthians 14 is easy to see if we just ask ourselves, “What were the unintelligible words Paul spoke of in I Corinthians 14? Were they Greek words the congregants had difficulty understanding or were they words spoken in a different language altogether?” The answer is simple. The unintelligible words Paul condemned in I Corinthians 14 were words spoken in a foreign language that no one in the church could understand. Paul was not saying that the words spoken in the church must all be on a level everyone present can understand. He was simply saying that there is no point in speaking in a language no one present can comprehend.
 
To justly claim that I Corinthians 14 applies to the use of the KJV in American churches, you must first demonstrate that the language used in the KJV is on the same level as the unintelligible words that Paul condemned in that passage. I have yet to find a single proponent of the modern translations who has proven that the KJV is unintelligible.
 
You alluded to the idea that the KJV is unintelligible during one of your exaggerations regarding my position. You claimed that “Bible concepts can often be difficult. But difficulty should not be because of vocabulary, syntax, and grammar.” On the surface, this sounds like a reasonable statement, but think about it for a minute. Vocabulary, syntax, and grammar are necessary components of written language. When God chose to communicate to man through the written word, He chose to subject men to the necessity of mastering things like vocabulary, syntax, and grammar as a prerequisite for understanding His Word. This is true no matter what translation a person may choose to use. It is not possible to translate God’s Word in way that does not require readers to master vocabulary, syntax, and grammar. That requirement really is “baked into the cake” as a theological necessity.
 
Another erroneous claim found in your article is the claim that “the goal of translation is to make something simpler and more readable to a specific audience.” That is simply incorrect. The goal of translation is to take a concept expressed in one language and accurately convey it to someone in another language. Translating Romans 10:13 as “Everyone who calls, ‘Help, God!’ gets help” (The Message) makes the verse much simpler and more readable than translating it as “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved,” (KJV) but only the second of those two can reasonably be called a translation. The primary goal of translation is accuracy. The primary goal of teaching is understanding. Both translation and teaching are necessary, but when we conflate the two, we end up with books like “The Message.”
 
Let me hasten to add a quick point of agreement. You wrote,
 
There is really no fundamental difference in the result of translating “Θεός” to “God” (Greek to English) and updating “asswaged” to “subsided” for example (Middle/Early English to Modern English). In both cases, the goal is to make them simpler and more readable to the English-speaking person.
 
I agree with the first part of this statement. There is nothing wrong with using the word subsided in Genesis 8:1. The question that I have is why? Why should we prefer the word subsided over the word asswaged? You seem to be implying that asswaged is more difficult to understand, but that would be a very subjective conclusion. We could be more objective by noting that assuage is commonly used in modern American literature almost as much as subside. In fact, assuage is so common that it can be found in thousands of news reports covering a wide range of topics.
 
Examples include:
 
“Biden’s debate performance—which was supposed to assuage concerns about Biden’s age, but did the opposite.” --https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2024-07-05/hollywood-democrats-call-on-biden-to-step-aside-after-debate-performance-its-about-the-ability-to-win
 
“JetBlue ‘should have done something to assuage [Lewis’] pain.’” --https://abcnews.go.com/US/jetblue-passenger-alleges-severe-burns-hot-tea-turbulence/story?id=111817880
 
“Inflicting substantial economic damage on their constituents to assuage narrow special interest groups.” --https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/opinion-restoring-america/3076252/protectionism-forgets-the-interests-of-the-average-american/
 
“An extension now could assuage some of the unease Blue Jays fans feel about a possible-but-unlikely Guerrero trade.” --https://heavy.com/sports/mlb/toronto-blue-jays/vladimir-guerrero-jr-trade-rumors-contract-extension-update/
 
“All three teams have—at least temporarily—assuaged internal concerns by hiring new coaches.” --https://www.theringer.com/nba/2024/9/20/24249435/nba-offseason-2024-trade-rumors-brandon-ingram
 
Given that the two words have about the same level of usage in modern English, why would we choose subside over assuage? It seems to me that you only chose subside out of personal preference, and that is a poor justification for claiming that the KJV needs to be updated. You have accused KJV proponents of arbitrarily setting “the threshold to the level of the KJV English,” but doesn’t your desire to change one perfectly modern word (asswaged) to a different modern word that you find more familiar (subsided) reveal that you have “arbitrarily set the threshold to the level” of your own preferences?
 
Toward the conclusion of your article, you mentioned that “KJVO proponents admit to rather large numbers of archaic words (and still growing).” It is true that some KJV proponents make that admission, but the question we need to ask is what evidence do they have that the claim is true. How are they defining the term “archaic,” and how much modern literature did they study before deciding that the words in their lists meet that definition?
 
I have put this claim to the test with several words including halt, besom, commendeth, compass, and remove. None of these words are truly archaic, and none of them are even “false friends” as Mark Ward is fond of labeling them. They are all used frequently in modern literature in the same way they are used in the KJV. I am in the process of testing more of these supposedly archaic words to see if their modern usage justifies that denomination, and I expect to find no more than ten words in the KJV that are actually archaic.
 
In conclusion, let me recommend that you read the two articles that I linked at the end of my response to Nathan.  The first of those recommended articles was Which Bible Did God Write?  The Biblical Case for Inerrancy as a Test of Textual Critcism. In that article, I present a biblical case for the superiority of the Textus Receptus based on the doctrine of inerrancy. At the end of that article, I attached a brief statement about the KJV, and I think if you take a moment to read it, you’ll find that we are much more closely aligned than you may have realized.
 
The second of the two articles that I listed was Some Thoughts on the Book Authorized by Mark Ward. This article is a collection of Facebook posts that I had made in reference to Ward’s book. A few of those posts are well developed, and they provide more insight into my view of the Bible in general and the KJV in particular. One aspect of this article that you might find interesting is Mark Ward’s contribution in the comment section, and my response to him.
 
I also recommend my three most recent articles on this issue. You can find them at these links:

1) Are There Really Archaic Words in the KJV? – This is a written debate between myself and Mark Ward.
 
2) You vs. Thee: The Importance of Second-Person Pronouns in Bible Translation – This article provides several examples of the way that passages are misinterpreted and misapplied when an English translation neglects the distinction between the singular and plural second-person pronouns.
 
3) Mark Ward’s “False Friends” are Nothing of the Sort – This article examines the word that Ward identifies as the “central example” and as the “key example” of his “false friends” argument.  I demonstrated that the word halt is commonly used as a synonym for limp in today’s literature in spite of Ward’s claims to the contrary, and in a response to this article, Ward finally admitted that he had known all along that halt could mean limp.