CONCERNING A NEW TRANSLATION

It was recently my good pleasure to meet and hear Mr. Robert Bratcher of the American Bible Society, the man who translated Good News for Modern Man, a book that heads the bestseller list among the paperbacks with a total of more than 12 million copies. Mr. Bratcher is as modest as he is scholarly, and his concern that the public have an easy-to-read Bible is obvious.

The college students to whom Mr. Bratcher spoke were impressed with the case he made for continued revisions of the scriptures, though some were made uncomfortable by his criticisms of the King James Version. To those who insisted that surely the King James Version was satisfactory, Mr. Bratcher pointed out that there were some passages that simply could not be understood as they appeared in that version. He cited Acts 8:33 as an example: “In his humiliation his judgment was taken away.” He challenged anyone to make sense of those words apart from help outside the King James Version. He told of one lad who took up the challenge, explaining that when a person is humiliated as Jesus was it would be expected that he would lose all judgment!

Mr. Bratcher’s own version is an improvement: “He was humiliated, and justice was denied him.”

He explained that Good News for Modern Man was intended for those who used English as a second language, and thus needed a simple, up-to-date version of the scriptures. He said the American Bible Society was delightfully surprised that the version has been enthusiastically received by those whose native language is English. He purposely avoided such words as justification, expiation, reconciliation. Instead he used “being put right with God” for justification, and in place of “to make reconciliation for the sins of the people” (Heb. 2:17), he put “so that the people’s sins would be forgiven.”

Mr. Bratcher explained that the translator has a serious problem in rendering the scriptures into the language of people whose culture is much different from the Greek-Roman world that produced the Bible. Such ideas as “anchor of the soul” has no meaning to inlanders who have no contact with the language of mariners. Nor does “Your sins shall be as white as snow” mean much in those areas of the world where it never snows. For our Lord to be referred to as “the bread of life” means less to those people who do not have bread in their diet than it does to us. And what does the expression “They were sawn into” (Heb. 11:37) mean to people so primitive that an implement like a saw is unknown?

In all such cases it is necessary to appropriate the meaning of scripture to the various cultures. Mr. Bratcher explained that while hope is indeed “an anchor of the soul” to us, it is better in some primitive societies to describe hope as “our picketing peg,” in reference to the means by which the people secure their camps.

He pointed to another interesting problem in translation. In a few of the more primitive languages our pronoun “We” may be translated in two ways, a “We” that includes only those who are speaking, or a “We” that is more inclusive, referring to all those present. So how is one to render such verses as Matt. 8:25: “They went and woke him, saying, ‘Save us, Lord; we are perishing’?” Did the disciples include Jesus when they spoke of perishing or only themselves? It may not be a big point, but it is one more problem that the translator faces.

Mr. Bratcher bothered to share with the students his view of the inspiration of the scriptures. He made it clear that this does not to him imply infallibility, for he sees errors in the scriptures, though no significant ones. To him inspiration means that the writers of scripture were enabled of God to see more than the facts. The inspired man was able to discern the meaning of the facts. Even if their “facts” may have sometime been confused, they nevertheless conveyed the meaning and the truth that God wanted the people to have.

He admitted to difficulty in persuading people to accept new versions of the Bible. But he takes comfort in the fact that the King James Version itself was forty years in being accepted. One church leader in that day was quoted as saying “I’d rather be dragged by horses” than to use the new translation. So suspicion of new translations is nothing new.

Those of you who are pleased with the Good News for Modern Man will be pleased to hear that the American Bible Society is now working on a similar production for the Old Testament scriptures, which should be ready in another four or five years.

A final note of interest in Mr. Bratcher’s talk was his reference to the woman who drew the many illustrations for Good News for Modern Man. She was under no instructions from the Society, save to go through the scriptures and draw such pictures as to her seemed appropriate. So she was in a way an interpreter herself, as of course every translator is. Knowing this, it is interesting to thumb through the new version and study the illustrations, noticing how her drawings are not only interpretations of the text but of the cultural practices as well.

Sometimes she seems inconsistent. In Acts 20, for example, she is illustrating Paul talking to the saints at Troas, and she quite properly has poor Eutychus nodding in a nearby window, ready to fall to his death. But she includes bareheaded women in the audience, while at least one man has on a turban. But in 1 Cor. 10 at the serving of the Supper the men are bareheaded and the women carefully covered. The last scene would, by the way, please our “one cup” brethren!

She doesn’t venture to illustrate a baptizing, but she does have Jesus literally walking on water. And she makes an interesting distinction between the accounts of Jesus cleansing the temple. In illustrating the account in Mark 11 she has Jesus chasing the moneychangers Out of the temple, and there is no whip in his hand. In John 2 she draws another picture of the same event, and this time a whip is in Jesus’ hand, but he is using it only on the animals.

This indicates that whether one is using words or pictures there are difficulties in interpretation. And it just may be that when you are drawing a picture of it you are a little more on the spot, for pictures are less ambiguous.

Speaking of drawing pictures of biblical events reminds me of a story coming out of Harvard Divinity School. Some of the students were pressing the professor as to what he made of the resurrection narrative. Not quite satisfied with his answer, they asked him: “Suppose someone was there with a Brownie and snapped a picture of the resurrection. When the film was developed, what would he have?” The professor, known to be less “liberal” than most of his Harvard colleagues, mused for a moment, and then said: “I suppose he would have a picture of the resurrection!”

So in the Good News for Modern Man we have more than a mere translation. There is someone there with a Brownie!

We do indeed commend the American Bible Society and Robert Bratcher for making the New Testament scriptures as fresh and up-to-date as the morning newspaper. We thank God for their labor of love. And let this random report on Mr. Bratcher’s talk be our way of expressing gratitude.—the Editor