Your Translation of the Bible Matters
By: Allison J. Van Tilborgh
Tags: Judaism, History, Christianity, Religion, Spirituality

Your Translation of the Bible Matters

Not all are created alike… and neither are their verses.

Recently, I’ve been trying to read various translations of the Bible side by side. Not just NIV (New International Version), or the good ol’ NKJV (New King James Version), but also the CJB (Complete Jewish Bible), a Messianic Bible translation.

The translation we choose to read from is extremely important. It can change the way you view scripture, for good or bad. Likewise, it’s essential we recognize these texts for what they are: translations — not the actual text.

I can recall many church services where the Pastor would reference a single English word and emphasize how special it was that this specific word was used in a particular passage as if the translation had the same divine potency as the original text document.

There is still much unrest about the status of the Bible in general. Is it a historical document? Is it a rule-book? Is it wisdom literature? Is it a compilation of stories? Is it a mix of all of these?

Furthermore, is the Bible divinely inspired (meaning it was written by God through human hands)? Or is, perhaps, one part of the Bible divine, such as The Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible)? Or how about the entire Bible just being made by humans, with human problems, human sin, and human misunderstanding?

In any case, we cannot deny the fact that these books have been compiled over and over again over thousands of years, and translated through Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, German, Yiddish, English, and sometimes English again (hence the ‘new’ in New International Version). In many cases, the Bibles we read from have gone between languages many times.

A classic example of translation skewing the meaning of a passage is in the ‘10 Commandments’.

First off, there are not just 10 commandments. Some people find 11, 12, 14 within the set that goes on the tablets and there is debate over where they begin and end. More broadly, however, there are 613 mitzvot sprawled throughout the Hebrew Bible, and not one is more important than others, from a Jewish perspective. This means that eating Kosher is literally as important as taking a Sabbath or taking a good bath after menstruation.

Furthermore, there is a lot of debate about the translation of the Hebrew word mitzvot to commandments. Online you’ll find a lot of sources defining it best as either a commandment or as a good deed. I had a professor once who translated it best as ‘word,’ ‘statements,’ or ‘declarations’ from the Hebrew. In other words, not everyone agrees with the 16th-century Christian translations that turn these mitzvot into a legalist principle.

How would our understanding of Hebrew scripture shift if we saw mitzvot not as law and law-breaking, but as wisdom to help us live good, healthy, prosperous lives? Perhaps many of us wouldn’t still be wrestling with the same shame and fear we do today.

Further implications of this understanding of biblical law require a reexamination of the following phrases that I have all heard in the past week.

“We need more commandment-following Pastors!” “Judaism was about rules and feeling bad about yourself. Christianity is about freedom and love.” “Jesus came to fulfill the law, so we mustn’t concern ourselves with those old, outdated practices.”

Would you be surprised to hear that more than one of these quotes come from the same person?

There are many, many articles that could be made, inspired by such rhetoric, but for now I will say the following few statements: by cherry-picking laws and elevating a select few’s importance to our lives, we wrongfully ‘over-judge’ specific individuals that Jesus called us to love!

Furthermore, these ‘commandments’ are not Christian in origin. These are Jewish. If you want commandment-following Pastors, you should learn to respect all of the commandments, not just your favorite few.

Do you really believe a God who created the universe would instruct His people to abstain from pork, shellfish, and shrimp for the fun of it? I firmly believe each mitzvah God spoke was with the intention of making our lives better, healthier, or more apt to fulfill his purpose.

Spoiler alert: Jesus ate kosher and was circumcised (I know, crazy). He still abided by Jewish law and ethics. Yes, he redefined the way we should let the law control our lives, and drew a distinction between the Pharisee approach versus his own, but they still were speaking of the same issues.

How can Christians point at Jews and say, “You silly people practicing silly laws!” Jesus followed those ‘silly laws.’