Subject: Why so many Bibles? |
Bible Note: Excellent post, most excellent Huron! To carry your fine observations of the NASB a trifle farther, it might be noted that it is the considered opinion of this writer that to a certain degree the NASB has become the victim of a somewhat nasty and essentially inaccurate rumor; to wit, that in its herculean efforts to be literal it has inadventently become what the critics have called "a wooden translation." I sometimes feel like countering with, "Well, if I were a translation, I'd sooner be wooden than plastic. And would prefer to be literal than approximate, to be the real McCoy than the shadowy "dynamic equivalent" of the real thing. It'd rather give praises to God by translating the actual phrases of God than dumping off my own gussied-up paraphrases." .... Actually, I do get a little tired of hearing some of these wild-eyed disciples of the dynamic equivalence/paraphrase school carp on the woodeness of such excellent formal, word-for-word translations as the NASB 1995 Update. I've been hanging around words for many decades and even majored in English, and so lay claim to knowing a thing or two about putting English words together in order to be able to say something meaningful. And I find that by and large the NASB reads well. It is clear and comprehensible. I'll concede it doesn't read, as a blurb for a certain sorry paraphrased version announced upon its publication some years ago, "like today's newspaper", a fact for which I am enormously grateful and stand in admiration of the good sense of the NASB translators! --Hank |