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Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy
Welcome to Day 1036 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
Treason & Translation  - Wisdom Wednesday


Wisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge.  Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy.  Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1036 of our Trek, and it is Wisdom Wednesday.  Creating a Biblical Worldview is important to have a proper perspective on today’s current events.  To establish a Biblical Worldview, it is required that you also have a proper understanding of God’s Word.  Especially in our western cultures, we do not fully understand the Scriptures from the mindset and culture of the authors.  In order to help us all have a better understanding of some of the more obscure passages in God’s Word, we are investing Wisdom Wednesday reviewing a series of essays from one of today’s most prominent Hebrew Scholars Dr. Micheal S. Heiser.  He has compiled these essays into a book titled  ’I Dare You Not to Bore Me With the Bible.’

Are some Biblical translations treasonous to the Christian faith?  In today’s essay, we will explore a passage that shows why certain translations differ.
Treason & Translation
A famous Italian proverb declares “traduttore, traditore," which means, ''translator, traitor.” Those who assume this is true are unaware of how difficult it is to produce a translation. Every translator at some point invariably discards the meaning of the original text.

A committee of scholars assembled to produce a translation typically adopts an overarching philosophy of translation. In simplest terms, there are two. The first is called “formal equivalence,” which seeks to account for virtually every word in the original text by producing its English counterpart in translation. This is “word-for-word” or “literal” translation. The second is called “dynamic equivalence.” This approach seeks to capture the thought of the original verse in context, and then re-create that thought using whatever English words are most precise. This is “thought-for-thought” translation. But adopting an approach does not mean that all the translators will apply it equally. There is also a matter of interpretation. When the biblical text allows more than one translation due to ambiguity in the context, grammar, or word usage, a translator needs to make his or her own decision, which can lead to controversy.

1 Corinthians 7:1 is illustrative of the potential hazard.



ESV
It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.


NASB
It is good for a man not to touch a woman.


NIV
It is good for a man not to marry.


NLT
It is good to abstain from sexual relations.



The most “word-for-word” of these translations is that of the NASB, which captures the literal reading of the Greek words in the verse, particularly the verb “touch.” Other translations move away from the ambiguous “touch” to “have sexual relations with’’ (ESV, and NLT).The most controversial rendering is the NIV “It is good for a man not to marry” How is it that the translators could go from a Greek word that means “touch” to these options?

The answer is that the translators factored in what was presumed to be the wider context of the chapter and, ultimately, the writer. In 1 Corinthians 7:7-8. Paul describes himself as single. His advice to the Corinthians in several places is that it would be wiser for those who are not mar...