Why the nlt is a bad translation

Well we were wrong. And why are we surprised to learn this, given the intensity of our culture's hatred for anything smacking of anti-Semitism? It's not surprising the New Living Translation did not stop with muting the patriarchalism of Scripture, but also muted the texts which have been accused by Jews of leading Christians to call them "Christ-killers.

It never ceases to amaze how men of impeccable evangelical scholarly credentials think nothing of changing thousands of words in Scripture in order to diffuse or hide the language of patriarchy or purported anti-Semitism. Yet at the same time these same men see no need to cash in their inerrancy credentials. And tragically, no one has the courage to tell them they ought to do so.

Stop and think for a moment: if the Holy Spirit meant to say "Jewish religious leaders," would He not have breathed "scribes and Pharisees" or some similar construction as He has done in so many other New Testament passages? When there are so numerous places in the New Testament where what the Holy Spirit has inspired is the equivalent of the NLT's "Jewish religious leaders," is it not imperative to communicate that, for instance, in John this is most decidedly NOT what He breathed?

Similarly, look at John ; ; ; ; ; ; , Then notice other places where Jewish markings have entirely disappeared from the NLT: John ; ; ; ; ; There is no logical end to this censoring of God's Holy Spirit. Once we set ourselves up as authorities over the Word of God, thinking that we can communicate more accurately the meaning of the Holy Spirit by hiding His words, we rightly come under God's judgment.

This post was originally published in For a number of books and articles that rightly divide the Word of Truth on these matters, check out our congregations' web ministry, KepttheFaith. Also, here's an article dealing with this subject that I wrote for the Banner of Truth web site. Tim serves Clearnote Church , Bloomington, Indiana. He and Mary Lee have five children and big lots of grandchildren.

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Featured Posts Previous Pause Next. Baylyblog has moved: come visit our new home Error message. The Bible in its original languages is a powerful book, not only in its message but also in the ways it presents its message. Much of it is written in poetic form or in exalted prose, in keeping with its noble themes.

It is well-designed to make an impression upon its hearers. It is full of sophisticated rhetorical devices--irony, hyperbole, allusions, metaphors, and so forth. Some English versions have been very successful in representing these features of the original. But the NLT is not one of them. The literary quality of the NLT is uniformly low, and often very far from being "idiomatically powerful.

An example of this may be seen in Matthew They may refer to me as 'Lord,' but they still won't enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The decisive issue is whether they obey my Father in heaven. Go away; the things you did were unauthorized.

Verse 21 is in the literal translation one of the most impressive and convicting sayings in Scripture. We wonder how anyone could think that the NLT's rendering of this verse, which falls flat by comparison, is more 'idiomatically powerful.

The language is just not suitable at all to the gravity of the situation, and it does not reflect the solemnity of the Greek diction here. It seems that the NLT is not really trying to produce the 'equivalent effect' which is the basic idea of the dynamic equivalence theory of translation, but simply imposing a colloquial style on the material, without any regard for the style of the original text.

In Genesis, when God discovers that Adam and Eve have eaten the forbidden fruit, the King James conjures up a roar of rebuke: "And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? We note that the NLT's "How could you do such a thing" in Genesis is not a new translation, but carried over from the Living Bible. Taylor may have given this rendering instead of the literal "What have you done" because he thought some readers might not realize that it is a rhetorical question, and they might think that God did not know what the woman had done.

His treatment of the Lord's question to Adam in is similar. Instead of the literal "where are you? So it seems that the NLT revisers had no particular concern about misunderstandings of the text.

If indeed they have taken care to revise every verse, it seems that they have preferred to leave as it was for stylistic reasons. Daniel Taylor, an English professor at Bethel College in Minnesota and one of the stylists for the version, has explained that the committee was under some "pressure" to simplify the text, and has acknowledged the drawbacks of this in an article published in Christianity Today :.

In contemporary Bible translations, ours included, the pressure generally is to seek the widest possible audience and to do whatever is necessary stylistically to reach that audience. Nevertheless, if a translation allows the least literate, least educated, least churched, least inquisitive, least motivated reader to become the de facto norm, it not only will fail to do justice to the text but also will alienate many other potential readers.

In recent years many people associated with the Wycliffe Bible Translators and the American Bible Society have been talking about the need to translate the Bible into the 'heart language' of all peoples. Hyatt Moore, the former U. Director of the Wycliffe organization, evidently regards the NLT as an example of this, because he has endorsed the NLT with the words, "I'm grateful for a modern translation of the Scriptures like the New Living Translation.

This is the word of life, so it has to be given in the language of the people—their heart language—in clear, understandable, accurate words.

It doesn't take as much work and effort to understand, as a second language would. This desire to communicate on an emotional level is evident in the NLT, which tries to evoke an emotional response by various rhetorical means: the frequent insertion of such words as "wonderful" and "wonderfully," "marvelous," "dear" and "dearly;" the overuse of "very;" the use of the more personal direct address instead of indirect statements, and so forth. Most of this derives from the Living Bible, and it is toned down somewhat in the revision.

You are among those who have been called to belong to Jesus Christ, dear friends in Rome. God loves you dearly, and he has called you to be his very own people. Again, much of this is carried over from the Living Bible, but the NLT's gushing style does not reflect the tone of the original here, which is really quite formal and declamatory.

The NLT is merely following Taylor's lead in this respect, trying hard to make the English text emotionally warm, personal, and informal. This will of course make the version appealing to those readers who want their emotions massaged, but it is not 'dynamic equivalence. One of the phrases often misunderstood by readers of the Bible who are not familiar with the "Bible English" of literal versions is the phrase "a man after [God's] own heart," spoken of David in 1 Samuel , and alluded to in Acts "a man after my heart".

This phrase is commonly thought to mean that David was always chasing after God's affection, doing things to win his love, etc. In these languages the words for "heart" are used in reference to the mind in general.

So when the Bible speaks of God's "heart" it means his thoughts or his intentions , not his emotions. When the Biblical authors wanted to refer to the emotions they used words corresponding to our words for lower organs—the intestines and kidneys—not the heart.

For example, the Apostle Paul exhorts us to "put on bowels of mercies" in Colossians , by which he means "compassionate hearts. Another problem arises from the use of the word "after" in this phrase. This is an archaic usage of the seventeenth century, at which time the word "after" was often used in the sense "according to. That is what this phrase means in the original languages. Unfortunately many pastors and authors who should know better have based whole sermons and study guides upon the highly "preachable" misunderstanding of the phrase.

This is a good example of the pitfalls of literal translation and archaic English for people who interpret such language as if it were idiomatic modern English. The main justification for the "dynamic equivalence" method of translation is that it anticipates and prevents such errors of interpretation.

In the Good News Bible at 1 Samuel we read "the kind of man [the Lord] wants," which gives the meaning well enough in idiomatic English. But the NLT is disappointing here.

In 1 Samuel we read, "a man after his own heart," and in Acts it is, "a man after my own heart. Under this method of translation "a man after my own heart" in Acts is no more suitable than "bowels of mercies" in Colossians Readers of literal versions who have gained some familiarity with biblical idioms and are alert to the fact that what they are reading is not idiomatic vernacular English are not so likely to misunderstand this language, but in a version such as the NLT the reader has no reason to think that the words mean something completely different from how they are used in vernacular English.

How could the reader of the NLT know that in these two verses the word "after" is being used in an archaic sense? Its use here is simply anomalous.

Because the correct interpretation of this phrase is well-known to all competent scholars, it seems incredible that the scholars involved in the making of the NLT are responsible for the problem here. Nor can it be explained as a carry-over from the Living Bible. Although the Living Bible did use the expression in Acts , in 1 Samuel it read, "the Lord wants a man who will obey him, and he has discovered the man he wants.

Many bad renderings have been corrected. We are especially glad to see that Taylor's indefensible Arminian glosses on Acts and Romans have been eliminated, and in other places the theological bias of the Living Bible has been toned down, if not entirely neutralized. But there are some parts of the NLT in which it seems that the revisers have been lax, making only some spot corrections of Taylor's paraphrase when a fresh translation was in order.

We may take 2 Corinthians as an example, in which there are some very questionable renderings carried over from Taylor. On the day of salvation, I helped you. Today is the day of salvation. Thus Paul's appeal is interpreted as a "gospel invitation" to the Corinthians, as if they had never accepted the basic gospel-proclamation described in , and might even reject it now.

But surely this is not right. Paul's words "receive the grace of God in vain" presuppose that God's grace has been received by them, not merely offered.

The problem for the interpreter is to decide what is meant by "in vain. This interpretation is supported by various considerations. There is a close verbal parallel in 1 Corinthians , "But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

Paul never does this in his epistles. And the whole context of the statement shows that Paul's main concern is their immaturity, their lack of Christian growth and testimony. He reminds them that "the new has come" 2 Corinthians , that Christ died "that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him" , and he goes on to say, "Let us cleanse ourselves He uses the word in reference to the whole process of salvation, from justification through sanctification to glorification.

Likewise the words "be reconciled to God" in may be understood as an exhortation to those who are not walking in the Spirit, and who consequently are in a sense not truly reconciled with God. We see this interpretation in other 'dynamic equivalence' versions, such as the New English Bible, which reads "you have received the grace of God; do not let it go for nothing," and similar renderings are given in the Good News Bible and in the Contemporary English Version.

What we have in the NLT is an interpretation arbitrarily favored by Taylor, and at the very least the NLT revisers should have added a footnote advising the reader of the interpretation favored by most scholars. In the NLT carries over Taylor's "right now Certainly this is how most people will understand the NLT's rendering, and there can be little doubt that this is how Taylor meant people to understand it, especially after the plea not to "reject" the "message of God's great kindness" in the preceding verse.

Yet this is not the meaning. When Paul quotes Isaiah and says "now" is the "day of salvation" he means that the time for the fulfillment of God's promise has arrived. The "favorable time," when God's grace is poured out so abundantly upon his people, is here. By "now" he means the new age that began with the resurrection, the period of his ministry. The New English Bible captures the sense here: "The hour of favour has now come; now, I say, has the day of deliverance dawned. The Arminian spin on the passage comes out clearly with the paraphrastic rendering "God is ready to help you," which, taken together with the other interpretions here, suggests a synergistic doctrine of salvation.

If in this passage Paul is urging unregenerate Corinthians to accept Christ as their savior, in this context "God is ready to help you" implies that God is merely waiting for them to take the first step towards salvation, by "making a decision. Elsewhere he consistently teaches that God is the one who takes the first step, in regeneration. The Living Bible rendered verse 2,.

For God says, 'Your cry came to me at a favorable time, when the doors of welcome were wide open. I helped you on a day when salvation was being offered. Today he is ready to save you. The NLT has pruned away the most flagrant parts of Taylor's interpretation, such as the phrase "when the doors of welcome were wide open.

The Arminian obsession with "free will" and "choice" may be seen in many places throughout the NLT, which injects libertarian buzzwords like "free," "freedom," "choice," and "choose" into verses quite gratuitously, often in ways that vitiate the teaching of the original text. Paul's expression "you are under grace" is meant to express the condition of those who are under the compelling influence of God's sanctifying grace, not a condition of "freedom," as one can plainly see in the verses that follow.

Another example of this tendency may be seen in Proverbs , where the NLT reads, "Teach your children to choose the right path. On the contrary, the whole point of this saying is that the way should not be left to choice or chance, but instilled by careful and early training. Morality must be a habit formed by careful inculcation, so that it becomes second nature. This is the way to insure that "even when he is old he will not turn aside from it," as the second half of the proverb goes.

The proverb really excludes the idea that moral character is a matter of "choice. This rendering, which also derives from Taylor, expresses something very different from the Hebrew. We do not suppose that Taylor or the NLT revisers of his work consciously chose to inject their theology into the version. Nor do we doubt that they sincerely wished to make the Bible easy to understand. We prefer to say that, under the license of "dynamic equivalence," they have failed to practice self-restraint, and have ended up presenting their own theological notions as the inspired word of God.

Alternatively, you may have an emotional attachment to the way some translations phrase a particular line of Scripture, either because you memorized it that way or because it has entered the liturgical grammar of the church. That translation is accurate, faithful to the Greek, time tested, and beautiful. But is it a good translation? Well, that depends. As a working guideline, then, I propose we evaluate translations on the basis of three criteria.

Many have an instantly negative reaction to the NLT when they first start reading it. Our Father in Heaven, may your name be kept holy. This brings us to a second frustration many have with the NLT, and here we have a more substantive criticism. Here is where the Greek and Hebrew nerds like myself wring their hands and gripe to their fellows. If you consider our previous example, you might see the problem in a small way in Matt.

The NLT thus seems far removed from the Greek. But I have this complaint against you. The NLT has added so much! This is a bit technical, so bear with me. As such, it still has verb-like qualities that attach to it. No-one gets to not make a decision here. The NLT snatches that decision away. It makes the decision for you. And to many, that seems like a bad thing. And the thing is, it is very interpretive. I wish they had left it ambiguous in that verse. Because a mbiguity is harder to read. Clarity and specificity go together.

If you leave it ambiguous you necessarily put the burden of interpretation on the reader. The Greek necessarily presents a hermeneutical puzzle; the translators weighed the evidence and came to the conclusion that John is being intentionally ambiguous here, that he intends the object of the love to be both Jesus and the church.

Having made that conclusion, they represent it in their translation. All translations do this, and they do it all the time; 7 the NLT just does it more often because it has to given its translation philosophy , which is to make things easier on the reader.

There is no mystery about what the translation team is trying to accomplish. The translators of the New Living Translation set out to render the message of the original texts of Scripture into clear, contemporary English.

As they did so, they kept the concerns of both formal-equivalence and meaning-based in mind. NLT translators rendered the message more toward the meaning when the literal rendering was hard to understand, was misleading, or yielded archaic or foreign wording. The translators first struggled with the meaning of the words and phrases in the ancient context; then they rendered the message into clear, natural English.

Their goal was to be both faithful to the ancient texts and eminently readable. It is, of course, great for all those categories of people. But it was while reading the NLT together during devotionals that I began to really enjoy it. Then I wanted my own copy.

And now that copy is a part of my regular reading rotation. Readable, yes, sure.