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Sarah D’Addese

Prof. Jan Rieman

English 1103-002

Annotated Bibliography

Goddard, Burton L. “Concerns in Bible Translation.” Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological

Society. 10.2 (1967): 85-87. ATLA Religion Database. Web. 22 Feb. 2011.

Burton Goddard is a Doctor of Theology at Gordon Divinity School in Massachusetts. He was a

founding member of the Evangelical Theological Society and an ordained minister. Although

this is a rather old article, I do not think that it is outdated. He was writing to fellow theologians

who, in my opinion, can still appreciate his work because the question of Bible translation is still

being debated. In this particular article he discusses the merits of the English translation of the

Bible that we use. In other words, how accurate are they? Since it is rather impossible for the

average Christian to translate from Aramaic or Greek, Goddard suggests we go to an evangelical

scholar and ask for help. While I appreciate Goddard’s method, is that really the only way to

read the Bible? I intend to find out.

Kalland, Earl S. “Considerations of Verbal and Idea Rendition” Bulletin of the Evangelical

Theological Society. 10.2 (1967): 88-92. ATLA Religion Database. Web. 22 Feb. 2011.

Earl Kalland is one of the members of the NIV (New International Version) translation

committee. Seeing as how the NIV is the largest selling Bible translation in the world, he seems

more than qualified to write to his fellow theologians about the difficulties of translation. He

argues that you will never be able to translate from one language to another perfectly. This said,

you must find a happy medium between literal translation and translation of ideas. If you are too
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literal, you lose the meaning, but if you are too free, then you make unjustified interpretations.

Since I have an NIV version of the Bible, and will probably be using it for this paper, it seemed

necessary to get some input from one of the translators himself.

Philip, Johnson C. and Saneesh Cherian. “Analyzing Bible Difficulties.” Brethren Assembly.

Web. 20 Mar. 2011.

Johnson Philip is a Christian apologist, or someone who answers the question “is Christianity

believable?” who founded the first seminary in the world to offer master’s and doctorate

programs in apologetics. Through his research he undoubtedly came across the discussion of

Biblical translation errors. He partnered with Dr. Cherian, who has, among others, a Master’s in

Divinity and a Ph.D in Biology, on several projects, this being one of them. They conclude that

although there may be copying errors in the Bible, they are mainly in the numbers or the names

of people which does not take away from the overall meaning of the Bible. They also recognize

that when idiomatic expressions or speech patterns from one society are translated into a

different language errors will occur and so compromises must be made. Going off of what

Kalland suggested, they too feel that a happy medium must be found between too rigid and too

free. They make various other points but these are the main two I wish to focus upon.

Van Leeuwen, Raymond C. “We Really Do Need Another Bible Translation.” Christianity

Today 45.13 (2001):28-35. Web. 22 Feb. 2011.

Raymond Van Leeuwen is a teacher of the New Testament at Eastern College in Pennsylvania.

In this article, his main problem with the current Bible translations we have now is that they were

translated using the functional equivalence (FE) method. In this method, what is actually stated
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in the original Greek and Hebrew is altered to make it easier for the “everyday person” to

understand. Van Leeuwen feels that this is a problem because when you change words and

metaphors, they lose their meaning. You no longer have to stop and ponder them because they

are no longer there. Someone else has done the thinking for you and given you their

interpretation. Although he does see the good in this method of translation, he is adamant that

there should be several other methods employed as well when producing a translation of the

Bible. This article correlates almost directly with Kalland’s piece because they both discuss the

FE method of translation, however, this one is more in depth about what we should do instead

and why FE should change.