Page 67 - Doctrine and History of the Preservation of the Bible revised

Can you believe that is just one sentence? Modern grammarians would call that a “run-on” sentence
and would insist that students should break it down into multiple sentences. The problem is that the
original author did write it in one sentence, so to break it down would mean moving away from a “word
for word” or a formal approach to translation. Each group of translators must decide to what degree
they want to remain faithful to a formal approach and what degree do they want to help the readers
understand what the author is saying in sentences they can better understand.

Look at the following chart for how the translators chose to translate Eph. 1:3-14:

Translation Sentences Published

American Standard (ASV) 1 1901
J.P. Green (LITV) 1 1987
Young (YLT) 1 1898
Modern King James (MKJV) 2 1962
King James (KJV) 3 1611
New King James (NKJV) 4 1982
New American Standard (NASV) 4 1960
New Revised Standard (NRSV) 6 1989
J.B. Phillips (PHL) 6 1958
New American Bible (NAB) 6 1970
New English Translation (NET) 7 1997
New International Version (NIV) 8 1973
New Living Translation 15 1996

No translation is completely formal – even translations considered formal such as the KJV or NKJV and
the NASB contain dynamic translations. Let’s see an illustration of what we mean from Luke 9:44.

KJV NASB NIV
Let these sayings sink Let these words sink Listen carefully to what
down into your ears: into your ears: I am about to tell you.
for the Son of man for the Son of Man the Son of Man is going
shall be delivered into is going to be delivered to be betrayed into the
the hands of men. into the hands of men. hands of men.

For example, in Mark 4:1 the second gospel writer states that in order to speak to a large multitude,
Jesus sat in the sea: “And he began again to teach by the seaside: and there was gathered unto him a
great multitude, so that he entered into a ship, and sat in the sea” (KJV - translated exactly as Mark
wrote it). Did Jesus sit down in the boat or in the water? Admittedly, this matter would be irrelevant for
a translation following the methodology of Dynamic Equivalent or Paraphrase (discussed below)
because each would predictably discard the troublesome phrase and make the sentence convey the
meaning that Jesus sat down in the boat.

To highlight these questions even further, another troublesome passage which has plagued scholars,
commentators, and translators for centuries is Isaiah 15:5 where the Hebrew words “...Eglath-
shelishiyah” are simple to understand yet make absolutely no sense in the context of the passage. There
is no linking adverb or preposition or conjunction nor general syntax, or anything else that even

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