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  • From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] paraphrase Bible versions
  • Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2005 20:54:10 -0600

Dear Steven,

Thanks for all the wonderful information. I had one question:

Wycliffe could only translate from the NT Vulgate, so that is basically an independent translation.
(I'm not 100% sure about the Tanach)

HH: He apparently did the same for the OT:
http://www.higherpraise.com/preachers/wycliffe.htm

Although he did not know Scripture in its original languages, and translated Scripture from the Latin Vulgate, he gave a remarkably accurate translation which enabled the common people to hear the Scriptures in their language for the first time.

Our English Bible gradually developed over the last six hundred years. John Wycliffe is credited with the first English translation of the New Testament which was completed about 1380 C.E.

I don't understand the connection between only being able to translate from the Vulgate and it being basically an independent translation. I can't remember the details, but that would seem, on the face of it, to make it less independent:
http://www.intergate.com/~jcordaro/Jn.1.html

Wycliffe's translation is based upon the Latin Vulgate, not the Greek. It is therefore a "version of a version."

HH: Perhaps you mean that his English did not depend on other English translations. Here is a word about it from the NY Public Library:
http://www.nypl.org/press/tyndale.cfm

In the 14th century, John Wycliffe translated the Bible from Latin into English working from the Vulgate. Wycliffe's translation clung faithfully to the syntax and grammar of the Latin, which resulted in an awkward English. Though faithful to the Vulgate, Wycliffe's translation, which emphasized the common man's access to the Scriptures, was condemned as heretical in England by the Constitutions of Oxford in 1408, setting a precedent for Tyndale's fate.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard
From peterkirk AT qaya.org Thu Jan 6 07:19:40 2005
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] paraphrase Bible versions
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On 05/01/2005 19:24, Schmuel wrote:

Hi b-hebrew,

Subject was: Re: [b-hebrew] Review Alter's translation

Schmuel
First, let me say that I am not convinced that the term paraphrase is limited to reworking within one language in scholarly lingo.

The dictionary definitions do not seem to have that definition limitation, and if you put "translation is a paraphrase" or "paraphrase translation" into Google
you will 500 hits each where all sorts of translations are called paraphrases
in writings.
One interesting article
http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/articles/bibletrans.html
discusses what is a paraphrase, and says that paraphrase itself is a "loaded
word"


Fair enough. I accept that a pejorative sense of "paraphrase" is in use in some circles, resulting in general confusion. This part of this article is generally good (I haven't read it all), although it goes over the top in its condemnation of the Living Bible. I am happy to follow the advice there:

We can eliminate some confusion by setting aside the loaded word paraphrase for the moment. The real issue seems to be how we determine what merits the title of translation and what doesn't.


However, for the purpose of your question below, I will be using your
definition.

Peter Kirk,

Please name any English version which is in fact a paraphrase, i.e. an adaptation of a previous text in the same language, rather than a translation, i.e. based on the original language texts - and which does not call itself a paraphrase as the Living Bible does.

Schmuel
Well, the Complete Jewish Bible Tanach from David Stern simply changed words in the
JPS-1914, (David acknowledged very limited Hebrew expertise). When David discusses
"paraphrase", as in
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/StudyTheBible/InfoJewish.rtf he is using the literalness
of the translation as his definition, not whether it is a rework of an existing text in
the target language.

And apparently the Restoration Scriptures by a group called YATI (Your Arms to Israel) did similarly using the Revised Standard Version. Not surprisingly they are not very straightforward with their description of their methodology, leaving the impression that they did an original translation.
How these two handled the NT I cannot say for certain offhand.

There are others where there is no real scholarship background given, and there have been
paraphrase theories offered by outsiders. One would be the ISR - "Institute of Scriptural
Research" in South Africa version "The Scriptures". The second is well-known, the
New World Translation by the Jehovah's Witnesses. Perhaps this did in fact fully involve
translation from the original languages, but there is at least some uncertainty. I see now that
you mention this below.

btw, James Trimm did something similar with his Hebraic-Roots-Version NT, being
publicized largely through the Internet, while claiming an original translation. This
was a little different, as mostly he didn't even change any vocabulary, prepositions,
conjunctions, punctuation, etc. so his volume qualifies much more as a plagiarism than
a paraphrase. A lot of words were changed to be more "Hebraic", but that is
neither translation or paraphrase, simply substitution (word processor
scan-and-replace).


Thank you. All of these (except perhaps NWT) are best classified, to my mind at least, as fringe versions rather than mainstream ones. And most of them are generally rather literal. So I don't think these are what Bill had in mind when he commented on "the excesses of paraphrases posing as translations which are striving for originality and novelty in English".

...

Peter (in later post)
And this is how most English versions have been done, except for Wycliffe's very first one.

Schmuel
Wycliffe could only translate from the NT Vulgate, so that is basically an
independent translation.
(I'm not 100% sure about the Tanach)
Tyndale was the "very first one" on the line of Masoretic Text and TR Bibles.

My point was that Tyndale made use of the phrasing and vocabulary of Wycliffe's translation, although he also brought it in line with the MT and the Greek NT. But Wycliffe could not use any earlier English version, and so had to invent his own English phrasing and terminology everywhere. (More accurately, there were two Wycliffe versions, and the second one was much more satisfactory; and Wycliffe's personal involvement in the work was small.)

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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