Translate the Bible into both the Language and the Culture of the readers.

I was asked to speak to the leadership of a Christian group committed to using only the King James Version of the Bible in their ministry throughout the English-speaking world. I asked them, “What are the  names of the first people to translate parts of the New Testament?” They confessed themselves stumped.

“You know their names very well. They are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The language spoken in Israel was Aramaic, a Semitic language similar to Hebrew and Arabic. Jesus spoke Aramaic and all the stories about His life circulated in Aramaic. All four Gospel writers translated the Aramaic into Greek, a language unrelated to Aramaic.”

I went on to explain that translators need to focus not only on the meaning of the words in the source text, but also on the culture of the readers for whom they were translating. Matthew wrote his account of Jesus for the Greek-speaking Jewish people who lived in the Middle East. Luke, Mark, and John, however, wrote their gospels for the Greek-speaking, non-Jewish, Gentile people in that area.

Jesus often spoke about the Kingdom of Heaven. Matthew, translating for Jews, used the term “Kingdom of Heaven” thirty-five times. Whereas Mark, Luke, and John never used that term. Instead, they used the term “Kingdom of God” seventy times.

Here’s why there was such a huge difference. When Jesus, speaking to the Jews in Palestine, said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matt 19:14) Matthew was the only translator who faithfully used the Greek term for “Kingdom of Heaven.”

Mark, Luke and John, however, did not use the Greek term for Kingdom of Heaven, but changed what Jesus actually said into Kingdom of God.” Why did they not faithfully translate the exact words their Master Jesus said?

They had an excellent reason. They knew that if they used the term Kingdom of Heaven, their readers, being steeped in Greek culture, would instantly interpret the term Kingdom of Heaven as the pantheon of Greek gods, such as Zeus, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Apollo and Hermes, etc. That was not at all what Jesus was talking about! That is why the Apostle Paul, who evangelized in Greek and wrote his letters to the Gentile churches in Greek, also never used the term ‘Kingdom of Heaven.’

This example, from the first translators of Jesus’ words and the stories about Jesus, is a powerful lesson for all Bible translators. Translators must not only know how to translate the source text, but they must also know how the readers of the translated words will understand those words, in the context of their own culture.

I then summarized my explanation, “In the light of the importance of the receiving culture, the King James Authorized version was intended to speak clearly to English-speaking people in England living in the culture of the early 1600s. It did so very well, and God used it in a tremendous way.
But it is now over four hundred years later, and many varieties of English are spoken worldwide. It is easy to see how both the English language and the cultures of readers have changed enormously.
The English language, as it was spoken four centuries ago, is now a hindrance to understanding the gospel, rather than a help, for people living in a totally different culture.”

The Amsterdam Declaration, formulated during Billy Graham’s Amsterdam 2000 convention, states this clearly: “We pledge ourselves to remove all known language and cultural barriers to a clear understanding of the gospel on the part of our hearers.”

I later heard that the Christian group, whose leaders I was talking to, eventually switched to using the New King James Version, as well as the English Standard Version and the New International Version.