Comments on: Functional Equivalence in Translation (2)

By: Joel

Joel — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:44:14 +0000

This is why translations matter as Brent says. Translations are done by people, not by God. Many people get too caught up in the words they read or memorize. Interpretations are made based of those words with little or no effort made to understand why those words were used. How many souls were lost because translators didn’t understand the Jewish meaning of “eye of a needle.” God made sure that we have access to the knowledge that we need to make the right choices, but we have to actually study for ourselves. Mindless memorizing without context has led to many false doctrines.Â

By: ElShaddai Edwards

ElShaddai Edwards — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:09:18 +0000

> I believe â€œfor the forgiveness of sinsâ€ belongs to the entire passages, not just baptism.

I agree – I just wanted to point out that even minor things like a comma can make a difference in interpreting a passage – something that both functional and formal translations can fall down on.

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:18:57 +0000

Exactly! It is a hard fight trying to get others to see this sometimes.

By: Brent Kercheville

Brent Kercheville — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:39:46 +0000

Hi ElShaddai,

By the way, love your blog.

I believe "for the forgiveness of sins" belongs to the entire passages, not just baptism. Forgiveness comes as a result of faith, confession, repentance, and baptism. I agree with you about the comma, which I had not noticed before. The revised NLT does seems to make it sound like baptism alone is for the forgiveness of sins. I think that can be misunderstood.

By: ElShaddai Edwards

ElShaddai Edwards — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:17:30 +0000

Good examples, Brent.

In the last NLT’07 example, do you consider the phrase, “for the forgiveness of your sins”, to belong to the immediate preceding phrase, “be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ”, or to the entire passage, “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ”? That is, does forgiveness come as a result of baptism or repentance/faith/baptism?

The way the NLT’07 is grammatically divided, with the comma after “God”, suggests the former, which raises troubling questions as to whether God’s forgiveness is a result of our work (baptism) or of the entire process.