Translation Is Interpretation

Bible translations are often sorted into two boxes, word-for-word and thought-for-thought, as though every translation belonged cleanly to one or the other. It is more accurate, and more useful, to picture a single spectrum running from formal equivalence, which tries to preserve the source language's words, word order, and grammatical structure as far as English allows, to functional equivalence, which tries to preserve the source language's meaning and effect even where that requires restructuring the sentence.

Near the formal end sits the NASB, which for decades was the standby for close reading precisely because it keeps Greek and Hebrew sentence structure visible even at the cost of smooth English, and the ESV, which aims for a similar closeness to the original wording while reading somewhat more naturally. Toward the middle of the spectrum sit the CSB and the NIV, both of which will restructure a sentence, supply an implied subject, or trade an idiom for its English equivalent when a strictly literal rendering would confuse or mislead an English reader, while still keeping the underlying vocabulary and imagery close to view. The NRSV sits near the formal end for most purposes but is also shaped by a stated commitment to gender-accurate language where the original intends to include both sexes, which occasionally moves its wording further from a strictly literal rendering than its overall reputation suggests. Toward the functional end sits the NLT, which regularly trades a Hebrew idiom or a Greek participial construction for the English sentence a fluent speaker would actually produce, aiming to make sure the ancient meaning lands rather than the ancient sentence shape.

Each choice gains something and loses something, and neither loss is trivial. A more formal translation lets you see, in English, when the same Greek word recurs across a passage, when a sentence is genuinely ambiguous, and when a construction is unusual; it makes hard work possible for a reader who does not know Greek or Hebrew. But it can also produce English that is stiff, or that preserves an ambiguity a fluent original reader would not have felt as ambiguous at all, or that hides an idiom behind a literal rendering no English speaker would recognize as an idiom. A more functional translation reads naturally and often communicates the passage's force better to a first-time reader, especially someone new to the faith or without a churched vocabulary; but it resolves ambiguities silently, on the translator's judgment, and a reader working only from that translation cannot always tell where a decision was made at all.

None of this makes one end of the spectrum more honest than the other. It makes them different tools, built for different moments: close exegetical work wants a translation near the formal end open beside the text, and a first reading aloud in a small group, or a reader for whom English itself is a second or third language, is often served better by something nearer the functional end.

Romans 3:22 is a clean case because the disagreement is not sloppiness on anyone's part but a real ambiguity in the Greek itself. Paul writes of dikaiosyne theou dia pisteos Iesou Christou, which we can render literally, leaving the key word untranslated, as 'the righteousness of God through the pistis of Jesus Christ.' The BSB prints "through faith in Jesus Christ" with no footnote, which means it has taken the objective reading without telling the reader that another is possible. Pistis Christou is a genitive construction, and Greek genitives regularly carry more than one possible relationship between the two nouns. Read as an objective genitive, Christ is the object of the faith: people believe in him, and the phrase means 'faith in Jesus Christ,' the reading followed by most major translations including the BSB, NIV, ESV, and NRSV. Read as a subjective genitive, Christ is the one doing the believing or being faithful, and the phrase means 'the faithfulness of Jesus Christ,' most associated in recent scholarship with Richard Hays, and followed in the main text or a prominent note by translations such as the NET Bible and the CEB.

The exegetical stakes are real without being doctrinally catastrophic in either direction. On the traditional objective reading, verse 22 says people are justified through their own faith directed at Christ, fitting smoothly with "to all who believe" in the same verse. On the subjective reading, verse 22 says people are justified on the basis of Christ's own faithful obedience, including his faithfulness to death, with human believing addressed separately by the following clause; Galatians 2:16, which uses the same construction twice in one verse, is the other passage this same argument turns on. Serious, orthodox scholars hold each position, and the argument is fought on Paul's Greek style, on parallel constructions elsewhere in his letters, and on the flow of Romans 3 as a whole, not on which side is more comfortable with the doctrine of justification by faith, which both readings affirm in some form.

A comparable case, worth knowing even briefly, is Psalm 22:16. The BSB prints "they have pierced my hands and feet" and adds a footnote saying that this follows the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint, the Vulgate and the Syriac, while "most MT" (the Masoretic Text, the standard medieval Hebrew text) reads "like a lion at my hands and feet." The Masoretic reading has no verb at all, a gap so bare that every English Bible has to supply one to make the line readable, and the ancient versions read an actual verb at that spot, on a one-letter difference in the underlying Hebrew consonants. So the BSB has taken a side in its text, and the footnote is the only place a reader of the BSB learns that the other reading exists and has a long manuscript history of its own. Which reading is original, and which arose from the other, is genuinely contested, and this module's first lesson, 'Which Bible Are You Reading,' treats the crux in full. And 1 Corinthians 7:1 is a second case of a translation's punctuation settling a question. The BSB prints "Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good to abstain from sexual relations" with no quotation marks around the second half, so it reads the sentence as Paul's own view. Other modern translations, the ESV among them, put quotation marks around the second half (look the verse up on Bible Hub or Bible Gateway to see how each does it), reflecting the judgment of many scholars that Paul is quoting a slogan from the Corinthians' own letter to him back at them, rather than stating his own view outright; his actual instruction follows in verse 2. The Greek has no quotation marks at all, so both punctuations are a translator's interpretation, and the other side of this question deserves full weight: a reader who takes verse 1 as Paul's own thought has to explain why verse 2 then qualifies it so sharply. Each of these cases rewards exactly the same method: notice the disagreement, then go find out what in the Hebrew or Greek is generating it.

The practical discipline is simple to state and genuinely productive to practice: read a passage in two translations from opposite ends of the spectrum, side by side, and treat every place they disagree as a flag rather than a nuisance. A disagreement between the NASB or ESV and the NLT at a given verse almost always marks a spot where the original language contains a genuine ambiguity, an idiom, or a debated construction, which is exactly the information a close reader wants and a single translation, read alone, will not surface.

Once a flag is found, the next step does not require Greek or Hebrew either. Blue Letter Bible and STEP Bible, both entirely free, will show the underlying word behind an English phrase, list the range of ways that same Greek or Hebrew word is used elsewhere, and in many cases summarize the interpretive options in a way a diligent student can follow. This is real exegetical work, not a substitute for it; a student who does this consistently across a passage, a book, or a sermon series has done something a casual reader of any single translation has not.

Paraphrases deserve a place named honestly rather than dismissed. The Message and the Living Bible, an earlier work that the NLT later grew out of as a fuller translation, restate the sense of a passage in fresh, often vivid English without functioning as a controlled rendering of the Hebrew or Greek word by word; they are one person's or a small team's interpretive retelling. They are genuinely useful for devotional reading, for hearing familiar material freshly, or for a first encounter with a passage's overall movement, and genuinely unsuited to settling any question about what a specific word or construction means, which is not the job they were built to do.

Say this plainly, because it is true and worth a student's confidence: a student with no Greek or Hebrew can do real interpretive work using nothing but two or three translations and the free tools named above. The languages let a scholar go further and check claims a translation comparison can only flag, but the comparison method itself is not a lesser, amateur substitute for exegesis. It is exegesis, conducted through a window other people have already opened for you.