Weighing a Translation Yourself

Paul is defending his ministry against people in Corinth who thought him unimpressive and who had brought in teachers more polished than he. In 2:17 he has already said that he is not like those who peddle the word of God: καπηλεύοντες (kapēleuontes), a present active participle from a verb used of a small trader selling goods at a profit. In 4:2 he goes further. In the SBL Greek New Testament (SBLGNT) the verse begins ἀλλὰ ἀπειπάμεθα τὰ κρυπτὰ τῆς αἰσχύνης (alla apeipametha ta krypta tēs aischynēs, but we renounced the hidden things of shame). Ἀπειπάμεθα is aorist middle indicative, first person plural: we have renounced, we have said no to. Then two present participles describe the ministry Paul refuses: μὴ περιπατοῦντες ἐν πανουργίᾳ (mē peripatountes en panourgia, not walking in craftiness) and μηδὲ δολοῦντες τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ (mēde dolountes ton logon tou theou, nor falsifying the word of God).

Δολόω (doloō) means to falsify or adulterate. The lexicons note its use outside the New Testament for adulterating a substance, the way a dishonest seller might water his wine. Put the two verbs side by side, peddling in 2:17 and adulterating in 4:2, and the picture is of a trader who dilutes his goods to make them go further and sell better. Paul's charge against himself, if he were guilty of it, would be that he had thinned the word of God down to make it more acceptable to the people he wanted to impress.

Against that he sets τῇ φανερώσει τῆς ἀληθείας (tē phanerōsei tēs alētheias, by the open display of the truth). Φανέρωσις (phanerōsis) is a dative feminine singular, used here for means: it is by making the truth visible that Paul commends himself. And he commends himself πρὸς πᾶσαν συνείδησιν ἀνθρώπων ἐνώπιον τοῦ θεοῦ (pros pasan syneidēsin anthrōpōn enōpion tou theou, to every conscience of people, before God). Notice that he makes his appeal to the conscience, not to taste or to status, and that he does it in God's sight. He has nothing to hide from either the hearer or God.

This is not a verse about translation. But it describes exactly the standard a translation must meet, and exactly the standard you must meet when you check one. A translator who softened what Paul wrote, or sharpened it, to make it more acceptable to his readers or more useful to his own tradition, would be doing what Paul renounced. And a student who checks a translation, finds what he was hoping to find, and announces it from the pulpit without showing his evidence, would be doing it too. The method in this lesson is designed to keep both honest: to make the truth of what the Greek says visible, so that your hearers' consciences, and not your authority, are the judge.

Here is the whole of this track so far, gathered into seven questions you can ask of any English rendering of any New Testament verse. Copy them onto the inside cover of your notebook. Each one draws on a skill you have already learned, and each has a free tool you can use on a phone.

One: is it the same text? Before you judge a rendering, check that the translation is translating the Greek you are reading. Use the SBLGNT and THGNT notes on Bible Gateway and the BSB footnotes on Bible Hub, as in the first two lessons of this module. A difference of text is not a mistranslation.

Two: is the word within its range? For each important word, find it on STEP Bible or Blue Letter Bible, look at the lexicon's range of meanings, and look at other places the word appears, especially in the same author. Ask whether the English word chosen falls within that range and whether the context supports the particular sense chosen. Remember the fallacies the module on the tools named: a word does not mean its root, or every meaning it ever had at once.

Three: is the grammar carried, or resolved? Check the parsing. Has the translation kept the tense and aspect, the voice and the mood, or has it made a choice where the Greek allows more than one? Participles are a special case: English often turns them into main verbs, and in doing so a translator must decide how each relates to the main verb. That is legitimate, but you should see where it happens.

Four: are the connections kept? Look at the small words, γάρ, οὖν, δέ, ἀλλά, καί and ἵνα, and ask whether the translation shows how the sentence and the paragraph hang together. A translation that drops a for or a therefore may read smoothly and lose the argument.

Five: what has been added or left out? Every translation supplies words English needs and drops words English cannot use; Mark 1:1's 'This is' was one. The KJV prints its supplied words in italics, a practice worth knowing about. Ask whether any word supplied in English carries an interpretation the Greek does not require.

Six: is it consistent where consistency matters? Where an author repeats a word deliberately, as Paul repeats commend through 2 Corinthians, a reader of the translation should be able to see the repetition. Where the author varies his words, the translation should not always hide it, as English 'word' hides Peter's move from logos to rhēma in 1 Peter 1:23-25.

Seven: what register has it chosen? Formal or plain, idiom kept or explained, masculine generic forms kept or rendered inclusively: these are the decisions of the last lesson, and they are often not about accuracy at all but about the English reader. Judge them by the translation's own stated aims as well as by your own preference.

Now work the seven questions through the anchor verse, in the BSB, comparing it with the KJV, which can be quoted freely, and with the NIV, the CSB, the NET and the NASB of 1995, which can be named and described.

The text. The SBLGNT has one note in this verse, at συνιστάνοντες, and it records only that two other editions spell the participle differently. The text is not in question, so every difference between the translations is a difference of translation.

The words. For δολοῦντες the BSB has distort, as do the NIV, the CSB and the NET; the KJV has 'handling the word of God deceitfully'; the NASB of 1995 has adulterating, which is closest to the verb's ordinary sense and keeps the trader's image of 2:17. Distort is within the range and is clear, but it loses the picture. For φανέρωσις the BSB and the NET both have open proclamation, the CSB has open display, the NIV a phrase about setting forth the truth plainly, and the NASB of 1995 manifestation. The noun means a making visible, which covers both speech and life. Proclamation narrows it to preaching, which suits the context of 4:5, but Paul's ministry made the truth visible in suffering too, as 4:10 says, and display or manifestation leaves that open. Neither is wrong; one decides more than the other.

The grammar. The Greek is one sentence with one main verb, ἀπειπάμεθα, followed by participles. The BSB breaks it into three sentences and turns the participles into main verbs, so that practising, distorting and commending each get a sentence or clause of their own. That makes the English clear and natural. What it loses is the shape: in Greek the refusal is a single act, we renounced, and everything after it describes the ministry that results. The KJV keeps the participles: 'not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.'

The connections. The verse turns on ἀλλά (alla, but) twice: but we renounced, and but by the open display of the truth. The BSB renders the first as Instead and the second as On the contrary, which keeps both contrasts clearly. Good.

Additions and omissions. The BSB's 'secret and shameful ways' renders τὰ κρυπτὰ τῆς αἰσχύνης, literally the hidden things of shame. The genitive could describe the hidden things as shameful, or as things one hides because of shame, which is how the NASB of 1995 takes it; ways is supplied. Practice deceit renders a phrase that is literally walking in craftiness; walking is a Hebrew-shaped idiom for conduct that the lesson on the dative taught you at Galatians 5:16, and the NET notes it in a footnote. Πανουργία is the word Paul uses in 11:3 for the serpent's cunning, so a reader who sees craftiness here and craftiness there would catch an echo that deceit does not carry.

Consistency. The BSB renders this verb as commend in 3:1, 4:2, 5:12, 6:4, 10:12, 10:18 and 12:11, so an English reader can follow the thread the inquiry traced. The one other use in the letter, 7:11, has a different sense, you have proved yourselves, and the BSB rightly renders it differently there. That is a real strength, and a translation that varied the word would have hidden one of the letter's main threads.

Register. The BSB's 'every man's conscience' renders πᾶσαν συνείδησιν ἀνθρώπων. Ἀνθρώπων is the generic word, people, not ἀνδρῶν, males. The BSB here keeps the older English, as do the KJV and the NASB of 1995, while the NIV, the CSB and the NET all render it with everyone. Notice that this is not a theological line: translations that disagree with each other about gender language elsewhere agree here, and the BSB is here among the more traditional. The meaning is not in dispute, since Paul plainly means everyone. The question is only whether every man's is still heard that way.

Verdict. The BSB at 2 Corinthians 4:2 is accurate, clear and consistent. It narrows φανέρωσις to proclamation, flattens the trader's image in δολόω, turns a single Greek sentence into three, and keeps an English idiom some readers will hear as male. None of those is a mistranslation. Each is a choice, and you can now see each one.

A fair cross-examination begins by hearing the witness. Before you decide that a translation has made a poor choice, find out what the translators themselves have told you about it, because good translations say a great deal about their own decisions, and most readers never look.

Start with the preface. Every major translation explains its aims: how literal or how natural it means to be, which Greek text it follows, how it handles gender language, what its footnotes mean. Many people who criticise a translation have never read a sentence of its preface. The BSB's own introductory material, the NET's preface and the prefaces of the other translations named in this lesson are all available free online, and ten minutes with them will tell you whether a decision you dislike is a lapse or a policy.

Then read the footnotes, and learn their three kinds. A note beginning Or, like the BSB's 'Or as a propitiation' at Romans 3:25, offers an alternative rendering of the same Greek: the committee is telling you that the word or phrase could fairly be taken another way. A note beginning Literally gives a word-for-word rendering of something the main text has smoothed. At 2 Corinthians 4:1, the verse just before the anchor, the BSB prints 'since God in His mercy has given us this ministry' and gives in its footnote the literal form, Therefore, having this ministry, as we have received mercy. That single note tells you that the translators turned a Greek participle and a passive verb into an English clause with God as its subject, and lets you see exactly what they did. And a note naming manuscripts or editions, like the BSB's note at Mark 1:1, reports a difference of text.

The KJV has its own way of showing its workings. Words its translators supplied to make the English read, with nothing directly corresponding in their Greek, are printed in italics in most editions. Open 2 Corinthians 4:2 in an edition of the KJV that keeps the italics and you can see how few words the translators of 1611 felt they had to add, and where. The NET goes furthest of all, with tens of thousands of notes explaining its choices, its alternatives and its literal renderings.

All this is the translators doing what Paul describes in 4:2: putting the truth in plain view, so that the reader can judge. Treat it with the same respect you would want for your own work. When a translation's footnote already offers the rendering you were about to announce as a discovery, you have not caught the translators out. You have caught up with them. Say so, and give them the credit. And when, after all that, you still disagree with a decision, you will be able to say exactly where and why, which is the only kind of disagreement worth bringing to a congregation.

Proverbs 18:17 is the motto for this whole lesson: 'The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.' When you find what looks like a mistake in a translation, cross-examine yourself before you announce it. The committee that produced any major translation contained people who had read Greek every day for decades. If your few months of Greek disagree with all of them, the first possibility to consider is that you have missed something. Look again at the lexicon's range, at other uses of the word, at the grammar. Then read a NET note on the verse if there is one, because the NET's translators often explain why they chose what they did.

That is not an argument for never disagreeing. Committees make mistakes, and they disagree with each other, which proves that at least some of them are wrong somewhere. The point of this track is precisely that you should be able to see why they chose as they did and say whether you are persuaded. But the usual result of honest checking is not the discovery that a translation is wrong. It is the discovery that the Greek allows more than one good rendering, and that the translations have chosen differently for reasons you can now state.

Judge a translation as a whole and by its own aims. A translation that aims to be readable aloud by a congregation that speaks English as a second language will make different choices from one that aims to let a student see the structure of the Greek. Both may be faithful. Do not condemn either for doing what it set out to do. And do not judge a whole translation by one verse you happen to dislike. Count its strengths with its weaknesses, as the verdict on 2 Corinthians 4:2 did.

Above all, beware of the sentence that ends this kind of study in many pulpits: my Bible says this, but the Greek really says that. It is almost never true in the way it sounds. Usually the Greek allows what the translation says and also allows something else, and the honest sentence is longer: the BSB says this, which is a fair rendering; the Greek word can also carry this sense, and here is why I think Paul means it here. That sentence does what 2 Corinthians 4:2 asks. It puts the truth in plain view and lets the hearer's conscience judge.

And remember who your hearers are. In many churches the English Bible, or the Bible in the local language, is the only Bible anyone will ever read. A preacher who leaves his people thinking that their Bible is untrustworthy without him has done them harm, even if every fact he stated was correct. The aim of weighing translations is to increase your people's confidence in the word of God, by showing them that it can be checked and that it holds, not to make them dependent on you.

This is the last exercise of the module, and it gathers the other three. Open your notebook to your capstone passage. You already have a Text page, a Weighing page and a Translation page. Start a fourth, headed Verdict.

Choose the two or three verses of your passage that carry its main point. For each, work the seven questions of section 2 against the BSB, comparing it with at least two other translations on Bible Gateway, one of them the KJV. Write one line for each question. Where a question finds nothing worth noting, write nothing to note; that is a result too.

Then write a verdict paragraph of no more than 120 words, as section 3 did for 2 Corinthians 4:2: what the BSB does well in your verses, what it decides that the Greek leaves open, and whether you would want to say anything about it when you preach. Name at least one strength.

Last, write the exact sentence you would use in the pulpit if one of those decisions matters for your sermon. Read it aloud and test it against Paul's standard: does it put the truth in plain view, does it leave your hearers able to check it for themselves, and does it leave them trusting their Bible more, not less? When it passes all three, copy it into the front of your capstone study. In the next module you will begin to use these pages in your study and in the pulpit week by week.