A Nugget for Biblical Literary Nerds

If you’re unsure you fit this auspicious categorization, feel free to read no further; however, you might proceed and discover you are indeed one of us.

Before there were so many translations of the Bible, and before Eugene Peterson published his seminal work, The Message, there was an Anglican clergyman and translator named J. B. Phillips. Like Peterson, Phillips began his modern translation work for the congregation he was serving.

Phillips started his translation with the New Testament letters in 1941, during the first world war. Before publishing, Phillips sent a copy of the manuscript to C. S. Lewis for review. Lewis was enthusiastic, suggesting Phillips might name the translation, Letters to Young Churches. Lewis went on to write a preface for the book which was published, in 1947, under the suggested title.

I had read Phillips’ translation, but didn’t know of this connection between Phillips and Lewis. Once I learned of it I immediately went and read this preface. In it, Lewis offers his perspective on modern biblical translations. As you might guess, he is in favor, “when they are made by sound scholars.” Lewis states, “There is no such thing as translating a book into another language once and for all, for a language is a changing thing. If your son is to have clothes it is no good buying him a suit once and for all: he will grow out of it and have to be re-clothed.”

Classic Lewis.

He speaks boldly and directly to concerns over new or modern translations of the Bible, pointing to objections voiced when King James authorized an English translation from the Latin. “The only kind of sanctity which scripture can lose (or at least New Testament scripture) by being modernized is an accidental kind which it never had for its writers or its earliest readers.” He goes on to speak to the well-recognized pedestrian nature of biblical Greek.

So there you have it. A bit of literary Bible translation history. And if you’ve reached this sentence you are very likely one of us. Welcome.