Non-Christian/secular translation of the Bible?

score:12

Accepted answer

The Society for Biblical Literature produces a well regarded translation (Logos even carries it). According to their own mission statement, they are concerned with biblical scholarship and not doctrine. Their vowed mission statement is simply "to promote biblical scholarship." They are a secular organization not affiliated with any religious organization (see comment below). Their Greek translation of the New Testament is available for free here, but I believe their translation of the Old Testament requires purchase.

Additionally, Isaac Asimov and Thomas Jefferson both have secular digests that bear some reading. (Admittedly, neither is an ad fontes translation, but they did look at sources to compile their versions.)

As for commentaries that speak to the translation difficulties that come from a decidedly secular point of view.:

  • The Oxford Companion to the Bible was the product of many well respected theological scholars, including several who are not Christians. Bruce Metzger is (was?) the chief editor.

  • Anything by Bart Ehrmann e.g. Misquoting Jesus should speak to the historical value of the source texts and give guidance.

  • Anything by John Dominic Crossan or The Jesus Seminar would also fall into this category. JDC is currently in the leadership of the SBL.

Upvote:-2

A. Nyland has written a couple of comontaries about mistranslation of the bible in the name of religious tradition. Basically her take is that no one who currently edits, 'writes', or publishes bibles is a professional linguist or translator, and the one company that attempted to publish a bible produced by a professional was threatened with economic murder. Nyland has produced her own translation of one of the gospels, it is interesting to read, but her excessive use of exclamation points is distracting and, frankly, irritating. Nyland's work is available from Amazon Kindle.

Upvote:1

There is an update of the popular NIV translation about to come out or recently released. Whatever it's root, Zondervan (the publisher) is now owned by Harper Collins, which is in turn owned by News Corp. Harper Collins is decidedly secular, publishing many books that would definitely be out of place in a Christian home. Thus, while it involves mainly Christian scholarship, even the well-known NIV translation could no longer be said to be wholly Christian in origin. Many other common modern translations have similar conflicts of interest.

Upvote:2

At the risk of stating the obvious, the entire Old Testament can be found translated to English by Jewish scholars. Wikipedia gives an overview.

Upvote:4

If you read French, the secular translation by André Chouraqui is very interesting. One nice part is that he often translates figures of speech literally, so some of the verses sound very foreign but more poetic. He also translates the names of the books and the people when possible. Also, he uses a single French word in literal translation for each use of a particular word in the original; so for the Hebrew "ruah" or Greek "pneuma" he uses "souffle" (breath), instead of something more modern like "spirit" (esprit in French). This captures the original idiom rather well, but it does make it harder for us modern folk to read it.

Here is the first part of Genesis, re-translated by me from his French into English:

Book 1: Heading.
1: Elohims (the s to underline that Hebrew "Elohim" is plural, literally "gods", even if it's the name of a single god) was creating the heavens and the earth
2: the earth was tohu-and-bohu (tohu is Hebrew for "waste"), a darkness on the faces of the abyss, but the breath of Elohims blew across the faces of the waters.
3: Elohims says: "A light will be." And it's a light.
4: Elohims sees the light: what good! Elohims separates the light from the darkness.
5: Elohims cries out to the light: "Day". To the darkness he had cried out: "Night". And it's an evening and it's a morning: Day one.
...

Like I said, it's kind of a foreign read. But then again, the Bible is a foreign anthology, isn't it.

Chouraqui also made a translation of the Qur'an; both are available online http://nachouraqui.tripod.com/id88.htm

Upvote:6

The obvious example (as it's been recently discussed here) is the Wikisource Translation It's not complete, though, and its value as a "good" translation is debatable.

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