Month: April 2017

John 14.16 reads:

16 κἀγὼ ἐρωτήσω τὸν πατέρα καὶ ἄλλον παράκλητον δώσει ὑμῖν, ἵνα μεθ’ ὑμῶν εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα ᾖ, [NA 28]

‘And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;’ [KJV]

‘I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever;’ [NASB]

‘And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.’ [NRSV]

‘And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever,’ [RSV]

This is the first occurrence of the word παράκλητος (paraklētos) in the New Testament. It has been variously translated as ‘Comforter’ (Tyndale, KJV, ASV), ‘Counselor’ (RSV), ‘Helper’ (NASB, ESV, GNT, NKJV), and ‘Advocate’ (NIV, Lexham, NLT, NRSV).

Brian Simmons, however, in his version of John’s Gospel, renders it here as ‘Savior’:

‘And I will ask the Father and he will give you another Savior, the Holy Spirit of Truth, who will be to you a friend just like me—and he will never leave you.’

Continue reading John 14.16 in Brian Simmons’ ‘Passion Translation’: Is the Holy Spirit another Saviour?

John 1.1 reads:

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. (NA 28)

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ (NASB)

But Brian Simmons, in his Passion [Anti-] Translation, has it as:

‘In the very beginning God was already there. And before his face was his Living Expression. And this “Living Expression” was with God, yet fully God.’

Note d reads:

Simmons claims that Christ:

had full participation in every attribute of deity held by God the Father.

Is this orthodox? I stand to be corrected, but I would have said that it is unorthodox to suggest that Christ has the attributes of deity only by participation, and not in His own right. In Simmons’ formulation, only the Father is said to hold the attributes of deity. Surely, the Son of God also has the attributes of deity Himself, in His own right, does He not?

It seems to me that there may be a connection between the doctrinal issue and the translation issue. I do not think that ‘Living Expression’ can stand on its own in the way that ‘Word’ can. In the first clause, just:

‘In the beginning was the Living Expression’

would be strange, it seems to me. ‘Expression of what, or of whom’, one seems bound to ask.

Again, in the second clause, Simmons replaces the article with the personal possessive pronoun to give ‘his Living Expression’ instead of ‘the Living Expression’.

And in the third clause, he adds the demonstrative pronoun ‘this’  and quotation marks, presumably because the phrase would not have stood well on its own, and needed to be referred back to ‘his Living Expression’ in the previous clause.

the first clause

Simmons’ first clause reads:

‘In the very beginning God was already there.’

Does the Almighty really want to tell us, through His holy word, that He was already there in the beginning? In Genesis 1.1, it is taken for granted that God already exists. Do we really need to be told that now, in the New Testament?

The answer is no, because this is not the real holy scripture. The true scripture reads:

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος

which can reasonably be translated:

‘In the beginning was the Word’

and this is telling us something important that we need to know, namely that the Word, the logos, is eternal. Glory be to the Most High God, and to the eternal Word, the Son of God, who took flesh and dwelt among us; who died for our sins and raised us to a new and wonderful life in Him. Let us not change the holy scriptures on a whim and a fancy.

Andrew

 

 

John 1.1 reads:

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. (NA 28)

All thirty-six English versions at biblestudytools.com, including even ‘The Message’, translate λόγος with ‘word’. For example:

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ (NASB)

Brian Simmons, however, has ‘Living Expression’ in place of ‘Word’:

Continue reading John 1.1 in Brian Simmons’ ‘Passion Translation’: not translation at all

The Problem Restated

The reason for my long series of posts about Brian Simmons and his so-called Passion Translation is that sincere Christian believers are reading it, believing it to be a genuine English version of the Holy Scriptures, translated from the original texts, when in fact it is fraudulent, so far as I can see. In many cases where there is an unusual rendering of a verse, Simmons says in a footnote it is translated from the Aramaic. In his FAQs he identifies his Aramaic text as the Peshitta, making it possible to compare his English text with the original from which it is said to be translated. I investigated the first ten such claims in his ‘translation’ of Galatians, and found none of them to be substantiated. What I did find however, was that in the majority of cases, he was following Victor Alexander’s so-called ‘Aramaic New Testament’ which, as its name implies, claims to be a translation of Aramaic scriptures. In these cases, Alexander’s English text, like that of Simmons, does not seem to be translated from the Peshitta.

The question then arises as to whether Alexander might be translating from some other Aramaic source text. In recent years he has consistently refused to say what his source is. He sometimes gives the impression that he may have manuscripts older than the Peshitta, with a different text. For example, as I explained in an earlier post, he has ‘Covenant of the Son of Man’ in Galatians 3.15, rather than ‘human covenant’ as in both the Greek and the Peshitta, and then says in a footnote that:

Only the Ancient Aramaic retains the correct meaning of this passage.

as if perhaps there were some text more ancient than the Peshitta which had this form of text.

More directly, he has implied that he is in possession of the oldest manuscript found, which might further suggest that it is one not known to others:

I don’t need to prove that the manuscript I’m translating from is the oldest found;

Continue reading Brian Simmons and his ‘Passion Translation’: what text is Victor Alexander translating from? (part 3)

Having discovered that the source of many of the strange perversions of holy scripture in the so-called ‘Passion Translation’ is Victor Alexander’s so-called ‘Aramaic Bible’, I am trying to find out what text Alexander is translating from. In my last post, I recapped on his unwillingness to be specific on this point, and then highlighted his claim that he is translating from ‘the manuscripts of the Ancient Church of the East’. I explained that he is referring to the Church of the East, whose first organisational centre was Seleucia-Ctesiphon, on the banks of the Tigris, just East of the Eastern border of the Roman Empire.  It became known as ‘Nestorian’ from an early date, although that may be something of a misnomer. This church expanded greatly into India, China and Japan, and then went into a rapid decline at the end of the fourteenth century, being reduced, outside of India, to a regional church in Kurdistan.

Alexander goes on to say that:

The Church of the East survived and maintained the Scriptures in the original language all through the conquests of the Mongolians (Genghis Khan) 12th Century, and the Tartars (Tamerlane) 15th Century.

He sometimes gives the impression that he is translating from a unique manuscript not known to others:

I don’t need to prove that the manuscript I’m translating from is the oldest found; archeology is not the issue.

and so on, as I quoted at greater length in my last post. But it may be that the reality of the situation is much more prosaic.

Continue reading Brian Simmons and his ‘Passion Translation’: what text is Victor Alexander translating from? (part 2)