A Bible translation is only as good as the reference tools used to produce it

Tweet Share Today I taught my first class of the spring semester, a class in Introduction to New Testament Exegesis (interpretation). I realized this was the 30th year I have taught this course at Dallas Seminary, so counting fall semester sections and summer school, I have probably taught this same course around 60 times. As I have done the last few times I have taught this course, I told my students, "Your exegesis will only be as good as the tools you use when you do it." I then asked how many of the students were familiar with Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary (a widely-available commentary in both electronic and print format). I asked the students if they knew when Matthew Henry's commentary was written. A few guessed the 1800's or 1900's, but no one knew for sure. It was originally published in 1706. Now a lot of things have changed in the field of New Testament study since the beginning of the eighteenth century (that's over 50 years before the Declaration of Independence). With all due respect to Matthew Henry, the person who uses it to understand the New Testament is going to miss out on a lot, because we understand a lot more about the language, history, culture, and sociology of the Jewish and Greco-Roman world of the first century than people nearly 300 years ago did.

Likewise, I asked who was familiar with Joseph Henry Thayer's Greek-English lexicon (a popular and influential Greek-English dictionary also still available in electronic form in a number of Bible software programs). Thayer's work was first published in the late 19th century (1886, revised 1889), and thus is not nearly so old as Matthew Henry's commentary. But Thayer's lexicon suffered the unfortunate fate of appearing only a decade before the work of a German scholar, Gustav Adolf Deissmann, completely changed our understanding of the nature of New Testament Greek itself. Deissmann's work on the nonbiblical (secular) papyrus documents from Egypt demonstrated that the language of the New Testament (which differed significantly from Classical Greek) was not a special version of the Greek language given by inspiration of the Holy Spirit to the writers of the New Testament, but was simply the everyday common speech (Koine or "common" Greek) of the Greco-Roman empire in the first century AD. Since Thayer did not have the benefit of these new discoveries, his lexicon became obsolete almost as soon as it was published. Now the Bible student who works only with outdated tools like these will produce outdated exegesis; thus my statement, "Your exegesis will only be as good as the tools you use when you do it."

When it comes to Bible translation, much the same is true. The best and most accurate translations are done by scholars and editors who use the best and most up-to-date tools. This is certainly the case with the NET Bible, where many of these tools and reference works can readily be seen in the notes of the First Edition, and also in the "List of Cited Works" on page 2459 or online (click here). Many of these works are among the best in their fields and are internationally recognized. With the NET Bible First Edition the user is never left wondering what sources or reference works the translators and editors employed in producing the translation. It's plainly in the notes for everyone to see (and consult, if needed).