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- 2. The Textual and Linguistic Competence of the Translation
- To Every Nation (Passion Version) Sheet Music by Charlie Hall
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- Passion - To Every Nation (Passion 98 Album Version) | Play for free on Anghami
2. The Textual and Linguistic Competence of the Translation
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To Every Nation (Passion Version) Sheet Music by Charlie Hall
Create or log in to your Bible Gateway account. Enter your credit card information to ensure uninterrupted service following your free trial. Begin reading God's Word ad-free with instant access to your new online study library. The Greek Septuagint is by far the oldest and most important non-Hebrew witness to the original. It has a complex history and varied character, and must be used with care. None of these considerations seem to weigh with Simmons, because his aim does not appear to be the reconstruction of the original text.
In many places where the Syriac is actually an important witness to the original Hebrew text, Simmons makes no reference to it at all e. He seems instead to be looking around in ancient sources for changes and additions that he can use as he himself changes and adds to the text. The famous line in Psalm To give one more example, in Ps Linguistically TPT is just as questionable. One of its most frequent techniques is to find words with more than one meaning, and create a double translation containing both of them. This is sometimes legitimate, since poetry in particular can play on the double meaning of words.
But context must determine case by case whether word-play is intended, and Simmons clearly does not feel himself bound by this. Simmons ignores the core meaning of the word strength and creates a double translation combining all the derived meanings: Despite all these glaring problems, if the context pointed strongly enough in this direction then a case might be made for ray , or in theory even hill.
However, the other descriptors of God in Ps Simmons derails the verse with his fanciful misuse of the dictionary. There are many places, like Ps Finally, the translations of Syriac and Greek referred to in footnotes are often simply wrong. Simmons seems as uninterested in linguistic accuracy as he is in textual accuracy. He searches the dictionary, and sometimes apparently his imagination, for ways to insert new ideas that happen to align with his goals, regardless of their truthfulness. What results from this process may still technically count as a translation of the psalms, because there are many ways to translate, including impressionistic and reader-responsive translations.
But it does not count as a faithful witness to the original text.
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There is no possible way in which a reader of this translation could ever know whether a given unit of meaning in TPT has an equivalent in the original. To deal with all the issues raised by the translation would take a book many times longer than the original. I shall therefore look at an excerpt from Psalm Along the way I will also make reference to other psalms.
He is even more expansive later on e. Where do all these extra words come from? Sometimes he creatively alters the Hebrew underlined below ; elsewhere he creates stand-alone additions, or attaches them by hyphen to a word in the text. They mostly fall into two categories:. Omission is rare, and mostly consists of the repeated words and phrases that characterise Hebrew parallelism. Some types of change are very frequent, such as the conversion of [a] speech about God or others into speech to God nine times in the psalm ; [b] metaphor into simile once ; [c] concrete images into more abstract ones about ten times, including the elimination of feet, deer, path, bow, rock, shield ; and [d] the removal of historical references including the removal of about half the references to enemies and nations.
Many English versions occasionally replace concrete images with more abstract explanations [c], according to their translational goals. However, the other categories are harder to defend. For example, in v. But Simmons lifts the image from its historical context and turns it into one of illumination: Even the historical psalms in TPT, such as Psalm , tend to make historical people and places less prominent, though the majority of them are retained. Thus there are no tents in TPT On the other hand, references to pagan gods are intensified: Other pieces of dehistoricizing and spiritualizing are more theologically loaded.
And in Psalm 22 the bulls of Bashan in v. The most radical cases of alteration involve the complete rewriting of a line or couplet, often resulting in a different meaning e. In Psalm 13, for example, the four verses of lament are fairly modestly treated, but the final two verses of praise are more than doubled in bulk, changing the meaning of the whole psalm in the process. Here is TPT vv. I will mention three broad types of theological alteration that pervade the translation.
These changes can become perilous. The softening in TPT of Ps Violent or unforgiving language is also toned down, whether by completely changing the meaning e. In the early 4th century the great Church Father Athanasius wrote a letter commending passionate, Christ-focused, Spirit-filled interpretation of the psalms. But he concluded with the following warning:. The book is a treasure trove of one-liners.
Passion - To Every Nation (Passion 98 Album Version) | Play for free on Anghami
However, the stylistic hallmark of The Psalms is not its linguistic freshening-up, but its genre. Simmons has changed the genre of the Psalms from Near Eastern poetry to poetic prose. Notice in the following example, where I have laid out TPT as prose, how words are omitted underlined in ESV that would have created duplicate sentences saying the same thing, and words are inserted underlined in TPT that turn the remainder into a complex prose paragraph whose elements are logically joined into a narrative. A poetic flavour is added back into this prose by means of abundant alliteration, a technique used in at least every second verse, and by multiplying colourful, emotive, and exclamatory language wherever possible.
The cords of death entangled me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. The cords of the grave coiled around me ; the snares of death confronted me. In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help.
From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears. My sobs came right into your heart and you turned your face to rescue me. The effect is often striking, and would make for an interesting meditation on the psalms, albeit with a strong sectarian flavour. However, by eliminating the poetic techniques of parallelism and juxtaposition, TPT denies the reader the chance to follow the particular logic of the psalms.
This suggests that Simmons has adapted the method of translation, pioneered by Eugene Nida, of reducing Hebrew sentences to their simplest kernels, transferring those simple structures to English, and then freshly generating a semantically equivalent text. It can produce clear, faithful and accurate translations, but the method needs to be carried out with care to prevent meaning from being lost in the transfer process. Here is Eugene Nida on the question of style and exegesis:. For Simmons it means a type of emotion.
It might be happy, or sad, or angry, or loving, but what makes any emotion into a passion is simply its strength. The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines passion as: This valuing of being overwhelmed by something is what seems to drive his whole project.
The idea that things are more real, more true, more valuable, when we feel them strongly is a product of 19th century Western Romanticism. Not that Simmons believes that our emotions make God himself more real. Emotions are a contentious topic in Christian theology, because they are both powerful and morally ambiguous. The Bible is both deeply affirming of human emotions, and acutely aware of the danger of being controlled by them.
To be human is to have emotions, and the Bible is full of them.