By Reese Currie, Compass Distributors

Dynamic equivalency is the practice of translating thoughts instead of words when translating Scripture. This is to be contrasted with formal equivalency, which is intended to translate every word with some exceptions for smoothness, and literal translation, which is intended to translate every word with no exceptions.

In this article, we are going to compare two literal translations, the ASV and NASB, to three formal equivalency translations, the NRSV, the KJV, and the NKJV, to a couple of the better dynamic equivalency translations, the NIV and NLT. Translations such as the CEV and TEV are so inaccurate as to not qualify for this evaluation.

Practically all translations, including literal translations, translate idiom dynamically. Idiom is, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Current English, "1. Phrase etc. established by usage and not immediately comprehensible from the words used (e.g. over the moon, saw the light) 2. Form of expression peculiar to a language etc. 3. Language of a people or country 4. Characteristic mode of expression in art etc."

The meaning of idiom in this sense found in definitions 1 and 2 above.

A typical Hebrew idiom is the usage of the word kidneys. Basically, kidneys in Hebrew are the equivalent of the heart in English. Realistically, we know that neither the heart nor the kidneys are the seat of emotions, but rather, the mind. Nevertheless, to be an accurate translation of the meaning of a passage, such things must be translated on a direct idiom-to-idiom basis. The only correct English translation for the Hebrew idiom surrounding "kidneys" is "heart."

The American Standard Version translated this idiom correctly in Jeremiah 12:2, "Thou hast planted them, yea, they have taken root; they grow, yea, they bring forth fruit: thou art near in their mouth, and far from their heart."

The NRSV accurately reads, "You plant them, and they take root; they grow and bring forth fruit; you are near in their mouths yet far from their hearts."

The NIV also translated this correctly as "heart" but unfortunately butchered the rest of the verse. "You have planted them, and they have taken root; they grow and bear fruit. You are always on their lips but far from their hearts." The NIV gives the false impression that these people are always talking about God, which is not implied in any way by the Hebrew.

The King James Version translates this verse, "Thou hast planted them, yea, they have taken root: they grow, yea, they bring forth fruit: thou art near in their mouth, and far from their reins." This gives a wonderful image of these people not letting themselves be controlled by God. Unfortunately, it does not even approximate what the actual Hebrew text says, idiomatically or otherwise.

The NASB and NKJV translate the Hebrew "kidneys" as "mind." Now, we know that emotions actually stem from our minds, not our hearts, which does make the verses actually more accurate to the fact of the matter. However, idiomatically, "kidneys" in Hebrew does not correlate to "mind," but to "heart." While our mind is thought of as giving us our logical or rational beliefs, our "heart" in English is more representative of our feelings. Furthermore, the NASB and NKJV mistranslation sets up a logical flaw in the Bible; how would God be near to their mouth if not near to their minds? While this is not as bad as the KJV mistranslation, it is still a failure to translate the idiom properly and it introduces a serious mistake.

The New Living Translation translates this passage, "You have planted them, and they have taken root and prospered. Your name is on their lips, but in their hearts they give you no credit at all." This conveys a meaning that is absolutely not found in the Hebrew. Nothing at all about giving credit to God is to be found in the Hebrew text. His name is not mentioned in the Hebrew, and the fact of taking root and producing fruit is left out, conglomerated into the word "prospered," which ironically is a word people with reading difficulties would not know.

This result is somewhat surprising, since the NASB and NKJV are the cream of the crop of literal and formal equivalency translations in our modern era. However, the abuses of the NASB and NKJV do not even approximate those of the abuses of the two dynamic equivalency versions, the NIV and the NLT. If this is not adding to the word of God, nothing is.

The American Standard Version correctly translates this verse, "And when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy." The King James Version translation is similar, except it inexplicably drops the leading "And," a practice followed also by the NKJV and NASB.

The NIV renders this, "When they saw the star, they were overjoyed." It leaves out the rejoicing, not a great practice for anyone looking to lead a good Christian life, on the very questionable basis that people do not know what rejoicing is.

The NRSV does a bad job here. Not only does it omit the rejoicing, but it also adds a few words that imply the rejoicing did not occur when the star reappeared but only when it had stopped. "When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy."

The NLT renders this, "When they saw the star, they were filled with joy!"

Are we really to believe that "rejoicing with exceedingly great joy" is too much for the modern reader to comprehend? Is it really necessary to downplay the emotions of people whose lives have been touched by Christ? At least the NLT carries with it an exclamation mark to convey a bit more of the sense of the verse compared to the NIV.

Given, the word "propitiation" is a big word, but it has a big meaning that is crucial to understand to have a proper grasp of the Christian faith. The word "propitiate" means "to appease" and the word propitiation means something that has appeased someone. Christ was given as a propitiation, that is, as an appeasement, for the wrath of God. Just to go a step further, an appeasement means a conciliation, a gaining the goodwill of a person, attaining a reconciliation with a person. So, what it means ultimately is that Jesus Christ, by dying on the cross, reconciled those who repent and believe in Him to God. It is a finished work, and we need no priest or sacrament to reconcile us to God over and over again. It is a horrible heresy to even suggest such a thing.

The problem is, this doctrine is rejected by Roman Catholics, whose priests believe they re-offer the sacrifice of Christ over and over in their mass, and furthermore believe that Christ's work alone was not good enough, but they have to earn their way into heaven with their good works. I have noted that versions carrying a Catholic "imprimatur," a Latin term that means "let it be printed," have to go very soft on Romans 3:25 in order to allow such a false interpretation to be possible. They have to present Christ’s work on the cross as a temporary measure in order that the Catholic interpretation is possible. The interpretation is certainly not possible from the Greek. It is impossible for any church to be "necessary" for the reconciliation of a person to God who, if he or she has actually believed in Christ, was already fully reconciled to Him forever. To acheive this end, it is necessary for them to change "propitiation" to "sacrifice of atonement" which opens the door for priests to "re-offer" the sacrifice that Christ offered once, for all sins, for all time.

Many people were martyred by the Roman church for proclaiming the Bible truth that salvation is by justification through faith. It would therefore be a major loss for Protestantism, decency, and morality if the beliefs that many Christians were martyred to preserve would be lost in our modern age. Not only that, but it would tear at the very fabric of the true gospel not to present the Bible text accurately at this point.

The American Standard Version predictably translates Romans 3:25 correctly as, "whom God set forth [to be] a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God;"

The King James Version deviates from this ever so slightly, saying, "Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;"

Actually, the ASV translation here is head and shoulders above the KJV translation. The KJV translation could be misinterpreted to suggest that the sins are only "past sins" of a person which clashes with the very meaning of the word "propitiation." The term "aforetime" refers to the time before Christ had died for our sins, as is evidenced by verse 26, which makes reference to the "present season," the time after Christ’s sacrifice had been made.

The NKJV and NASB make reference to the sins "previously committed" which conveys the thought found in the ASV with more modern words, but less accurately, and could be falsely interpreted as meaning a person’s past sins. At least both retain the use of the word, "propitiation."

The NIV, however, which has the imprimatur, reads, "God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he left the sins committed beforehand unpunished."

"Sacrifice of atonement" carries an entirely different meaning from propitiation. Even if it said "God presented Him as an atonement" it would be acceptable, but that is not what the NIV says. It presents Christ as "a sacrifice of atonement," as if His sacrifice was only one sacrifice of many that must be made, only part of a larger requirement. The phrase carries with it no concept of full reconciliation with God.

However, it has to be noted that this is not an evil inherent to dynamic equivalency, but rather to a desire to please men by writing a doctrinally ambiguous Bible version. It is possible to translate these difficult concepts using dynamic equivalency methods without necessarily using a big word like propitiation. The New Living Translation succeeds in doing this, reading, "For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God’s anger against us. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us. God was being entirely fair and just when he did not punish those who sinned in former times."

This does successfully convey the propitiation aspect of the verse but is still too light on God's declaration of His righteousness. Everyone who denies the propitiation is denying the demonstration of God's righteousness, that He would take the full price for our sins on Himself. The utter permanency of this being "made right" with God is not brought out perfectly, but at the same time it might be inserting too much interpretation into the text to do so here. There are many other verses in the Bible that reinforce the point.

The NRSV, which has the Roman Catholic imprimatur, says, "whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed." This sin of denying the whole thrust of the Reformation is not restricted to dynamic equivalency translations but also to supposedly literal translations that choose to adjust Bible doctrine to suit the pope of Rome.

Translated properly from the American Standard Version, Leviticus 20:17 reads, "And if a man shall take his sister, his father's daughter, or his mother's daughter, and see her nakedness, and she see his nakedness; it is a shameful thing; and they shall be cut off in the sight of the children of their people: he hath uncovered his sister's nakedness; he shall bear his iniquity."

The King James Version is virtually identical, but it throws out some words in order to try to make the text smoother and inexplicably changes the word "shameful" to "wicked." "And if a man shall take his sister, his father's daughter, or his mother's daughter, and see her nakedness, and she see his nakedness; it is a wicked thing; and they shall be cut off in the sight of their people: he hath uncovered his sister's nakedness; he shall bear his iniquity."

The NKJV follows the KJV, and the NASB follows the ASV, but rolls "shameful thing" into one word, "disgrace." The NRSV here is a hybrid that removes the "children" concept like the KJV but uses the "disgrace" rendering of the ASV’s "shameful thing."

The NIV completely butchers the meaning of the verse, saying, "‘If a man marries his sister, the daughter of either his father or his mother, and they have sexual relations, it is a disgrace. They must be cut off before the eyes of their people. He has dishonored his sister and will be held responsible."

Marriage is in no way implied by the Hebrew. The fact of the matter is the Hebrew does not even say sexual relations, it says it is shameful merely for the brother and sister to see each other naked.

The NLT translates this, "If a man has sexual intercourse with his sister, the daughter of either his father or his mother, it is a terrible disgrace. Both of them must be publicly cut off from the community. Since the man has had intercourse with his sister, he will suffer the consequences of his guilt."

This translation is somewhat better than the NIV’s translation because at least it does not imply the necessity of marriage for a sin to be a sin. It assumes sexual intercourse, unfortunately, which goes somewhat beyond the Bible text, and for some reason it makes unclear that the people are cut off not only from their local community but from the very people of Israel.

I think at some point we need to decide what we want to read, the Word of God or the approximations of translators who carelessly reword His thoughts, sometimes tainting the word with the imaginations of their hearts and rabid doctrinal bias. It is inescapable that a dynamic equivalency version or a paraphrase is hardly even a representation of the Word of God; it is really only a representation of the biases and thoughts of the translators.

The fact is, thought for thought translation is rendered doctrinally impossible and even heretical by only one Bible verse, Isaiah 55:9 which says, "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts" (ASV). It is a total impossibility that man can replace God’s thoughts with his own thoughts and call it a translation. The thought that one could do so is to either elevate man to God’s level or bring God down to man’s level, and that is absolutely contrary to Scripture.

Four Case Studies in Dynamic Equivalency Copyright © 2000 by Compass Distributors

Scripture taken from the American Standard Version Copyright © 1901 (expired) by Thomas Nelson & Sons.

Scripture taken from The Holy Bible: New King James Version, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, Inc.), 1982.

Scripture taken from the The New Revised Standard Version, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers) 1989.

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.) 1996.