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I N TRO DUCTION TO THE NEW L IVING TR ANSL ATION
part, the best in modern textual scholarship.
However, in cases where strong textual or other
scholarly evidence supported the decision, the
translators sometimes chose to differ from the
UBS and NA Greek texts and followed variant
readings found in other ancient witnesses. Significant textual variants of this sort are always
noted in the textual notes of the New Living
Translation.
Translation Issues
The translators have made a conscious effort to
provide a text that can be easily understood by
the typical reader of modern English. To this end,
we sought to use only vocabulary and language
structures in common use today. We avoided
using language likely to become quickly dated or
that reflects only a narrow subdialect of English,
with the goal of making the New Living Translation as broadly useful and timeless as possible.
But our concern for readability goes beyond the concerns of vocabulary and sentence
structure. We are also concerned about historical and cultural barriers to understanding the
Bible, and we have sought to translate terms
shrouded in history and culture in ways that
can be immediately understood. To this end:
• We have converted ancient weights and measures (for example, “ephah” [a unit of dry volume] or “cubit” [a unit of length]) to modern
English (American) equivalents, since the
ancient measures are not generally meaningful to today’s readers. Then in the textual footnotes we offer the literal Hebrew, Aramaic, or
Greek measures, along with modern metric
equivalents.
• Instead of translating ancient currency values
literally, we have expressed them in common
terms that communicate the message. For
example, in the Old Testament, “ten shekels of
silver” becomes “ten pieces of silver” to convey the intended message. In the New Testament, we have often translated the “denarius”
as “the normal daily wage” to facilitate understanding. Then a footnote offers: “Greek a
denarius, the payment for a full day’s labor.”
In general, we give a clear English rendering
and then state the literal Hebrew, Aramaic, or
Greek in a textual footnote.
• Since the names of Hebrew months are
unknown to most contemporary readers,
and since the Hebrew lunar calendar fluctuates from year to year in relation to the solar
calendar used today, we have looked for clear
ways to communicate the time of year the
Hebrew months (such as Abib) refer to. When
an expanded or interpretive rendering is given
in the text, a textual note gives the literal rendering. Where it is possible to define a specific
ancient date in terms of our modern calendar,
we use modern dates in the text. A textual
footnote then gives the literal Hebrew date
and states the rationale for our rendering. For
example, Ezra 6:15 pinpoints the date when
the postexilic Temple was completed in Jerusalem: “the third day of the month Adar.” This
was during the sixth year of King Darius’s
reign (that is, 515 b.c.). We have translated
that date as March 12, with a footnote giving
the Hebrew and identifying the year as 515 b.c.
• Since ancient references to the time of day
differ from our modern methods of denoting time, we have used renderings that are
instantly understandable to the modern
reader. Accordingly, we have rendered specific
times of day by using approximate equivalents
in terms of our common “o’clock” system. On
occasion, translations such as “at dawn the
next morning” or “as the sun was setting”
have been used when the biblical reference is
more general.
• When the meaning of a proper name (or a
wordplay inherent in a proper name) is relevant to the message of the text, its meaning is
often illuminated with a textual footnote. For
example, in Exodus 2:10 the text reads: “The
princess named him Moses, for she explained,
‘I lifted him out of the water.’ ” The accompanying footnote reads: “Moses sounds like a
Hebrew term that means ‘to lift out.’ ”
Sometimes, when the actual meaning
of a name is clear, that meaning is included
in parentheses within the text itself. For
example, the text at Genesis 16:11 reads: “You
are to name him Ishmael (which means ‘God
hears’), for the Lord has heard your cry of distress.” Since the original hearers and readers
would have instantly understood the meaning of the name “Ishmael,” we have provided
modern readers with the same information so
they can experience the text in a similar way.
• Many words and phrases carry a great deal
of cultural meaning that was obvious to the
original readers but needs explanation in our
own culture. For example, the phrase “they
beat their breasts” (Luke 23:48) in ancient
times meant that people were very upset,
often in mourning. In our translation we chose