Kingdom New Testament-OE [Hardcover]

I recently read NT Wright's The Kingdom New Testament, which is a contemporary translation of the New Testament.

I think this is the first book by NT Wright that I did not like.

Some of the sections are great, but for the most part, his contemporary translation of the New Testament suffered from the same two problems that most other contemporary translations suffer from.

The first problem with contemporary translations is that they are contemporary.

What I mean is this: Since culture and language changes so rapidly, what is "contemporary" now is no longer "contemporary" a few years from now. Contemporary translations of the Scriptures have a short shelf-life. Some contemporary translations from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s sound almost ridiculous today.

As I read NT Wright's contemporary translation, I cringed at some of his word choices, as some of his phrases are already out of date. For example, in Matthew 23 when Jesus pronounces woes upon the Pharisees, NT Wright uses the phrase, "Woe betide you." Maybe this is a British phrase, but I cannot recall hearing anyone ever use it. I looked it up online, and it was very popular in the 14th century, and was still in use by some in Great Britain up until about 20 years ago, but almost nobody uses it today. So NT Wright's contemporary translation is already out of date in this instance, and there were numerous places this happened. One more example is in Matthew 2:8, where Herod says to the Magi: "Off you go." I'm sorry, but no king then or now would speak with such informality.

When a contemporary translation fails at being contemporary, it ends up sounding silly. It is almost better to have a woodenly literal translation that sounds archaic, but is at least consistently archaic.

That is the first problem with contemporary translations (Including this one by Wright. However, I really do like the New Living Translation). What is the second problem?

The second main problem with contemporary translations is that they are often culturally bound to the person (or persons) who made them. I still remember reading Eugene Peterson's The Message, and thinking that the Jesus in this translation sounded distinctly like someone who was stuck in the 1960s.

As I was reading NT Wright's The Kingdom New Testament, I had a similar impression, though not of someone who lived in the 1960's, but of someone who was trying to write a novel, and was failing miserably. NT Wright is a great scholar, theologian, and writer, but this translation made me think that he is a bad story teller. (That made me feel better, actually, because I am a horrible story teller.) There was too much repetition of words and phrases to make the Gospels truly readable.

This isn't NT Wright's fault. Not even the greatest novelist in the world could transform the New Testament into a well-written novel unless they took huge liberties with the text. But if they did this, the result would not be a translation at all.

For example, Greek and Hebrew repeatedly uses the word "said" in dialogue. Jesus said, "..." The apostles said, "..." Jesus said, "..." The apostles said, "..." This is really bad writing in English, and NT Wright tries to mix these up a bit for variety, but there is only so much you can do with long conversations (cf. John 21).

The problem with turning the New Testament into a contemporary translation is that none of it is contemporary. It was written in a form and a genre that no longer exists today, and so to make it fit literary forms of today is impossible.

A close example would be like trying to rewrite Shakespeare into modern language. Though it could be done, who would want to read it? The simple act of translation destroys the beauty of the narrative.

The same thing happens to Scripture when we try to put it in a contemporary translation. It needs to be archaic and "other worldly" for the same reason that Shakespeare needs to be archaic and "other worldly." What reason is that? They ARE archaic and other worldly! They were written in a different time, place, and culture, and the text should reflect that. At numerous times, NT Wright tried to make the quotations from the Old Testament rhyme. He did this, of course, because the quotations are from Hebrew poetry (which didn't rhyme), but today we expect poems to rhyme. But more often than not, his rhymes end up sounding like Nursery Rhymes, and they lose their force. Here are two examples from Matthew 21:

My house will be called a house of prayer--
But you have made it a brigand's lair.

You called forth praise to rise to you
From newborn babes and infants too!

Once again, I'm sorry, but NO! Thankfully, Wright did not do this with all the quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures.

Translations of the Scriptures are necessary since most people are not able to read Scripture in the original languages of Hebrew and Greek. But no translation is fully able to duplicate the structure and flow and imagery of the original, and each translation provides a slightly different perspective on the text. A Bible translation is, in a sense, the most basic type of Bible Commentary that exists. The word choices of the translator reveal what the translator thinks the text means.

And here is where we get to the strength of NT Wright's translation, and why I will probably be referring to it frequently in my own study, despite its idiosyncrasies.

NT Wright is a world-class New Testament scholar and historian. On numerous occasions, his translation helps show the reader not just what the literal translation of the word is, but what it actually meant to the original readers. Or at least, what NT Wright thinks the text actually meant to the original readers. The translation does, after all, reveal Wright's particular perspective on Jesus and Paul in numerous occasions.

In Romans, for example, where we usually read about justification and righteousness, Wright uses the phrases "covenant justice" and "being in the right." In these cases, whether or not one agrees or disagrees with NT Wright on his perspective on Paul, I don't think these translations are any more helpful for contemporary readers than were the terms "justification" and "righteousness." Does anybody who has not read NT Wright's perspective on Paul know what he means by "covenant justice" and "being in the right"? I doubt it. I've read some of his books on these subjects, and I'm still not sure what he means!

Nevertheless, reading one set of words where you expect a different set does make one stop and think about the text, and that is the strength of every new translation, NT Wright's included. We get so comfortable with a particular view of a text, reading the text from a different perspective jars us into giving the text another look. For this reason, and this reason alone, I am glad to have a copy of NT Wright's The Kingdom New Testament and will refer to it frequently in my own study of the New Testament.

I'm a huge fan of N.T. Wright. He's a fellow Anglican, but more importantly I've enjoyed numerous works of his, especially his nuanced insights into St. Paul's language and theology. He's not only a first-rate theologian but also an excellent popularizer. For these reasons I had the highest hopes for his new translation of the New Testament: "The Kingdom New Testament."

While there's a lot to appreciate in Wright's effort, there are also a number of negative elements, the most negative of which is his insistence on inclusive language that distorts the meaning of various texts.

Wright's translation was written as part of his "Bible for Everyone" series. I've read and reviewed several of these popular commentaries on the New Testament, and they're excellent. Wright helpfully lays out his philosophy of translation in his Preface. He draws attention to the fact that his work is a translation and not a paraphrase, like, for example, Peterson's "The Message." I greatly appreciate this fact. He's opted for conveying an informality and sense of excitement and energy over a more formal or stately prose, an approach which ends up having both pros and cons, although in theory I like the attempt.

On many levels, I applaud Wright's attempt to make the New Testament fresh again by using less formal language. For example, in Matthew 1, Wright chooses to use "family tree" instead of "genealogy," which I think is a nice replacement word: it makes the language more familiar and easier to understand, without sacrificing meaning. There are numerous other examples of such happy word choices. As a whole, Wright's text reads very nicely and accomplishes its purpose of making the text less formal and more energetic. I also like the fact that at times Wright replaces the title "Christ" with either "Messiah" or "King." Even though it may sound unorthodox, I appreciate Wright's instinct to get away from the old language of "Christ" which for many seems more like a last name than a title.

Sometimes, however, Wright's language is jarring or seems inappropriate. For example, in Matthew 4:9 when Satan is tempting Jesus, he says, "I'll give the whole lot to you" (speaking of the kingdoms of the world.) Another example of an attempt to modernize that is not especially helpful occurs in Matthew 6:7 when Jesus proclaims "When you pray, don't pile up a jumbled heap of words!" An even less helpful translation occurs in Matthew 7:5 when Wright chooses to replace the word "hypocrite" with "play-acting." This substantially weakens the language, without any positive gain in the choice of words. There are many other cases of such unfortunate substitutions, even as there are many beneficial ones as well.

An example of where Wright's language is both helpful and less than helpful occurs in John 21, where Jesus and Peter have an encounter in which Jesus restores Peter. The less formal language is a good thing here: "I'm going fishing" instead of the more stilted "I am going fishing" and "We'll go" instead of "We will go" are good changes. However, for some unknown reason Wright has seen fit to take it upon himself to change Peter's words to Jesus from "You know that I love you" to "you know that I'm your friend." This produces no positive effect, while it lessens the force of what Peter is saying and has the downside of changing what God clearly intended (through St. John) to communicate.

While Wright's insights into Paul's words and theology have had a powerful influence on contemporary theology (I believe for the better) his great learning sometimes leads to confusing choices. This is especially true for his replacements for the word "righteousness" which occur throughout his translation of Romans. In Romans 1:18, Wright replaces "unrighteousness" with "injustice." This not only narrows Paul's intention here but also unnecessarily slants it toward one particular aspect of unrighteousness. It also makes less sense in the context of the larger passage. While Wright is aware as a scholar of the shades of meaning of the word "righteousness" it's just plain confusing to interpret the same Greek word 3 different ways in one passage. In Romans 4:3 "righteousness" becomes "putting him in the right;" in Romans 4:11 it's rendered "status of covenant membership;" and in Romans 4:13 it's translated "covenant justice." This creates more confusion than clarity, something Wright was clearly aiming at with this contemporary translation.

Wright's most unfortunate changes involve his mission to render the New Testament in inclusive language. As a proponent of women's ordination, he clearly has an ax to grind here, and it sometimes leads to unfaithful translations of the Bible. Not only has he changed the language to be less faithful to the original but when he's done so he makes it more difficult for the readers of his text to know what the original text actually says. There are many examples of this, some worse than others. The most numerous and least offensive examples are where Wright substitutes, for example, the word "brothers" with "brothers and sisters" or "family." A more substantial example is in Romans 5:15 and following when Wright substitutes "one man's trespasses" with "one person's trespasses." But the fact that Adam as a male was the covenant head of mankind is now obscured by Wright, and this covenant headship of both Adam and Christ is essential to St. Paul's thought. Worst of all, however, is 1 Timothy 2:11-15. While verse 11 should read "Let a woman learn quietly with submissiveness," Wright translates it as "They must study undisturbed, in full submission to God." "Study undisturbed" sounds like a woman studying on her own without distraction. But from the rest of the passage it's clear that Paul is talking about women in general when they are being taught by men. Wright's worst translation in the entire translation, as far as I could tell, is 1 Timothy 2:12. This verse should read "I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet." Wright doesn't even attempt to paraphrase here but radically alters the meaning. This is not a translation at this point but a deliberate attempt to re-write what St. Paul clearly wrote. Wright's version is: I'm not saying that women should teach men, or try to dictate to them; rather they should be left undisturbed." Whether you're in favor of women's ordination or not, we should all agree to let the text speak for itself.

It's a shame that Wright made some of the translation choices he made. "The Kingdom New Testament" has so much to commend it, with the theological background of Wright, the often pleasing and informal language, and some fresh word choices. Unfortunately, I believe the translation's flaws will prevent it from becoming, as Wright hoped, one of the 2 or 3 translations that modern Christians would most rely on.

In his "For Everyone" commentary series on the New Testament books, N.T. (Tom) Wright included his own translation of the texts (based on his in-depth knowledge as one of the world's leading Biblical scholars). Now these translations are gathered into one volume, free of adornment or commentary so that one may simply read the New Testament in highly accurate, well-rendered modern language.

Having read the entire "For Everyone" series, I had to get this as soon as it came out. I look forward to a fresh experience with God's Word in my upcoming study.

The book also includes an assortment of maps distributed throughout the text, lending a sense of place to narrative sections.

My only criticism is that there is no guidance on how to cite this translation (KNT? KNTACT? NTW?) I'm sure that issue will sort itself out, as this translation finds its audience and begins to leaven religious discourse.

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