Introduction to the OET

Have you ever asked someone whether you should buy a more ‘literal’ (word for word) Bible or a more ‘dynamic’ (thought for thought) one? Or did you find one that advertised itself as being ‘the perfect combination of both’ or having ‘optimal literalness’? (Of course, those kinds of things are empty marketing terms, like a perfect mixture of a piping hot flat white and an iced coffee would have to be.)

Many Bible readers these days have been sold the belief that a more literal Bible that’s closer to the Greek and Hebrew is better. (It’s certainly harder to read and understand, and does require more godly enthusiasm, we’ll give you that.) Think about it: Go and buy a Chinese device that’s complex enough to require a user manual. Obviously the user manual that’s word-for-word from the Mandarin and reflects Chinese idiom and culture would be much better? Wrong. Obviously wrong. We’ve all read Chinese manuals like that: ‘On the plugging in of this device, take care.’ Well, that wasn’t written by a native English speaker. Much better would be: ‘Think carefully about where your fingers are as you push the plug into the power socket.’ Oops, there might be no Mandarin word for ‘fingers’ in the original Chinese manual, so it’s a little bit of an interpretation as well as a translation. All good, understandable translations should be like that—trying to say what we believe they actually meant.

Is there a danger there? Yes, and not just getting your pinkie too close to one of those pins! There is a danger that the translator might add something that wasn’t actually meant by the original writer. If you were working as a translator for the Chinese manufacturer, you could double-check your translation by asking them if that was indeed what they meant. But if the original writers of scripture died thousands of years ago, that’s not so easy.

Could there be a ‘best of both worlds’? Well yes, what if we had a very literal version printed side-by-side with our best attempt to try to understand what the original author meant, but in the words we use today. Then if you thought an interpretation was wrong, you could look across and see a word-for-word translation of the original Hebrew and Greek words, and think about what the author might have originally meant and how you would interpret it. Ha, you just described the Open English Translation—two for the price of one! Oh, and did we say that it’s completely free?

Read more at https://OET.Bible

Two for the price of less than one!