“Some Witnesses Have ...”: The Representation of the New Testament Text in English Bible Versions

Abstract

"Quite a few things have changed in (Christian) Bible translation theory and practice in the past 50 or 60 years, but one aspect has remained virtually the same: the way in which versions make reference to text-critical decisions. While the importance of representing textual criticism in Bible translations has been mentioned at times (e.g., Scanlin 1988, Schowalter 1995, Szesnat 2001), a systematic analysis and critique of the way in which English versions present the issues and the textual material involved has yet to be done. In fact, there are hardly any studies of the way particular translations handle textual criticism (Fee 1993 is an exception), and perhaps this is, at least in part, due to the hard labour of reconstructing a translation’s textual basis: after all, Tasker’s helpful edition of the Greek NT as effectively developed by the NEB (Tasker 1964) was a rather unusual work, and not likely to be repeated for the NT in these days of a ‘stable’ Nestle- Aland ‘standard text’. So, all I wish to offer here is an exploratory overview of the representation of ‘the text’ in English versions, based on text-critical indicators (usually footnotes) in the translations, as well as any introductory comments that may be offered."(pg 1)