The Source New Testament

Dr Ann Nyland  the author of the Source NT  comments that:

"For centuries, the meanings of numerous New Testament words remained unknown. Bible lexicographers, that is, people who compose dictionaries of word meaning, look at the occurrences of a particular word. Many words which appeared in the New Testament were not found anywhere else, which made grasping their meaning difficult. However, when the papyri and inscriptions (written at the time of the New Testament) were unearthed, many of these words appeared commonly in all sorts of different contexts, and thus their meaning became apparent. Some papyri and inscriptions were discovered in the late 1880s but a huge number after the mid 1970s.

Yet nearly every New Testament translation of today follows the traditional Bible translations of the earlier versions, which were published centuries before the evidence from the papyri and inscriptions revealed to us the meanings of numerous New Testament words. … [In 1976 alone], fifteen volumes of new papyri were published."

Nyland makes a very significant point here as the great majority of New Testament translations have NOT made use of these findings and thus have a great many mistranslations as they have misunderstood and misappropriated the meanings of a great many words.

And even though a many translations have been edited since 1976 there appears to be very limited changes in these versions that have taken all these new word meanings into account.

Nyland gives as an example Matthew 11:12: "From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force." (ESV).

She argues that with these new understandings this passage should not suggest the 'Heaven is suffering violence' at all.

She renders it as "From the time of John the Baptizer until now, Heaven's Realm is being used or even robbed by those who have no legal right to it. This stops those who do have a legal right to it from enjoying their own property."

While Nyland uses 'Heaven's Realm' I think a better translation is God's Kingdom, as 'Heaven' was often used as a  synonym for the Almighty so as not to risk using His actual name, YHVH (Yehovah) inappropriately.

Of course, this is still a very strange comment.  I suspect that the context indicates that Yeshua is speaking of how the crowds rush to hear John and wanted so much to grasp the good news he shared of the Kingdom of God. These people were from many walks of life and perhaps great sinners or pagans and thus not truly of the House of Israel and therefore not really having a 'legal' right to the Kingdom. This understanding (shared by a number of great theologians such as Albert Barnes) though does not sit comfortably with Nyland's second sentence.

But the main point here is that very few recent Bible translators/editors appear to have taken this very significant new information into account.

This is not to say that Nyland has it all correct (I certainly would take issue with some of her arguments such as 'Jesus was very wealthy'), but we would be wise to at least seek our The Source New Testament as a major source if not our most significant NT version.

I am aware of only one recent translator who has perhaps an even greater appreciation of the contextual issues including word meaning and who has also gone back to the earlier extant Greek manuscripts to re-translate them. And that is Uriel Ben Mordechai. Uriel has now (mostly based on Papryi 46 - circa 170 CE) translated a lot of the Apostle Paul's writings , along with 'The Letter to the Hebrews' and is currently working on John's Gospel.

Uriel's versions of Galatians, Romans and Hebrews can be purchased from http://above-and-beyond-ltd.com/store/books/if.html) and The Source NT from https://www.amazon.com/Source-Testament-Extensive-Notes-Meaning/dp/0980443008/