Has anyone heard of the Literal Standard Version?
Not until reading your thread. I secured a copy and am shocked at how dreadful it is on every level... I see nothing redeeming about it. The translator(s) imagine themselves and their product as a bulwark against the "perversion" of "translations [made] to appease a postmodern, progressive, and secular readership" (LSV 7), yet churn out something I would expect out of the dark ages and preface it with claims that should make any informed Christian cringe.
They elevate inerrancy to an essential doctrine when they claim "Christians regard the original autographic manuscripts to be directly inspired by God, inerrant ... and infallible" (LSV 5), inferring that if one does
not do so then s/he is
not a Christian. Inerrancy is a modern and misguided response to critical biblical scholarship embraced only within fundamentalist and
some evangelical circles (the founder of CARM, for example, moves in such circles), but within which it has even been thoughtfully critiqued (Smith; Sparks).
The translator(s) are welcome to believe in inerrancy if they so choose, but it is no excuse for alienating in their preface a large proportion of Christians who are not so dogmatic about the subject and, worse still, making a number of misleading or blatantly false assertions about the manuscript evidence. In terms of the first, there is the claim that some manuscript copies "were made shortly after the originals and others were written many decades later" (LSV 5). The contrast implies that "shortly" means something less than "many decades", which is an extremely narrow window and one that could conceivably apply only to the single fragment from John 18 known as Papyrus 52 (Metzger and Ehrman 55-56). The terse comment of the LSV translator(s) conveys no proper understanding of the fragmentary nature of the earliest 'manuscripts' for either testament or that complete manuscripts of New Testament books come
centuries (not decades) later and even longer windows exist for most books of the Hebrew Bible.
The translator(s) comments in the aforementioned case are irresponsible, but others are even more egregious and amount to errors outright. For example when they claim that the Dead Sea Scrolls (hereafter DSS) "show[] that the Old Testament we have today is equivalent to the one used by Christ and His disciples" (LSV 6). The biblical scrolls from Qumran and the surrounding area
taken as a whole demonstrate nothing of the sort. To be sure, a text type
similar (not equivalent) to the Masoretic Text (hereafter MT) was reflected among
some of the DSS (Tov 108), but so were text types that support unique readings in the Samaritan Pentateuch (hereafter SP) and the Septuagint (hereafter LXX), as well as some previously unknown readings (Tov 108-10). The text of the Hebrew Bible in the late Second Temple Period was pluriform and unstable, evidencing evolution of certain sections (Müller et al.), truths that will not just disappear because they are inconvenient for the LSV translator(s) or their intended readers.
The translator(s) suggestion that the differences between the aforementioned "manuscript versions" involve "minor discrepancies" (LSV 5) is wishful thinking, particularly as it relates to the Hebrew Bible, and they claim to use different versions "where the evidence seems incontrovertible" --- but what this means is unclear and no criteria are given for when and why they introduce alternate readings directly into the translation inside double square brackets with a prefacing
or as if the reader can pick whichever one suits their fancy. They are both selective and inconsistent. For example, they incorporate a reading from the DSS into Deut 32:8 and place the variant MT in brackets, yet translate 32:43 from MT without so much as mentioning the controversial DSS variant (for these readings consult Abegg et al. 191-93). In another example (Genesis 5), they provide in brackets the different genealogical data of LXX but not that of SP, yet the former is no closer to the putative "original" than the latter, nor is MT for that matter since
all three text traditions reflect adjustments to a now-lost archetype (Miano 67-76).
The translator(s) assumptions about the "original" text are thus theoretically naïve since text critics working on both testament have questioned and largely abandoned the pursuit of an "original" in favor of earliest recoverable forms of each text, which may be marked early on by variances owing to the interaction between textuality and orality, as well as performances within different communities (Carr; Martin; Wachtel and Holmes). Their approach represents a gigantic step
backward for contemporary Bible translation and there is no excuse whatsoever in their choice to use the Textus Receptus as their base text for the New Testament rather than NA28, thereby incorporating numerous readings into the translation that have no viable claim to being "original" (Metzger and Ehrman) and many without the benefit of even bracketed alternatives from superior manuscripts.
These are some of the theoretical and text-base problems underpinning the LSV, which is itself atrocious as far as "translations" go --- it admits to being "essentially an interlinear in terms of word-for-word translation, but arranged with English sentence structure" (LSV 7). Indeed, the LSV comes across with a slavishness one might expect from someone using an interlinear with a rudimentary knowledge of the languages. I have referred to "translator(s)" throughout as there is no transparency as to who he/she/they are and what qualifications they actually have to execute a competent translation. In any case, they miss all sorts of subtleties from what I can see glancing at the first few chapters of Genesis and their renderings of vav conversives/consecutives with historic present tenses and "perfects" straight across into English as such (and this not even consistently) reflect a profound ignorance of the Hebrew verbal system and what is going on syntactically. This post is long enough as it is so I will provide examples of their mistakes and inconsistencies in another post... later today (if I have time), but (more likely) this weekend.
Kind regards,
Jonathan
Works Cited:
Abegg, Martin Jr. et al.
The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible: The Oldest Known Bible Translated for the First Time into English. HarperSanFrancisco, 1999.
Carr, David M.
The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction. Oxford University Press, 2011.
Martin, Gary D.
Multiple Originals: New Approaches to Hebrew Bible Textual Criticism. SBL Text-Critical Studies 7. Society of Biblical Literature, 2010.
Metzger, Bruce M. and Bart D. Ehrman.
The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. Fourth Edition. Oxford University Press, 2005.
Miano, David.
Shadow on the Steps: Time Measurement in Ancient Israel. SBL Resources for Biblical Study 64. Society of Biblical Literature, 2010.
Müller, Reinhard et al.
Evidence of Editing: Growth and Change of Texts in the Hebrew Bible. SBL Resources for Biblical Study 75. Society of Biblical Literature, 2014.
Smith, Christian.
The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture. Brazos Press, 2012.
Sparks, Kenton L.
God's Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship. Baker Academic, 2008.
Tov, Emanuel.
Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible. Third Edition, Revised and Expanded. Fortress Press, 2012.
Wachtel, Klaus and Michael W. Holmes (eds).
The Textual History of the Greek New Testament: Changing Views in Contemporary Research. SBL Text-Critical Studies 8. Society of Biblical Literature, 2011.
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