Fr. Nick King Audio Course

Many of you are familiar with Fr. Nicholas King S.J. as the person who recently translated the Bible from the Greek to English.  Currently, he is a Visiting Professor at the School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College, where he teaches New Testament and Koine Greek. For 12 years, he was a lecturer in the same subjects at Oxford University. Prior to coming to Oxford, he taught in South Africa, where he served as a District Observer for its first democratic elections.  

The fine people at Now You Know Media have recently come out with The New Testament: A Bible Study Course by Fr. King.  According to the website description, this audio set includes: "36 engaging lectures that give you access to modern scholarship on the New Testament. Fr. King’s original translations breathe new life into the words you have so often heard and studied, accurately conveying the mood of the original documents.  After a fascinating general introduction to the New Testament, you will take a fresh look at the Pauline epistles. You will enjoy four lectures on each of the Gospels before looking at Acts of the Apostles, the general epistles, and Revelation. Finally, you will consider the important themes of Christ’s Resurrection, divine inspiration, and the necessity of the Old Testament.  Above all, you will gain a fuller sense of Jesus as a devout Jew who was telling the old story of God and the People of God in a new way. And as Jesus preached, the gospel message is open to all."

I have at least a dozen sets from Now You Know Media and they are of the highest quality.

Guest Review: Owen's Opening of the King Bible

The following review is largely photo image driven and it's focus is on the physical book itself including contents but not speaking to the "translation." 

Thanks for Timothy for the invitation to do this when I mentioned that I had acquired a copy.

There are a lot of photos. Don't say I didn't say so :)  And, the following could seem a little fanatical, perhaps it is but as the specific bible is not easily found outside the UK and with few suppliers it seemed it might be helpful to offer a detailed view. Some of the images are fuzzy. I do not present them so you can read the text but so that you have a general idea of the look of things.

Shipped from thebookdepository [UK]

In the photo I've covered my address with my art-business cards. Otherwise, this is as it arrived with the contents very well protected. The photos that follow happened in real-time as I took the treasure out of it's package; other than the white in the display box window (below) which is the packing slip that sat on top of the bible inside. I removed the paper and closed it up again without removing the book itself.

The book was in perfect condition and truth, that is not always the case when ordering online from well known non bricks-n-mortar stores. It increasingly seems we get "seconds" from A-zon for example.

[Caveat emptor: oddly, the day my copy arrived the seller had dropped the price by $16.00, at the time of writing this post, from what I paid. I wrote them. They have no intention of offering me anything more than the "fact" that prices fluctuate according to availability [and recent purchases is my honest guess as I have seen this occur more than once - but that's good news for anyone who has not yet purchased]. That said, thebookdepository sells for less than I have seen at the publisher's site or when you find it on ebay. ]

Out of the box:

Opened roughly to center without doing any of my usual careful page-by-page from the center out to the left / out to the right, to gently break in the binding. Such a fastidious task is often not necessary in bibles that are sewn and covered with one kind or another of synthetic "leather" as is the case with this edition. Speaking of leather, this has what the publisher's promotional material calls a "[s]oft leather effect". The whole affair looked pretty flexible so I went for it and . . .

. . . was happily not disappointed. Without delay then I went front then back to see how the brand-newly opened book cover would respond - as in, just how flat would it lay and therefore what's the potential for a lovely flat sitting bible with a bit of usage?

That bods well. Onward. Let's go find that ribbon.

Purple? Ack. What were they thinking of? How about a nice tan or brown or even black. Ah well, at least I know why the display box and hardcover editions are purple. Maybe all the other colours used to distinguish a brand of bible were used up. Perhaps the colour will grow on me or I make my own set of ribbons as I have with other bibles. A little DYI is a bible-geek's wont.

Looking at those images enlarged one begins to have good sense of the ghosting/show-through but more about readability late. Next-up, "size maters"?

A sense of size:

Guest  reviewer Russ, in another post showed you the King Bible along with the New Oxford Annotated NRSV with Apocrypha, Hardcover. I reprise that comparison here adding another large bible to the mix, the New Jerusalem Bible, Standard Edition [copious notes and cross reference], real leather board cover with slip-case.

And, below, here is the King Bible, sandwiched between the NOA-NRSVwA and the Life With God, NRSV with Deuterocanonicals reviewed on this blog. Clearly this is not an easily taken to Mass or bible study bible.

Readability and the like:

Margins. Impressive, I think. Plenty of room for marginalia such as bible-geeks like myself are wont to add. The inside margin on left facing pages throughout are plentiful; none of this bend the page nonsense in order to read the copy. The right hand margins on all pages, left and right facing, throughout are wider; a good 1.25 inches.

Ghosting/Show-through. Very good, as in not much, as in pretty standard to slightly better-than. I've selected these pages with minimal text and even with all that white space things look good and read well. Pages with lots of text read very clearly.

Single Column Text:

Correct. You read and have seen correctly. This Catholic bible is SINGLE COLUMN TEXT in the Hebrew portions [here called the Old Testament] AND in the New Testament. This fact alone numbers it among the few Catholic bibles with single column text and is desirable to many a reader for that reason alone.

And, it is a beautifully set single column text at that. How so?

Font and font size:

The font is the very pleasing Adobe Garamond and is used throughout including the text notes and bold subheadings. I find this uniform text makes the content shine rather than screaming, "Look at our clever design team." 

Using allbibles sample bible font chart [a print out laid over the bible page] I make the main text to be 9.5pt with the Old Testament footnotes to be a surprisingly legible 7pt. Fellow reviews Russ guesses 9pt for the main text. Subheadings, paragraph breaks at a 10pt bold.

The kerning is very good, open but not loose and certainly not crowded as is the case in too many bibles. Line spacing is roughly 1.5 times the text height. 

Setting of the Notes:

As shown above in several images it is a fairly standard two column setting in the Old Testament. In the New Testament it's a whole different thing. 

A page from the New Testament shows the inset Notes. Above on the page shown the Notes appear at the top and in the lower third of the page with the scripture text running the full column width  The font size of the inset Notes is the same as the main body text. I find it very easy to read. The inset Notes do break the flow of the bible text yet should you care to skip Notes reading the bible text only flows very well. Right now I am reading everything. Perhaps more on that in another post. Love it!

The following is a good example of a page that has Notes and Old Testament quotations within the New Testament. Most are center text. Occasionally, a quotation is very short or a fragment it will flow within the main body copy and not be centered as a drop-quote.  

I have found but one instance of a page that has this boxed note below. It is in a New Testament book. Perhaps there are some of these in the Old Testament but I haven't uncovered every page by any means.

Below, I do so briefly and limitedly verge into "translation" yet only relation to the look more than the content.

Here then, you find highlighted with purple is an example of the a) seldom used list of references at the bottom of the page and b) convention of using square brackets to indicate questionable translation choice or more often words used to make sense in the English that are not present in the Greek.

Cross-Reference Citations:

Regarding referenced verses, "forward" or "back" they are limited and are primarily found within the copy of the inset Notes though sometimes in the bible text itself. In both these cases the citation is within closed square brackets. Very readable and not distracting. Less often "cross" references are listed as a footer [see above].  In the Old Testament cross references are given within the two column footer notes.

Translator's Emphasis:

In the bible text words are occasionally made bold, or italic or both. Sometimes the reason for this is explained in the inset Notes but just as often not. One must intuit why this may be. Overall I have not found it a problem coming to the text with some pre-knowledge. Honestly, I don't think it matters.

• The only other bible using inset notes in this manner that I am aware of, Protestant, Catholic or otherwise is Eugene Peterson's [standard Protestant book selection not the Catholic/Ecumenical edition of] The Message translation called Conversations: The Message With Its Translator, now O.P. with a re-print under a new title revisions and additional material.

Book Introductions, Maps, Other:

The book introductions tend to be short. Most come in at under one page while some run to two pages as in the second example image below.

Maps are few. Two a the back of the New Testament . . .

and but one in the Old Testament, located at the close of the Historical Books presenting Palestine of the Maccabean period. The maps are in my preferred grey scale. They are, I believe, intentionally simple so as to keep the reader from wonderful but not entirely necessary head knowledge; just enough to help you "place" events if you even want/need to.

Oh yes, Other. 

Apart from a two paragraph About the Author page, the translator's page and a half "Dear Reader" preface and an Acknowledgement page there is no Other. No charts of weights and measures, no timelines, no glossary, no cross-reference system, no thing that will detract the reader from reading. Frankly, I find it wholly refreshing.

Aesthetically and subjectively[!] speaking:

I can live with two-tone and as I must lucky for me these are two tones that suit me for a bible. The stitching around the edges is well done and attractive. The "soft leather effect" is pretty much that. One is either OK with it or not. I'm OK with it. Feels smooth, flexible and warms in the hand. It doe not smell, at all, not like leather unhappily yet happily not like the backside of a chemical plant as is with some synthetic materials used as bible covers.

Now, the logo. Ick! Nasty. Yuk. It's HUGE. The "The" in the middle top of the "B" drives my artist/graphic designer mind crazy. And, it's huge; both on the front cover and on the spine [as seen way above]; huge! Did I mention the logo and author name are huge? Why do bible publishers do this to us. However, the new Didache bibles [NABRE and RSV2CE] are worse stinkers for clutter so console myself that I'm not looking at those.

I do rather like that it's title is simply, The Bible and not The Holy Bible because every Christian bible is holy. [This reminds me of at time I worked in a Mom n Pop Christian bookstore. A women asked for a Holy Bible. After some information gleaning questions to help find some suitable translation/editions I began showing her selections to which she said, "None of these say Holy. I want a Holy Bible not just a bible".]


For "fun":

I have never really understood why the following kind of images get bible-geek's mojo going but, well, here:

And, "in closing": 

After a few hours of use the book is already opening nearly flat at either end. That's impressive. 

P.S. I have some thoughts about how the page design and content aids reading the sacred text and have found some very interesting translation peculiarities that have quite "blessed" me. There's a post. I also have a copy of the 2005 Pocket Edition that curiously has more introductory material than this full bible does. Odd. There's another post. Perhaps.

Related posts to date on this translation:

Guest Review: Holy Bible King Translation

Review of King's LXX Translation

Fr. King's Response to Missing Portion of Baruch

#frnicholaskingbible #kingbible #frnicholasking

Fr. King's Response to Missing Portion of Baruch

A recent discussion on this blog concerning the Fr. King translation of the Bible has pointed out that Baruch 6, the Letter of Jeremiah, was left untranslated.  Well, our King Bible correspondent Russ emailed Fr. King and received this following response from him:

Many thanks for the e-mail. I think that I have heard from the other person in question. The publishers are willing to put those 72 verses on the website; and when I get a moment I am willing to attempt the translation, but that may take a while, as I am absolutely overwhelmed with work just at present.

Review of King's LXX Translation

Russ continues his analysis of the King Bible with a look at his translation of the Septuagint.

“In the beginning God made heaven and earth. And the earth was invisible and unformed; and darkness was upon the abyss, and the Spirit of God was rushing upon the water.”

So begins Fr. King’s translation of the Septuagint (LXX), for which we should be thankful as there are very few English translations of the Greek Old Testament in our bibles today. One is found in the Orthodox Study Bible (OSB), which uses as its base text the Old Testament of the New King James Version, and the other is the New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS), which uses the NRSV Old Testament as its base text. Now we have Fr. King’s and it’s my intention to quote freely from his introductions and footnotes to guide us through it. I don’t really consider this a review in the conventional sense but more of a casual glancing through his translation and the way it’s laid out. I simply haven’t had the time to read the entire translation. However, I wanted to share some initial observations and what I have found that I consider educational.

In his Preface he gives three reasons for using the LXX:

“In the first place, the LXX, and not the Hebrew text (what we shall call the MT or ‘Masoretic Text’) is the version most used by our New Testament authors, for whom the LXX, and not the MT, is ‘the bible’. Secondly, and perhaps rather oddly, the manuscripts for the LXX are older than those of the MT and in some cases preserve a superior reading; and they are good evidence for how Greek-speaking Jews of the three centuries before the birth of Christ read their sacred texts. Thirdly, it may be useful at this point to recall that most Jews of the time will have spoken Greek rather than than Hebrew, just as today more Jews speak English than Hebrew.”

And it’s in his presentation of the Old Testament (as opposed to his NT section/text that I reviewed two weeks ago) that you get back to more familiar ground as far as study bibles are concerned, and this is advertized as a study bible. Here the verses are included in the text (wild applause and cheering on my part), unlike the NT.  Most of the introductions are more in-depth than what is found in the NT but not overly so. In a lot of bibles you actually feel like you’re drowning when it comes to all the theories and speculations about this, that, and the other thing (and yes, there is a place for all the this, that, and the other thing) but if you’re not careful you (me) can lose sight that, when all is said and done, this is a book that is inspired by God and one of the most beautiful ways he uses to communicate to us.

His footnotes are copious in the places that are needed, and in many of them he demonstrates the differences between the Greek and Hebrew and what the translator may have been thinking.

For example, Genesis 2:2 (I did the underling below):

LXX (King): “And God completed on the sixth day the works which he made; and he rested on the seventh day…”

NABRE:  “On the seventh day God completed the work he had been doing; he rested on the seventh day…”

The RSV/NRSV/NJB all translate the same way as the NABRE as they are all based on the MT as well.

Fr. King’s footnote for that verse: “here the translator seems to have edited what he found in the Hebrew text, which at first blush implies that God actually worked on the 7^th day, and the translator is evidently determined to preserve the Sabbath from divine labour.” Twenty years into my reading and studying of the bible, and I’m just now discovering this interesting little tidbit. And there are many other such notes that are found scattered through each book.

And this is an example of why he states in his Introduction to Genesis: “As you read this translation of the Septuagint, I should like to encourage you to keep your Bibles open, and see some of the differences between the Greek and the Hebrew versions from which your bibles will normally have been translated.”

When you flip passed the books of Moses, Joshua and Judges you find “four books that belong very closely together. The LXX signals this by calling them 1-4 ‘Reigns’ or ‘Kingdom’. We shall call them by the conventional titles, of 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings (the latter originates with Jerome’s translation of the Hebrew text into Latin).”

Next are two books that “were just one volume in Hebrew; it was only when they were translated into Greek that they were divided…the Greek translator called it ‘Paralipomena’, or ‘things left out’.” Again, Fr. King uses the traditional titles of 1 and 2 Chronicles for these books. I’m glad because as hard as I try, I find it difficult to pronounce Paralipomena without my tongue and mind becoming momentarily paralyzed.

Going forward to the Wisdom books you first come to the Book of Job, personally one of my favorite books and one I admit I haven’t read in a long time, so it’s a joy to read it again, this time from the Septuagint. Fr. King: “the Greek text is notably shorter than the Hebrew, sometimes offering no more than a paraphrase (though there are also occasional additions). This is partly, one suspects, because in places the Hebrew is so very obscure, and partly because it tends to be repetitious. The Greek translation makes various theological emendations…This translation is particularly interesting as it is our first evidence of how some Jews, from a different culture, read this remarkable work.”

A sample introduction, this one from Psalms.

About the numbering of the Psalms, Fr. King notes, “This Psalm (9) was originally an alphabetic psalm (although bits are now missing), and Psalm 10 was its continuation, as LXX correctly observes. We shall continue to number in accordance with the Masoretic Text, but with LXX in brackets after the MT numeration.”

When you get to the prophets and specifically now to Isaiah he writes, “the Greek translation is odd in places, for occasionally the translator seems to have misunderstood the Hebrew (assuming that he had the same text before him as we have), and his Greek is simply unintelligible at times. At other times, however, he shows excellent translation skills, though he sometimes feels free to suggest a different translation, often entirely appropriate to the themes of the book as a whole.” Finally, “the reader is warned that at times it is very difficult indeed to follow the order of the Isaiah scroll; in particular how one passage leads into what follows. So do not worry if it seems impossible to grasp; simply sit patiently with it.”

Above is an example of the page layout for the entire Old Testament section. And considering the season we’re in, I wanted to display that particular part of Isaiah.

Jeremiah is another book I haven’t read in a long time, so when I started to flip through it I was immediately reminded and educated to the difficulties scholars have when it comes to the proper order and structuring of the book. In his translation, Fr. King uses the following chapter order:

1-25/49-51/25-45/52.

He writes in the Introduction, “the Greek is about 12 per cent shorter (than the MT). And the discoveries of fragments of Jeremiah in the Qumran caves (especially the one known as 4QJer(b) suggests that there were several editions of Jeremiah known to 1^st century Jews; many scholars think that LXX may be closer to the original, in particular in the placing of the ‘oracles against the nations’, though in the circumstances that is a tricky claim to sustain.”

When I first started to look into this translation, I saw that it was roundly endorsed by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, Desmund Tutu and Henry Wansbrough, OSB, general editor of The New Jerusalem Bible and former member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission. However, I didn’t buy it for that. I bought it because he translated from the Septuagint. Had it not been for that I most likely wouldn’t have purchased it.

In his mostly favorable review for the Methodist Recorder , The Rev Dr. Paul Ellingsworth wrote, “This is a version intended to be read rather than analyzed, so detailed criticism is best left to academic journals.” And while I hope that someday someone with the proper biblical and language skills will do such a review, I can definitely say that I am reading this translation. For me there’s nothing like a new translation of the bible to open our eyes and spirit, or, as their advertisement says, to “shake off the dust which often settles on passages which have become tired from over familiarity or frequent quotation.”

This translation is a challenge and one that I honestly look forward to reading every day. I believe it’s a wonderful resource and it’s my hope that this translation will someday be readily available to an American audience.

Guest Review: Holy Bible King Translation

Russ, who interviewed Fr. King, now presents us a review of the King Bible.  Thanks to Russ for taking the time to do this!

After becoming aware of (and then purchasing) Fr. Nicholas King’s translation of the scriptures at the beginning of the year, Tim asked if I would do a review of said translation, and foolishly I agreed. Tim does such a nice job reviewing bibles and books that I felt somewhat intimidated so I hope you find this helpful and informative. And just for the record, I have absolutely no specialty or knowledge of Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic or Latin other than what I read in study bibles or commentaries themselves. I am a Catholic who has a deep and abiding interest in the Word of God and the translations that are available to us. The following impressions are the result of my spending the past few weeks with it.

Fr. King’s career as a translator began after he came back from South Africa, where he had been teaching New Testament in seminaries and universities, along with some academic administration. Upon his return to England and finding himself with a bit of an academic break, he decided to translate Mark and John for a summer school class he was preparing for. As it turns out, one of his students was married to a publisher, and as he said in an interview, “Eventually the request came: How would you feel about translating the whole Bible? Initially I was reluctant, but after reflecting on it for a while, and a certain amount of arm-twisting, I thought: ‘Why not?’”

He finished translating the NT in 2004 and then began work on the Old Testament Septuagint. So my review will start with the NT as well. Eventually I will write a review of my impressions of the Old Testament.

It comes in a hard case and the first thing I noticed (as did my daughter) when I slid it out was that it had a purple ribbon. It’s her favorite color. It’s just one ribbon but that’s more than most bibles these days. It opened out nice and flat on the table. You have a choice of either hard cover or fake leather and I went with the fake and I’m pretty sure Tim would turn right around and Fed Ex it to have it rebound in real alligator leather or something similar. It tops off at 2400 pages so it seems like it should weigh more than it does. No font size is stated in the book or on the web site but I’m guessing about 9 for the text and a bit smaller for the footnotes in the OT, so if you’re getting old like me (53) you probably already own a pair of reading glasses anyway so it’s no big deal. I emailed the publisher to find out but they never replied. And it smells really nice. You just don’t get that from Kindle books.

The second thing I noticed after I opened it up was that that it had some nice marginal space. The paper is kind of thin like most bibles, but if you like writing in your bible, you can certainly use a pencil and not worry about it bleeding through to the other side. The bleed through of the text isn’t as bad as some of the pictures I provided seem to indicate.

This translation is advertised as a study bible so after I started flipping through the NT I was worried that they had shipped me the wrong edition as I did not see any footnotes, cross references,  or commentary,  while I found plenty of notes at the bottom of the pages of the Old Testament. I finally found the commentary, and when I did I discovered something else in the process: there is no verse numbering in the NT. Anyway, not the kind we’re used to seeing. Take a look.

Here is an example:

You see Chapter 1 indicated, and just to the right of that in small print 1-17, indicating the verses for that section that he has titled “Jesus’ family tree”.  Notice that there are no verses in the text. Then, after the text, heavily indented, comes his commentary for that particular section. It goes like this throughout the whole NT. The commentary is informal but…informative. After spending time with this bible I found I liked the commentary. It doesn’t overwhelm you like a lot of study bibles. They’re not overly academic but things to be aware of when reading the text. One reviewer found the notes “lively” and “neatly set into the text itself instead of being buried in the footnotes at the bottom of the page. They really do make it much easier to read and follow the story.”

I admit it, I really disliked that it didn’t have verse numbering. I’ve had a lot of bibles in my time but never one without the verse numbering included. It makes it a chore if you want to use this for study purposes.

In an online interview Fr. King explained why he did this when he first translated Mark and John: “I ignored chapter and verse, since they are both medieval impositions on the text, and wanted to get the ‘feel’ of what it was like for the early readers (or, we should say, hearers, since most of them would not have had the skills of writing or reading) of those gospels, and of their freshness.”

However, on the proverbial flip side of things, after using it for a while (I’ve started out by reading John’s Gospel) I realized I was concentrating more on the text itself and not on what a certain scholar had to say in the footnotes, or this doctor or saint of the church. Like the reviewer previously mentioned, I wasn’t getting bogged down by notes/commentary.  I found myself meditating on the story in front of me, becoming a “participant” in the story I was reading, which was a pleasant (and fruitful) surprise.  (Full disclosure: after finishing a chapter of John I went back and put the verses in with a pencil using the NRSV as a guide to where the verses began. If the verse began in the middle of a line I indicated that by making a small dot above the word.) And I forgot to mention, it is single columned, which I truly enjoy.

Book Introductions are brief, concise, sometimes only a sentence or two long, nothing like what you find in your traditional study bible.

Below is one to the Letter to the Romans:

When a word could be translated in a different way Fr. King puts the alternative choice in a bracket after the word he settled on. For instance, in Matthew 23 where we find Jesus tearing into the Pharisees (the “Woe to you!” section) and most translations have “hypocrites,”  Fr. King translates  “frauds” and then: [hypocrites]. Most study bibles would have something like this notated at the bottom of the page, stating “or…” and then give the alternate translation. But if you’re not familiar with the bible, if you’re new to reading the scriptures, this might be a problem because it could be interpreted as being part of the text itself instead of what it actually is, an alternative way to translate a certain word or phrase.  And there’s nothing in the Introduction that alerts the reader to this, which I think should be looked at in future editions.

Cross references from the Old Testament can also be found in the text and bracketed off instead of being found at the bottom of the page or on the margin like they’re found in the NJB.

The picture on the side here is from Matthew 5:21-48, the “you have heard” section of the Sermon on the Mount. On the left margin you see the verses indicated, and then he has this section of verses broken down even further into individual parts, which he numbers 1, 2, etc. As stated above, if you’re new to the bible this could very well be problematic as the reader might think this breakdown is part of the text. Also, notice the bracketing of the Old Testament verse that Jesus is quoting. Personally I don’t mind it, but again, the beginner might think that Jesus actually says, “Exodus…”

I found in John’s gospel a new translation philosophy, at least to me anyway. Unlike the other gospels, in John you find the recurring refrain of “the Jews,” and most times Fr. King translates “the Judeans.” He explains: “You may also notice the reference to the ‘Judeans’ at the start of the passage. This is by way of alternative to translating the word as ‘Jews” (the same word is used for both in Greek), and may serve to mitigate the anti-Semitism that, too often, this Gospel has been used to justify.’” I liked it. I think it works well.

As he answered earlier in the week in 7 Questions, inclusive language was required by the publisher of his work. As can be seen in the picture above, he used “brother or sister” for that passage. In other places he translates “my fellow Christians,” “brothers and sisters,” or “him or her.” For me, this really isn’t an issue any longer. In the past I admit to being completely turned off with the use of inclusive language, thinking that all such translations came straight from the bowels of Hell, but not anymore. As long as it’s done in an accurate, professional way that doesn’t detract or become overbearing I hardly notice it any longer.

In conclusion, I thank Tim for alerting me to this translation and for giving me the opportunity to review it for his blog. And thanks to his readers for taking time out to read it. If there is anything else you would like to know about his translation of the NT (how a particular verse is translated perhaps or if there is something I should have covered but didn’t) please feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer you. In the next couple of weeks I will send Tim my review on Fr. King’s translation of the Septuagint.

Before wrapping up, I would like to give Fr. King the final word. In the online interview I referenced above the following Q&A is covers something that we sometimes forget and what some Christians don’t realize.

Question:

You have said that “the Greek text of the New Testament is only a scholars’ guess, and what we have in our modern editions is not a manuscript that ever existed; all the manuscripts that we possess have mistakes in them, so we do not even know what the original text was.”

Does this conflict in any way with your belief that God’s voice is just below the surface? Do you believe that this voice will get harder to hear/find?

Fr. King: This is where the Church comes in; we get the Bible from the Christian community and not the other way around. However (and this is really important) it is also true that the Church is subservient to the text, as well as being its source, and we all have to listen to that voice of God which is there “below the surface of the text,” whatever the quality of the translation, and whatever the state of the manuscripts.

Introducing Fr. Nicholas King, SJ and His Bible Translation

 I want to thank reader Russ for purchasing this new Bible translation and reaching out to Fr. Nicholas King.  I hope you enjoy being introduced to this new translation.  You can learn more about Fr. Nicholas King at his website.  More information about his translation can be found at the end of this interview.  

Nicholas King SJ was born in Bath and was educated by the Jesuits at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire. He started learning Latin and French at the age of eight and Greek two years later; he went on to study Classics at St John's College, Oxford. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1970 and was ordained a priest in 1980. He is currently teaching at the Jesuit School of Ministry at Boston College.

In 2001 he began translating Mark and John for a summer school he was teaching, and it eventually led him to translate the entire New Testament, which came out in 2004. He then began work on translating the entire Old Testament from the Greek Septuagint. Fr. King completed his monumental work in 2013.

I recently received this translation and am currently using it for both study and meditation purposes while jotting down thoughts and observations as I happily make my way through it. It is my hope to complete a non-scholarly review of it in the near future.

After spending a couple of days with his translation, I emailed Father King and asked if he would answer a number of questions that popped to mind and he graciously accepted.

Thanks to Tim for making me aware of this translation last New Year’s eve.

1) Unlike the vast majority of bible translations, your OT translation is based on the Greek Septuagint. Why is the Septuagint important?

The reasons I chose the Septuagint as the basis of my translation were fourfold: First, my Greek is stronger that my Hebrew! Second, and more important, the Greek version is what counts as Scripture for all of our NT authors. Thirdly, the mss of the LXX are centuries older than those to which we go for the Masoretic Text; Codex Leningradensis is 11th century and the Aleppo Codex much the same. Fourthly, the LXX gives us evidence, supported by the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran, of how Jews were reading their Scriptures during the time when Christianity was emerging.

2) Are there different versions of the Septuagint, and if so, which one(s) did you base your translation on?

There are indeed different versions of the LXX: I used the Rahlfs edition, mainly because it is the one in my computer programme; but it is entirely respectable!

3) Besides the spelling of the biblical names, in what way does your translation differ from the NETS translation?

The NETS (New English Translation of the Septuagint) had not appeared when I started my work; they have made a great contribution by letting us have an English version. The main difference is that they opted for a very literal version, to give a flavour of the original. I find their suggestions very helpful indeed in places.

4) Which Greek text did you use in translating the NT? Recently I saw an Eastern Orthodox translation of the NT which used the Patriarchal text of 1904 as their base.

Once again, the version in my computer, which is NA 26/USB3, again perfectly respectable. No printed version (and of course no manuscript version) has any guarantee of being what the original author actually wrote.

5) Inclusive language still seems to be a hot topic when it comes to the biblical text. How important (or unimportant) was the use of inclusive language when you went about translating? Did later Church Father interpretation of a particular verse(s) play a part in how you went about using inclusive language? And should it play a role when translating?

That is a tricky question; in a way it was simple for me, since it is my publisher’s policy to use inclusive language. It does not always work, though, if one is to be faithful to the original, so I stuck (for example) to “Son of Man” in the gospels and to “adoption as sons” in Galatians, in order to capture what was going on in the original. But you lose friends whichever option you take.

6) Like most people who read the bible, I have my favorite verses and like to see it translated in certain ways. One of mine is Luke 1:28, the “full of grace” verse where Gabriel addresses the Mother of God. I’ve grown up praying the rosary so I’m wondering why in your translation, and in most others, “full of grace” is not used in Luke when addressing Mary, but Stephen is “full of grace” in the Acts of the Apostles? For someone who doesn’t know the original languages, it would seem that it should be the other way around. Can you explain the Greek text behind these two verses to help us why they are translated the way they are?

The translation of Luke 1:28 as “full of grace” is not quite accurate. The original is chaire kecharitomene, which could be translated as “Cheer up, you lucky thing”, and means “rejoice, woman who has been graced.” Acts 6:8, however, has Stephen as “full of grace”, and there it is correctly translated.

7) Would you describe the decision that went into displaying the footnotes and commentary the way they’re arranged in both the OT and NT?

It was not so much a decision as a drifting into a policy, mainly because I decided that space would not allow for commentary in the OT in the way I had adopted in the NT, so I just gave an introduction to each text in the OT, and mainly stuck with footnotes.

Again, I want to thank Fr. King for taking the time to answering these questions. It was very much appreciated. Tim, I would also like to encourage your readers to visit YouTube, where Father King can be found giving lectures on both the gospel of Mark and John. It’s well worth the time. You can purchase various editions of Fr. Nicholas King's Bible at Kevin Mayhew Publishers.