In a visit home earlier this year, Mum asked if I knew about this 'new translation' - a few of her facebook friends had started to share Bible quotes from something called The Passion Translation (TPT), and she felt uncertain about how things were worded. I looked up their website and examples they showed of their version compared to others and we agreed that the TPT seemed to add bits that were not in any of the mainstream translations and seemed very skewed.
Well time passes and I didn't hear of this version again, until this week. I often listen to either an audiobook or a youtube video/podcast walking the dog or now in the car (since new to me car can play from my phone). An internet 'rabbit hole' - a reference to Alice in Wonderland - can lead to unexpected places, and so I stumbled on posts about the same translation that my mum had mentioned months earlier.
(I started on one youtube video, then the playlist, but there is a combined collection here which includes the the written papers from the professional translators on their books of expertise, as well as the video interviews - which include clips from public sermons by TPT the author)
So with pricked up ears I started to listen. and various alarm bells rang loudly -
1. The author Brian Simmonds (an American preacher) claims that he had a visitation by Christ commissioning him to write, and he named the work after 'an angel named Passion', who looks after his ministry. (clips then listen on to a translator/scholar's summary)
2. He claims that this is the most true translation, and with angelic help he has been given divine inspiration to allow him without language expertise to have 'downloads' from God about the meaning. (including God hiding meanings)
3. He claims to have had revealed to him specific hidden secrets from the text that have not been available to readers and translators over the past 2000 years. (first few minutes and then 16min 33sec)
4. He claims to be more true because he uses the 'Aramaic texts' and that Jesus spoke Aramaic. However scholarship is clear that that the books of the New Testament began in Greek. Whilst the writers may have had access to sources in Aramaic, the books we now have were in Greek - from having to explain the Aramaic terms included and playing with language, ( Eloi to Elijah at crucifixion; the pun in Greek in John 3 conversation with Nicodemus, that only works in Greek).
There are Biblical texts in Aramaic - eg parts of Daniel - which shows how this is not as old as claimed since Aramaic was a later development than Hebrew. (Imagine modern English appearing in Chaucer) But there is no 'original' Aramaic new testament.(see here re Ephesians) Rather the Greek was translated into a form of Aramaic and found in later Syrian texts, later than our earliest manuscripts in Greek.
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However we approach the Biblical texts, whether as those who see it as infallible, or those who see the hands of editors and reflections, there is still a core transmission. Generally modern translations use committees of scholars, who can be a check and balance to how the final version emerges. There are paraphrases - be it The Living Bible or The Message - these are openly admitted to be such. Apparently Peterson did not want his reworking to have verse markers as he did not want to imply equality with the translations, but as something that makes them think.
In contrast The Passion Translation - despite expert translators saying it is even more creative than other paraphrases - claims for itself a direct, perfect for today, revealing secrets from God for this age and should be people's primary Bible for study. link
Yet this Passion Translation is endorsed by big-crowd gathering preachers in certain corners of American Christianity. And it seems is gradually appearing in British contexts.
There is no translation that is free from interpretation; but this is interpretation claiming to be a translation, and claiming singular insights and special knowledge hidden to the rest of us over centuries.
Whenever I hear - 'I have the only and best Word of God', then my instinct is to run. Whilst we each value our understanding of the Bible, most of us acknowledge that we can only see 'through the glass darkly' and that we have much to learn or relearn. This is why I preach and talk about asking questions, thinking about our faith, and comparing different views in forming our own.
