Thursday, October 19, 2017

David Bentley Hart's translation of James 2:18-26

Today I went through David Bentley Hart's translation of the New Testament:

The New Testament: A Translation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017)

While one is usually wary of translations of the entire NT (and/or OT) by a single person, this is actually a very good translation, and the footnotes provided are very well done, too. Such holds up even in "small" places; for instance, Hart correctly translates the verb μετατιθημι in Heb 7:12 as "to transpose" and not "to change":

For, when the priesthood has been transposed, there is also of necessity comes about a transposition of law.

While commenting on 1 Cor 15:29, he writes on p.348 n. ac:

The presence of Christians receiving baptism on behalf of other persons who died unbaptized was evidently a common enough practice in the apostolic church that Paul can use it as a support for his argument without qualification. and the form of the Greek (πρ τν νεκρν [hyper tōn nekrōn]) leaves no doubt that it is to just such a posthumous proxy baptism that he is referring.

He also does a stellar job at translating words from the δικαι-word group correctly, and not in light of the purely forensic nature of Protestant translations (which are informed by theological bias). This comes out explicitly in many texts, including Jas 2:18-26 where δικαιοω is rendered "made righteous" (alt. "proved righteous" and not merely "declared righteous"):

Yet someone will say, "You have faith and I have works." You show me your faith without the works, and I will show you faith by my works. You have faith that God is one? You are doing well. Even the daemonic beings have that faith, and they tremble. But are you willing to recognize, O you inane man, that faith without works yields nothing? Was not our father Abraham made righteous by works, offering up his own son Isaac on the sacrificial altar? You see that faith cooperated with his works, and by he works the faith was brought to completion. And the scripture was fulfilled: "And Abraham had faith in God, and it was accounted to righteousness on his part," and he was called a friend of God. You see that a human being is made righteous by works, and not by faith alone. And, likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also made righteous by works, sheltering the messengers and sending them forth by a different path? For just as the body without spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.


If one is looking for a good translation of the New Testament, Hart's comes highly recommended.