The Bible in translation : Ancient and English versions by Bruce M Metzger
Baker Academic, 2001 200 pages £12.99 ISBN 978 0 801 022 827
Bruce Metzger (1914-2007) was Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary for 46 years..
In the wide-ranging survey of many translations (and some paraphrases) of the Bible into English from the earliest – 9th and 10th centuries – to the NIRV of 1996 and Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase in ‘The Message’, Prof Metzger clearly shows his complete mastery of the subject.
It is significant that the Bible has been translated more often than any other piece of literature and is currently available, at least in part, in some 3500 languages (about half of the world’s known languages).
Bruce Metzger was a highly respected Bible scholar with an encyclopaedic knowledge of manuscript versions of the Scriptures and of later translations.
The first part of this book deals with ancient versions such as the Syriac, Latin and Old Church Slavonic translations taking some 55 pages. The following three quarters of the book are devoted to English versions, the latest being the 1996 New International Reader’s Version.
The circumstances in which each translation was produced are described and the author offers sound insights into it’s underlying objectives, characteristics, strengths and weaknesses.
All in all, this is an excellent survey, the more valuable and readable for being concise.