# Adding words (tenses, etc...) NASV, NIV, ESB and KJV



## Eoghan (Feb 6, 2011)

In studying Daniel 4 (see other posts) I was interested to find that the past verb tense is ommitted in the Aramaic but added for completion in some translations. This is acknowkledged in the NASV by the use of italics, avoided by translating a different way by the ESV and the NIV does not seem to let the reader know it has inserted the word at all.

Later the "on the roof" scene is implied. The KJV acknowledges this is implicit but not explicit and the NASV likewise. The ESV at this point seems to relieve the reader of worrying about whether it is implicit or explicit a little like the NIV.

Conclusion - I will maybe start carrying my NASV to church again along with the ESB. I _so _like the ESB but my confidence has just taken a little knock.


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## au5t1n (Feb 6, 2011)

My pastor reads from the ESV and I often read along in my KJV (reading along in another translation doesn't distract me, really). Anyway, I've lost track of how many times my reading's been different and then my pastor has said in the sermon, "By the way, the Hebrew here actually says..." and then proceeds to give me what I read in my translation. It happens all the time. A few examples, "sons of Belial" instead of "foolish men," "Gird up the loins of your mind" instead of "preparing your mind for action," "any that pisseth against the wall" instead of "every male."


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## Ask Mr. Religion (Feb 6, 2011)

Should we choose a translation that adds the least amount of words to the ancient texts?


The word count of the Hebrew and Greek text in the standard critical editions is 545,202. A few stats:

• Original KJV 774,746

• Current KJV 790,676 (Blayney 1769 version: 788,280)

• ESV 765,432

• NLT 747,891

• NIV 726,109

• HCSB 718,943

• NKJV 770,430

• NRSV 895,891

• NASB 782,815

• TNIV 723,393

AMR


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## Pilgrim (Feb 7, 2011)

austinww said:


> My pastor reads from the ESV and I often read along in my KJV (reading along in another translation doesn't distract me, really). Anyway, I've lost track of how many times my reading's been different and then my pastor has said in the sermon, "By the way, the Hebrew here actually says..." and then proceeds to give me what I read in my translation. It happens all the time. A few examples, "sons of Belial" instead of "foolish men," "Gird up the loins of your mind" instead of "preparing your mind for action," "any that pisseth against the wall" instead of "every male."



An apt illustration of how ludicrous the chart at Evangelical Bible is that shows the ESV as being more literal than the KJV. I can't see how the ESV would be considered to be more literal than the KJV and NKJV by any objective standard.


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## greenbaggins (Feb 7, 2011)

Eoghan said:


> In studying Daniel 4 (see other posts) I was interested to find that the past verb tense is ommitted in the Aramaic but added for completion in some translations. This is acknowkledged in the NASV by the use of italics, avoided by translating a different way by the ESV and the NIV does not seem to let the reader know it has inserted the word at all.
> 
> Later the "on the roof" scene is implied. The KJV acknowledges this is implicit but not explicit and the NASV likewise. The ESV at this point seems to relieve the reader of worrying about whether it is implicit or explicit a little like the NIV.
> 
> Conclusion - I will maybe start carrying my NASV to church again along with the ESB. I _so _like the ESB but my confidence has just taken a little knock.


 
There are only two "tenses" in Hebrew: perfect and imperfect. And even these do not correspond to our ideas of "tense." If there is a verb, there is a tense, and it is either perfect or imperfect, though there are imperatives and infinitives as well, which correspond closely to our infinitives and imperatives. There is in fact great debate about what the tenses actually mean. Waltke, for instance, argues that "perfective" means "viewing a situation as a whole, viewing it globally" (IBHS, p. 480), whereas imperfect is less specialized in meaning. English concerns about "tense" are often not in the Hebrew writer's purview at all. In short, English tense is an interpretive decision on the part of the translator that is based often on the genre of the literature and on the immediate context.


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