A ‘Wicked Bible’ for the 21^st century?

The Queen James Bible

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by Lita Sanders

In 1631, a printing of the King James Bible went horribly wrong, when the verse “Thou shalt not commit adultery” was misprinted “Thou shalt commit adultery.” The printers were fined £300 (a very large sum at the time), and most of the copies were recalled and burned. This edition was called ‘The Wicked Bible’ or ‘The Sinners’ Bible’ because of the typo.

The Wicked Bible was the result of a mistake, but a new translation of the King James Bible has a very deliberate change to several verses. The “Queen James Bible” ‘reinterprets’ several verses that have traditionally been read as prohibiting homosexual practices.

Translation versus interpretation

The editors’ notes state:

The Bible is the word of God translated by man. This (saying nothing [sic] countless translations and the evolution of language itself) means that the Bible can be interpreted in different ways, leading to what we call “interpretive ambiguity.”

There is an Italian word play, “Tradutori? Traditori!” which translates, “Translators? Traitors!” which is most appropriate in this case. The ‘interpretive ambiguity’ the translators cite, in practice, becomes a blank check to blatantly rewrite the verses, citing cultural context, alternate meanings of the word, and other ‘magic decoder rings’ that make the verses say something other than what they clearly do. While ‘something is always lost in translation’, most texts don’t really allow for all that much ‘wiggle room’ as far as meaning. Just for the sake of example, here is the Greek text of Romans 1:26–27:

διὰ τοῦτο παρέδωκεν αὐτοὺς ὁ θεὸς εἰς πάθη ἀτιμίας: αἵ τε γὰρ θήλειαι αὐτῶνμετήλλαξαν τὴν φυσικὴν χρῆσιν εἰς τὴν παρὰ φύσιν, ὁμοίως τε καὶ οἱ ἄρσενες ἀφέντες τὴν φυσικὴν χρῆσιν τῆς θηλείας ἐξεκαύθησανἐν τῇ ὀρέξει αὐτῶν εἰς ἀλλήλους, ἄρσενες ἐν ἄρσεσιν τὴν ἀσχημοσύνηνκατεργαζόμενοι καὶ τὴν ἀντιμισθίαν ἣν ἔδει τῆς πλάνης αὐτῶν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς ἀπολαμβάνοντες.¹

Now the ‘Queen James’ version does the following inexcusable things to this text.

1. The phrase διὰ τοῦτο παρέδωκεν αὐτοὺς ὁ θεὸς εἰς πάθη ἀτιμίας (dia touto paredōken autous ho theos eis pathē atimias) has been moved from the beginning of the thought to the end, removing the causal link to the preceding thoughts. In the Greek, “this reason” is “they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (v. 25). But in the QJV, “this reason” becomes “men working with men that which is pagan and unseemly and pagan”. It also changes the sense of πάθη ἀτιμίας (pathē atimias, meaning “passions of dishonour”) from homosexual behaviour in general to pagan worship. This sort of ‘cut and paste’ job would receive a failing grade in Greek 101, and is deeply unethical.
2. They did not translate τέ (te), which although a small word is not insignificant, since it is a connective meaning “both and”.
3. The QJV changes ἀφέντες (aphentes) from an active participle (“leaving”) to a passive (‘left of’). One wonders whether this was deliberate or whether the QJV translators are simply so inept that they don’t know the difference. There are many perfectly good ways to express the passive idea of deprivation; the active participle of ἀφίημι (aphiēmi, depart or dismiss) is not one of them.
4. “Ritual” lust is nowhere in there; it’s purely read into the text.

In short, in this case, every single change they made was an inexcusable bastardization of the text which is apparent to anyone who has the most basic knowledge of Koinē Greek and translation principles.

Much could also be said about the Hebrew butcherings as well. The Levitical texts didn’t mention the temple of Molech at all. The revisionism implies that the only reason that the text condemned homosexual behavior was that it was practiced in pagan temple. But it was the reverse, the pagan temple practices were condemned partly because they included homosexual behavior. By the ‘logic’ of the ‘translators’, child sacrifice is also allowable as long as it wasn’t in Molech’s temple.

Rewriting Scripture is not the answer

For the majority of history, it’s been assumed that Scripture condemned homosexuality, both Old Testament and New Testament. People have disagreed that homosexuality is sinful, and they had the integrity to simply state that they thought Scripture was wrong. Maybe Paul just wasn’t enlightened enough, or the ancients had no conception of a committed homosexual relationship. But the QJV goes one step further and tries to write that condemnation of homosexuality out of Scripture entirely.

A good translator does not try to impose his or her own agenda onto the text, but is conscious that a translator’s job is to communicate the thoughts of the document as fluently as possible in the receptor language (the language into which the document is translated). This is why we’ve been uniformly critical of translations which seek to impose their own agenda on the text, whether feminism, conservatism, or anything else.

The translator of an ancient text like those of Scripture faces many challenges—when does one translate an unintelligible metaphor into something that the audience will understand, for instance? There is legitimate room for interpretation when the language has more than one possible meaning (but some of this may be intended, so ambiguity should be left in the translation if possible).

People who want to communicate their own thoughts should be authors, and not try to impose them on texts in spurious translation. This QJV is no exception.