Young's Literal Translation (YLT) is a translation of the
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
into English, published in 1862. The translation was made by
Robert Young, compiler of ''
Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible
''Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible'' is a Bible concordance to the King James Version compiled by Robert Young. First published in 1879, it contains "about 311,000 references subdivided under the Hebrew and Greek originals with the lit ...
'' and ''Concise Critical Comments on the New Testament''. Young used the
Textus Receptus
''Textus Receptus'' (Latin: "received text") refers to all printed editions of the Greek New Testament from Erasmus's ''Novum Instrumentum omne'' (1516) to the 1633 Elzevir edition. It was the most commonly used text type for Protestant denomi ...
(TR) and the
Masoretic Text
The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; he, נֻסָּח הַמָּסוֹרָה, Nūssāḥ Hammāsōrā, lit. 'Text of the Tradition') is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism. ...
(MT) as the basis for his translation. He wrote in the preface to the first edition, "It has been no part of the Translator's plan to attempt to form a New Hebrew or Greek Text—he has therefore somewhat rigidly adhered to the received ones."
Young produced a "Revised Version" of his translation in 1887, but he stuck with the Received Text. He wrote in the preface to the Revised Edition, "The Greek Text followed is that generally recognized as the 'Received Text,' not because it is thought perfect, but because the department of Translation is quite distinct from that of
textual criticism
Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts or of printed books. Such texts may range in ...
, and few are qualified for both. If the original text be altered by a translator, (except he give his reasons for and against each emendation,) the reader is left in uncertainty whether the translation given is to be considered as that of the old or of the new reading."
A new Revised Edition was released ten years after Robert Young's death on October 14, 1888. The 1898 version was based on the TR, easily confirmed by the word "bathe" in
Revelation 1:5 and the word "again" in
Revelation 20
Revelation 20 is the twentieth chapter of the Book of Revelation or the Apocalypse of John in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The book is traditionally attributed to John the Apostle, but the precise identity of the author remains a poi ...
:5. The "Publishers' Note to the Third Edition" explains, "The work has been subjected to a fresh revision, making no alteration on the principles on which the Translation proceeds, but endeavouring to make it as nearly perfect in point of accuracy on its present lines as possible."
Translation philosophy
The ''Literal Translation'' is, as the name implies, a very literal translation of the original
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
and
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
texts. The Preface to the Second Edition states:
Therefore, Young used the present tense in many places in which other translations use the past tense, particularly in narratives. For example, the YLT version of
Genesis
Genesis may refer to:
Bible
* Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of mankind
* Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Book of ...
begins as follows:
Young's Literal Translation in the 1898 edition also consistently renders the Hebrew
tetragrammaton
The Tetragrammaton (; ), or Tetragram, is the four-letter Hebrew language, Hebrew theonym (transliterated as YHWH), the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four letters, written and read from right to left (in Hebrew), are ''yodh'', ''he (l ...
(divine name) throughout the Old Testament as "
Jehovah
Jehovah () is a Latinization of the Hebrew , one vocalization of the Tetragrammaton (YHWH), the proper name of the God of Israel in the Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament. The Tetragrammaton is considered one of the seven names of God in Judais ...
", instead of the traditional practice of representing the tetragrammaton in English as "" in
small capitals
In typography, small caps (short for "small capitals") are characters typeset with glyphs that resemble uppercase letters (capitals) but reduced in height and weight close to the surrounding lowercase letters or text figures. This is technicall ...
, but editions prior to 1898 do say "" in small capitals.
Assessment
Young's translation is closer to the Hebrew than the better-known versions of this passage in English. The Revised Standard Version (RSV), which is based on
Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia
The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, abbreviated as BHS or rarely BH4, is an edition of the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible as preserved in the Leningrad Codex, and supplemented by masoretic and text-critical notes. It is the fourth edition in ...
, for example, treats verses 1–3 in this way:
Young's usage of English present tense rather than past tense has been supported by scholars ranging from the medieval Jewish rabbi
Rashi
Shlomo Yitzchaki ( he, רבי שלמה יצחקי; la, Salomon Isaacides; french: Salomon de Troyes, 22 February 1040 – 13 July 1105), today generally known by the acronym Rashi (see below), was a medieval French rabbi and author of a compre ...
(who advised, "
you are going to interpret
his passagein its plain sense, interpret it thus: At the beginning of the creation of heaven and earth, when the earth was (or the earth being) unformed and void
..God said, 'Let there be light.) to
Richard Elliott Friedman
Richard Elliott Friedman (born May 5, 1946) is a biblical scholar and the Ann and Jay Davis Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Georgia.
Friedman was born in Rochester, New York. He attended the University of Miami (BA, 1968), the Je ...
in his translation of the Pentateuch in ''
The Bible with Sources Revealed'' (2002).
The translation is not perfectly literal. It renders one passage as "And on the first of the Sabbaths" while it translates another as "And on the first of the week" even though the two phrases are identical in the Greek texts. To quote the preface, "Every effort has been made to secure a comparative degree of uniformity in rendering the original words and phrases. Thus, for example, the Hebrew verb , which is rendered by the King James' translators in different ways... has been restricted and reduced to , and so with many others. It is the Translator's ever-growing conviction, that even this smaller number may be reduced still further." David Dewey, in ''A User's Guide to Bible Translations'', mentions that Young's "method of translating Hebrew tenses makes his Old Testament in places virtually unreadable."
''Eternity'' or ''age''
Another important feature of YLT is its treatment of the
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
word () and the
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
word (). These two words have basically the same meaning, and YLT translates them and their derivatives as "age" or "age-enduring". Other English versions most often translate them to indicate
eternality (eternal, everlasting, forever, etc.). However, there are notable exceptions to this in all major translations, such as: "I am with you always, to the end of the age” (NRSV), the word "age" being a translation of . Rendering to indicate eternality in this verse would result in the contradictory phrase "end of
eternity
Eternity, in common parlance, means Infinity, infinite time that never ends or the quality, condition, or fact of being everlasting or eternal. Classical philosophy, however, defines eternity as what is timeless or exists outside time, whereas ...
", so the question arises whether it should ever be so. Proponents of
universal reconciliation
In Christian theology, universal reconciliation (also called universal salvation, Christian universalism, or in context simply universalism) is the doctrine that all sinful and alienated human souls—because of love of God, divine love and mercy ...
point out that this has significant implications for
soteriology
Soteriology (; el, σωτηρία ' "salvation" from σωτήρ ' "savior, preserver" and λόγος ' "study" or "word") is the study of religious doctrines of salvation. Salvation theory occupies a place of special significance in many religio ...
and the
problem of hell
The problem of Hell is an ethical problem in the Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism, in which the existence of Hell (aka Jahannam or Sheol) for the punishment of souls in the Afterlife is regarded as inconsistent with the noti ...
. However, "age" and "age-enduring" imply indeterminacy which may be either timeless and atemporal or pertaining to an indefinite period of time, the former (but not the latter) meaning having been acquired by the words "
eternity
Eternity, in common parlance, means Infinity, infinite time that never ends or the quality, condition, or fact of being everlasting or eternal. Classical philosophy, however, defines eternity as what is timeless or exists outside time, whereas ...
" and "
eternal
Eternal(s) or The Eternal may refer to:
* Eternity, an infinite amount of time, or a timeless state
* Immortality or eternal life
* God, the supreme being, creator deity, and principal object of faith in monotheism
Comics, film and television
* ...
".
While it has been argued that "eternity" and "eternal" also have other meanings including "endless period of time" and "endless in time" respectively, this is rarely the case in late antique texts, where the word would be used to designate endless duration.
[ Ilaria L. E. Ramelli & David Konstan: Terms for Eternity: Aiônios and Aïdios in Classical and Christian Texts (Gorgias Press 2007)]
Compare the following passages, quoted from YLT with words corresponding to "age" or "age-enduring" emphasised:
See also
*
Geneva Bible
The Geneva Bible is one of the most historically significant translations of the Bible into English, preceding the King James Version by 51 years. It was the primary Bible of 16th-century English Protestantism and was used by William Shakespear ...
*
Green's Literal Translation
Green's Literal Translation or the Literal Translation of the Holy Bible (LITV) is a translation of the Bible by Jay P. Green, Sr., first published in 1985. The LITV takes a literal, formal equivalence approach to translation. The Masoretic Text ...
*
Julia E. Smith Parker Translation
*
Literal Standard Version
The Literal Standard Version (LSV) is a Modern English translation of the protocanonical books of the Bible with a number of distinctive features. It describes itself as the most literal translation of the Bible into the modern English language. ...
*
Tyndale Bible
The Tyndale Bible generally refers to the body of Bible translations, biblical translations by William Tyndale into Early Modern English, made . Tyndale's Bible is credited with being the first Bible translation in the English language to work ...
References
External links
Young's Literal Translation complete text online
complete text online
* Downloadable PDF o
Young's Literal Translation (3rd ed.)*
*
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