See Bart Ehrman’s 5-part post series Problems with the NRSV posted in September 2012. Links and extracts are below.
Part I; But in the NRSV there is no problem any longer, because of the mistranslation (of John 3:22) (6:1 is a problem even there – – there’s no way to get around the geographical faux pas by retranslating the passage in that case). The Greek of 3:22 says that they went into the “land” (GHN) of Judea, not into the Judean “countryside” (XWRIS).
This matters because if in fact Jesus and his disciples went into the countryside, it simply means that they left the city and went to the rural places outside. No contradiction. But if translated correctly, there is in fact a discrepancy. And I think there is no doubt at all about why the translators changed the RSV in this case. It was precisely to eliminate the possibility of the geographical discrepancy. But in mistranslating the phrase, they have done more harm than good. IMHO.
Part 2; I actually approve of the translation of Psalm 8 in the NRSV Bible. The problem is that the verse is quoted in the New Testament in Hebrews 2:6-7 and the author of Hebrews did NOT mean “humans in general.” When he read Psalm 8, he thought the passage was referring not to “the human being” but specifically to Christ. That is, he read the singular “man” and “son of man” as referring to Jesus, who was made “for a little while a little lower than God.”
But when the NRSV translators rendered Heb. 2:6-7, they decided to make put it in inclusive language (as had been done, appropriately, for Ps. 8 itself). So the translation now does not refer to Jesus at all, but to humans:
What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals that you care for them? You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with lorry and honor, subjecting all things under their feet.
AI YAI YAI!!! This passage is not talking about exalted humans, as a race, the way the translation now indicates. It is speaking specifically of the superiority of Christ, a particular man/son of man. But there is no way the English reader can know that. As a result, in fact, the passage no longer makes any sense. (Unless a reader is diligent enough to read the footnotes and realize that it has been mistranslated). I think this is a serious problem. Now a reader cannot know what the passage is talking about.
Part 3; Nowhere else in these entire two volumes is Jesus’ death “for” others. A scribe has changed the text and changed Luke’s theology of Jesus’ death in the process (in part by making the passage sound more like 1 Cor. 11:22-24).
Why then did Jesus die, according to Luke, if not for atonement. It’s a long story. I may tell it in a later post. For now, I want to make a different point. One branch of our manuscript tradition is missing the end of v. 19 and all of v. 20. That branch of the tradition is almost certainly giving us, in this instance, the “original” text.
By translating the *other* form of the text, the NRSV translators have done a real disservice in my opinion. They made Luke say something that in fact he never said and put a doctrine of atonement into a book that originally did not have it.
Part 4; He does not like the NRSV’s convention of putting double brackets around text they do no believe were in the original (added by a scribes) leaving in the text that should not be there. These verses were not originally in Luke’s Gospel (or anywhere else in the New Testament). They were added by later scribes. I’ll explain why in a second. But for now, if the verses were not originally in Luke, and if the translators know (or at least think) that they were not originally in Luke. Why do they include them in their translation of Luke???
I don’t think double brackets are good enough since most readers have no idea why the brackets are there, and the footnote in the translation does not tell you that the translators are pretty sure these verses were a later scribal addition. I think the translators should translate the oldest form of Luke that survives and put any additions to the text in a footnote. As it is, people read the passage and assume this is what Luke wrote.
Part 5. – The Bloody Sweat plus a follow-up post, More on the Bloody Sweat where he talks about the Chiasmus as a scribal insertion; not a NRSV problem.
But the structure works only if vv. 43-44 (the angel and the bloody sweat) are not part of the passage. Once you introduce these verses, you destroy the chiasmus. And even though there is no longer the chiasmus, the focus (the center of the passage) is now on Jesus’ agony, not on his acceptance of the divine will through prayer. And it is PRECISELY this focus on Jesus’ agony that Luke has eliminated from the account otherwise in his redaction of his source, the Gospel of Mark. But that scarcely makes sense. It makes better sense that the passage is in fact a chiasmus, that it is centered on prayer, and that Jesus’ agony is not to be found in it.
