A Four-Dimensional Perspective on Bible Translations 

I admire your ability to gather and analyze data and your attention to detail. Thanks so much for your work and for sharing this with the public!

Thank you for all the hard work you put.This is truly eye-opening.

To make their greek text, Wescott and Hort actually back-translated from English to Greek, using Judas Escariot's own copy of the NIV as a base text.

Interesting

Such a gem of a channel

Brilliant piece of work! I'm going to share this video with some friends at work who are textual criticism junkies like myself. Thank you for your patient precision.

R. Grant Jones...Thank you so much for this comparison. We truly appreciate your efforts.

Very interesting. Your observations match what I have been reading about modern textual criticism. In particular, your observation regarding translators independence as textual critics matches information I gleaned talking with a translator of the ESV (he only added that any textual choices made by the translator had to be defended before the committee).

Great video. Thanks for all the hard work.

Really impressive research. Thank you.

This is wonderful! Very useful. Thank you so much for putting the time and work into it.

A most excellent presentation. Thank you for the hard work you do.

Excellent. This has really given me perspective. Thanks so much and good work!

I would love to get your perspective on the Jehovah Witnesses Bible “The new world translation “

Very interesting and useful video. I believe in sheds some light in a very cloudy topic nowadays. Thank you for your amazing work! Looking forward to upcoming videos. I’m also going to watch some of your previous ones on Bible translations. Blessings!

Wow, @R. Grant Jones, all I can say is wow. This is your best work yet!

As always, great job on the video. I really appreciate your translation and bible reviews/comparisons. You do the most in-depth detailed study than any other channel. It's very much appreciated. I did have a question that you might be able to answer. As you mentioned, Westcott & Hort are often demonized and that all modern translations use their readings, which is clearly not the case at all. Why do you think W&H have fallen out of favor over time, even among Critical Text adherents? Does the demonization have an influence, or have modern textual discoveries shown them to be less accurate?

Whoa, what an amazing video, it really puts various translations into perspective. It is a bit weird that the "catholic" NAB almost slavishly follows the NA28. As a fan of the Vulgate it was interesting seeing the DRB consistently in its own constellation, one might say that St Jerome was as eclectic as we are today.

Well done. It's a very interesting video. Regarding the future work you mentioned, you may consider that a deeper analysis may be available to you if you look to decompose the data set according to its directions of most dominant variance via PCA (principal components analysis). If you are willing to collaborate a bit on that, I would like to have a look at your data sets with you. For me this looks like a fun and interesting thing to try. I have over 25 years of experience working with data analysis and extracting information from data mostly in chemical engineering with tools such as PCA and many other methods as well. The PCA approach may be able tell you why one cluster of data is different than the other along an axis (i.e a linear combination of each of the original measurement continuums) and how it is that you could make one cluster move toward another. This is a very common approach to looking at adjusting chemical plants for better operation. Please feel free to contact me if you would like to talk a bit about looking at your data together and to see if any of my data tools/codes or experience may provide some insight to you. What you are doing sounds quite interesting. All the best to you from Canada.

EXCELLENT VIDEO ANALYSIS

How about NIV Greek, UBS5 greek, SBL greek, etc each of them highest & connected to the Bible translations? How about OT Hebrew comparison to bibles, what do you have in your videos? Dotan Hebrew, koren Hebrew, Westminster Hebrew, etc in 4 dimension X Y diagram

I know I'm late to the game by now, but this is an incredible video! Thank you for all the hard work you put in. I agree that I'd love to see a translation based on the THGNT. I have some hopes that if the ESV ever updates again they will go with it, considering the partnership between Crossway and Tyndale House in publishing it.

Wow... that was so analytically appealing! It also makes me wonder Bro. Jones if it has changed your own thoughts and opinions on translations you once ranked high and ranked low before you conducted this study?

Fascinating. Thank you. I find it interesting, as a Catholic, that the NAB and CSB seem to coincide so much. I need to explore te DRC as i do not have a copy.

Absolutely fascinating, thank you so much. There's a lot to absorb there, I'll watch the video again in the morning. The breadth of translations you've analysed is incredible, and much appreciated. The DBH translation is intriguing; do we know what textual basis Bentley-Hart worked from?

After making this video, I scored Lamsa's translation of the Peshitta, though I used only 140 verses, since the Peshitta did not originally include 2 Peter, 2 or 3 John, Jude, or Revelation. The scores are: WH, 24.3%; NA28, 43.6%; THGNT, 51.4%; and RP, 69.3%. Lamsa can be placed in a loose grouping with the Douay-Rheims and the Evangelical Heritage Version, somewhere between the Traditional Text translations (KJV, NKJV, EOB, and EMTV) and all the others. I also scored the the Darby and Nicholas King translations, as well as the Lexham English Bible (LEB) and the New Living Translation (NLT): Darby -- WH, 20.9%; NA28, 41.2%; THGNT, 58.2%; and RP, 85.6%. Darby has the 5th highest RP score, behind the EMTV, EOB NT, KJV, and NKJV. King -- WH, 53.6%; NA28, 76.5%; THGNT, 45.8%; and RP, 35.9%. King has the 4th highest NA28 score, behind the NAB, CSB, and NRSV. LEB -- WH, 64.1%; NA28, 67.3%; THGNT, 51%; and RP, 35.3%. The LEB has the 4th highest WH score, behind the NAS77, NAS95, and David Bentley Hart's translation. NLT - WH, 58.2%; NA28, 71.9%; THGNT, 51.6%; and RP, 35.3%. I made a supplementary video that presents these results, which you can view here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-bGkAhdZoII0.html .

Thank you for this very informative analysis. As you noted, Wescott & Hort is heavily demonized as being occult, new age, heretical, etc. Yet, the NAS77 and the NAS95 translations, which are both highly regarded by some evangelicals, show broad agreement with Westcott & Hort. Does this seem odd? I have no axe to grind on the subject, just a question. Thanks again for your hard work.

I thought this was incredibly interesting and such a visual way of plotting differences and agreements! Fabulous. I would be interested in seeing the NLT but agree with you that it might not be truly plottable with the translation liberties taken. I really enjoy the NLT but it’s not the most scholarly work. Still, it would be interesting to see where it falls on the different axes, just to get a visual. And how about the Knox version? Talk about liberties! Anyway, really excellent work here, thanks for your efforts.

That was just absolutely awesome video. I've always wanted to see how the translations stack up against each other based on the Greek underlining text. I'm an NKJV person myself, but always wanted to see how much of WH or NA28 was in it. Great video and I really appreciate the time you took to do this and upload it. PS. Could you do a comparison of the ESV (which seems to be one the more, if not most popular translations) and the NKJV as you did with the ESV KJV comparison.

I use 4 translations in this order1- NASB95 2- KJV/ESV (is a tie) then 3-NKJV I feel pretty confident that that’s a well rounded group from the data that you gathered. Thank you sir for all the hard work you put into this, you certainly to have a colossal intellect. I like the NASB because it’s the easiest for me to understand I know people think it’s “wooden” but maybe that how my brain is to. They made some bad choices sure but so did the ESV. 1Cor. Is the only one that makes me cringe in the NASB when the say LAW COURT 🤭

Thank you so much for the time you spent in doing the actual study and making it presentable to us all. Your intellectual capacity and ability to communicate to the layperson astounds me. Truly incredible. I am in the middle of reading a book called ‘Which Bible Is God’s Word?” By Gail Riplinger. I do not know anything about he author or the book besides what I have read. I was wondering if you know of this book and if so what are your thought on it. I felt I needed to ask someone I could trust having the intelligence to understand and verify the contents of the book. Thank you always and God bless your activities!

very interesting circumstance that the new Tyndale House GNT agrees so much with the Byzantine text... it is a more balanced Edition in that regard..... even more interesting is that this edition is based on the oldest uncial MSS....

Do you have any intention of looking at the David Bentley Hart New Testament? About to watch your review of Nicholas King’s Translation - I found his course on Mark ‘The Strangest Gospel’ to be of benefit in reading with a parish group in England.

What passages did NKJV, EOB, EMTV disagree with RP?

Do you have a video regarding Septuagint vs Masoretic or any other Hebrew versions ??. blessings

I find myself having to watch this more than once to take it all in . No reflection on your channel it’s all on me . It’s just a lot to take in . Kind of like drinking from a fire hose. Side question witch Greek text do you prefer ? You may have said it somewhere . I probably did not pick it up . Blessings

Am I correct to assume your a believer? I understand that's personal, I just feel prompted to ask

Fascinating! Thanks for all the work you put into this study. Perhaps you can add the New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE) of 2010 to your future study.

thanks for this interesting study... however, though agreements and disagreements between Greek Editions measured in percentages is legitimate in itself, it does not tell the whole story as to the nature of these texts.... the WH is a text of the same nature as the NA28... as to the kinds of readings both retain or dismiss, they are essentially the same... they both reject John 7.53-8.11, they both reject Mark 16.9-10, etc... they both reject the vast majority of the TR readings which typically mean anything for believers, and which are found also in the RP... i am talking about the Alexandrian vs Byzantine readings which define the modern debate between texts... like the differences between the KJV and the NIV, ... the significant/larger readings casted doubt on in the footnotes in the NIV are in the main the same readings as are shared by both WH and NA, ..... from this perspective then, the WH and NA (any edition) is basically the same kind of text... at least from the perspective where most people live... but even the most strict KJO people have for decades recognized that the NA editions have increasingly been parting ways with the WH text, popularized by the category of "NA have accepted more and more Majority or TR readings" since the days of WH, or something to that effect... :-))

as to the issue of WH, Nestle/NA and UBS Greek text editions being each one a distinct Greek text from each other, this needs to be qualified... even the Greek NT editions of the 16th and 17th centuries, regarded as the "received text", are each one a distinct Greek text, though not any two of them agreeing completely in places of various readings, i.e. Erasmus, Complutensian, Stephanus, Colinaeus, Beza, Elzevir and others.... there are some 250 differences between them, at least, though not all are translatable (not including typos, of course)... the stream of "critical" editions from Griesbach to Wordsworth (1870) certainly has numerous differences between them... but from WH1881 onward, everything changed, and the "critical" editions became much more "uniform"... because most scholars swallowed the theories of W&H hook, line & sinker...:) ... from Nestle (1898-1904) onward, the theories of textual criticism were gradually modified (moderately) and developed, but the "type" of text did not change very much (away from WH), that is, the type of text that discarded most of the Byzantine readings, though somewhat more inclusive of that text form (compared to WH)... so, if we are to compare the three main text editions in the area of "distinctly" Byzantine/TR readings, it will surface some rather interesting results... i am basing this on some older comparisons (c.1980) of the "three main" editions: WH1881, Nestle 23 1957, UBS3 1976... and it is in fact proper to compare these earlier editions, because it was these Greek texts that were current when the debate around texts and versions started to become more heated and the debate was growing more and more on to the "popular" arena among both fundamentalists and non-fundamentalists in the English-speaking world... (you see, it was not Bart Ehrman who popularized textual variants among believers, it was the KJO fundamentalists in numerous pamphlets, articles and books... :-)) the (back then) ever increasing number of modern English versions were almost all based on one or more of these critical editions... -- let's just use one "type" of variant readings as an illustration of the strong mutual unanimity of these three texts: the 3 texts were compared in the exact same places of variation in the NT text, almost 300 places from Matthew to Revelation, in the specific area of omissions/substitutions of names and titles of Deity (as Holy Spirit, through the Spirit, of the Lord, of God, Son of God, Alpha/Omega, in Christ, in Spirit, Jesus, through Jesus Christ, of our Father, raise up Christ, etc etc.... and on further study of these, it becomes clear that several of them affect doctrine for sure....) --- the three texts almost completely agree throughout in the omission (or a few times, substitution) of "Names/Titles of Deity": WH omits "Names/Titles of Deity" 221 places, Nestle 230, UBS 212 -- // these numbers are really telling of the "nature" of these text editions (as a result of modern textual scholars' theories of the "superfluity" of (or the "expansions of Deity" in) the Byz. text in these areas)... it may be argued that it is not very constructive to compare texts just by random selections, but rather sort out according to "type" of variant readings..... [:-()->---

This is Excellent Research Material !! Thank You. I like the King James tradition of word usage, although not the modern loss of it's archaic wording. NKJV actually does not keep in the King James tradition a surprising amount of the time, and instead "re-translates" wording into the modern tradition. In fact, other translations like NRSV do a better job in certain situations. This is best explained by giving an example . . . 1 CORINTHIANS 6. [18] - - - - - - - [18] Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. [NKJV] - - - [18] Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. [KJV] - - - [18] Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. [NRSV-1989] (NRSV stands as unique among Modern Bible Translations) - - - [18] Fugite fornicationem. Omne peccatum, quodcumque fecerit homo, extra corpus est : qui autem fornicatur, in corpus suum peccat. [VUC] (Vulgate-Clementina) - - - - - - - - - In fact, NKJV follows nearly all the modern bible translations in removing "fornication" as an archaic word in the verse above. I don't perceive "fornication" to be archaic, but rather that the translators changed the wording over theological reasons. ESV, NIV, NLT, CSB, TEV and other modern Bible translations completely censor the words "fornication" and "fornicators" from their Bibles. ZERO times are they mentioned in their Bibles, while the King James Version, and every popular Pre World War 2 bible translation, including ASV, keeps "fornication" in their Bible. However, World War 2 changes the translation method: The 1946 RSV New Testament removes "fornicator" in the verse above, clearly demarcating the translation shift was "Post World War 2" - - - [18] Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. [ASV-1901] - - - [18] Shun immorality. Every other sin which a man commits is outside the body; but the immoral man sins against his own body. [RSV 1946-1970 & 1971-1988 editions] - - - - - - - - - [18] Flee immorality. Every [other] sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. [NASB]