Category: William Mounce
Bill Mounce to Work on NIV 2011
William Mounce has announced that he will be working on the translation committee of the 2011 NIV. Formerly, he has worked on the committee that translated the ESV. He has written several works on biblical Greek including the popular Basics of Biblical Greek (Zondervan). Also, he is an adjunct professor at the seminary where I study and work–Western Seminary in Portland, OR! I think the NIV committee made a fantastic decision! We should applaud Mark Strauss and Douglas Moo for doing what needed to be done to make this happen.
See Bill Mounce’s announcement on his blog here or at Koinonia here.
See T.C. Robinson’s post here.
See Rick Mansfield’s post here.
Back into Biblical Greek
The past year I’ve been working exclusively with biblical Hebrew. This year I will add biblical Greek into the mix. This will officially be my third year of Greek. I had taken two years at the undergraduate level. I was also privileged to be a substitute Greek teacher for a one and a half months. During my undergrad studies, I found Greek to be more easily dissectible, while I thought Hebrew to be the funner of the two. Now that I’ve become better acquainted with the Hebrew language, I will have to hold off on comments until I finish this program.
The course I will be taking is Introduction to New Testament Greek. Looking at last year’s syllabus, it appears we have a few required textbooks, one being William Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek. The one that is listed is the first edition; I suspect we will be using the second edition.1
I am familiar with this book because I used it as a supplement to my grammar in my bachelor program. Now that it is required, I am looking forward to making it a well-used resource in my library.
One advantage I have found with Mounce’s book over the one I used in my initial studies2 is the correlation between the English grammar and the Greek grammar. Mounce introduces a particular grammatical concept in English first (for instance, the idea of the imperfect tense—continual action in the past), how it is expressed (e.g., he was saying) in English, and then connects it to the Greek (elegen). When I taught the advanced Greek class, I did the same thing, and the students instantly got it. Also his memorization system is top notch.
On the other hand, I feel Summers and Sawyer’s work has an advantage over that of Mounce’s in that it introduces the student to syntax much earlier. For example, their chapter3 on the imperfect active indicative is a condensed version of what one would find on the imperfect in Daniel Wallace’s Greek syntax.
I am truly looking forward to relearning and honing my Greek translating ability up to a competent level.
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1 William D. Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003).[Back]
2 Ray Summers, Essentials of New Testament Greek, rev. Thomas Sawyer, rev. ed. (Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman Publishers, 1995).[Back]
Mounce on Translations and Translators
William D. Mounce, a.k.a. Bill Mounce, is a reputable Greek scholar. He is author of Basics of Biblical Greek, the standard introduction to biblical Greek grammar used in seminaries across North America. He received a question regarding Tagalog translations. Because it has something to do with the Philippine national language, I thought my Filipino readers would find this of interest. I the broader audience will also find some value in his perspective because it has to do with translations at large.
The question regarded the grammar of the two major Tagalog translations—Ang Biblia (The Bible) and Ang Magandang Balita (The Good News)—and their method of translation. Although they are translated by some sort of Bible society, both translations seemed to follow the English word order. The inquirer makes the following observation:
As I try to further learn the Greek language, it inspired me to probe on the Tagalog (my countries native tongue) translation of the Bible. I discovered that we had two versions: Ang Biblia (1905) brought by the Evangelical Union Missionaries and the newer ones , Ang Magandang Balita (1970) translated by our very own Philippine Bible Society. Now both translations, as stated in their prefaces, claimed to have based their translation work from the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts but as I work my way through the translation, I began to notice that our Tagalog translation of the Bible may have based it’s work not on the Hebrew and Greek themselves but actually on the English Bibles (KJV and NIV). . . . It seems to follow the same rules of the English grammar while it should have been following the Greek or Hebrew.
Mounce makes a few points in response. Perhaps the most helpful point is that translators consult other translations. The point is that there is value in finding agreement with other translations. He notes that
. . . translators are always looking at other translations, and it may be that the Tagalog translators relied somewhat on English to help them understand the Greek. If you are making a new translation, and if you have two or three English translations that all agree on a specific translation, that consistency can have a strong influence on how you translate. It isn’t that you are copying; you are wanting to be careful and right, and there is a perceived safety in numbers.
This is good news for aspiring Greek (and Hebrew) scholars and translators, who often consult with a translation in their native language as they learn the language. As far as I can recall, virtually every English translation has relied upon other translations. It is uplifting to know that for any translation from a reputable group of translators, the translators have done their best to make sure what is in one’s Bible is accurate. Part of this is accomplished by the translators’ comparing theirs with others who have come before them.
Read Mounce’s response in its entirety in his post Are translations really based on the Greek and Hebrew?.
