| Summary: | The current Afrikaans translation of the New
Testament is based on the Textus Receptus and the
Dutch “Statenbijbel.” At present a committee of
translators is busy with a new translation of the
Bible in Afrikaans. They decided to put aside the
Textus Receptus and the Dutch translation in favour
of the U.B.S, edition of Kurt Aland as textual basis for the Afrikaans New Testament. This decision
incited much criticism from the public.
A study of the correspondence and publications
during the time when the current Afrikaans translation was made (1923-1933), indicates that the translators were well aware of the fact that the Textus
Receptus was not the best available Greek text of
the New Testament. But they were led by two notions in following the Textus Receptus:
(1) As the Dutch Bible had been in use in the
Afrikaans churches up to that time, they believed
that the public, and therefore the Afrikaans churches,
would not accept a translation which showed too
much differences from the Dutch translation;
(2) Assuming that the Textus Receptus had been
the textual basis of the Dutch translation, they
decided to keep to the Textus Receptus in translating into Afrikaans.
Both notions, however, prove to have been wrong:
(1) Considering the letters written by the public
in protest against a mere Afrikaans “Statenbijbel”,
relations with the Dutch translation could have
been broken without much difficulty;
(2) According to the respective dates on which the
Dutch "Statenbijbel" and the Textus Receptus were
published, the Textus Receptus could not have been
the textual basis of the Dutch translation. There
is much reason to assume that the Dutch translation
was based on the text of Beza.
Though the Textus Receptus is not a "bad" or
"misleading" text, it exhibits a very close relationship to the text of Erasmus, a text which was prepared in such haste and was based on such scanty
textual evidence, that it cannot be authoritative
amongst the modern critical texts. The major
textual evidence to the text of Erasmus, was MS 2,
MS 2ap and MS 1r. The evidence that the New Testament textual criticism has accumulated during the
past decades, indicates that all of these manuscripts
belong to the Byzantine type of text, which is of
much less value than the Alexandrine and Caesarean
types. Most readings of the Textus Receptus are
Byzantine; Sometimes the readings have little support of any kind and at some places no support at
all of the Greek manuscripts.
Considering these conditions, it is evident that
a translation based on such a poor text cannot be
standardized. Therefore it is necessary that the
new translation into Afrikaans must have a modern
critical text as basis. === Thesis (MA)--PU vir CHO
|
|---|
