What are you missing when you read a good translation of the Bible instead of the original? This is hard question to answer, but biblical scholar J. P. Fokkelman gives the best answer I’ve read.

In Reading Biblical Narrative, Fokkelman writes:

The Bible reader who is dependent on a translation will lose sight of some details. This is a pity, but not fatal. In a book which by definition has to leave Hebrew and Greek aside, I cannot demonstrate the sophisticated word plays and phonetic patterns regularly used by the narrator to underline his points. I cannot appeal to the effects of rhyme and alliteration, and some word repetition disappears in a translation as well. This means that I will have to leave out almost all references to the style in the original. It cannot be helped; at levels above that of phonemes and word formation there will still be enough linguistic material to observe for us to remain in the narrator’s tracks. In a translation we can still observe how sentences are grouped, who is allowed to speak when, how the narrator presents his subject matter, what is the valuable object which the hero is after, what makes the characters tick, whether the events are dynamic enough, which reversals take place, etc.

I think this is exactly right.

You might say that what is lost in translation is nearness. It’s like viewing the Mona Lisa from a distance. While you won’t be able to make out the brushwork, certain color transitions, or the tiny details that create her smile, you still see the actual painting and it can still move you. Good translations are like this.

Also, unless you are good at reading Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, you probably aren’t trading nearness for distance, you’re trading inaccessibility for accessibility. In other words, you aren’t losing anything at all with a translation, you are only gaining.

Every day, about 30,000 people choose to see the Mona List behind a rope and in a crowd instead of not seeing the painting at all. What if I told you that you had access right now to the life-changing word of God. Would you read it?

Crowd in front of the Mona Lisa 3