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Question 5

Bercot insists that when reading prophecies, instructions, and Jesus’s teaching, he doesn’t want a translator “second-guessing” the apostles; how do you decide when readability has become a spiritual liability because it hides hard edges of obedience, judgment, or the “Gospel of the Kingdom”?

Another way to ask: How do you tell when a translation is “easy to read” but ends up softening hard parts about obedience, judgment, or the Gospel of the Kingdom?

Direct Answer According to Bercot, readability becomes a liability when it increases “human interpretation,” smoothing or reshaping apostolic commands and Jesus’s message; he urges choosing a more literal translation and being willing to question renderings that conflict with Jesus’s overall teaching.

Support from Transcript:

He says thought-for-thought is attractive because it’s “easier to understand” and “flows more naturally.”
But for “prophecies and instruction and the teachings of Jesus,” he doesn’t want a translator “second-guessing what Jesus and His apostles intended to say.”
He warns that transmission/translation has been modified by human hands in ways that can “obscure and skew Jesus’ Gospel of the Kingdom.”
He recommends reducing interpretation by using a translation “closer to a word-for-word translation, while it still makes sense in English.”
He critiques the NIV as readable but containing “more human interpretation,” and he rejects paraphrases like “the Living Bible and the Message.”
He advises we should not be afraid to question a translation “particularly when it seems to go against the general message that Jesus preached.”

Discussion Follow-ups When you read a very smooth verse, do you ever ask what interpretive choices made it smooth? What “hard edges” in Jesus’s teaching do you suspect might get softened by a thought-for-thought approach?

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