Bible Translation Wars: Meet Homer Translation Wars

Can knowing Greek save you?

Photo by Kelly Brito on Unsplash

If you happen to be on social media, you may have noticed that firmly enshrined in the liturgical calendar of social media fights are the Homer translation wars. I’m not entirely sure when this (ig)noble tradition got started, but having lived through multiple rounds of it, including at the end of December 2024, I believe it’s reached canonical status. Generally, each cycle of these wars involves someone expressing an opinion about a particular translation they cannot abide. Someone else tries to defend the translation under attack, whereupon someone else promptly retorts with a Homeric-level insult, possibly involving the original poster’s or respondent’s mother or intelligence level or evolutionary rank in the homo sapiens species, and things go up or down (depending on your perspective) from there.

I would like to weigh in this conversation now as an actual trained Classicist (all of my degrees are in Classics—the study of Greek and Latin and the people who spoke and wrote in these languages). In brief, I think that these discussions, while generally unproductive as currently conducted, offer an argument for the relevance of ancient literature today. But most interesting, this discourse bears much in common with another type of translation wars—those involving the Bible. Ultimately, both types of translation wars show the importance of the study of ancient languages—but not for the purpose or reason you might think.

At the bottom of my closet, there is a tightly folded t-shirt that is now almost a quarter-century old and that I haven’t been able to fit into for about two decades now (I hold graduate school eating habits responsible—and having three kids). On the front is printed the scene from Euphronios’s Sarpedon krater, showing the death of Sarpedon. The son of Zeus, Sarpedon fights for the Trojans during the Trojan War, until the Greek hero Patroclus slays him in battle.

This shirt is a tangible memento from my own first encounter with Homer in the original Greek. It was fall semester of 2000, and I, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed second-year college student, was taking the legendary Jenny Strauss Clay’s seminar on the Iliad. It was a graduate seminar, and I was not a graduate student, but I really wanted to read the Iliad in the original. The premise? Twenty-four books of the epic to read in full during the semester. This averaged out to two books per week, most weeks.

It was, to say the least, intense. Some books of the Iliad contain as many as 800 verses, so at a pace of two books per week, one had to make it through over 200 verses a day every day of the week, just to keep up. By the end of the semester, everyone was just a bit cross-eyed and exhausted—but feeling the satisfaction of a weighty task accomplished. Professor Clay kindly invited us to her home for a party at the end of the semester—where she handed out those t-shirts to remember the class.

So what did I learn from the experience? There is something intoxicatingly glorious about reading an ancient epic in the original. It is a thrill unlike any other. But even when read in translation, the dramas, emotions, strong feelings, and general angst that the Homeric epics express are remarkably timeless. Not every work of ancient literature is so easily relatable to us and our modern sensibilities. The Homeric epics, however, really are. We all want to be the “Best of the Achaeans” in our own respective spheres of life and influence. Such a desire for power and glory and recognition is timeless, even as after two millennia of Christianity we also rightly feel a decidedly un-Homeric discomfort over the negative effect of such power and glory on our character and our souls.

As it happens, the acrimonious translation wars surrounding the Bible have something to offer in considering the fights over Homeric translations. People get quite emotional in defending their favorite translation while attacking others. “Battles over Bibles” have been going on for a while and are far from over. And just as in the case of the Homeric translation wars, most of the warriors going to battle to defend the honor of their favorite translation do not have any knowledge of the ancient languages. This generally doesn’t stop them from accusing the readers—and makers—of other translations of heresy or, at least, significant errors of judgment.

New Testament scholar

Scot McKnight

noted over a decade ago just how divisive Bible translations had become already then, presenting this tongue-in-cheek list of who reads each major translation:

“NRSV for liberals and Shane Claiborne lovers;
ESV for Reformed complementarian Baptists;
HCSB for LifeWay store buying Southern Baptists;
NIV for complementarian evangelicals;
TNIV for egalitarians;
NIV 2011 for peacemakers;
NASB for those who want straight Bible, forget the English;
NLT for generic brand evangelicals;
Amplified for folks who have no idea what translation is but know that if you try enough words one of them will hit pay dirt;
NKJV and KJV for Byzantine manuscript-tree huggers;
The Message for evangelicals looking for a breath of fresh air and seeker sensitive, never-read-a-commentary evangelists who find Peterson’s prose so catchy.
CEB for mainliners who read their Bibles.”

And yet, McKnight noted elsewhere, “The reality is that the major Bible translations in use today are all good, and beyond good, translations. There is no longer a “best” translation but instead a basket full of exceptional translations.” It is with this spirit that McKnight published his own translation of the New Testament in 2023—The Second Testament, aiming to present the New Testament in modern and accessible language.

New translations, whether of the Bible or of the Homeric epics continue to appear (in 2018, Richard H. Armstrong noted that there have been 27 translations of Homer’s Odyssey into English since the year 2,000! At least two new ones are coming in 2025), and their goal is not to indict every previous translation as erroneous. Rather, each translation tries to serve particular readers for whom it would be beneficial. And so, this point that McKnight had made is key: The Bible translation wars involve disputes over multiple good translations. This means that the disputes involve matters of personal preference rather than the question of who presents truth rather than falsehood. This is why I generally refuse to recommend particular translations—whether of the Classics or of the Bible—to people.

And yet, McKnight’s argument has been slow to win some people over. Personal preferences become distorted much too easily as a search for truth. But this is where the Bible translation wars have an important point to add to the Homer translation wars: All of the major Bible translations have been completed by massive teams of scholars, rather than any one individual. McKnight’s new translation is the exception, rather than the rule. But for most translations, over the course of years, experts in the Biblical languages and theology and much else besides have researched, discussed, and debated together before their translation reached its published form. The ESV translation team, for instance, included over one hundred people. So what hope is there for the translators of the Homeric epics, lone wolves that they generally are in their respective projects?

Therein lies the main takeaway here, I think, both for the Bible translation debates and those over the Homeric translations. Too often non-academics ask me translation questions, when they hear that I know Greek. The all-too-common assumption goes: Anyone who knows Greek would surely be able to settle any issue once and for all.

Alas, both in the case of Homer and for Bible translations, this is not true. The reality, rather, is that all languages are unique and have their own particular nuances and quirks that can be translated by experts in various pretty good ways. This is why no two translations are identical, even as many hold significant overlaps. Reading in the original offers definite advantages, but it does not resolve all challenges of comprehension—just as it did not for the original hearers of the New Testament in the first or second centuries AD.

So if those who study the ancient languages do not gain secret knowledge™ that will allow them to resolve any debates, what do they actually learn? Hopefully the most important—and the least Homeric—lesson of all: humility. Because it takes studying an ancient language like Greek or Hebrew or Latin to realize just how difficult the translator’s task is and, therefore, how subjective the judging of translations is. We need such humility in our Bible reading, whether we read in translation or in the original. Only if we approach our Bible reading with humility, will we look to God to open our hearts as well as our minds, and give us the kind of peace and comprehension only God can give.

Reading Recommendations

I want to recommend one book and one essay I read this week that I will be thinking about for a while.

Book recommendation: I finally read

Gina Dalfonzo

’s excellent Dorothy and Jack. If you are a C.S. Lewis and/or Dorothy L. Sayers fan, you’re in for a treat. This book tells the story of their friendship—and offers food for thought about the intellectual life and the gift of intellectual friendships in our lives.

Essay recommendation:

Paul J. Pastor

’s essay this week at Current is a thing of marvel. If you are a Christian artist or writer—or if you simply appreciate Christian art and writing—read this and be encouraged.