The Literal Idiomatic Translation is a work in progress. Many books of the new testament of the Bible are now complete in a first draft form, while others are in various stages of completion.

My Work Is Not Infallible. I'm a disciple of Christ Jesus, and God's Word, and student, and I’m constantly learning as I translate my way through the ancient Hebrew and Greek texts of God's Word.

I have chosen the UBS4 text from which to work. As you may know it's an eclectic text, which concept I like. It's by and large the product of comparing many various ancient Greek texts of the new testament portion of the Bible, and then arbitrarily applying the recommended amendments of the popular seven textual critics, which outcome produces a body of Greek texts which supposedly may be the closest we can get to the content of the original autographs of the ancient biblical writers.

The weakness of the UBS4 text, in my opinion, lies in the residual textual by-products of the apparent cart blanche application of those critic's recommendations. Various apparent scriptural contradictions appear and disappear with the application of many of those recommendations. But I guess contradiction, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

I believe one of the inherent qualities which make the LIT more valuable as a translation is that it quotes the ancient writers of the biblical texts. This translation methodology is used deliberately, and with great care, just as paraphrasing and creative "synonyming" is done with great care in many other translations to inject mortal-made theological ideas into them which came much later than when the ancient writers wrote their autographs.

In the LIT every word of every phrase of every clause of every sentence is a quote of WHAT the writers wrote, and especially HOW they wrote it. This is necessary to preserve into English the vitally important figures of speech, the colorful idioms and colloquialisms common to that ancient Middle Eastern language and culture. These figures, idioms and colloquialisms are abundant, to say the least, in the ancient texts of the Bible, but they are virtually ignored based upon the most common translation methodologies.

Common modern translation methodology used to produce perfect English language renderings calls for opinionated paraphrases and creative "synonyming" to replace what was actually written by the ancient writers, which substitution introduces and injects a layer of mortal-made theological opinion to insulate the reader from what was actually spoken and written by the ancient writers, they being carried along under holy Spirit. This cuts off the holy Spirit from speaking directly to the reader!

If anyone chooses to verify English translations back to the Greek texts, one would come to a dramatic enlightenment that virtually all of the figures of speech and cultural language idioms and colloquialisms present in the Greek texts, which language methods the original writers used abundantly to convey the meanings of God's Word to us, are missing in the English translations! Why is that? If WHAT the original writers of the biblical texts spoke, taught and wrote as they were carried along under holy Spirit of God, is important for us to know, then isn't HOW they spoke, taught and wrote it somewhat important in determining the exact meaning of what they spoke, taught and wrote?  My answer to that is ABSOLUTELY YES!

So why do virtually all English translations hide (for whatever reason) from the reader HOW the writers of God's Word said something when it is said through a figure of speech or language idiom? The existing predominant reason I’ve come across in my studies is that the common lay person does not have enough ____________, you fill in the blank with the correct word, to learn and understand ancient cultural figures and idioms; and so a paraphrase of some kind must supposedly be invented to state something which hopefully captures the ancient figurative or idiomatic meaning meant by the writer, but which says it in a form recognizable to an English speaking person in the culture in which they may now live. That sounds like a good ideal. And I believe it is, more or less, depending upon how much the paraphrased result is true compared to what an ancient writer actually wrote and meant.

Can anyone reading an English translation know with 100% certainty that each and every occurrence of a paraphrase or of a supposed synonym used in it by translators reflects with 100% accuracy the meaning intended and given in the wording of its ancient writer in the biblical text to which it should relate? Of course not. The best any reader of an English translation can hope for is that the translators of it were correct. That’s it. The BELIEFS of hundreds of millions of people reading English Bible translations is no stronger than that of their HOPES that the translators and translation committees were correct. So then, are our supposed beliefs really no more than hopes, that the translators and translation committees were correct?

Hoping that the translators and translation committees are correct in each and every occurrence of their innumerable paraphrases and usages of creative synonyms is not good enough for me, given what’s at stake, everything! Given the uncountable number of mortal-made theological ideas and opinions that are now floating around, not to mention the uncountable number of them which have ever been invented in the entire history of Christianity, and floated as being somewhat plausible, I wonder how many of them are wrong, and of those how many of them have stuck and have become a part of the present oral tradition of Christianity, but which can’t be substantiated and verified in the ancient biblical texts, without the use of paraphrases and creative synonyms?

Is there any way to get beyond simplistically only hoping that our beliefs are based upon God’s actual written word? Is there any way to substantiate and verify that mortal-made theological ideas and opinions have not been elevated to the level of, and are now not being passed off as God’s Word, in the innumerable paraphrases and creative synonyms present in English Bible translations, of which there are well over 200 of them now? Which ones are more or less correct? How would anyone know beyond simply hoping that they are correct in every place, all the way through them? If a Bible translation is correct, why is their apparently a need to keep on making new ones, each new being one different in many ways than the last published Bible translation?

Whether translations are packed with mortal-made theological paraphrases and synonyms is a problem, and whether it is a small or GIANT problem, is exactly why I began making the LIT! I’m absolutely not happy and comfortable with a layer of mortal-made theological ideas and opinions which endlessly theorize this and that, insulating me from seeing and hearing exactly what the ancient writers of God’s Word actually wrote and meant, predefining the meanings in God’s Word for me.

Wasn’t the power and might of the holy Spirit of God working in the ancient holy men of God, teaching and guiding them into exactly what to say and write, and how to say and write it, good enough, given God’s omniscience of our ability to read and learn?

It is said that the purpose of DE, which is not a literal word for word rendering into English of the Greek texts, is to present the essential meanings, concepts, and ideas present in the Greek texts of the Bible, which meanings, concepts, and ideas are supposedly stranded in a two thousand year old culture estranged from a modern Western culture, into somewhat freely worded English renderings, to accommodate their implicit and explicit meanings into an English translation. Simply quoting the ancient writers would do that, as I have shown and proven in the LIT. DE is the translation methodology which is most commonly used to legitimatize the unfettered use of paraphrases and creative synonyms to represent the meanings, concepts, and ideas present in the ancient biblical texts, in the production of an English translation.   

Formal Equivalency (FE) is the term used to describe a translation methodology which seeks to render a translation into English on, as close as possible, a word for word basis, selecting the best English equivalent word or words to render the meaning of the Greek texts into English. FE employs a more strict set of translation rules to render more closely the substance of the meanings of the words, and renders what are called literal translations. FE methodology closely preserves the unique style and grammar of the writer, to not only preserve what the text says, but as much as possible the way the text says it. When we come to customs, cultural practices and language idioms in the ancient texts FE attempts to preserve both the implicit meanings of the references and the way the text referenced them.

The translation methodology used to produce the LIT follows very closely to FE, but employs even more strict rules of adherence to the original texts, in the form of greater consistency in English word rendering. This is a methodology based upon quoting the ancient writers of the biblical texts. Therefore, the LIT simply quotes exactly what the ancient biblical writers wrote, and exactly how they wrote it.

The LIT does not not push an ulterior denominational agenda of any kind; but rather it intentionally quotes the writers of the ancient texts, using their exact wording, whether that wording may or may not sound like it supports or does not support certain denomination’s dogmas.

The translator of the LIT translates the ancient texts of God’s Word God's Word for himself, because he wishes to be pleasing in the Father’s sight through believing His Word, and not those things invented through mortal-made theological theorizing. Belief in mortal-made theological inventions which have made their way abundantly into the oral tradition of Christianity does not earn rewards from God, but earns the opposite, frustration and consequences for disbelief, and misbelief, which are both unbelief.

DE is an unacceptable translation methodology, because in practice it has been, and still is, used as a vehicle to inject pre-interpreted mortal-made theological meanings, concepts, and ideas of the translation’s sponsors, those who are paying for it to be published, into an English Bible translation, through the use of paraphrases and creative synonyms. The most common mortal-made theological theory, the one invented in the third and fourth centuries, and refinements to it are still being invented, is the triune godhead theory patterned after so many other pagan theological concepts of a three-headed god, which invention was imposed upon mortal kind at bloody spear point beginning in the fourth century, and is still being pressed upon the cosmos up until this present time.

That the Word (John 1:1) was a pre-existing spirit-based being, a messenger (), which became flesh and bone, Jesus Christ (),

- and that the Word was the first thing that the God created, even before the subsequent creation of the entire cosmos (),

- and that the Word was the instrumental agent of God used in the subsequent creation of the entire cosmos (),

- and that the God, a spirit-based being (a being not of flesh and bone) came into the soul-based being Jesus Christ, to empower him to help God reconcile all of mortal kind back to God (),

- and that they, who are each a separate and distinct being from one another, came together into one being, i.e., the spirit-based being, the God, went into the soul-based being, Jesus Christ, the one inside of the other (),

- and that they thusly worked together as one in purpose to both reconcile all mortal kind back to the God (), to to give salvation/wholeness to all of mortal kind (),

- and that on account of the spirit-based being, the God, residing IN Jesus Christ, and He was working THROUGH Jesus Christ, the people believed that Jesus was the son of the God, and some believed that Jesus was a god himself, but absolutely no one believed that Jesus was the one true God which no one has ever seen,

- and that this was the essence of that which was prophesied by the prophets, and this was the essence of that which was taught by Jesus Christ and his disciples and apostles, and this was the essence of that which was believed by the first century church and many thereafter, by those who were believing upon the name of Jesus Christ, at least up until roughly the middle to end of the fourth century,

all of this is well beyond obvious in the many passages in the ancient Greek texts which were written about these things, when the innumerable theological theory-based paraphrases and creative synonyms in English "translations" are removed from consideration.

These are the things which, as much as can be determined, were spoke, preached and taught in the early Christian ekklesia, and the things which, for the most part, Arius spoke, preached and taught as well. Athanasius became the champion for the adoption of the pagan three-headed god concept to explain the overall framework of the meaning of God’s Word, in the mid fourth century, which three-headed go concept was already quite acceptable to the non-Christian masses, and had been for thousands of years.

Wow! Can you now imagine how much money could possibly be gathered into the passing plates, and gathered forever more, from those pagans coming in droves to see the premier of the new Christian movie script in the mid-fourth century, and liking it, especially as a religious "object" around which much gossip and hoopla can be made? The possibilities for the number of bit parts which can be played are innumerable. It’s no wonder this moment in church history blew up the church like an atomic bomb, all of which now, about Arius and Athanasius, and the utter lack of supporting scriptural evidence for it in the ancient Hebrew and Greek texts of God’s Word, but not in modern English translations, must be kept under wraps and hush, hush!

In the early church, the uprising of a pagan styled three-headed god concept to replace the orthodox Christian concept much of which Arius was supposedly carrying on, (which specific Arian doctrines can no longer be substantiated on account of the deliberate destruction of so many related historical documents to wipe out Arius’s teachings) was considered by the Christian majority to be a corruption of the apostolic tradition, and a horrific destruction of it into becoming another pagan and devilish false religion. This church history is kept secret by Evangelical-based Christians, since it powerfully calls into question what is being taught and believed to be God’s Word.

The level of the bar of honesty and Truth in translation, and in the dissemination of God’s Word, according to God’s Word, is that there should be absolutely no theological "fudging" of God's Word in Bible translations with paraphrases and creative synonyms at all! Zero! None! It's God's Word! If mortals wish to write books about their own theological theories and beliefs about God’s Word, then those books should be identified as books about their own personal theological theories and beliefs, and absolutely not not be labeled as a Bible of God’s Word. I can't think of any better reason why a translation methodology which quotes the ancient writers of the ancient texts of God’s Word should be used.

Most popular and common translations today are really more of interpretations than they are translations, because they are so heavily paraphrased, and they are certainly not quotes of the ancient writers by any stretch. A paraphrase, whether of a single sentence, or of the entire Bible, is technically not a translation, but only someone else’s opinion or belief of what the text may say and mean. I believe readers should come up with their own interpretations, based upon their own opinions and beliefs, from their own first-hand encounter with the ancient texts, or a "quote" translation of them.  

· A paraphrase is a re-wording of what was believed to have been written or spoken, based upon someone's more or less educated opinion.

· A translation is the written or spoken exact meaning of the meaning of a word or phrase in any medium, rendered into another language, based upon someone's more or less educated opinion.

· A quote is a verbatim copy of a word or words from the text or speech of another, with a clear indication given that the one copying is not the original author or speaker of that which is copied.

So what is the greatest difference in these three statements? When quoting what another has written or spoken, someone’s more or less educated opinion generally is not a key factor in the reproduction of another’s intellectual work. However, it’s probable to me that God’s Word is misquoted more than anything else ever written or spoken.

Likewise in the LIT, my more or less educated theological opinion should not be a key factor in my reproduction, i.e. copying of the ancient biblical texts into an English rendering, since I use the exact words of the writers in the ancient texts, and I use the exact morphologies of those words, to render them into an English translation which literally quotes the ancient writers of God’s Word. Any words I do supply in the English rendering are virtually always to accommodate the very common use of Ellipsis in the Greek texts, which I do indicate to the reader that they are supplied by the translator on account of the variances between Greek and English in the way some things are stated.

That depends upon what you are looking for, and if you’re looking at all.

For Trinitarian-based Christians, who most all, from being babies, have grown up in Trinitarian theology-based churches in which that fourth century mortal-made theological theory has been raised to a level at least equal to if not exalted up over and above the ancient texts of God’s Word, then the lack of any Trinitarian-based wording in the LIT shall cause them to believe the LIT is no where near as accurate as most all other Bible translations.

For those who have no pet preference whatsoever over any mortal-made Christian denominational theological theories, but who wish to examine the LIT on a much more intelligent level, on the level of examining the ancient Greek texts for their own substantiation and verification of the words rendered into English in the LIT, whether those renderings are exactly what the ancient writers wrote, then that critic would look for:

• are the morphologies of verbs rendered accurately into English, i.e., paying attention to the type, mood, tense, voice, case, gender, person and number,

• are the meanings of nouns rendered accurately into English, i.e., case, gender, person and number,

• are words added, changed, or deleted in English, thusly adding to, changing from, or deleting from the meanings of those word present in the ancient texts,

• are theological-based paraphrases and creative synonyms used to sculpt into an English rendering theologically-based preconceived ideas,

• how are capitalization and punctuation used; to promote theologically-based concepts and subjects read into the texts, thusly throwing the subject and contextual meaning out of agreement and into conflict with the identical or associated concepts and subjects present in other immediate, local and remote contexts; or are other associated concepts and subjects present in other immediate, local and remote contexts recognized as having a bearing and importance in determining the placement of capitalization and punctuation? For example: wherever the adjective holy is uded in an ancient text in reference to the noun spirit, is the word holy automatically capitalized to create a title of a supposed "person" of the trinitarian godhead, or is it recognized as being simply and adjective used by the writer to distinguish the character value of the spirit as being holy, as opposed to the other kinds of "spirit" mentioned in God’s Word which are unholy, such as the devil, demon spirits, the "spirit" of soul-based man, etc.?

• are figures, idioms and colloquialisms reproduced into English literally, so that the reader can see them and then determine for himself if they are truly figures, idioms or colloquialisms,

• is the article the, or any words at all, inserted into the English rendering arbitrarily, identified as the translator’s own opinion,

• is any wording in the ancient texts which may describe Jesus Christ as not being totally 100% equal in all power and authority to the God, Who God’s Word says is His Father, fudged out of the English rendering, to support a fourth century mortal-made theological invention,

and so on. In an honest interlinear-style translation, the LIT presents word for word, literally what the writers and speakers said and wrote. 

If this level of examination is not adequate, then careful examination of other passages containing similar word orders, and especially those containing the specific or closely related subject matter, to determine the most likely word order which should be rendered into English. Subject matters are often explained more or less completely in various passages and contexts, and so challenging word orders can very often be resolved upon comparison with other passages based upon subject matter as well.

And so a translator must diagram phrases, clauses and sentences. And then, based upon a translator’s own judgment, after exhausting the use of the afore mentioned translation process, determine the most plausible sentence structure to render into English. This is something that a translator is more well equipped to do, having both all of the textual resources, and being intimately familiar with the ancient texts already from regular daily hands-on work in them.

The context of the subject matters in God’s Word, in the Bible, is the ancient Middle Eastern culture.

Some of the Middle Eastern thought and various concepts, and many of their cultural practices mentioned in the Bible, cannot easily be expressed within the boundaries of the ideological perfect English grammar (which idea may be practically ridiculous anyway). Relatively few of the cultural idioms expressed in the biblical texts apparently have no counterparts in modern Western civilization, but the vast majority of them do.  

These require learning, so the reader can learn what God's Word truly means in those places in the holy scriptures, which is the purpose for the Literal Idiomatic Translation Glossary (LITG), which is an essential part of the LIT. In the LITG I try to explain many of the meanings of figures of speech, idioms, and colloquialisms identified in the texts, and I explain many of customs and cultural practices, which knowledge is essential in understanding many biblical contexts. In the LITG the listings for figures of speech, idioms, colloquialisms and cultural practices are in numerical order based upon the Strong’s numbering system, as links from the texts.

All DE translations ignore the practical concept of word-verse-subject association. Using a different word in all twenty places would be contrary to scripture build-up, obfuscate the subject matter trail so the reader could find only half of the truths or less, and thereby rob the reader of being able to detect the holy Spirit's intended continuity of a subject throughout God's Word. This is such a conspicuously huge systemic error in virtually all translations, especially DE translations, in regard to the purpose for making a translation in the first place.

I believe that consistently rendering a Greek word, or form of it, in the ancient texts into the same English word or form of it, in an English quote translation, consistently matching in morphological form as well, for each and every word throughout the Greek texts, reconstructs and preserves the intended pathways for straightly cutting God’s Word (2 Tim. 2:15), which are the pathways of understanding throughout God's Word. This translation process, which would reveal and preserve those pathways, virtually all other translations have grossly neglected, and/or deliberately destroyed. The pathways in God’s Word follow subject matter, and paraphrasing, and especially creative synonyming, obfuscate and ultimately destroy those pathways from intelligibility and full disclosure to a reader.

For example: Using the Greek word kalos in the biblical texts as an example (among thousands of examples) should illustrate my point about obfuscation and obliteration of the meanings of the ancient writers through paraphrasing and creative synonyming in English translations. 

The translation of the Greek word kalos, Strong's # 2570, gives me one more of thousands of good reasons why I must make my own translation. The translators of the KJV (not to single out the KJV over dozens if not hundreds of other paraphrased "translations") never translated kalos as beautiful, not even once, even though beautiful is exactly what it means! Neither did they translate its adverb form, kalōs, Strong's # 2573, as beautifully, not even once!

The KJV translators and/or translation committee/cartel determined for us that the way the ancient Middle Eastern culture used the term ‘beautiful’ colloquially, daily, was a too different from our modern ways of using it in the 17th century, and that we, commoners, were too hopelessly dim-witted to be able to ascertain and appreciate their colloquial usage of it. So they decided to cover up all of its usages, rendering in its place hopelessly inadequate English word "synonyms":

KJV English renderings for the adjective kalos, beautiful:

good - 83 

better - 7

honest - 5

meet - 2

goodly - 2

misc. - 3

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Total 102

KJV English renderings for the adverb kalōs, beautifully:

well - 30

good - 2

full well - 1

misc. - 3

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Total - 36

Out of a total of 138 combined usages of kalos and kalōs in the Greek biblical texts of God's Word, the "Authorized" translators of the KJV couldn't manage to translate those words as "beautiful", or "beautifully" respectively, not even once! Now you may ask yourself, as I did myself, with how many other words in the Greek texts have they done this? And so then, given a word’s number of usages, how many other times could the translators have possibly obfuscated and obliterated meanings of words in the Greek texts, through causing them to be altered or entirely missing in the KJV translation?

But when we're quoting Abraham Lincoln, or Ralph Waldo Emerson, or a NYT article, we better not get one word wrong, or we shall be guilty of blatant abuse of an English language rule of proverbial speech etiquette. I worry; I sweat over the thought that somewhere, somehow in the LIT I may have lied in my translation about what the ancient writers actually meant by what they wrote! Maybe translators and/or the translation committee of the KJV believe the things mortals have said are more important than the things God has said! The words ‘beautiful’ and beautifully never made it into English!

Swapping and substitution of the meanings of words in English translations, away from the meanings of their supposed source words in the biblical Greek texts, is rampant, flourishing, spreading, and unrestrained in most all English "translations".

I hope my translation work and associated studies may enrich your knowledge and belief.

Brother Hal Dekker