A friend of the family asked me a Bible question I couldn't answer: "Why do so many translations have random words italicized? This is distracting and makes the Bible so hard to read!" I told him I didn't know but would investigate. My instinct was that it has to do with the language of the time when the translation was done, so I checked every Bible in my house. I opened a KJV Bible to Isaiah 64 and found sixteen fairly randomly italicized words. I checked a Jerusalem Bible--no italics. NIV--no italics. Spanish Bible--no italics. French Bible --no italics. Why would this be? -- Erica Hernandez (San Francisco)
First these words are not randomly italicized. The translators (of the King James Version for example) are indicating that for the sake of clarity they are supplying words not in the original. They are going the extra mile in showing faithfulness to the original text. The forewords or prefaces of most Bibles set out the principles upon which their translations have been made as well as their conventions (paragraphing, italicization, spelling and so forth). It pays to read the preface before diving in to any version.
Those more literal versions which italicize words added for clarity help the reader in my opinion. For the most part anyway! In 1 Corinthians 12-14, the well-meaning KJV translators chose to render the Greek glossai (languages or "tongues" in the English of around 1600) by two words: "unknown tongues." As you can see the word unknown has been added; it is not present in the original Greek of 1 Corinthians. The problem is that many later readers--such as those were who part of the "charismatic movement" beginning in the 20th century--took this to mean that these languages were unknown on earth! You can see where this led. (For more, see my book The Spirit.)
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