Is there a modern English translation of the Bible that uses the second-person plural pronoun?

Question

I'm looking for a modern translation of the Bible (ideally in the public domain) that retains the distinction between second-person plural and second-person singular. In Early Modern English (the language of the King James Bible) when speaking to a single person, "thou", "thee", "thy", and "thine" were used. When talking to a crowd, "ye", "you", "your", and "yours" were correct. These days the plural form and "ye" are universally replaced with the "you" forms. Since both Greek and Hebrew make this distinction, it's useful to know which form the original language used. (A rule of thumb is that the plural is nearly always used in the New Testament letters.) We lost something when English simplified to "you".

I know that the ASV was pretty strict about using the right number for second-person pronouns. But it was published before the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls and uses lots of other archaic language, so I'd like to find something newer. Many of the more modern versions either do not use the archaic forms or only use them for addressing God. So they aren't useful for my purpose.

Is there any modern English translation that does distinguish between singular and plural second-person pronouns?

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Why I ask

My pastor has been been talking about the importance of community in the Bible and a few weeks ago he pointed out this deficiency in Modern English. He's from Florida (via Kentucky) and pointed out that Southern American English has a solution to this problem: "y'all". As a semi-serious joke, I'd like to produce a version of the Bible that I will call the Southern American Version™ or SAV for short. It turns out that I can mechanically produce this from the ASV. Here's 1^st Peter 2:9-10 (SAV) as an example:

9 But y'all are a elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, that y'all may show forth the excellencies of him who called y'all out of darkness into his marvellous light: 10 who in time past were no people, but now are the people of God: who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

That comes out ok, but other passages just sound outdated and strange. 2^nd Corinthians 3:1-3 (SAV):

1 Are we beginning again to commend ourselves? or need we, as do some, epistles of commendation to y'all or from y'all? 2 Y'all are our epistle, written in our hearts, known and read of all men; 3 being made manifest that y'all are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in tables that are hearts of flesh.

Y'all got any suggestions?

Answer 1

I would take a look at the NRSV. Depending on which version you get (there is a Catholic NRSV as well) you will commonly find a "you all" or "all of you" instead of simply "you." Although rather than being a "word-for-word" or "thought-for-thought" translation, it is somewhere in between. It does a fairly good job of making grammatical distinctions where important and providing the theological or historical idea where that is more important.

Also... the NKJV does a lot of what you might be looking for as well.

Answer 2

Different languages have different distinctions. The idea that something is "lost" is not entirely true. As another person commented, the purported "loss" is solved by context. All languages use redundancy, e.g. agreement, which makes sure that the message gets across.

Your pastor is right to note the importance of community in the Bible, and the lack of it in modern, North American culture, including the church. But that is a problem of such scope that it cannot possibly be solved, or even helped much, by a focus on pronouns, especially when there are explicit texts in the NT which address the issue very clearly and in which nothing is lost to the lack of a plural second person pronoun in English.

Answer 3

The New World Translation of The Holy Scriptures uses the capitalized YOU and YOUR convention to distinguish the second person plural. It's also, in my personal opinion, an excellent translation because it strives to convey the original thought accurately, rather than by paraphrase. It also disguishes between a number of tenses more accurately for example "Keep on, then, seeking first the kingdom" (NW) versus "But seek first the kingdom" (NIV) at Matthew 6:33.

The text is available online here: http://www.watchtower.org/e/bible/index.htm

And some background information is available here: http://www.watchtower.org/e/20080501a/article_01.htm

Answer 4

The lack of second person plural is one of the least significant differences between Hebrew and English. It almost never leads to confusion, since context resolves the referent in nearly all cases. The suggestion of using y'all is no good, as y'all has backwoods connotations in English that the plural you doesn't have in Hebrew (or Greek).

Douglas Hofstadter has considered this issue regarding translation from French, where the second person plural "vous" and the second person singular "tu" are similarly distinguished, and further have a formal/informal connotation. His solution was to use a capitalized you, "You", for the second person plural.

This solution works for Hebrew. In reading aloud, a tonal difference can indicate the initial capital. So "You" would be pronounced "YOU" with high-tone (stress), while "you" is pronounced in the normal tone.

While doing the Wikisource translation, I will try to consistently use this convention for the Hebrew from this point on. I'll fix up the translated Hebrew to follow this convention also.

EDIT: The confusion brought up here with the capitalization convention regarding God is giving me second thoughts about this--- people will get confused. I think it is somewhat better to italicize plural you, you^f,you, you^f, to give the four forms: singular/plural generic-masculine/feminine^f. Further, the "f" subscript need only be used when there is confusion (as in the handful of feminine God references in the uncorrected Masoretic).

Answer 5

I've recently created a Google Chrome plugin that does this on a few bible websites: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/texan-bible-2nd-person-pl/hecahobcfkfdpifomfgoikegbeeiolmd

It's also an option here: http://biblewebapp.com/app/

Answer 6

Try this web site which shows each English word and its Greek equivalent: https://www.abarim-publications.com/Interlinear-New-Testament/1-Corinthians/1-Corinthians-3-parsed.html

Answer 7

I partition translations into two categories: Analytic and Synthetic. These two categories describe the intended use of the translation.

Literal translations are good examples of the Analytic category. Thought for thought translations, as they exist today, are adequate examples of the Synthetic one.

Analytic translations are designed to support analysis of the text, nearly always from an original language perspective. Synthetic translations are designed for compositional comprehension of the original author's thoughts.

Few people have grasped the amount of education needed to do really good analysis of a English-fied original language text. These, pretty much by definition, are rendered in a language that doesn't exist. So, the interpretive load is huge. Sometimes, words like Greekish (Greek + English) or Hebrish are used to name the language. Greek and Hebrew (some Aramaic) needs to be learned, discourse structures of the original languages, history, cultural dynamics,etc., I could go on. Come to think of it, StackExchange-Biblical Hermeneutics needs to exist (a good thing!). And there are tools, lots of tools, though the tools are sometimes misused. I've read discussions among Greek experts--professors, for example--that accuse themselves of misusing Lexicons for their glosses. That's not what they're designed for.

But, let me say to balance this somewhat, that each gain of a knowledge category moves one forward. Exercise makes one grow stronger. We all need to "run the race" and make it our own. Snapping a straight line with the Word of God takes refined skill, so we should all strive for the same thing Timothy was charged with.

Such texts, Analytic translations, are needed!

Synthetic translations suffer from translation decisions being invisible. This is often called, "adding interpretation" (a phrase I find odd since 'interpretation' is a process, not an artifact. You can't add interpretation to a text. In fact, you're doing it exactly right now! In English! I'm not writing interpretation! You're doing it! Gotcha! LOL). However, it's important to accept that the reader doesn't know the labyrinth of expertise the translator walked. And, it's somewhat of a perverse irony that because synthetic translations are much clearer, the meaning is more easily attacked, even though it might be well supported by research. The problem is the research is typically invisible. Like... how many of the books in a well stocked theological seminary have you read? Well, me, too! Not to mention the significant progress that has been made in the last 50 years in archeology and linguistics, and the cross-over between the two. Seminary professors haven't caught up with the explosion of new insight, in many cases, they're not allowed to. (!!)

Now, I say all that to say, the answer to your question is, it depends. It depends on who is going to use the translation. Is it for analysis? Or is it for compositional comprehension?

If the translation is what I call Analytic, then a formal mechanism should be adopted. A bolding, you, or YOU, whatever works. As long as the one using such a text knows to interpret the formal mechanism, it will work.

If the translation is what I call Synthetic, then the text should be rendered in the destination language (eg English). It should be the way we would say it. In other words, let's take Luke 22:31-32a:

Σίμων Σίμων, ἰδοὺ ὁ Σατανᾶς ἐξῃτήσατο ὑμᾶς τοῦ σινιάσαι ὡς τὸν σῖτον· ἐγὼ δὲ ἐδεήθην περὶ σοῦ...

O! Simon! You need to take note that the Satan demanded to sift you men like wheat. But, I myself have prayed for you. Simon, ...

An Analytic translation could be:

Simon, Simon! Note this: The Satan demanded to sift you as the wheat. But, *I* prayed for you...

*I* indicates emphasis. An Analytic translation could more easily expose chiastic structures for better analysis.

So, it depends on the audience of the translation.

But, a better way would be a translation using today's technology. The technology provides a rich set of tools to display the entire web of cohesive data that went into the decisions, and with drill-through capability. It would be a Synthetic translation that fully exposed all the translation decisions. The NET translation is a move in that direction.

I would learn lots of the details behind the decisions so that the formality wouldn't be needed--I'd have plain English, but I'd also have translator accountability. I'd learn things like old men would never, ever shamefully run through a town, see Luke 15:20; and the silence of a piece of information left out from a rehearsed statement is loud (compare Luke 15:18-19 and 15:21)--why did he drop the "just make me an employee"? Perhaps, "Father, you've just did all the work yourself that I would have tried to do!"

And then, maybe a technology like StackExchange -- which would expose a lot of the translator discussions around those decisions, filling in a lot of the spaces. I know...I know...pie in the sky dreamer! But, then again, "We got to get to Mars before I die," Elon Musk.