This Is NOT How You Evaluate Bible Translations  🔗 **Source:** [This Is NOT How You Evaluate Bible Translations](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zy5YaFJfUs#transcript) > [!note]+ Document Notes > tags: [biblical-studies, bible-translation, textual-criticism, apologetics, epistemics, expertise, hebrew-bible] > author: Dan McClellan > source: YouTube — Dan McClellan > reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zy5YaFJfUs > date created: 2026-08-01 > > > [!info] Generated analysis — not the author's words. Sections below are machine-written > > from the captured source. Only text inside `> [!quote]` blocks is verbatim from the author. > > Do not quote or attribute any other line to the named author. > > # 🏷️ This is NOT how you evaluate Bible translations > <!-- deep-read:sections start --> ## 🧭 Table of Contents - 🔗 References · 📝 Summary · 📖 Main Content · 📚 References · 🗣️ Paraphrase · 📰 Newsletter - ✅ Action Items · 🧪 Hypotheses · 📊 Methodology · ❓ Questions · 🔮 Future Research · 💡 Implications - 🧠 Learning Styles · 📊 Accessibility · 🌍 DEIB · ✅ Logical Validity · 🛡️ DARVO · 🎯 Conclusion · 🧱 Refactor Appendix ## 🔗 References - Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zy5YaFJfUs (Dan McClellan, 2026-08-01, 22m29s) - Response format: stitch-reaction to an unnamed apologetics creator's "best Bible translations" video - McClellan's referenced own videos: Genesis 2:19 pluperfect discussion; `maklelan 3050` on Psalm 22:16 ## 📝 Summary **What happened.** Dan McClellan — a biblical scholar who works in the source languages — responds line by line to a popular apologetics video ranking Bible translations. His argument is not that the creator picked the wrong translations. It is that the creator has no method for picking at all, and that what is being ranked is dogmatic comfort rather than translation quality. **The diagnostic move that carries the video.** McClellan identifies the tell before examining any specific verse: the video never mentions the NRSV or NRSVue, which he describes as widely considered the most faithful, accurate, and critical English translation of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament together. An evaluation of translation quality that omits the scholarly consensus pick is not an evaluation of translation quality. **The omission identifies the actual selection criterion.** **The demonstration that closes it.** The creator condemns the NIV because its rendering of John 7:8–10 makes Jesus appear to lie. McClellan pulls up the same verse in four translations the creator *recommended* — CSB, ESV, NASB, LSB — and shows that three of them render it exactly as the NIV does. Only the LSB, MacArthur's revision of the NASB, inserts "not yet." The creator's stated objection disqualifies most of his own list, which he has evidently not checked. **Technical substance.** Three worked mistranslation cases in the LSB: Genesis 2:19 rendered in the pluperfect to dissolve the Genesis 1 / Genesis 2 creation-order contradiction; Isaiah 7:14 rendering `almah` as "virgin" and "has conceived" as "will conceive," importing the Septuagint's `parthenos` to protect Matthew's quotation; and Psalm 22:16 "pierced my hands and my feet," where the verb does not mean *pierced* under any attested usage. **Stakeholders.** Lay readers choosing a Bible on the strength of a recommendation video; apologetics audiences; anyone tracking how NAR-adjacent and evangelical publishing shapes what texts are allowed to say. **Bottom line.** A translation ranking produced by someone who cannot read the source languages measures which English text flatters the ranker's prior commitments. The omission of the consensus pick is the fastest available diagnostic, and it works before you check a single verse. ## 📖 Main Content ### 🗒️ Notes Timestamps unavailable — the recovered transcript carries no time offsets. Segments are ordered as presented. **Segment 1 — The thesis, stated before any evidence** McClellan's charge against "best Bible translations" content is specific and stacked: none of these creators have worked in Bible translation, none understand the methodologies or theories, none can competently engage Biblical Hebrew or Koine Greek. > [!quote] > Really, what they're sharing is the English translations that best resonate with the dogmas that they're bringing to the text. **Segment 2 — The omission tell** The NRSV/NRSVue is absent from these lists. McClellan's stated reason: > [!quote] > And the reason they omit it is because it doesn't prioritize dogma over data. He characterizes the NRSV as trying to let the text operate on its own terms while striking a balance between faithfulness and accessibility. His inference is that omitting it signals either disinterest in translation quality or inability to assess it. **Segment 3 — The LSB, and what it is** The creator names the Legacy Standard Bible as his favorite and "currently the most accurate Bible translation that we have." McClellan identifies it as John MacArthur's revision of the NASB, and characterizes its priority as univocality, inspiration, and an evangelical interpretive lens over what is in the text. **Segment 4 — Genesis 2:19, the pluperfect** Genesis 2 has God forming the animals from the ground after the first human. Genesis 1 has animals before humans. The contradiction is in the text. Some translators render the *wayyiqtol* verb as an English pluperfect — "now God **had** formed" — which relocates the action before the human and dissolves the conflict. McClellan's point is sharpened by the lineage: **the NASB rendered it accurately, and the LSB — a revision of the NASB — changed it to the inaccurate reading.** The revision moved away from the source text, not toward it. > [!quote] > That is a laughable mistransation. There's no plausible case to make for it. **Segment 5 — Isaiah 7:14, two errors in one verse** - `almah` rendered "virgin." The Hebrew word means young woman; the Greek `parthenos` in the Septuagint is closer to "virgin," and Matthew quotes the Greek. - "Will conceive" rendered as future. The Hebrew has a young woman who **has** conceived. McClellan's reading of the actual prophecy: the predictive content is not the birth but what follows it — that before the child can tell good from bad, the northern kingdom and Damascus will fall. The prophecy is bounded to the eighth century BCE. The motive he assigns: preserving intertextuality so a reader checking Matthew's source does not find a mismatch and start asking questions. **Segment 6 — Psalm 22:16** "They have pierced my hands and my feet." McClellan grants the text-critical move of preferring the Dead Sea Scrolls or Septuagint over the Masoretic text — "we do that a lot" — and says the problem survives it anyway: the verb does not mean *pierced* in any attested occurrence. **Segment 7 — The ESV** Characterized bluntly as awful and as an explicitly complementarian project: created in the 1990s in Colorado Springs by men reacting against the prospect of a gender-inclusive NIV, and taking complementarian renderings wherever available. It also carries the Genesis 2:19 pluperfect. **Segment 8 — NASB, CSB, NLT, CEB** - **NASB** — decent, but prioritizes an evangelical lens, less severely than the LSB. - **CSB** — decent, similar posture to the NASB. - **NLT** — thought-for-thought, highly readable, and shares the evangelical lens. - **CEB (Common English Bible)** — McClellan's counter-recommendation for accessibility: comparably readable to the NLT while letting the text operate on its own terms far more faithfully. Aimed at younger and second-language English readers. **Segment 9 — The frameworks are outdated** Word-for-word versus thought-for-thought, and formal versus dynamic equivalence, are described as outdated dichotomies that have not informed working Bible translation for many years — but that persist in online apologetics because it takes time for scholarship to filter down. **Segment 10 — John 7:8–10, the internal refutation** The creator's argument: the NIV is bad because it renders Jesus as saying he is not going to the festival, then going in secret — making Jesus a liar. McClellan's response is textual and then comparative. *Textual*: the manuscripts split between `ouk` (not) and `oupō` (not yet). The earliest attestation favors `oupō`, but `ouk` has strong attestation, and text critics broadly favor `ouk` as original on the standard transcriptional principle — a scribe changing `ouk` to `oupō` to fix a theological problem is explicable; the reverse change is not explicable either accidentally or deliberately. *Comparative*: he displays the verse in four of the creator's own recommendations. CSB: "I'm not going up to this festival." ESV: "I am not going up to this feast." NASB: "I am not going up to this feast." **Only the LSB** reads "not yet." So the objection the creator raises against the NIV applies equally to three translations he praised, and the single translation that escapes it does so by departing from the NASB it revises. **Segment 11 — KJV and NKJV** The creator prefers the NKJV over the KJV on the grounds that 400-year-old English cannot be accurate because English has changed. McClellan grants that English changes and translations need updating, but points out this reasoning does not describe the LSB at all: the LSB's priority is closer adherence to the *form* of the source text, which in most places makes it **less** accessible than the NASB, not more. The creator's stated criterion contradicts his own top pick. **Segment 12 — Conclusion** The creator's final advice: CSB for a first read-through, LSB for deep theology. McClellan's verdict on the latter is that it is "bafflingly stupid," and he closes on process rather than conclusions: > [!quote] > They only research until their confirmation bias has been tickled and then they just stop. ## 📚 References - **Primary** — Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia / Masoretic Text (Genesis 2:19, Isaiah 7:14, Psalm 22:16) - **Primary** — Nestle-Aland / UBS critical apparatus for John 7:8 (`ouk` vs `oupō`) - **Primary** — Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint witnesses to Psalm 22:16 - **Primary** — NRSVue (2021), NRSV (1989), CEB (2011), LSB (2021), NASB, ESV, CSB, NLT, NIV as translation artifacts - **Secondary** — McClellan's own referenced videos on Genesis 2:19 and Psalm 22:16 (`maklelan 3050`) - **Contextual** — Colorado Springs Guidelines (1997), the gender-language dispute behind the ESV's founding - **Not cited on screen** — no published translation-committee documentation is shown; claims about translator motive are inference from output ## 🗣️ Paraphrase Videos ranking "the best Bible translations" are made almost entirely by people with no training in translation, no grasp of translation theory, and no ability to read Hebrew or Greek. What they actually rank is which English wording agrees with what they already believe. The quickest way to spot it is what's missing. The NRSV and its update are the scholarly consensus for the most faithful and critical English Bible covering both testaments, and these videos never mention them — because that translation doesn't put doctrine ahead of evidence. The creator's favorite is the LSB, which is John MacArthur's revision of the NASB. It repeatedly changes the text to protect doctrine. At Genesis 2:19 it uses "had formed" so the animals come before the human and Genesis 1 and 2 stop contradicting each other — and notably, the NASB it revised had this right, so the revision made it worse. At Isaiah 7:14 it makes two changes: "young woman" becomes "virgin," and "has conceived" becomes "will conceive." Both exist to keep the verse looking like a prediction of the virgin birth quoted in Matthew. In Hebrew the woman has already conceived, and the actual prediction is that two kingdoms will fall before her child can tell right from wrong — an eighth-century BCE event. At Psalm 22:16 it says "pierced my hands and my feet." Even granting the decision to follow the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Greek over the Hebrew, that verb never means "pierced" anywhere it appears. The ESV is worse, and it exists for a reason: a group of men met in Colorado Springs in the nineties because they objected to the NIV using gender-inclusive language, and produced a translation that takes the complementarian option wherever one is available. Then the demonstration. The creator says the NIV is bad because at John 7 it makes Jesus lie — he tells his disciples he isn't going to the festival, then goes secretly. But the CSB, ESV and NASB, all of which the creator recommends, say the same thing. Only the LSB adds "yet." The manuscripts do split here, and scholars mostly think the original said plainly "not," because you can explain a scribe softening it but not a scribe hardening it. So the creator's own objection knocks out most of his own list. He also says the NKJV beats the KJV because English has changed. But his favorite, the LSB, is deliberately *less* accessible than the NASB it revises — so his stated standard rules out his own top pick. ## 📰 Newsletter **How to tell a Bible translation ranking is worthless in ten seconds** You don't need Hebrew. You don't need Greek. You need to check what's *missing*. Dan McClellan's [response](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zy5YaFJfUs) to yet another "best Bible translations" video makes the point before touching a single verse: these lists never mention the NRSV. Which is awkward, because the NRSV is roughly the scholarly consensus for the most faithful critical English translation of both testaments. Omit the consensus pick and you've told everyone what you're actually ranking — not accuracy, but agreement. Then he does the thing that makes this worth your time. The creator trashes the NIV because John 7 has Jesus telling his disciples he isn't going to the festival and then going anyway. Liar Jesus, bad translation. So McClellan pulls up John 7 in the creator's own recommendations. CSB: "I'm not going up." ESV: "I am not going up." NASB: "I am not going up." Three of his four picks do exactly what he condemned. Only the LSB says "not yet" — and the LSB is a revision of the NASB, so it *changed* it to get there. That's the whole review, really. The objection was never applied. It was reached for. There's real scholarship underneath: Genesis 2:19 rendered "had formed" to make the two creation accounts stop contradicting each other; Isaiah 7:14 turning a young woman who *has* conceived into a virgin who *will*, so Matthew's quotation lines up; Psalm 22:16's "pierced," where the verb doesn't mean pierced anywhere it occurs. And the ESV's origin story — men convening in Colorado Springs in the nineties specifically because the NIV might use inclusive language — is worth knowing regardless of where you land theologically. The transferable lesson isn't about Bibles. **When someone ranks tools, vendors, frameworks, or models, check what they left out before you read what they put in.** Omissions are cheaper to verify than claims, and they identify the selection criterion. McClellan's closing diagnosis is the line to keep: they research until confirmation bias is tickled, and then they stop. ## ✅ Action Items **DevRel** - Steal the method, not the subject. Any "best X" comparison should be audited first for what it omits — the consensus pick's absence is a faster disqualifier than checking every claim. - When publishing comparisons, state selection criteria up front; the absence of stated criteria is what makes omission diagnostic. **OSPO** - Apply the omission test to vendor-supplied tool comparisons and analyst quadrants entering procurement. **Community** - Useful case study for teaching source evaluation without requiring domain expertise of the audience. **WordPress subteams** - **Core / Core Performance / Core AI / Core Program Team / Mobile / Playground / Community / Training / Marketing / Support / Design / Documentation / Photos / TV / Polyglots / Accessibility / Meta / CLI / Hosting / Tide / Openverse / Themes / Plugins** — Not applicable to this source. The material is biblical scholarship with no WordPress surface. The *method* (omission as diagnostic; internal refutation) transfers to Training and Documentation source-evaluation guidance, and to Polyglots as a live example of translation-methodology tradeoffs, but no team action follows from the content. **The WPOCC** - Not applicable to this source. **FAIR** - Not applicable to this source. **Personal / vault** - Connect to the McClellan cluster: this is the third source in the vault using the same "refute on the claimant's own terms" method. - Cross-check against the KJV backlog row (`Is the most famous Bible translation really all that good?`) — same author, adjacent argument. ## 🧪 Hypotheses 1. **Omission of the consensus pick predicts inability to assess quality.** Testable: sample "best translation" videos, code for NRSV mention, and independently score the creator's demonstrated source-language competence. 2. **Recommenders do not check their recommendations against their own stated criteria.** The John 7 case is one instance; testable by applying each stated criterion to each recommended translation across a sample. 3. **Translation preference tracks prior doctrinal commitment more strongly than any stated quality criterion**, testable by survey pairing translation preference with positions on inerrancy, univocality, and complementarianism. 4. **Dogmatically motivated renderings cluster at known contradiction sites** (Genesis 1 vs 2, Isaiah 7:14, Psalm 22:16, John 7:8) rather than distributing randomly — directly testable across a translation corpus. 5. **A revision moving away from its base text marks doctrinal rather than philological motivation.** The NASB→LSB Genesis 2:19 change is one data point; the direction of change across all LSB divergences is measurable. 6. **Outdated frameworks persist in popular discourse on a measurable lag** from their abandonment in the field — testable by tracking "formal vs dynamic equivalence" usage in scholarship versus popular media over time. ## 📊 Methodology **The source's method.** Close reading against source texts, plus a comparative display of one verse across four translations, plus text-critical reasoning from transcriptional probability. This is standard philological practice and the comparative display is genuinely rigorous — it is falsifiable on the spot by anyone who opens the four translations. **Its limits.** Three points deserve marking. First, claims about *translator motive* ("the translators want you to think") are inferences from output, not documented from committee records; the renderings are demonstrable, the intentions are not. Second, "widely considered the most accurate" is asserted rather than sourced to a survey of scholars. Third, the target is an unnamed creator selected by McClellan, so the sample is chosen rather than representative — the video establishes that *this* video is bad, and generalizes to a class by assertion. **What a stronger version needs.** A coded sample of popular translation-ranking content; published translation-philosophy statements from each committee; and a scholar survey substantiating the consensus claim about the NRSV. ## ❓ Questions - Is "widely considered the most accurate" empirically supportable, or is it a defensible professional consensus that has never been measured? The claim carries a lot of weight here. - Do translation committees document these decisions? Where committee minutes exist, motive stops being inference. - The transcriptional argument for `ouk` in John 7:8 is strong, but how strong — what is the actual distribution of witnesses, and does earliest attestation of `oupō` trouble it more than McClellan allows? - Does the NRSVue carry its own systematic lens that a critic from another tradition could catalogue the way McClellan catalogues the LSB's? - If formal/dynamic equivalence is outdated, what replaced it in working translation practice, and why has no popular vocabulary emerged for the replacement? - How much of a reader's interpretation is actually determined by translation choice, versus by the teaching community around them? ## 🔮 Future Research - **Systematic corpus study of doctrinally-motivated divergence**, scoring translations by how often they depart from critical consensus specifically at doctrinally loaded sites. - **Reception study**: does knowing a translation's institutional origin (the ESV's Colorado Springs founding, the LSB's MacArthur provenance) change lay readers' trust in it? - **The lag from scholarship to popular discourse** as a measurable phenomenon, with translation theory as the case. - **Whether accessibility and faithfulness genuinely trade off**, using the CEB as the test case for McClellan's implicit claim that they need not. - **Comparative method transfer**: whether "audit the omissions" outperforms "audit the claims" as a heuristic for evaluating recommendation content generally. ## 💡 Implications **For practice.** The transferable technique is cheap and general: evaluate a recommendation list by its omissions first. It requires no domain expertise, it is fast, and it identifies the selection criterion rather than disputing individual entries. **For policy.** Institutions that recommend Bible translations — churches, curricula, study programs — should state their criteria explicitly. Unstated criteria are what let doctrinal preference masquerade as accuracy assessment. **For education.** This is an unusually good teaching text for source evaluation, because the decisive move (checking four translations at one verse) is reproducible by a student with a browser and no languages. **For security and software, by analogy.** The structure recurs exactly: a comparison authored by a party with a stake, using unstated criteria, where the omitted option is the one that would not have flattered the conclusion. Benchmark selection, model evaluations, and vendor bake-offs all have this shape. **For the NAR-adjacent research thread.** Translation choice is a distribution mechanism for doctrine. This connects directly to the vault's existing work on The Passion Translation — the LSB is a much more respectable instance of the same underlying move, which makes it more instructive, not less. ## 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment - **Visual** — Strong at one critical moment: the four-translation comparison of John 7 is shown on screen, and it is the video's decisive evidence. Otherwise talking-head. - **Aural** — Strong. The argument is carried by speech and survives audio-only listening, with the exception of the comparison table. - **Verbal** — Very strong, and the primary channel. Dense technical vocabulary: pluperfect, wayyiqtol, Masoretic text, Septuagint, attestation, univocality, intertextuality, formal/dynamic equivalence. Rewards a reader; punishes a casual listener. - **Kinesthetic** — Weak directly, but the material is unusually actionable — a viewer can open four translations at John 7:8 and reproduce the finding in two minutes. - **Logical** — Very strong, and the video's real backbone. Explicit inference from transcriptional probability, a clean internal-consistency refutation, and stated criteria for each judgment. - **Social** — Weak. Adversarial reaction format; no dialogue, and the interlocutor is a clip. - **Solitary** — Strong. Self-paced, verifiable alone. - **Naturalistic** — Not applicable to this source. **Reading level estimate.** Roughly Grade 13–15 (early undergraduate) as delivered. Syntax is complex and the technical vocabulary is largely unglossed — "wayyiqtol" and "pluperfect" arrive without definition. A motivated lay listener will follow the argument's shape while losing its mechanics. Note the transcript contains recurring ASR corruption of "mistranslation" as "mistransation" and "Septuagint" as "Septuagent." ## 📊 Accessibility Assessment Mapped to WCAG 2.2 AA. 1. **Captions (SC 1.2.2, A) — at risk.** Auto-captions demonstrably mangle the exact technical terms carrying the argument (Septuagint, mistranslation, Masoretic). For a video whose substance is terminological precision, this is a substantive failure, not cosmetic. 2. **Audio description (SC 1.2.5, AA) — fails.** The four-translation comparison is the video's decisive evidence and exists only visually; a non-sighted listener hears verse text read but cannot perceive the comparison structure that makes the point. 3. **Contrast and text in images (SC 1.4.3 / 1.4.5, AA) — unverified.** Screenshotted translation text is presented as images of text; legibility at small screen sizes is unknown. 4. **Language of parts (SC 3.1.2, AA) — fails in practice.** Hebrew and Greek terms are spoken inline with no markup; screen-reader pronunciation of transliterated forms will be unreliable. 5. **Reading level (SC 3.1.5, AAA — aspirational).** The content exceeds lower-secondary reading level substantially with no supplemental plain-language version. Marked as AAA, so not a conformance failure, but relevant given the topic's general audience. 6. **Sensory characteristics (SC 1.3.3, A) — at risk.** References like "on the top" and "on the bottom" for the comparison rely on spatial position. 7. **Timing and pace (SC 2.2.1, A) — passes.** Standard YouTube controls; the viewer sets pace, and the material rewards pausing. **Summary.** The genuine failures are audio description and caption fidelity, both aggravated by the same property: this is a precision-vocabulary argument delivered partly through on-screen comparison. ## 🌍 DEIB Assessment - **Cultural breadth.** Moderate. The frame is Anglophone Protestant translation culture. Jewish interpretive tradition is materially relevant to `almah` in Isaiah 7:14 and to Psalm 22 and is not consulted; Catholic and Orthodox translation traditions are absent. - **Inclusive language.** Strong on the substance. The ESV segment names complementarianism directly and frames the subordination of women as the translation's design goal rather than as a neutral difference. That is a real inclusion argument made on textual grounds. - **Neurodiversity support.** Weak to moderate. Rapid delivery, heavy unglossed jargon, and long argumentative chains without summary or on-screen recap. The strong logical structure helps; the pace and density do not. - **Representation.** Single expert voice, adversarial toward a single unnamed target. No other scholars are quoted, so consensus claims rest entirely on the presenter's authority. - **Psychological safety.** The weakest dimension. "Bafflingly stupid," "laughable," and "don't have the first clue" attack the person's competence rather than only the claims. The competence claim is arguably germane — the whole argument is that the creator is unqualified — but the register will read as contemptuous to anyone who holds the criticized translations devotionally, which is a large share of the potential audience. There is a real tension here between the accuracy of the charge and the reachability of the people who most need to hear it. - **Accessibility of expertise.** Genuinely good on one axis: McClellan repeatedly makes claims checkable by non-experts, which distributes the ability to verify rather than requiring trust. ## ✅ Logical Validity **Strong reasoning** - **The internal refutation is the video's best move and is close to airtight.** Rather than disputing the creator's framework, McClellan applies the creator's own stated objection to the creator's own recommendations. It requires granting nothing and is verifiable by any viewer. - **The transcriptional-probability argument for `ouk`** is correctly stated and correctly weighted: he acknowledges `oupō` has the earliest attestation and explains why directionality still favors `ouk`. Conceding the strongest counter-evidence and arguing past it is good practice. - **Granting the text-critical premise at Psalm 22:16** before showing the problem survives it is the same discipline — the argument does not depend on winning the prior dispute. - **The NASB→LSB direction-of-change observation** is genuinely probative. A revision moving *away* from accuracy is hard to explain philologically. - **Distinguishing accessibility from accuracy** correctly identifies that the creator's KJV/NKJV reasoning contradicts his own top pick. **Fallacies** 1. **Hasty generalization.** *Location: opening.* "Pretty much none of them have the first clue" and "none of them have ever worked in Bible translation" are universal claims about a whole genre, evidenced by one selected example. **Fix:** state it as a pattern with the sample it rests on, or code an actual sample. 2. **Ad hominem (circumstantial), partly germane.** *Location: throughout.* Repeated attacks on the creator's competence — "not remotely qualified," "bafflingly stupid," "don't have the first clue." Competence is legitimately at issue in a dispute about expertise, so this is not purely fallacious; but the conclusions are made to rest partly on the creator's status rather than solely on the demonstrated errors, which is unnecessary because the demonstrated errors suffice. **Fix:** let the John 7 comparison carry the verdict and drop the characterizations. 3. **Appeal to unnamed authority.** *Location: NRSV segment, John 7 segment.* "Widely considered the most faithful," "text critical scholars are in pretty widespread agreement" — no survey, citation, or apparatus is shown. These are probably accurate representations of the field, and they are still asserted. **Fix:** cite the apparatus and a representative handbook. 4. **Mind-reading / motive attribution.** *Location: Isaiah 7:14, LSB segments.* "The translators of the LSB want you to think," "that's the last thing the translators want." Motive is inferred from output. The renderings are demonstrable; the intentions are speculation presented in the same register. **Fix:** distinguish "this rendering has the effect of" from "the translators intended." 5. **Loaded framing.** *Location: LSB and ESV segments.* "Fool you," "grotesque," "awful" do argumentative work that the evidence should be doing alone. 6. **Genetic fallacy (borderline).** *Location: ESV segment.* The ESV's Colorado Springs origin is offered as grounds for its badness. Origin is relevant to explaining a systematic bias, but does not itself establish that any given rendering is wrong — and here McClellan does also supply a rendering (Genesis 2:19), which mostly rescues it. **Fix:** keep the origin as explanation, rest the verdict on renderings. **Tone of voice.** Confident, technically precise, and openly contemptuous of the target. The register is combative in a way that will consolidate an existing audience and repel the one being corrected. There is a real cost here that the video does not appear to weigh: the same argument delivered without the characterizations would be strictly stronger, because the evidence is genuinely sufficient. Commercial context is present but not intrusive — the description carries paid course links, none pitched on camera. ## 🛡️ DARVO Analysis - **Deny** — Not applicable to this source. McClellan is the accuser, not a party responding to accusation; no denial of wrongdoing is present. - **Attack** — **Present, and the clearest DARVO-adjacent element.** Sustained attack on the target's competence and character ("not remotely qualified," "bafflingly stupid," "don't have the first clue"). Note carefully: attack alone is not DARVO. DARVO requires the attack to function as a *deflection from an accusation against the speaker*, and there is none here. This is ordinary adversarial criticism, and it should not be scored as DARVO. - **Reverse victim and offender** — Not applicable to this source. No reversal is attempted; McClellan does not claim injury. **Assessment.** DARVO is not present. The attack component exists in isolation without the structure that makes DARVO a distinct phenomenon. Recorded to note the distinction explicitly, because "there is an attack, therefore DARVO" is a common misreading of the framework. ## 🎯 Conclusion **Bottom line.** A translation ranking from someone who cannot read the source languages measures doctrinal comfort. McClellan establishes this two ways: structurally, by noting the consensus translation is never mentioned, and empirically, by showing the creator's own objection to the NIV applies to three of his own recommendations. The technical content — Genesis 2:19's pluperfect, Isaiah 7:14's doubled alteration, Psalm 22:16's unattested "pierced" — is substantive and checkable. The direction-of-change observation on the NASB→LSB revision is the sharpest single piece of evidence, because a revision moving away from its base text's accuracy is difficult to explain except doctrinally. What weakens an otherwise strong video is that it does not trust its own evidence. The John 7 comparison alone settles the matter; the sustained attacks on the creator's competence add nothing and guarantee that the people holding these translations will not hear it. The unnamed-authority appeals ("widely considered") and the motive attribution are the two places a hostile reader has genuine purchase. **Next steps.** 1. Open John 7:8 in NIV, CSB, ESV, NASB, and LSB and reproduce the comparison — it takes two minutes and is the whole argument. 2. Add the CEB to the vault's reference set as the accessible-and-faithful option. 3. Apply the omission test to the next tool or vendor comparison that crosses the desk. 4. Cross-link to the existing Passion Translation and translation-methodology notes; the LSB is the respectable-instance version of the same mechanism. ## 🧱 Refactor Appendix ### 📚 Literature Split Pad - Purpose: stage Konik CEE units that become per-source Literature notes. - Split level: **H3**. ### [H1] A recommendation list's omissions identify its real selection criterion > [!quote] > And the reason they omit it is because it doesn't prioritize dogma over data. **Where:** opening segment. **Why it matters:** a domain-independent diagnostic requiring no expertise, applicable to tool comparisons, benchmarks, and vendor evaluations. This is the source's most transferable claim. `#xref` `#articleseed` ### [H1] The creator's objection disqualifies his own recommendations **Where:** John 7:8–10 segment. CSB, ESV, and NASB all render "I am not going up"; only the LSB adds "yet." **Why it matters:** a textbook internal refutation, and the video's decisive evidence — verifiable by any viewer in minutes. `#xref` ### [H2] A revision that moves away from its base text signals doctrinal motivation **Where:** Genesis 2:19. The NASB rendered the wayyiqtol accurately; the LSB, revising the NASB, introduced the pluperfect. **Why it matters:** direction of change is evidence about motive that a static comparison cannot supply. `#xref` ### [H2] Translation choice is a doctrine-distribution mechanism **Where:** Isaiah 7:14 and the ESV origin segment. **Why it matters:** connects directly to the vault's Passion Translation work; the LSB and ESV are the respectable-institution instances of the same move. `#xref` ### [H3] Formal/dynamic equivalence is an abandoned framework still governing popular discourse **Where:** frameworks segment. **Why it matters:** a clean instance of scholarship-to-popular lag, and a caution about vocabulary that feels rigorous because it is old. `#addendum` ### 🔖 Atomic Split Pad #### [Z1] What a recommendation omits identifies its selection criterion - Scope/condition: holds where a consensus or obvious-best option exists and criteria are unstated; breaks where the omission is explained by audience fit or scope. - Pointer: opening segment, NRSV omission. - **CREATE — genuinely uncaptured.** Nearest existing notes are [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Sampling a Fraction of a Source Produces False Authority Over the Whole]] (corpus coverage, not evaluator diagnosis) and [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/A Metric Is Vanity Only Against Your Own Outcome Data]] (metric validity). Neither covers reading an evaluator by their omissions. #### [Z2] Refuting a claim on its own premises beats attacking the premises - Pointer: John 7 comparison. - **CONNECT, do not create.** Already captured by [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Refuting a Claim on Its Own Premises Is Stronger Than Refuting Its Premises]] — created this same day from McClellan's autism/sin video. This source is a second, cleaner instance of the identical method by the same author, and belongs in that note's Evidence as corroboration. #### [Z3] Divine-revelation and inspiration claims immunize translation choices from critique - Pointer: univocality framing across LSB segments. - **CONNECT** to [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Divine-Revelation Translation Claims Immunize a Work From Scholarly Critique]] and [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Target Audience Determines Translation Methodology More Than Equivalence Theory Does]]. #### [Z4] Two-tier use of an authoritative text reveals implicit theology - Pointer: Septuagint invoked at Isaiah 7:14 to overrule the Hebrew, Masoretic text preferred elsewhere. - **CONNECT** to [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Two-Tier Use of Authoritative Texts Reveals Implicit Theology More Clearly Than Explicit Statements]] — this is a textbook instance and strengthens that note. ### ✏️ Fleeting Queue - [F1] Open John 7:8 across the five translations and verify the comparison firsthand. - [F2] Check whether the NRSVue renders Genesis 2:19, Isaiah 7:14, and Psalm 22:16 as McClellan's standard implies. - [F3] Find whether any translation committee publishes decision records — would convert motive inference into evidence. - [F4] Add the CEB to the vault reference set for accessible-and-faithful reading. - [F5] Look up the Colorado Springs Guidelines (1997) primary documents on the ESV's founding dispute. - [F6] Test the omission heuristic on a software vendor comparison and record whether it works outside this domain. <!-- deep-read:sections end --> 📄 **Full text:** [[Full Document Contents/Articles/This Is NOT How You Evaluate Bible Translations.md|This Is NOT How You Evaluate Bible Translations by Dan McClellan]] ## Highlights - And the reason they omit it is because it doesn't prioritize dogma over data. It tries to allow the text to operate on its own terms as much as possible and does a really good job of striking that balance between faithfulness and accessibility. And if an online apologist omits any mention of that translation, it's because they are really not concerned for the best translation and almost certainly because they are not qualified to assess translation quality. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kyzg6vhq0sgpzh4gdm0ewrbm)) - Note: PERMANENT CANDIDATE — a recommendation list's omissions identify its real selection criterion. Domain-independent: applies to tool comparisons, benchmarks, vendor evaluations. Requires no expertise to apply. - Tags: evaluation-method, epistemics, atom/atomic/z1 - And one of the most egregious examples is Genesis 2:19 where it alters the NASB which actually had it translated accurately to mistranslate it in the pluperfect tense. So this is the passage where it says and then God created from the dust of the earth the animals of the field. And because this introduces a contradiction because it has the creation of all the animals of the field and all the birds of the air following after the creation of the first human. Well, that violates the order of creation that we see in Genesis 1 where the plants and the animals were all created before the human. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kyzg7eaa6yatx4h8ev6nw1n5)) - Note: Direction-of-change evidence: a revision that moves AWAY from its base text's accuracy is hard to explain philologically. Sharpest single piece of evidence in the video. - Tags: hebrew-bible, atom/literature/h2, translation-methodology - The ESV is an awful translation and it is explicitly an attempt to increase complementarianism. In other words, the notion that women are here to support and to be subordinate to men. It only exists because a bunch of white men in the '90s got together in Colorado Springs because they were just incensed that the NIV might publish a version that used more gender-inclusive language. So they came up with the ESV, which in virtually every opportunity it found to render the text in a way that subordinated women to men, they took advantage of a complementarian approach. And it also renders Genesis 2:19 with the pluperfect. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kyzg7rwzp6f12k0g3zft8dke)) - Note: Translation as doctrine-distribution mechanism. FALLACY FLAG: genetic fallacy risk — origin explains systematic bias but doesn't itself establish any rendering is wrong; partly rescued because a rendering (Gen 2:19) is also supplied. - Tags: fallacy/genetic, atom/literature/h2, complementarianism - Recall that the LSB is a revision of the NASB. So, the NASB translates it according to how scholars understand the text to have been written. And the LSB says, "Nah, we're changing it. We're going to make it fit better what we expect the text to say." So this content creator said the NIV is bad because it makes Jesus a liar. So does the NASB, so does the CSB, so does the ESV. All translations that he praised. Of all the translations he talked about, only the LSB actually has Jesus saying, "I am not yet going up to this feast," over and against the consensus of scholars. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kyzg75dayzfg5mec0tmmyemg)) - Note: The decisive evidence — a textbook internal refutation. The creator's own objection to the NIV disqualifies three of his own recommendations. Connects to the Permanent note "Refuting a Claim on Its Own Premises Is Stronger Than Refuting Its Premises." - Tags: atom/literature/h1, textual-criticism, internal-refutation