Does it matter? How should ἀνομία be translated?

AV/KJV: ‘Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?’ (2 Corinthians 6.14).

NKJV: ‘Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?’ (2 Corinthians 6.14).

It does matter … Because every word of God matters (Proverbs 30.5).

Background

The AV quite consistently translates the Greek word, ἀνομία, as ‘iniquity’, but the AV does vary its translation of the word on two occasions, ‘unrighteousness’ in 2 Corinthians 6.14 and ‘transgression of the law’ in 1 John 3.4, where the context in both cases appears to require such. It is true that the NKJV is consistent in translating the word as ‘lawlessness’, but that consistency seems more like a wooden consistency because the translation is not varied, even when the context seems to require it.

Translation Accuracy

It should first be noted that there is a problem with translating the Greek word, ‘ἀνομία’ as ‘lawlessness’. It is easy to understand the choice of this English word to translate the Greek word, ‘ἀνομία’. The NKJV translators perhaps reasoned in this way: ‘ἀνομία’ has the α privative prefix so ‘lawlessness’ will be the equivalent in English, the ‘-less’ suffix having the same privative meaning in English. But the problem is that the English word has two meanings. ‘Lawlessness’ may refer to the condition of being without any law or it may mean transgression of the law. But the Greek word, ἀνομία (anomia), as used in the NT has only the second meaning and not the first. For that reason, ‘iniquity’ is actually a better translation of the Greek word than ‘lawlessness’.

Trench in his Synonyms of the New Testament gives the following helpful description of the translation and meaning of the Greek word, ‘ἀνομία’, in the New Testament:

We have generally translated ἀνομία ‘iniquity’ (Matt. vii. 23; Rom. vi. 19 ; Heb. x. 17); once ‘unrighteousness’ (2 Cor. vi. 14), and once ‘transgression of the law’* (1 John iii. 4). It is set over against δικαιοσυνη (2 Cor. vi. 14; cf. Xenophon, Mem. i. 2. 24); joined with αναρχια, (Plato, Rep. ix. 575 a), with αντιλογια (Ps. liv. [LXX] 10). While ανομος is once at least in the N.T. used negatively of a person without law, or to whom a law has not been given (1 Cor. ix. 21; cf. Plato, Politic. 302 e, ανομος μοναρχια); though elsewhere of the greatest enemy of all law, the Man of Sin, the lawless one (2 Thess. ii. 8); ἀνομια is never there the condition of one living without law, but always the condition or deed of one who acts contrary to law: and so, of course, παρανομια, found only at 2 Pet. ii. 16; cf. Prov. x. 26, and παρανομειν, Acts xxiii. 3.

Thus, the NKJV translators seem not to have duly appreciated the meaning of the Greek word, ἀνομία. They seem to have simply regarded the α at the beginning of the word, ἀνομία, as ‘α privative’ and quite mechanically translated accordingly, without fully taking into account how the word is actually used in the NT. As Trench remarks, the word never denotes ‘one living without the law’, as the English word ‘lawlessness’ can imply, but always denotes the condition of one ‘who acts contrary to the law’. Thus, ‘lawlessness’ is not actually the best translation of the Greek word, ἀνομία, since it conveys the possible meaning of being without the law, whereas the Greek word does not have that meaning. So, to equate the Greek word, ἀνομία, with ‘lawlessness’ it is not a perfect match. ‘Iniquity’ is actually a better match.

The deficiency in the NKJV’s rather mechanical translating of the Greek word, ἀνομία, as ‘lawlessness’ can be seen in a number of passages. For example, in 2 Corinthians 6.14 the AV has ‘for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?’ whereas the NKJV has ‘for what fellowship hath righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?’ The NKJV mechanically translates, ἀνομία, as ‘lawlessness’, apparently not noticing that ‘lawlessness’ is not so appropriately contrasted with ‘righteousness’ as is ‘unrighteousness’, especially given the double meaning of ‘lawlessness’ in English. A clear contrast is being expressed here by the Apostle Paul since he follows the first question with ‘and what communion hath light with darkness?’ So, the same contrast is between ‘light and darkness’ as between ‘righteousness’ and the word paired with it. But how is that well expressed if the word paired with ‘righteousness’ is ‘lawlessness’? It is clearly better expressed if the paired word is ‘unrighteousness’.

Consider also Titus 2.14, where the AV has ‘that he might redeem us from all iniquity’ whereas the NKJV has ‘that he might redeem us from every lawless deed’. Does Christ redeem us from all transgressions of the law, as ‘all iniquity’ will mean, or from every deed done with no regard to law, as ‘every lawless deed’ may imply? How are our deeds accounted in God’s sight? Surely the accounting of our deeds is always with respect to the law of God, and not otherwise. So, there is an ambiguity in the NKJV translation here that is not at all desirable and must be reckoned a defect, a defect that stems from the apparently mechanical approach of the translators to the meaning of the Greek word, ἀνομία.