Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Capitalization as a Translation Issue in the Hebrew Scriptures

    In my ratings for the Bible Version Selection Tool, one of the areas on which I compare translations is capitalization of pronouns referring to God or to Jesus. The interesting thing about this is that the Hebrew text has no analog to capitalization of any kind, while edited Greek texts and some late manuscripts can mix majuscule and miniscule forms, the rules are hardly the same, and such capitalization cannot derive from the autographs which, like the Hebrew, did not use capitalization rules.

    There are two reasons I rate this. The first is practical. I regularly encounter people who consider it disrespectful to write a pronoun referring to God in all lower case. This is a peculiarity, I think, and I certainly don’t capitalize pronouns referring to God any more than any other pronouns in my own writing. A number of modern versions, such as the NRSV, ESV, and CEV don’t use such capitalization.

    Recently, while reading some texts in the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB), I noted this capitalization in Isaiah 42, which illustrates some of the potential problems with this practice. (For those interested, Psalm 22 presents similar issues in the NKJV, but the HCSB does not follow the same practice there as in Isaiah 42.)

    This is My Servant; I strengthen Him,
    this is My Chosen One; I delight in Him;
    He will bring justice to the nations. — Isaiah 42:1 (HCSB)

    Notice that pronouns referring both to God and to the servant are capitalized. I found this practice in the NKJV and NASB as well for this passage. “Spirit” is a special case, which I have discussed elsewhere. Should the word “spirit” be capitalized in the Hebrew scriptures which do not teach the doctrine of the trinity? My personal answer would be “no,” and the REB and the NRSV follow that practice. The NLT and CEV, which do not capitalize the pronouns in this passage do capitalize the word “Spirit.”

    The potential problem here is that the nature of the servant is somewhat controversial. Elsewhere (Isaiah 49:1-6 for example) the servant is identified as Israel. In Isaiah 53, Christians generally identify the servant with Jesus. There are those who would identify the servant as Jesus throughout the servant songs, dealing variously with passages identifying Israel in that role, while others would view Israel as the servant throughout. One option describes the servant as the remnant of Israel, taken into exile, and then redeemed, and sees Jesus as the ultimate representative of Israel, and thus the servant can be properly read as both Israel as a whole and the one individual, Jesus. Some would hold that different servant songs require a different identification of the servant.

    I am in no way trying to cover all the options on interpreting the servant songs. I’m simply pointing out that there are a variety of views. I would say that the scholarly consensus is Israel (see notes in the Oxford Study Bible and the New Interpreter’s Study Bible for good summaries of the consensus view). Thus with something as simple as the choice to capitalize or not capitalize certain pronouns, the translators tip their hand as to how they would interpret the passages in question.

    I doubt that most readers would notice this detail and make anything of it. The impression would be relatively subtle. And I would not automatically condemn translators for doing so. If the dialect into which they are translating the passage requires that pronouns referring to deity be capitalized, then they are subtly passing on their interpretation whether they capitalize or not. For what it’s worth, I believe that modern American usage tends against capitalizing. Readers who do not expect capitalization will probably simply think the text looks a bit odd.

  • Presuppositions

    I’m not generally presuppositionalist myself, but this post in an interesting discussion on young earth creationism is part of an interesting discussion. Check it out.

  • Information, Laziness, and Voting

    News stories this morning pointed out that Romney outspent Huckabee 6 to 1 in Iowa, yet in the end it wasn’t enough for a win. It’s interesting that the expectation is that spending is equal to votes. It’s unfortunate that it’s often quite true.

    Voters frequently complain about the behavior of candidates–too many sound bites, too many negative ads, too much fluff, too few hard proposals. It’s good for voters to be concerned. But the bottom line is that the candidates are going to do what works, that is what gets them elected. If negative ads didn’t work, candidates wouldn’t be using them so much. Now there certainly are times when there is a backlash because of excessively negative ads, or too many of them. But to a large extent, the mud sticks.

    There is also a perfectly good place for the negative in a campaign. If a candidate has lied or broken promises before, it should be known. A negative ad can point this out. But there is also a great deal of room for spin, and 30-60 second ads don’t leave much room for nuances. Take the issue of Governor Huckabee and the number of prisoners whose sentences he commuted while governor. How a governor uses the power to pardon people or commute sentences is surely a valid subject for discussion when that candidate seeks re-election or runs for another office. I see no problem with an opponent pointing out such behavior in an ad.

    But then there is the issue of context. Numbers don’t always mean what they appear to mean on the surface. Were there more opportunities for pardons or commutations? What reasoning was used? Can you point to specific cases of particular bad judgment? All of those are valid questions. Unfortunately, cynical voters tend to just focus on whether the ad was negative or positive.

    Since I am not a Republican (I’m registered independent), I only took a brief look at this issue, but based on that I suspect this issue would end up fairly neutral for me. In other words, I’d disagree with some of what he did, but I wouldn’t regard it as abuse. Were I a Republican voter in an upcoming primary, however, I’d be digging much deeper in order to either confirm that early impression or not. Should he be the Republican nominee, you can be sure I will know.

    I am angered by vague positive ads. Everybody’s in favor of “change.” Yet I’m reminded of this scene in C. S. Lewis’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader:

    “But that would be putting the clock back,” gasped the Governor. “Have you no idea of progress, of development?”
    “I have seen them both in an egg,” said Caspian. We call it Going bad in Narnia. This trade must stop.”

    Match the “time for a change” ads with the “make our country great again” ads, which generally don’t give one any hint of just what greatness consists of and how it is that we will attain that greatness. But you play these ads enough times with patriotic music and a flag waving in the background, and people who have no idea what the candidate stands for remember his name in favorable terms. Our problem is that we are not reading, listening, and viewing critically.

    The fact is, however, that we as voters really have no excuse not to get the information we need. I have been searching for information on the candidates’ positions on health care, in preparation for my next post in my series “What I want for election day . . .” Now for some candidates there is very little information there, but that in itself is significant information. The Association of Health Care Journalists reported that of the 14 candidates who were in the race when I first read the page, nine had released a health care proposal and only three had responded to a series of questions from the association. (Two candidates have dropped out of the race since I extracted that information.)

    Obviously candidates have no obligation to respond to a questionnaire from any particular organization, but it does give an indication of the interest level. The site also provides one with an easy way to access information from the candidates themselves through their web sites. Now I haven’t finished my own research, and I’m not vouching for the accuracy of their list–I’m just using it for illustration.

    My question is how many voters will actually read these health care proposals and ask how they would work? I congratulate candidates on putting out proposals that one can evaluate. But if the voters just respond to ads that announce things like “I’m in favor of health care for all” or “I believe we must preserve complete choice in American health care,” they won’t really know what is likely to happen should their candidate have his or her way. Not every proposal will accomplish what it claims it will.

    There is simply no reason why money should be so influential. We have the means to spread information on every candidate for very little money, and if the voters took the time to seek out the information, instead of waiting for 30 second spots which by nature cannot truly inform, then the money would have much less influence.

    I don’t think that candidate spending, (big money, or whatever you wish to call it), lobbyists, or the mainstream media can be blamed for a misinformed electorate. I think the only reason for the electorate as a whole to be misinformed is that not enough voters wish to be adequately and accurately informed. The information is available if you seek it out. If you’re going to vote, I can think of no adequate excuse for you to enter that voter booth uninformed.

  • Raymond Brown on Ambiguities and Literal Translation

    After my comments earlier about Piper and the ESV, I found this comment by Raymond Brown in An Introduction to the New Testament:

    For the purpose of careful reading or study, which concerns us here, one must recognize that sometimes the biblical authors did not write clearly, so that the original texts contain certain phrases that are ambiguous or difficult to understand. In some instances translators have to guess at the meaning. They must choose either to render literally and preserve the ambiguity of the original, or to render freely and resolve the ambiguity. . . .

    Brown continues by describing such a freer translation as a commentary built into the translated text.

    I have enormous respect for Dr. Raymond Brown, but I have to disagree with him here. The best explanation I can think of for his making this comment is that he overestimates the ability of the average reader to discover to range of possible meanings that the translated text might carry. In almost all cases I would regard it as more appropriate for the lay person to use multiple translations, reading of footnotes, and careful attention to the context to resolve ambiguity. The English text does not tend to suggest the same range of possible meanings as does the Greek or Hebrew text, in my experience.

    Most questions I’ve gotten on this result from the consistent translation of the Greek genitive with English “of” + some noun. English readers frequently find this ambiguous, and possibly more frequently they find it meaningless.

    I’m going to begin collecting ambiguous renderings from formal equivalence translations into English, where the ambiguity of the English text does not match the ambiguity of the source text. I’d be interested in any specific suggestions. I will post results here in a later blog post.

  • Once we faced Lions . . .

    Now we’re afraid our neighbors might think we’re weird. A Christian ministry founder says he believes American Christians are not ready for persecution. I wonder what was his first clue? [HT: Dispatches]

  • New Christian Carnival

    . . . is at Ancient Hebrew Poetry, including one post from Threads!

  • Miniposts

    I first saw these on Pursuing Holiness, and tried them on Participatory Bible Study and Jevlir, but now I want them here. They are just too convenient for those links and one-liners.

  • Blogroll: Geocreationism.com

    Having decided to blog a couple of times per week about my blogroll, I’m going to start with a site I just added, Geocreationism.com. If you’ve been following this blog for any period of time, you will have noticed occasional comments from Geocreationist, and this is his blog.

    I have a couple of reasons for including it. First, he disagree with a number of positions I take, but is open to dialog. That’s an excellent start. Second, his position on creation and evolution illustrates one of my key contentions: This is not a black and white issue in which there are only two sides. One of the defining features of the moderate position, as I see it, is refusing to be held to a choice of extremes. That’s why moderates are frequently very annoying to extremists–we refuse to get stuck with only two options. Sometimes even if you give us A, B, C, and D, we want E-none of the above.

    Before I go to a particular post, let me look at Geocreationism’s subtitle: Geocreationism – Showing harmony between mainstream science and scripture. It’s very easy to forget that when we look at the interaction between science and scripture that both sides can vary. One can differ on a view of science or of a particular scientific theory, or one can differ on the interpretation of scripture. Any type of reconciliation or harmony involves both. This subtitle is one I would not use, for example, because I don’t think there is any need for harmony simply because I don’t believe science and scripture address the same questions. There are occasional overlaps, but these are incidental, I think. This is one of the issues for Christians. Just what is scripture trying to address, and in what way does it address it?

    We’ll see some of this in action in a recent post, “Evidence for Creation” (Review) – Ground Rules for the Review. Geocreationist is reviewing Tom DeRosa’s book Evidence for Creation – Intelligent Answers for Open Minds. In laying out his own ground rules he distinguishes what he calls “Darwinian evolution” and “Theistic Evolution.” He defines Darwinian evolution as largely equivalent to atheistic evolution, though he sees little difference between that and the various deistic views.

    He contrasts theistic evolution, in which he says that God not only starts everything, but “He started every wave of Evolution as well.” In his view, God is still distant in this view of theistic evolution, and thus he presents his own third view: geocreationism, or geocreationist theistic evolution. In this case, God is continually present and concerned. I’ll have to read more to see how this impacts the process along the way.

    Now I must say that this terminology is somewhat surprising to me. For example, evolution occurring in waves with God starting each wave sounds very much like old earth creationism to me. Further, Geocreationist describes his view in this way: “Evolution would occur with our without the randomness, as long as God remains involved; remove God however, and the randomness would not be enough.” That latter view sounds somewhat like ID or “guided evolution” to me, depending on how one fills in the details.

    If I’m reading all of this correctly, I’m going to fall into the “Darwinian evolution” camp. My problem with being placed there is that I don’t think God is distant. For each and every law of nature I believe we can say it happens “because God.” In other words God wills gravity, and should he stop willing it, there would be no gravity. Not to worry, however, he’s pretty fond of gravity. God also wills variation and natural selection, and those produce certain types of order according to that law. Remove God and you remove everything.

    Now I know that there are some views that allow for indetectible divine intervention, but I’m not particularly interested at the moment in things that are even theoretically indetectible. I believe that God creates the laws, i.e. the system, which in turn produces everything that we see. God can intervene, but he would do so because he wants to, primarily because he wants to communicate with these weird creatures who have come into being.

    I have one further comment initial comment. Geocreationist appears to be looking for at least an historical outline in the Genesis accounts. I think this is doomed to be a disappointing search in the long run. I do not believe that the literature involved was written with the intent to provide a narrative history of anything, but rather to express God’s relationship to creation using the cosmology and symbolic language of the time. I will blog more on it as time goes on, but I have found that everything tends to fit quite nicely when read in that context.

  • Working the Blogroll

    One reason I enjoy the blogosphere is that it involves an exchange of ideas, often between people who differ a great deal on what they believe. I was pruning out my blogroll yesterday (I only removed defunct blogs), and it occurred to me that the blogroll really is not very meaningless. It contributes to someone’s scorecard on Technorati, perhaps, but often I have very little interaction with the blogs on my blogroll.

    So I’m going to try something for awhile. A couple of times each week I’m going to select a blog from my blogroll, look for an interesting post, read it, and respond here. The rules I’ve set for myself are these:

    1. First time through is pretty much random
    2. If there is no recent post with which to interact on the blog, I’ll go on to another and check it later.
    3. I won’t return to a blog until I’ve checked the rest of the roll. (Obviously this does not include ordinary blogging and linking.)
    4. After the first time through I’ll keep the order I worked the blogs through the first time.
    5. I won’t post just a link. I’ll respond in some way to the content of the post.
    6. This only includes posts in my blogroll, not the various larger blogrolls of which I’m a member. The Methodist blogroll is anchored at Methoblog.com, the Moderate Christian Blogroll is aggregated at ModerateChristian.com, and I’ll also be doing some linking from the Moderate Christian Blogroll Blog (there’s tongue twister).

    I have created a category Blogroll for these posts, so you can either avoid them or make sure you don’t miss any, as the case may be.

  • Another Interesting Lectionary Omission

    Since I’ve been attending a lectionary discussion group during Wednesday lunch, and therefore spending more time on the lectionary texts, I’ve been interested in the way the texts are selected. For this coming Sunday, Epiphany, one of the texts is Isaiah 60:1-6. “Now what could possibly be interesting about that?” you might ask.

    I’m glad you asked! In this case what’s interesting is the cut-off point. In general, this is a prophecy of restoration, given to Israel during the time of the exile, or perhaps afterward. (It would fall in trito-Isaiah, assuming one accepts that division.) More specifically it is a prophecy of Israel becoming a religious center, and other nations supporting them.

    I found it interesting that the Learning Bible (CEV), in its note on Isaiah 60:7 specifically says that the temple referenced there is the rebuilt temple, dedicated about 515 B.C. This suggests that in the view of those interpreters this passage was fulfilled with the restoration of Jerusalem and the temple following the Babylonian exile. Yet a brief reading of the chapter suggests there are a number of things which were not fulfilled at that time, such as the sun no longer being their light (verse 19) but YHWH serving that function (cf. Revelation 21:23-24), all its people being righteous (v. 21), to name just a couple. I note also that the Jewish Study Bible refers this to a future age when God will rule the nation directly.

    So again why do I find the cutoff at verse 6 interesting? Well, in that verse we have a reference to the continuation of the sacrificial services of the temple, something that most Christian interpreters do not include in any future age. Quoting from the JPS Tanakh:

    All the flocks of Kedar shall be assembled for you,
    The rams of Nebaioth shall serve your needs;
    They shall be welcome offerings on My altar,
    And I will add glory to My glorious House.

    Now Christian interpreters are not unaware of these texts, but many people in the pews are, and thus when they start studying eschatological prophecies they can become very confused.

    Let me make a couple of quick observations. First, Christian eschatology, insofar as it works from the prophecies of Hebrew scripture has divided prophecies between a first and second coming of Jesus. No such division is known here in the text. Salvation from sin and salvation from physical oppression are closely intertwined.

    Second, while both Ezekiel and Isaiah speak of a future time when the temple will be restored and sacrifices will be offered, Christian interpreters find that very hard to fit into any prophetic scheme. There are those who believe there will be a period of sacrifice in a restored temple during the time of the tribulation. I won’t go into the details of how this is supported from the text here. Suffice it to say that it can get complicated quite quickly. But in general, Christian theology has a problem with restored sacrifices seen in a positive sense, since the sacrificial system is commonly seen as unnecessary following the death of Jesus.

    One has to wonder whether the compilers of the Revised Common Lectionary didn’t want to avoid having these questions raised by a reading of verse 7 on Epiphany.