Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Anchor Bible: 2 Corinthians – Introduction

    One of my more esoteric goals in life is to complete a study of every book of the Bible form the original languages working with a commentary that takes critical issues into account. I have read the Bible through in its original languages. This is a different type of study. I will generally read other sources, but I choose one critical commentary that I think should be pretty solid, and I study the book with that on.

    In the case of 2 Corinthians, I chose the Anchor Bible Commentary by Victor Paul Furnish. It’s a 620 page (without front matter) volume that does interact intensively with some of the major critical theories, and also looks carefully at the theology of the book. I have used the Anchor Bible commentary in a number of my studies, and generally have found them to be fine volumes.

    This time I’m going to blog a bit about the experience as I study through. Using my own study methods, I’ve been reading the book through daily for the last couple of weeks, using different translations and getting an overview. Today I read the introduction, which occupies 57 pages. Most of it is fairly straightforward, dealing with dating the book and looking at where it fits with what we know of the life of Paul. Of those pages 18 deal with the history and the culture of Roman Corinth. Following that we get a substantial history of Christianity in Corinth as it is known from other sources.

    The entire introduction is good, and is expected of an Anchor Bible volume. But the section on the literary integrity of the book is exceptional, working through the logic that has been applied, and should be applied to various theories of authorship. One important point is made on page 38: “Any proponent of a partition hypothesis is under an obligation to offer some plausible explanation(s) of how originally independent units could have come to be combined into a literary whole.” That’s an often disregarded point.

    Dr. Furnish does accept one partitioning of 2 Corinthians. He believes chapters 1-9 represent one letter, and 10-13 a follow-up letter. His hypothesis for the combination of the two elements is that the two were put together as a collection, and joined by the simple expedient of dropping the ending salutations of one and the opening salutation of the other. He even provides examples of such collection practices in the ancient world. In doing so, however, he rejects a large number of very complex hypotheses.

    I’ll be reading the comments on the relevant passages with some interest to see how strongly he bolsters his case.

    For those interested, the introduction is followed by about 35 pages labeled “Select Bibliography.” All I can say is that I would hate to imagine what would have happened had the author not been selective!

  • Becoming Righteous and Becoming Rich

    I’m currently doing some study in 2 Corinthians for some of my personal study, partly because I became interested in the structure of the book when studying 2 Corinthians 5:21. I blogged about that previously, looking at the interpretations of Wright and Piper. In that post I obliquely questioned whether 2 Corinthians 5:21 was such a good penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) text in the first place. Some further reading has made me question this further.

    The specific verse that started me thinking is 2 Corinthians 8:9. Here we have the following:

    For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that he became poor for our sake, though he was rich, so that we, through his poverty might become rich. [my own very formal translation] — 2 Corinthians 8:9

    In English translation, the verse looks more grammatically parallel to 5:21 than it is in the Greek. In fact the vocabulary and structure is not very parallel at all, but semantically it seem to be it is. In the one case Jesus is made sin, so that we can be made “righteousness,” while in the other he becomes poor (Trinitarians should have no problem with the change from “made” to “become” in this case), so that we might become rich. On the off chance that someone might suspect me of teaching a prosperity doctrine let me note that in the context of 2 Corinthians, this is clearly a spiritual state of riches.

    Now in this second verse, would we talk about either impartation or imputation? We might, of course, talk about impartation, though in fact the spiritual riches are probably to be seen as a gift. But more likely it’s a change of state; riches are imparted, not richness, if that makes any sense. (Remember these are preliminary thoughts!)

    I would note further that 3:18 refers to a continuing transformation, i.e. a process, while 5:17, we have the reference to new creation. Frankly throughout the book it looks to me as though Paul is talking about something more like radical transformation than like imputation. If it’s impartation, it’s something that can happen over time.

    I would suggest that the best interpretation here would follow something along these lines: There is a transformation when one becomes part of the community of Christ. This is what is referred to as the “new creation.” This transformation continues as one lives inside that community or is a citizen of the kingdom of God. A citizen of God’s kingdom is by definition rich. The transformation continues until we leave this body behind, and put on the new one, where we also face God’s judgment (5:1-10). This is the soteriology that lies behind Paul’s defense of the apostolic calling.

    As of the moment, I see no proper place where one can import the forensic elements of PSA into this passage, and thus whatever one decides on the meanings of specific terms in 2 Corinthians 5:21 it is not a text about forensic justification.

    Of course, I continue to study the book. In my next post I’m going to start blogging my way through a commentary I’m currently using in my study of the book.

  • From my Blogroll: Better Bibles, Baptists, and Brothers

    Better Bibles was one of the earliest entries on my blogroll, and one of the blogs I read before I began blogging myself. I look to the authors for lots of challenging material on Bible translation. They often go much deeper than I would. But these posts are not just about explaining who’s on the blogroll. My plan is to interact with a post.

    Wayne Leman posted the Baptist is in. In which he discusses the “clarification” provided by the New Living Translation in John 1:6, in which “just plain John” (John in the text), gets the added identifier of “Baptist.” There’s no doubt that this is a reference to the person we call John the Baptist, so just what precisely is the problem with more clearly identifying him?

    On the surface, there doesn’t seem to be a problem. The identification is true, and the identification is true. This isn’t an issue of a difference between the ambiguity in Greek and in English. Whether it’s Greek or English, the same clarity is achieve with name, or the combination of name and title.

    Doug at Metacatholic brought up some excellent issues in his post The NLT and the intrusive baptist. The author of John apparently did not see the need for clarity here, and in fact may have had some reasons for expressing things precisely as he did. Now I’d normally comment about now that rhetorical devices that are not noticed by the audience are irrelevant. In other words, if a test audience got no different meaning from a translation that included “baptist” and one that did not, what difference does it make? In this case, however, I think that because there is, in fact, no essential difference between the Greek and English usage, in other words, the inclusion of the title or not has the same impact in both languages, we have a clear choice. In this case we would not be expressing the same thought as was in the Greek using different English wording. Rather, we would justly be accused of modifying the intention of the Greek author.

    Let me contrast this to another controversial translation issue where I would make the opposite choice. I happened to encounter this today in 2 Corinthians 13:11, in which Paul’s address of “adelphoi” is translated “brothers and sisters” with the unfortunate footnote, “13:11 Greek Brothers.” Actually “adelphoi” was the proper form of address to an audience of mixed genders in the Greek of Paul’s day. In the dialect of English most dominant where I work, “brothers” would refer to men. The Greek doesn’t say “brothers” it says “adelphoi” and the best English expression available to convey that meaning today is “brothers and sisters.”

    I think there would be little controversy if we just happened to have three words, brothers, sisters, and _____, a word used to address an audience of both men and women. I think few would doubt, in that case, that we should use _____ as a translation in this case.

  • Literal Nonsense – the HCSB of 2 Corinthians 8:11-12

    I’m doing some studying in 2 Corinthians right now, and I encountered the following translation while reading it through in the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB):

    11But now finish the task as well, that just as there was eagerness to desire it, so there may also be a completion from what you have. 12For if the eagerness is there, it is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have.

    If you get additional context, more than I want to quote here, it will make it just a bit clearer, but it is still somewhat hard to follow. Also, I don’t intend this particularly as a criticism of the HCSB, though obviously I think such a translation in a major Bible version should be fixed. Rather, I think it is a good example of how a very literal (or formal equivalence) translation can be nonsense in the target language.

    This HCSB version follows the Greek fairly closely. In fact, it looks a bit like a student Greek exercise, following which I would tell the student, “Now that is a good draft and shows me you have found the words in your lexicon. Now we need to make it into English.”

    The English Standard Version (ESV) is only slightly better:

    11So now finish doing it as well, so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have. 12For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have.

    Now compare those two translations to a dynamic equivalence version, the New Living Translation (NLT):

    11Now you should carry this project through to completion just as enthusiastically as you began it. Give whatever you can according to what you have. 12If you are really eager to give, it isn’t important how much you are able to give. God wants you to give what you have, not what you don’t have.

    Now certainly the NLT has made some choices is clearing up the confusion. I don’t think the text as it is even suggests the real possibilities for translation. This isn’t preserving ambiguity–it’s nonsense.

  • Rounding Up My Blogs

    I’ve written two posts that might interest readers of Threads. The first is on how we listen and read, and the second is on capitalization in translation of the Hebrew scriptures. (And no, the Hebrew doesn’t have capitalization, so what gives?)

  • J. Barton Payne on Theistic Evolution

    A friend of mine e-mailed me a link to this post on Higgaion. It’s an interesting discussion, and Payne’s attitude is far from dead today. To the excellent article, I would add only a couple of questions.

    First, on what basis do people determine that Genesis 1 & 2 must be narrative history? I am regularly asked to prove that it is something else, as though by default it must be considered narrative history. But the way one usually identifies a literary genre, especially in the ancient world where things didn’t come labeled “mythology,” “history,” or “fiction,” is to build an acquaintance with related literature. Ever since I became acquainted with a much broader range of ancient near eastern literature, it has always seemed to me that this process should be reversed. Why should something that looks so very much like other ancient near eastern creation myths be regarded as narrative history?

    Note here that I do not regard it as identical to those other myths, nor as directly copied from them. Rather, I regard it as the same general type of literature, which often shares common elements of cosmology and other symbolism. If we did not have the current Genesis creation account, and we found it inscribed on clay tablets in some ancient near eastern city, we would have no hesitation identifying it as a new creation myth. (Note also that I think the genre is more precisely “liturgy” for Genesis 1:1-2:4a, and “myth” for Genesis 2:4bff. See my essay Genesis Creation Stories – Form, Structure, and Relationship.)

    Second, and closely related is this: Why do we have a prejudice against fiction and myth as a way to convey spiritual truth/value? One potential answer to my first question is that we Christians believe the Bible is inspired, and it must contain truth (or be true), and fiction is false. For protestants, I think there is some loss through lack of exposure to the apocrypha. Reading Judith or Tobit can help one gain appreciation for the use of fiction in the ancient world.

  • English and Greek Ambiguity: 2 Corinthians 5:21

    This relates to my previous post on translating ambiguous passages.

    The last clause of this verse reads, formally translated, “so that we might become [the] righteousness of God in him.” I’m interested in the range of meanings that might be heard by a modern English reader for the final phrase, “in him.”

    A number of translations, even my beloved REB, translate this simply “in him.” The NLT gets bold and reads “so that we could be made right with God through Christ.” The CEV uses “so that Christ could make us acceptable to God.” Now both of those latter translations do mean something in English, while in common speech, I don’t think “in him” means very much at all.

    I must admit that “in him” does mean something to me in church language, and it gives me the picture of being in the body of Christ, the church, as being a part of being reconciled to God. How exegetically sound that is will have to wait for another day. Suffice it to say that I don’t think I’m directly on target with Paul’s intent here. Other than that, however, “in + any reference to a person” only works rarely, in such statements as “the bullet was in him.” I’m pretty sure that’s not the intended meaning here.

    I’m not looking here for the precise meaning of the verse, but rather the range of meanings that might be suggested by that particular phrase in this context. I’m thinking that the Greek will suggest a number of possibilities, such as agency or instrument that the English does not. I note that BDAG offers “before, in the presence of” (1e), instrument (5), agency (6), and marker of cause or reason (9). One could glean more, but I’d be interested in examples in which these latter meanings could apply. (Note that some, such as instrument, do not apply here in Greek either. I’m pointing that one out to show the substantially different semantic range of the Greek “en.”)

    Comments, examples, and notes on your particular dialect of the English language would be appreciated.

  • 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.