Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • A Gender Neutral Example – Hebrews 2:6-8

    A couple of days ago I discussed gender-neutral language in a post dealing with both inerrancy and Bible translation issues. Today, as I was doing some reading about Hebrews, I encountered a vigorous comment against such language in a passage in Hebrews. The passage in question is Hebrews 2:6-8, and it quotes from Psalm 8:4-6. The NIV translates the first anthrwpos as “mankind” and then huios anthrwpou as “a son of man.” They then continue with a series of plural pronouns in the explanation.

    In his The New American Commentary: Hebrews, David L. Allen responds to this translation with some vigor. (Note that he is responding to the TNIV, and relying on the text of the 1984 NIV, but the text of the 2011 NIV has in it every difficulty he references in his discussion. I really can’t get the flavor of his arguments without quoting more than I’m going to quote in a blog, but he starts with two major issues. The first is that by obscuring the anthrwpos/’adam reference with a plural (TNIV uses “mortals” while NIV2011 uses “mankind”) one loses the sense of the unity of the human race through descent from Adam. Secondly, by using plural references in succeeding texts, one makes it more difficult, if not impossible, to connect this to “son of man” as a Messianic title for Jesus. Whether this was the intent of Psalm 8 in its original context, it appears to be an intent of the author of Hebrews.

    Of these he says:

    Third, to change the word or phrase to a more “gender neutral” expression, especially in light of the other two problems above, is simply an exercise in linguistic political correctness. (p. 240, Nook edition)

    The issues here are somewhat more complex than any case I was referencing in my earlier post. When you have someone address a congregation that includes both men and women using adelphoi, the issue is more one of referent. In this case, we need to ask a couple of questions:

    1) In what way was the author reading the passage? In other words, how would he have understood it in then making his argument? It seems courteous, in a sense, to render a quotation in the same way as the person quoting it intended. This is by no means uncontroversial. If an author quotes the LXX, as is done here, but the Bible translation in question translates its Old Testament from the Hebrew, what should be done? There are cases in which a translation will accommodate their own rendering of the OT verse to the translation as they have it in their OT, whether or not that fits the author. On the other hand, to have the author of Hebrews quote Psalm 8:4-6, and then have the rendering there differ from what a reader will find when he or she turns to the Old Testament in that very same Bible edition can (and will) raise questions. So it is a case of decisions, decisions, and no matter what you do, there will be disagreement.

    2) What will your readers miss when they read your rendering? In this case we have two choices. We might leave out some understanding of the unity of humanity and the connection between a singular son of man and Jesus. On the other hand, for some readers, we might be leaving out the sense that this is humanity and not just some particular man. I know of nothing that would cover all options except for an explanatory note, and most of us are likely aware of how many people read explanatory notes.

    I don’t consider this a clear case of a change of language requiring a change of translation. The word anthrwpos, as used here, is covering a different semantic range, and the translator needs to take that into account. The danger into which the NIV2011 and the TNIV have both slipped here is that they undercut the author’s presentation by using a different translation of the passage he’s building on. He chose the LXX of his time. Perhaps we should honor the idea of his choosing a translation by translating that translation in a way that matches his use.

    What do you think?

  • CHWRIS or CHARITI in Hebrews 2:9

    I chose to do some reading from Hebrews this morning, but instead of using my NA27 or my UBSIV text, I went to Bible Gateway and read from the SBL text. There I encountered (again) the reading chwris rather than chariti. (I checked out NA28 online and I see it still reads chariti.

    I tend to lean just a bit toward internal evidence over external in textual issues. The reason for this is that I suspect that most variations in the text likely occurred early in the transmission history, where we by nature will have the least evidence for them. In this case, however, I would have to say that one can argue the internal evidence either way. Which text is more difficult? It depends on how you read it. Using chariti seems almost superfluous to the conversation. Some of the explanations for chwris as a marginal gloss seem pretty reasonable. Either reading could cause someone to go for the other. Either can be explained as fitting the text.

    At this point, I think the Nestle-Aland text has it right. The overwhelming external evidence would need to be countered by much stronger internal arguments to convince me that chwris was original.

    I took a quick glance through a few translations that are here within arm’s reach, and found none that accept chwris as their primary text. The NRSV and the REB both mention chwris as an alternative in a footnote.

    What do you think?

  • Some Thoughts on the Christ of Faith after Reading Hebrews

    As most of my readers know, I’ve been working on revising my study guide to Hebrews. At least I keep mentioning it. I’m only about two years overdue on the project. When one deadline or another must be missed I tend to miss mine and work on other people’s stuff.

    So today I was reading in Hebrews, especially the first four verses, and I got to thinking about the distinction between the “historical Jesus” and the “Christ of faith.” There are various words used to make the distinction, and it is not a distinction that is uncontroversial. On the one hand there are those who don’t think the Jesus of history is really accessible in a meaningful way, so if we, as Christians, are going to discuss Jesus at all, it will be as the Christ of faith. There are others who think that the Jesus of history is so well established that there is no need of any distinction at all. There are, of course, many variations on these views.

    I am not one to deny the importance of history, but at the same time I doubt our ability to access it in any absolute fashion. If one studies history, I believe one studies probability, so I would describe the Jesus of history not as a necessarily accurate portrayal of who Jesus was, but rather Jesus as he can be accessed by purely historical methodology. Just how accurate you believe that picture is will depend on how you evaluate the documents we have, not to mention the methodology we use. But for me the Jesus who can be established historically, while important, is not critical in any sort of detail.

    There is, for me, definitely a “Christ of faith.” That is the Jesus in whom I placed my own faith as a nine year old at a church in the mountains of Chiapas, Mexico. I made that confession when I knew little of a Jesus of history or a Christ of faith. I proceeded to encounter Christ personally through washing one another’s feet and through participating in the act of communion. The person whose feet I washed had walked for three days over muddy trails to be at that place at that time. He was laughing the entire time I washed his feet and then he washed mine. It was a friendly laugh. In it, I encountered a Jesus who definitely transcended history. He is one reason why I cannot conceive of an amount of historical reasoning that would actually change my faith at the core. The details of the stuff I believe might change, and indeed they have over the years. But at the core, that is my Christ of faith.

    As I read from Hebrews it occurred to me that while the author of Hebrews builds on history, the Christ he preaches could never be established by historical means. We might make factual statements of all that can be construed as an historical claim, and we would have an extraordinary person by biblical standards (assuming Hebrew scriptures at that point), but that person would not be God, would not be exalted, and would not be the foundation of our faith. All of that is founded on a person, and have no doubt that I believe fully that Jesus came in the flesh, i.e. that God has walked among us and has experienced what we must experience and died. But even a person rising from the dead does not make that person God. There is no set of criteria which a historian could use to say, “This person is God because they meet the criteria.”

    Rather, that is a matter of faith. I don’t believe it merely because I have the witness of the New Testament writers, or their witness to witnesses, as is expressed in the early verses of Hebrews 2. Rather, I can believe Hebrews 2 because of what happened when I was nine years old. That experience matches mine, and the two together, through the power of the Holy Spirit, become my faith.

    I think it is very easy to change one’s views about history. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to change that experience, even if one is distant from it for a time, as I was.

    (Though I formed my view of faith before I read these books, they do elucidate my views, and are both by Edward W. H. Vick: History and Christian Faith, Philosophy for Believers.)

     

  • Discussion on Grief During the Holidays

    Last night Bob LaRochelle hosted a discussion with my wife (and author) Jody Neufeld and author Ron Higdon. This was a Google Hangout on Air and the video is now available. This is unedited with no titles as yet. I think there were many valuable points made in the discussion.

  • What About the Election?

    I’m both unsurprised and unconcerned. Why do I say that when I urged people to vote? I believe in participation. I believe in doing our best with the political system we have available to us. I don’t believe in getting worried about it. In addition, by following good polling data, and avoiding partisan inflation of the favorable (and deflation of unfavorable) results I was fairly certain of most results. While people complain about the accuracy of polling, there are less surprises than it seems. We just emphasize those cases where there was an upset. “Person Expected Wins Race” is a boring headline. “Upset in Election” is much more exciting and memorable.

    Does it make a difference? Yes it does. For example, the change in the composition of the senate no doubt alters the landscape for judicial appointments, potentially including ones for the supreme court over the next two years. I think there will be people who stayed home who would have liked a different reality. The question is whether they will recognize the source of the hardships encountered by their causes.

    Energion author Bob Cornwall responded in a post titled The Election is Over — God Still Reigns. Just so!

    We’re going to have a response from three more Energion authors. Click here for the event information on Google Hangouts. I expect a lively discussion considering the participants.

    In case you want to come back here to watch, I’m embedding the YouTube.

  • Keeping Up Greek for Exegesis

    Keeping Up Greek for Exegesis

    9781893729179mDave Black posted today about keeping up Greek and its importance for exegesis. I’ve extracted that post to the JesusParadigm.com site so as to have a specific link. Everything he said could apply to Hebrew as well. I turned to his passage, though I was confident I would be able to read it. I’ve read the entire gospel of Mark multiple times in Greek as part of keeping up my language skills. I was not disappointed. I learned Greek and Hebrew so that I would be able to read the texts in the source languages, not so that I could occasionally look up a Greek or Hebrew word, or pronounce words tolerably well when I found them in commentaries. I’ve kept up the skills necessary for that.

    So how fresh is your Greek? Does it help you?

    I’ve questioned our approach to teaching biblical languages in seminaries for a very long time. Quite often I believe that students learn just enough Greek to be dangerous and in a way that is often dangerous. Witness how common it is to hear a preacher say “what the Greek here really means here” or “what this Greek word actually means.” Either of those statements, almost without exception, means that someone doesn’t really know how language works. The result is a new translation. Assuming the preacher involved is using a modern English translation produced by a committee, he’s asking you to accept the “real meaning” as determined by someone with a couple of semesters of the language over the “real meaning” as determined by a committee of qualified scholars.

    So do I bow to the “committee of qualified scholars”? I do not! I have my own opinions. I study passages for myself. But when I translate from Greek or Hebrew and use it publicly, or when I comment on the meaning of a passage based on my own study, I identify it as such. It is my opinion after I have studied, not the “real meaning.” It might be the real meaning. I hope it’s the real meaning in that context. But in reality it’s my best approximation of it. Since I’m the one teaching the passage, that’s what I work with.

    My thought is that if we are not going to require actual proficiency in the biblical languages, we would do better to teach students just a few basics and then a great deal about linguistics to help them understand what they read from various commentaries or articles. The number of pastors I know who truly apply their Greek and Hebrew in a beneficial way is vanishingly small. I would urge those pastors who have a little Greek to work on getting more. If you are not truly skilled, make sure to use your Greek carefully.

    Come to think of it, I publish something useful: “In the Original Text It Says …”, and Dave has written something too, on which I wrote a few notes: Book Notes: Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek.

  • Craig Blomberg, Reviewed by Louis Markos, Commented by Mike Licona

    … or On the Meaning of Words, Particularly Inerrancy

    There’s a post on First Things titled Ehrman Errant. Now criticizing Ehrman is apparently great sport, and Blomberg has replied to some of the types of criticisms Ehrman presents in a book, which Louis Markos reviews. The reason I mention Mike Licona, a colleague of Markos, is that he makes a comment on precisely the section that led me back around in a circle to the beginning of the piece. As a quick note, I previously reviewed Ehrman’s book Misquoting Jesus, but  have not read either The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture or Blomberg’s book that is reviewed here. I’m basing my comments strictly on the review and the comments to it.

    The problem, as I see it, is one of language and communication. How do you communicate a message to a particular person in particular circumstances? When we are communicating in a way that might later be read by others, how do we accomplish this. As a simple example, if I want a two-year-old not to fall off the porch, I might try explaining gravity, acceleration rates, and probabilities of various injuries based on the height of the porch and the nature of the ground below. Or, more intelligently, I might just close the door, or say no (and enforce it). In fact, preparing to write this led me to write a humorous (I hope) short story for my fiction blog titled Genesis Wasn’t Written This Way.

    When we start talking about biblical inerrancy, however, we are by nature talking about language. What does the word “inerrancy” mean? How are people going to perceive me if I say I believe in inerrancy? What if I say I don’t? And that, in turn, depends on who you are. If you’re a professor in an evangelical seminary, it seems to me that you understand this term differently than the people in the pews of the United Methodist church I attend. So the question is this: Who am I talking to?

    Let me start from the end. Louis Markos complains about Blomberg’s chapter on gender-neutral language. He says:

    Blomberg, along with the translators of the NRSV, NLT, CEV, and NIV 2011, take it for granted that the convention of using “man” or “mankind” to designate the human race is merely cultural. It is not. It is God himself who originally made the designation: “When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created” (Genesis 5:1-2; ESV).

    To which his colleague, Mike Licona objects in the comments:

    … There are some passages that call for a gender neutral translation….

    And the reason, I think, that there are passages that call for a gender neutral translation is that language changes. It is not that we have new discoveries in Hebrew and Greek that mean that we should translate gender references differently. Rather, our usage in English has changed. Markos can quote the ESV, “God created man,” but the word used was not the English “man,” but, of course, the Hebrew adam. That word refers to humanity (in this case), not just the male persons within that broader designation. So the question in translation would be how we refer to humanity today.

    Similarly, consider the Greek adlephoi. It’s a plural and at one time would have been translated “brethren.” For some time, it was translated in that way and it was often understood to refer to the whole congregation, male and female together. But does it mean that to audiences now?

    Some years ago I tested this with a couple of classes I was teaching on translation. The classes broke somewhere between 30 and 40 years of age. Those older than that thought “brethren” referred to the guys. Those younger thought it referred to everyone. I suspect the break point would be younger now as the culture moves.

    Now you can complain about the culture, but nonetheless in those mythical “good old days” people were understanding verses that used the Greek adelphoi, translated as “brethren” to refer to both genders. If you translate that way now, you introduce an inaccuracy, because your audience doesn’t understand it the same way as their ancestors did. You can complain all day that they should. You can wish they would spend more time reading older literature and thus understand this important (to you) point. But they aren’t going to. Now if you want a scriptural admonition to refer to the whole congregation, you need to use something like “brothers and sisters.” Not all instances of adelphoi should be so translated. That depends on the intent of the writer. Who was he referring to?

    I recall a pastor, a good friend, who complained to me about the NRSV because it used “brothers and sisters.” He preferred the RSV, because it kept the traditional language. The next Sunday he was preaching and read a verse from the RSV that included “brothers.” He immediately looked up and said to the congregation, “And that means you sisters too!” His pastoral instinct was better than his translation theory.

    But how does this relate to inerrancy? Inerrancy is, of course, a word, and it has meaning—to people. Meaning apart from meaning to some person or group is meaningless. Somebody understands a meaning. Blomberg is arguing that there are errors in transmission, but they are not critical, they don’t damage the message or the value of the whole. But that is not the same as the absence of errors. It is an absence of important errors. Blomberg’s position isn’t some new thing. It’s pretty standard evangelical theology. If preachers, teachers, and other church leaders made this point from the pulpit or the lectern somewhat more often, we’d probably have less problems with a critic such as Ehrman. But people out there in the pews pretty generally think that “without error” means there are no errors, not that there are no errors that theologians deem important.

    The same thing applies when we criticize others for using “verification system that has only existed for some 250 years” (1st paragraph). This is the verification system and the level of factual and numerical accuracy that people expect these days. If I say, “_____ is without error” they generally assume it is without error as they perceive errors. Yes, there are variations in this, but we actually tend to put words on them. It might not be precisely inaccurate for me to say it’s 80 degrees outside if it’s 78 or 79 degrees. But I’d normally be expected to say “about” if I were to mess with numbers in this way.

    Well, the Bible doesn’t use numbers in the way we moderns expect them to be used, and it’s inappropriate to expect it to. Biblical literature has genre and literary standards and they are those of the time and place when those texts were written. But if you’re going to then label the Bible inerrant, a term that is itself new, you have to specify the standard by which that is measured. (I’m not claiming that the concept, depending on which concept of inerrancy is involved, is new.) So if we’re going to expect people to apply a different standard when determining whether something in the Bible is an error, then we need to make sure they understand the standard.

    There is a tendency amongst scholars now to use words that mean definite things to most hearers, but then to back off and ask to be judged by a different standard. The gospels are not histories in the modern sense. Just so! They aren’t. But if they aren’t histories in the modern sense, then don’t expect to use them as such without having them judged as such. If I claim that Jesus performed miracles (and I do), I can’t say that the reason is simply that they were recorded in inerrant gospels. Why? Because I’ve also just said that those gospels don’t meet modern historical standards. Personally, I think it’s a good thing that they don’t. I think they are much more important than any document that met modern historical standards would be. Not that a modern style history wouldn’t have it’s uses, it just wouldn’t have the same uses as a gospel.

    But I think that we play sleight of hand with the terminology. “The gospels aren’t modern history so you can pretty much accept their view of Jesus without judging them by modern historical standards,” is a philosophical and historical way of having your cake and eating it too. I believe in Jesus, but I do not do so because the gospels demonstrate this in a sense a modern historian could accept.

    One more thing. Someone is bound to suggest to me that I should always apply the definitions used by qualified theologians. Those are the definitions that matter. I think that’s wrong. I don’t communicate with very many trained theologians. I don’t write for them, I’m never invited to speak to them (probably for good reason), so I’m not going to use words that communicate with them but not with the audience I’m actually addressing. For me, because I teach Sunday School classes in a United Methodist church and occasionally speak as a guest at various churches, the appropriate meaning of inerrancy is the one they’re going to hear when I use the term.

     

  • Grief and the Holidays

    There are three critical things I’ve learned about grief:

    1) It gets worse at certain times.

    2) It’s different for everyone.

    3) To help, you have to listen and observe, and act on what you learn.

    I’m not the expert on grief. My wife knows a great deal more. In September we passed the 10th anniversary of James’s death. It wasn’t fun. You think after 10 years you might be done. Besides, as I said, it’s different for everyone, and anniversaries haven’t been my worst moments. Until this year. Let me be encouraging here. You don’t forget the one you’ve lost, but you do learn to live with your new normal. I actually find both elements of that encouraging. I don’t want to forget James. I doubt I’m in any danger of doing so in any case. But at the same time, I need to learn to live with reality as it is now.

    As Christmas approaches we’ll remember how much he liked having some decorations and activity related to the holidays. He also loved to both give and receive gifts. Those are great memories.

    For many people, this is the worst season precisely because of those memories. If you are living through grief, remember to take care of yourself. If you know people who are missing loved ones at this season, be there for them. Listen, learn, and when it’s helpful, act.

    As I was preparing to write this, my wife commented that she had just written two cards that were very difficult to write. One responded to loss in a family. The other responded to great hardship. Those cards she sends out is one of the ways she helps share the burdens of those who grieve.

    If you’d like to learn more about this, join her and Ron Higdon as they discuss grief in the holidays tomorrow night, Tuesday, November 4, 2014 at 7 pm central time. The host will be Pastor Bob LaRochelle. Jody and Ron have each written books, and they know some of the things that help and some of the things that don’t. Don’t just wait for things to go wrong for yourself or those you love. Get equipped!

    grief banner

  • Please Vote in the Midterm Elections

    This is written to my American readers. Please go out and vote int he midterm elections tomorrow. I say this irrespective of your political views.

    There are a number of groups who are more likely to vote in presidential elections and then ignore the “less important” midterm and local elections. But that is not the way the system works. In casual discussions of politics we often tend to blame or applaud the current president for the things of which we disapprove or approve. Often, however, the president is not the one who is making the relevant policies. Many policies are made at the local level.

    For example, I will vote tomorrow to renew two different local sales tax options. Those impact my daily life because, combined, they raise my sales tax level from 6% (the state rate) to 7.5% (the rate in my county of residence). Voting in a presidential year won’t impact that result. Voting tomorrow will.

    There are many excuses for not voting in these less exciting elections. For example:

    1. My vote doesn’t really count. I already know who is going to win the congressional race (or any other example). Margins are important. Narrow margins make politicians listen more closely less their narrow margin disappear at the next election. If politicians know you, or the majority of some group you belong to, will stay away from the polls, they can ignore you. For example, young people are often cited as staying home from the polls, and more so in non-presidential year elections. Young people, your politicians can, will, and in fact do ignore you because they know they can get by with it.
    2. The direction is set from the top. It shouldn’t be. Change it!
    3. I’m too busy. Really? I don’t believe you. It doesn’t take that long. Remember that the lines are shorter in an off-year.
    4. There’s no difference between the candidates. This is generally quite false. I often find it hard to make a choice, though I manage it in the end. The reason is that it’s hard to balance agreements and disagreements. What happens when one candidate supports economic policies I prefer, but would vote for social policies I abhor and vice-versa. It’s not that the candidates are the same; that believe is usually the result of failing to actually study the candidates. Rather, it’s the result of the fact that none of us are likely to agree on everything. What’s more important? Don’t be lazy? Think about it and make a decision!

    I think that’s enough. If you have true convictions that you should not vote, make that decision. Be aware, however, that even that decision has an impact on the results. But don’t stay home because you just can’t get up the energy to contribute.

  • Separating Church from State

    I believe in the separation from church and state. I’m not talking about the principle derived from the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, though I do accept that as well, but rather about a Christian principle. I believe that the more we depend on the power of Caesar to accomplish our goals, the less likely we are to depend on the gospel and the more likely we are to become corrupted. Government power is corrupting, and I think the church should stay away from it.

    Again, I don’t think that church leaders should be excluded from politics, but they should be especially careful to separate their personal political actions from the corporate actions of the church. I, as a member, should be able to handle having a pastor who works for political goals with which I disagree, provided he does not make me a part of his goals without my consent, and provided he is not committing the church to his own views.

    As an aside, nearly every election we have some controversy over churches involved with politics. What are acceptable political activities? Is it an infringement of freedom of religion for the IRS to forbid pastors to do political advocacy from the pulpit? I’ll probably awaken more controversy with this than anything else, but this is why I am ambivalent about church tax exemption. Tax exemption has become a key element of religious liberty in this country. I grew up Seventh-day Adventist, and in every discussion of religion, a bedrock principle was that churches must be tax exempt. “The power to tax is the power to control” was the key phrase.

    But it turns out that the power to define may also be the power to control, and if the government can provide tax exemption to “churches” it must somehow define what is and is not a church. Interestingly, some Christians of my acquaintance think this is obvious. We all know what a church is. But when a more marginal religious group is looking for tax exemption, they may be defined out of it. So is religious freedom for everyone, or just for the people that we think are obviously eligible? Perhaps tax exemption isn’t such a good thing.

    Personally, I don’t want my church doing any of the things that would threaten its tax exempt status, so I have no particular problem. But the fact that certain pastors disagree, and out of their convictions, which I believe they should be free to hold, believe that their religious duty calls for their involvement in politics, what then? That’s when the definition of a church, and of the activities that go with being a church becomes important.

    What do I mean by keeping the church out of politics but keeping individual members involved? I do not mean that Christians should not be involved in politics, whatever their nation. We are citizens of God’s kingdom, but we live in one or another of the kingdoms of this world. Like Nebuchadnezzar, we need to learn that God rules these kingdoms (Daniel 4:17), but he also expects us to live morally within them. I believe that means exercising what personal power we have within them in accordance with our Christian principles.

    I was a bit disturbed at a recent event to be given a voter’s guide. It was given to me by a very nice person, but it told me very clearly how to vote, and the person who gave it to me implied that this was the “Christian” way to do it. I think that is unfortunate. Not that he should not have pursued his political goals. For that I applaud him, even though he and I will likely not be voting the same way on just about anything. No, my objection is to implying that a particular way to vote is the one and only Christian way to approach issues. I’ve encountered churches I might have joined, but have backed off when I found that a particular political posture was so thoroughly assumed that nobody would imagine a Christian could disagree.

    I think the church would be much better served by working to create disciples, and then trusting that those disciples would act in accordance with the principles that they have learned.