Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Bible Translation

  • Translation, Exposition, and Communication

    Yes! I have found another pretentious title for a relatively simple post!

    I’ve been following the discussion around the blogosphere about literary translation, which has involved any number of blogs. I’ve been too busy to write about it. I was about to start last night, and then Doug at Metacatholic said part of what I wanted to say, and I waited until this morning to put it all together a bit more.

    In working with secular literature, and even with much religious or spiritual literature, there are many ways in which a work can be transformed to reach a particular audience. One of the methods I’ve been playing around with is simply writing a very short fictional piece that tries to teach the same lesson (example here). The point here is not to produce professional fiction or for the teacher to produce a “better” story, but rather for students to study the story by changing its form. I would ask students to tell a story from their own lives or to create a fictional one to teach the lesson. In studying Bible stories I also use the technique of having students tell the story from someone else’s point of view (see the section toward the end on Ahab’s Viewpoint).

    In secular literature we can have a book re-presented as a condensed book, a movie, a play, a children’s edition, illustrated edition, modernized (for an older work), and so forth. In each presentation, there are many choices made in terms of what of the original work will be presented again and what will be left out. Any time one changes the presentation, one loses something, and one may also gain something. The person who alters the form may well instill some additional meaning into the work that was not there before.

    But in Bible translation it seems to me that we tend to operate in fear of doing it the wrong way. Now don’t get me wrong here. I have very strong preferences in terms of Bible translation. I’m an advocate of dynamic equivalence, and of using ordinary, natural expressions in the target language. That is what I want most in a translation. If you think about it, and then realize that the most common thing I’m doing with a Bible translation is using it in a teaching context, you will realize that my preference of translation and my purpose tend to line up. One must add that I do not pretend to teach my classes Greek or Hebrew (unless that’s the subject!) and thus I am uninterested in a presentation of the forms of the source language.

    Nonetheless, as I talk about translations, I tend very strongly to speak in terms of lines of division. There are formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence, and never shall the twain meet. Now I actually believe there is a continuum (illustrated here), but that continuum easily gets lost in discussion.

    Let’s take [tag]The Message[/tag] for example. The key question people ask me, and the one I’m likely to bring up if they don’t, is whether this version is really a translation or not, and whether it is “good to use.” I can then analyze the language, and how close it is to the source, and in general I must admit that The Message doesn’t seem to me to reflect the original very accurately in many cases.

    But let’s shift context. Would I say the same thing about [tag]Eugene Peterson[/tag]’s teaching or his exposition in other material that he has written? There’s a bright line there that we may not always acknowledge. If he’s expounding, it’s OK. If he’s translating, well, not so much. What we are generally looking for is a solid line that divides working with the original languages from translation, and then working with a translation from someone’s exposition.

    But is such a line realistic? Let’s compare my reading of Hebrew, for example, to that of a Rabbi who has spent his entire life working strictly with the Hebrew text. Alternatively we could compare my reading to someone who has spent his entire life studying comparative ancient near eastern languages, which is closer to my own study. Since I went from that study at the MA level to teaching Bible at the popular level, I have spent a great deal less time in the details. I would expect there to be points that either of those experts would see in the text that I would easily miss. When I read their expositions, I see this in action.

    Let me belabor the point a bit before I build on it. I had read Leviticus through in Hebrew several times on my own, and done so in connection with Nahum Sarna’s JPS commentary, for example, but then I picked up Leviticus with Jacob Milgrom’s three volume Anchor Bible set. I claim to study from the original languages, and I do–in a sense. But not like that!

    On the other hand I regularly encounter preachers who say that they prepare their sermons from the original languages, and yet can barely work through the material word by word. Now don’t take this as criticism. I congratulate them for using all the tools at their disposal, but their specialty and their calling doesn’t allow them to become experts in everything.

    Hopefully that portrayal will do to show three levels of reading of the source texts–the expert in the texts, the person with facility in the language yet who does not professionally research on linguistic issues, and the pastor/teacher who knows some of the language. Anyone with experience could fill in the blanks either direction.

    We could similarly work our way through a continuum of levels of study with various English translations, based on how accurately the text conveys the maximum possible content of the source text. Somewhere in there we should fit someone who studies from multiple English versions.

    Finally, if we keep looking, we’ll find those persons who really don’t learn directly from the text or a translation at all, but rather learn the Bible in their community through exposition. There is a contempt in conservative Christianity for such people, but there are many who do know their Bibles quite well simply because they are regularly in the church when the scriptures are read and expounded, or they get similar knowledge from reading. This kind of thing makes folks like me nervous, because there are plenty of written materials that I believe distort the meaning.

    Now note that the continuum I have presented is based solely on comprehending the intended message of the text. If I were to abandon that particular question, I might ask instead what methods of study and exposition result in the greater absorption of the spirit of the text by the students. That would result in quite a different list.

    I could again shift views and try to build a continuum based on what produces a community sense of worship in reading scripture. This is a tremendously neglected area in many protestant churches. The information content is the sole criterion. The notion of the scripture reading as a vehicle for community worship is rarely considered. I can evoke cries of dismay when I suggest that respect for the scriptures might well be enhanced by reading all four lectionary texts on a Sunday. There seems to be a sense that if we don’t talk about it, if there is no sermon that builds directly on all those texts, there is no point in reading them. That comes from the idea that only knowledge is important.

    When reading scripture for worship, the literary quality of the text becomes more important, and especially the sound of the text when read aloud. Out of modern versions I like the sound of the [tag]New Jerusalem Bible[/tag] or the [tag]Revised English Bible[/tag] in public reading, but I know a number of people who would still go for the [tag]KJV[/tag] solely for its literary beauty. Now I don’t happen to like the KJV all that well myself, but I believe that literary taste has only a small objective portion and a very large subjective portion (a few notes on this here).

    If I were to work solely from my own tastes, I would suggest trying to match the literary quality of the original in translation. If so, [tag]Hebrews[/tag] should be harder to read, even when you know all the vocabulary words, than is [tag]1 John[/tag]. But of course it should not merely be harder to read; that’s just a product of someone not steeped in the language and rhetorical techniques reading a rather sophisticated text. The translation would need to be a literary masterpiece in English. My question would be this: Can you do that without reorganizing the material? In order to present the message of Hebrews as perhaps a masterful short theological essay, would we not need to take liberties with the structure of the book? After all, few English readers even notice the various literary features.

    What I’m suggesting here is that none of these issues are binary issues, and that there are very few absolutely right and wrong answers. I use the slogan “the best Bible version is one your read.” My point is that different people will be comfortable reading, and will understand different Bible versions. There will always be a compromise on what is conveyed and what is filtered out by the translation choices. That is simply a feature of translating, transforming, or expounding a message.

    One last note for those working on single translations into languages that are likely to have only one. There I can think of no better goal than “clear, accurate, and natural.” It’s very easy to set goals that are out of range of human thinking. In English, where so much effort is expended, we have the luxury of using multiple version and thousands of books of exposition to get the message across. In languages much less privileged–or abused–that doesn’t exist. There I would have to say that having something clear, accurate, and natural would come before anything else.

    I sense that understanding in Peter Kirk’s post “Literary Translation” and Obfuscation, which I think brings up a number of points. Look at that post from the perspective of a Bible translator who is not adding yet another English translation to the literature.

    Let me note the following from John Hobbins: Is Literary Translation Possible and If a text is literary, its dynamic equivalent in translation must also be literary From the second I take the following:

    But that means that dynamic equivalent translations like the Good News Bible and the Contemporary English Version are improperly done. For vast swathes of the Old Testament, the translation they offer is not literary enough.

    My point would simply be that I don’t accept the phrase “improperly done.” They are done according to the goals of their translators. The proposed “literary” translation would not accomplish that goal. Let me belabor the point some more. I love reading the [tag]REB[/tag]. It sits open on the reading stand by my computer because I love to consult it. I love to read it aloud. But I cannot use it in teaching, because I end up with too little understanding of the text. What to me is literary beauty obscures the meaning for them.

    For my goals in teaching, the REB is “improperly done.” But for my goals in reading and study, it is quite “properly done.”

  • Culture, Translation, and Literal Meaning

    I just read two excellent articles on Bible translation, one on a blog, and the other coming to me via e-mail. It seems to be very difficult for people to get an idea of just how language works. The notion that each word has a fixed, eternal, precise meaning just seems to hang on. Learning a foreign language will help, as will reading material from earlier in your own language’s history.

    The first article is by fellow Moderate Christian Blogroll member Eddie Sue Arthur [I originally credited this article to Eddie, but it is really by Sue. I apologize deeply for miscrediting it] who asks Can you close the door?. It may seem simple enough, but as Sue will demonstrate, it can be somewhat more complicated than that for Bible translators. Not only do words mean different things at different times and in different places, but they also occur in idiomatic expressions in which the word isn’t unit of meaning at all.

    Sue’s article is straightforward and simple, and I recommend it to anyone who is struggling to understand why Bible translation cannot be a more absolute and objective process.

    The second article came via the Bible Translation Mailing List which presents an article by Kermit Titrud titled Critique of the English Standard Version and “Are Only Some Words of Scripture Breathed Out By God” by Wayne Grudem in Translating Truth: The Case for Essentially Literal Bible Translation. Wheaton, Il.: Crossway Books, 2005. (You have to say that title on one breath or it doesn’t count!)

    Update: This article is now also available on the Better Bibles Blog.

    This article examines translations in the [tag]ESV[/tag] and in [tag]dynamic equivalence[/tag] translations that are criticized by Wayne Grudem. The fundamental issue is the same. Languages are very different and finding equivalent expressions requires effort and often will not look very much like the form of the original at all.

    I strongly recommend both of these articles, and for non-specialists especially the first.

  • Learning a Little Greek

    One of the major problems with seminary study of Biblical languages is that it is often short term and shallow. The seminarian, required to take a certain number of hours or just get by a particular test focuses all his efforts to getting past the hurdle. Precious few such students ever gain a real facility with the language. Some will have an exaggerated view of their own skills based on that study, but most will abandon what they have learned. Others will pop Greek and Hebrew words on their congregations, normally gleaned from commentaries and various articles of, often of questionable validity.

    In general, when you hear a pastor say “what the Greek really says,” prepare to be deceived. Not intentionally–the preacher really believes he knows, but actually he is probably missing the point. I have heard sermons in which the Greek word was completely wrong because the preacher simply provided the wrong Greek word. At other times, the error was one of context, when the preacher used a definition for a Greek word that was valid in some context, but not in the particular context in question. In one case, I heard a speaker recite the “real Greek” of a verse in four words. The only problem was that the verse was not, as he claimed, four words long in Greek, and not one of the four Greek words he used were actually in the verse he cited. I could just barely tell I was looking at the right verse based on the interpretation.

    I have a book in my library from the infamous Dr. Floyd Jones of KJV-Only fame. In the front of the book, on a page titled “TO THE READER – THE SOUNDING OF AN ALARM,” he cites a number of Hebrew words from Isaiah 14:12, in which he is giving the alarm regarding mistranslation. He should, however, be giving the alarm about his disastrous ignorance of Hebrew. I count no less than 8 errors in Hebrew in the course of a single paragraph. Now the KJV-Only position is so discredited that one might wonder why I bother to mention it. The reason is that most of the errors noted in that paragraph appear to result from the use of an interlinear in order to find the Hebrew form that is cited. Transliterations don’t match the Hebrew, though the translations match in the way an interlinear would.

    In both KJV-Only debates and discussion with lay “experts,” I have also encountered work done from Strong’s concordance. While it is more difficult to work with Strong’s than with an interlinear, it is even easier to be in error. Strong’s definitions are often out of date, and in fact they are generally not definitions at all but rather lists of glosses. I once was presented with a possible translation of a Hebrew text in which not a single word was translated correctly. On careful examination, however, every single word was translated by some word from Strong’s, and what was more, the resulting sentence was comprehensible in English though a bit stilted. It simply had no relationship to the meaning of the source text in Hebrew.

    We’ve probably heard that “to err is human, to really foul things up requires a computer.” Well, enter Logos Bible software, now with reverse interlinears (HT: Metacatholic–I recommend you read his entire post). Now don’t get me wrong. I own Logos with all the Biblical languages extensions I can get my hands on. But many wonderful tools have potentially bad uses.

    When a student uses tools that allow him to look up words more quickly so as to cover more ground in reading that’s a good thing. One way to actually gain facility in a foreign language is to work with it. Many students plow through one or two verses at a time and never go beyond that. They become specialists in individual leaves on individual trees, but they have no sense of how Greek or Hebrew reads or feels. Tools such as reader’s lexicons–works that give glosses by verses–can be very useful for rapid reading. But they don’t teach you Greek. Neither do interlinears, and neither do reverse interlinears. (Everything I say here about Greek is equally applicable to Hebrew.

    I have to discipline myself to spend time reading without the tools to prevent dependence. Especially in reading the Septuagint, I like to go into Logos so that I can quickly look up some of the words that I don’t know from my New Testament reading. But to really dig in and learn the material, I need to read without those tools from time to time. Now I have taken an different approach from the normal seminarian (whoever that may be!). I started in Biblical languages as an undergraduate. I had several years of Greek before I got to Seminary. I had three years of Hebrew. I actually read the passages I use when I prepare sermons first from the original languages. I use all the Logos tools constantly–except for anything resembling an interlinear. That is something I won’t do to myself.

    The writer of the post on the Logos blog bemoans the passing of original languages requirements in seminaries. But I would suggest that it will not be an improvement if people who are not competent with Biblical languages start substituting their judgment for that of the trained translation committees and reviewers that produce our modern English versions.

    For more on this topic see my series Word Study Dangers and my post on my Threads blog What the Greek Really Says.

  • Bible Translation and Fundamentalism from a Wesleyan Perspective

    Dennis Bratcher, of the Christian Resource Institute, has an exceptionally good article on neo-fundamentalism, with a focus on the TNIV and Bible translation, looking particularly from the Wesleyan tradition. (He is Nazarene). There has been a frequent tendency amongst Wesleyans to borrow theology from the Calvinists, but not to go as far on certain points. I would note also that sometimes Wesleyans who are not part of the charismatic or pentecostal groups borrow some theology back from those sources, often without careful consideration of how it all fits together.

    I have encountered people with cobbled together theologies made up of mismatched elements from the Calvinist, charismatic, and Wesleyan traditions. Now often United Methodists are loose enough about their theology to make it sort of work. But Bratcher calls on Wesleyans to at least ask how this might be view from a Wesleyan perspective.

    I’ll leave the rest to him. Go and read.

  • Ben Witherington on Hermeneutics

    This seems to be my day for linking, both on my threads blog and here. Ben Witherington has written an excellent basic post on hermeneutics. I’m particularly interested because of his illustrations taken from Revelation. In my study guide to Revelation, I recommend Witherington’s commentary as “the best commentary on Revelation for the serious student that is available today.”

    Witherington lists three principles: 1) What it means is what it meant, i.e. the meaning is in the text; 2) Context is everything; and 3) Genre matters. I’d love to say one is more important than the other, but there may well be no “greatest of these.”

    In this post Witherington demonstrates the clear exposition that makes his commentary the powerful resource that it is.

  • Communism and Bible Translation

    Bible translators and those who discuss that work know quite well that translation produces controversy, sometimes quite virulent controversy. One of the great watersheds in American church history was the publication of the RSV and the fight that followed. Though many of these issues are still quite alive today, the battle lines have largely shifted to other issues such as gender neutral or gender accurate language.

    In turns out that the Methodist church, or at least some Methodist clergy were pretty thoroughly involved in the incident I want to recount. In the days of Joseph McCarthy and his red hunting, it should not be surprising that reds were “discovered” on the RSV translation committee. It won’t surprise any Methodists that one bishop was accused, G. Bromley Oxnam, among other church leaders. I should note that being accused by McCarthy had no evidentiary value–he’d accuse anybody.

    Peter J. Thuesen, in the book In Discordance with the Scriptures [link is to my book note], notes that J. B. Matthews, a Methodist minister, and one-time communist sympathizer himself, was hired by HUAC. He had written in an article in American Mercury that “. . .the Protestant clergy comprised the largest single group of communism’s supporters.” After various protests, Matthews was allowed to resign.

    There were more accusations, however. One pamphlet accused various Protest leaders and Samuel McCrea Cavert, National Council of Churches executive secretary, of subversive activities (Thuesen, 103). Further,

    Still more pointed was a second pamphlet, Thirty of the Ninety-five Men Who Gave Us the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, issued by the Cincinnati-based Circuit Riders, Inc., a Methodist anticommunist organization led by air-conditioning executive Myers G. Lowman. Lowman’s widely distributed booklet alleged that the thirty members cited on the RSV committee and its advisory board were “affiliated with Communist and pro-Communist fronts.” (Thuesen, 103)

    Such accusations may seem a bit unreal today, but they were very significant in their time. Simply the accusation of communist sympathies could be enough to torpedo a career in some areas.

    Translators will not be surprised, however, to see the popular accusation of the day applied to their work.

  • Book: In Discordance with the Scriptures

    Though it would be a slight exaggeration, one could call this a history of Bible translation for post-moderns. Rather than focusing heavily on the technical issues as do most books on this topic, it focuses on the political and social elements and emphasizes that Bible translation is not a purely objective and scientific process. Any translation is influenced by the social and theological values of the translators.

    After briefly providing the background on how English Bible translation developed, the author begins looking in detail at the English Revised Version, the forces that shaped it, and the reasons for its successes and failures. The text really comes alive with chapters 4 and 5, dealing with the translation of the RSV and the liberal-conservative controversy that resulted.

    From the historical point of view, this is the key watershed in the history of Bible translation. Before that, even though there were a number of translations, the King James Version was overwhelmingly dominant, and the only competitors that came even close were the ERV and the ASV. The RSV was intended as another general, standard, authorized English Bible to replace the KJV, but Thuesen documents the reasons why it didn’t work. There simply was no organization that could authorize the Bible that would be accepted by all protestants.

    The fight over the RSV also tended to focus on theological more than technical issues. It is these social and theological issues that often drove other Bible translations, such as the New American Standard Bible and the NIV.

    This book is well-researched, extensively footnoted, and well written. The author does ramble just a bit, in my opinion, but generally less than I do, so that’s OK!

    My numerical rating is a 4.

  • Book: God’s Secretaries

    If you’re looking for a history of the KJV, you are likely to be disappointed by this book. There is a history, and considering the very sparse information on the topic, it’s a pretty good one, but it is concealed in the incredibly wordy prose of this ponderous document. Considering my own propensity for long words and complex sentences, I would suggest that I be taken seriously when I call someone else’s prose “ponderous.” Nicolson really likes the rich language of the KJV. He seems also to like much of the culture of Jacobean England, though he is capable of criticizing it.

    There is a great deal here on culture and the feel of the times. There is very little on Bible translation and its characteristics. I would call it more of a story than a history, but then it is a story that moves so slowly.

    Having said all of this about style, there is one characteristic that truly annoys me. Nicolson apparently belongs to that group of people who has decided that a particular literary style is better than any other, and who criticize anything else as inadequate. If one comprehends the Jacobean prose, and if one appreciates that sort of thing, then it will have the effects Nicolson credits it with. But that determination is subjective. I personally find the Revised English Bible a much better read. I like its sound better when read aloud, and I believe it is both more comprehensible and more faithful to the literary values of the source texts it purports to translate.

    Nicolson holds that sometimes the KJV is more majestic than the source. If one assumes that majesty is the proper quality of all prose, then perhaps that’s a good thing. As a reader of the source texts in their original languages, I don’t feel the same way. And “feel” is the appropriate term. There are some objective values in literary quality–good proofreading, for example. But much of literary quality is a matter of taste.

    I recall one of my professors who was a great fan of Dostoevsky. He also thought much of the science fiction I read was of poor quality and low literary value. Some of it was, some of it wasn’t. But under no circumstances would I recommend to anyone to read Dostoevsky at any time. I know that there are those literary folks who will regard my tastes as pedestrian and popular. They’re welcome to that opinion. I like what I like.

    What I dislike is the notion that those who like something different than I do are somehow objectively on a higher literary level. The KJV uses a language that was already in the past when it was translated. I do believe it is of high literary quality, though I wouldn’t want all that many works written in that style. (I like but do not love Shakespeare.) On page 234, Nicolson quotes T. S. Eliot of the NEB, saying that it “astonishes in its combination of the vulgar, the trivial and the pedantic.” I like T. S. Eliot, but I disagree with him here.

    If you choose to read this book, be prepared to cull the valuable material from the midst of the trivial and pedantic load of superfluous verbal baggage.

    My numerical rating: 2.

  • Response to Misquoting Jesus – Summary and Conclusion

    This is the conclusion of my multi-part series responding to Bart Ehrman’s book, Misquoting Jesus. Here are links to the earlier portions of this series:

    In chapter 7, The Social Worlds of the Text, Ehrman discusses how the social situation in the early church shaped changes that were made to the text. In particular he discusses the status of women, and mentions several instances of textual change that relate to it. Amongst these are Junia/Junias in Romans 16:7, and the prohibition for women teaching in 1 Corinthians 14:33-36.

    Next he discusses the relationship of Christians and Jews. Some alterations in the text make the Jews look bad. By the 2nd century, Christians were a separate religion, and often engaged in polemic against Judaism.

    Finally he discusses paganism and apologetic alterations to the text. He provides numerous illustrations in each case.

    One of his major points in this section is to show how the scribes were human beings whose world shaped the way in which they transmitted the text, and thus to some extent the text itself. When you hold a Bible in your hands, you hold the complex product of numerous people, each of whom have had a small part in shaping the text you will read.

    Conclusion

    It is in the conclusion that a differ significantly from Ehrman’s view. In technical terms, he is certainly expert, and he displays that expertise throughout the book. As a popularizer, he is clearly one of the best. I have not seen a clearer explanation of the basics of New Testament textual criticism for the non-scholar.

    The fundamental difference in our conclusions results not from the content, but from our starting points. I begin with the view that inspiration is something that happens to people, and that people express that inspiration in various forms, including text. While a person experiences God, individually or in community, the expression of that experience is distinctly human.

    Ehrman seems to accept the standard evangelical view of Biblical inspiration that assumes that God’s breathing of scripture is essentially the impartation of data to be expressed in words.

    How radical are the changes?

    If you see inspiration as involving the impartation of data to be accurately expressed in words, and expect those words themselves to be divine, then the alteration of such words must come as a shock. This is the experience expressed by Bart Ehrman in his conclusion. He sees the changes as radical and important because they alter the words, and to him the words are the vehicle of inspiration, or in the end of the lack of it.

    For me these changes are not nearly so radical, because I assume that the writers chose their own words, and in most cases their own facts. Thus alterations are interesting, but neither shocking nor dismaying. If one studies a broad enough basis of the text, one can get to who Matthew, Luke, John, or Paul really were, and to me that is the key to inspiration. God spoke to the community through these people in a special way and I want to get to know them.

    One quotation will illustrate this point:

    In particular, as I said at the outset, I began seeing the New Testament as a very human book. The New Testament as we actually have it, I knew, was the product of human hands, the hands of the scribes who transmitted it. Then I began to see that not just the scribal text but the original text itself was a very human book. This stood very much at odds with how I had regarded the text in my late teens as a newly minted “born-again” Christian, convinced that the Bible was the inerrant Word of God and that the biblical words themselves had come to us by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. As I realized already in graduate school, even if God had inspired the original words, we don’t have the original words. So the doctrine of inspiration was in a sense irrelevant to the Bible as we have it, since the words God reputedly inspired had been changed and, in some cases, lost. . . . (p. 211)

    I would like to point out one other thing, however, and that is that those who argue Biblical inerrancy, with or without verbal plenary inspiration, as it applies to the autographs do need to respond to the issue of the relevance of such inspiration. What is the importance of the inerrancy of a document we do not possess? If we can deal with 98% accuracy in the Bibles we actually have, why would the discovery that the autographs were also only 98% accurate suddenly be a devastating blow to the authority of the Bible?

    This is why it seems to me that the doctrine of inerrancy of the autographs is more a doctrine about God than about the accuracy or authority of God’s communication. What the doctrine says is that God is perfect. Certainly, I can agree with that. But that still seems irrelevant, because the issue is how well did human authors comprehend what God revealed to them?

    Dependence on Scholars

    On one last issue I think that Ehrman makes a particularly good point. I have heard many people express either the desire to be completely independent of Biblical scholarship or even the feeling that they are independent. Sometimes these are people who do not even read the source languages, much less work with the manuscripts to determine the text. When we consider context, the history and culture that stands behind the text, many more specialized fields come into play, and nobody is able to be proficient in all of those areas. All of us are dependent at some point on the scholarship of others.

  • Response to Misquoting Jesus VII

    . . . in which, of course, I respond to chapter 6. I will post a directory to the whole series of responses, with the final entry, but in the meantime you will get the series by choosing category “Textual Criticism” in the right sidebar. There are other entries in that category, but all the most recent ones are in this series.

    In chapter 6, Theologically Motivated Alterations of the Text, Ehrman looks at some specific points of theology and the way in which scribes altered, or tried to alter the text in opposition to those viewpoints. In our surviving texts, he notes, we don’t have many non-orthodox alterations, because it was the orthodox who won the day, and their texts were the ones that were preserved.

    He discusses three theological points which engendered theologically motivated changes: Adoptionist christology (Adoptionism in Wikipedia), docetic christology (Docetism in Wikipedia), and separationist christology. Adoptionism holds that Jesus was not born the son of God but was adopted, docetic christology holds that Jesus merely appeared to be human and to suffer as a human, but in fact, it was all just an illusion, while separationism suggested that Jesus was completely separated from God when he died, i.e. his divinity did not suffer death with his humanity.

    In each case, these anti-orthodox positions resulted in changes. These alterations to the text did not change the theology in a major way, but in the likely view of the scribes who made the changes they prevented people from interpreting a passage in an unorthodox way.

    I would simply make two notes on this chapter. First, it’s easy to make too much of such changes. The defense, as I frequently like to say, is never to base theology on a single text, but rather on an overall message an author is trying to present. Second, the abundance of Greek manuscripts lets us get behind this type of changes.

    I do agree with Ehrman that these types of alterations should be of concern if one holds a verbal plenary view of inspiration. If the individual words are so critical, as opposed to the overall message, then how could God allow the inspired words to be replaced wholesale? It’s easy to say that the abundance of manuscripts means that we can get at the original texts with a high degree of accuracy, but what about all those believers who used the various flawed manuscripts? What about the English speaking church before the ERV? (Note that the ERV used the Westcott and Hort text, and thus corrected numerous inaccuracies in the KJV.)

    I am absolutely comfortable saying that one can access God’s message via scripture, but when that message is reduced to the word by word level, i.e. if every word is important, then the state of the manuscripts is problematic.