Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Bible Translation

  • Response to Misquoting Jesus VI

    . . . in which, quite logically, I discuss chapter 5. 🙂

    In Chapter 5, originals that matter, Ehrman first introduces the basics of textual criticism and tells us how textual decisions are made. This good overview, as he notes, will not prepare you to make textual decisions for yourself, but it will let you know how scholars function as they decide which variant to use in an eclectic text, and similarly which variant to translate in a Bible version.

    Ehrman then discusses three textual variants with theological significance and in each case he disagrees the the general consensus on the appropriate text. These texts are:

    • Mark 1:41
    • Luke 22:43-44
    • Hebrews 2:8-9

    I have surveyed modern versions on these with some interesting results. I’m going to survey just a few translations, and then give my own opinion on each one. Ehrman deals with the theological and interpretive issues quite well in his discussion on each of these. My interest in this section is whether the non-scholar has ready access to this information. Please note that where I list translations supporting each option, I am not being exhaustive. Each list is a subset of the subset of translations I am using for this quick comparison. In each case a subscript f indicates that the translation in question indicates the alternate choice in a footnote.

    Mark 1:41

    The issue here is whether Jesus “had compassion” on the leper or “was angry/indignant.” The evidence for this variant is presented in the United Bible Societies Greek New Testament, 4th Edition (UBSIV), which is a common starting point for Bible translations, though note that most English versions make their own specific textual decisions and do not follow a particular Greek edition. UBSIV places “compassion” in the text and gives it a “B” rating.

    The following translations support “compassion”: CEVf, ESV, KJV, NLTf, NRSVf, NETf, NKJV.

    The following support “angry”: TNIVf, REBf

    The best note here is in the NET. A strong case can be made for “angry” but the dominant reading in English translations is “compassion.”

    Luke 22:43-44

    Here the issue is the presence or absence of verses 43 and 44. Ehrman argues that the original text probably did not include those verses.

    Versions including 43-44: ESVf, NKJV, KJV, CEVf, NLTf, REBf, TNIVf

    Versions marking 43-44 in some way: NRSVf, NETf

    Versions excluding 43-44: None

    Again, the NET is to be congratulated on an excellent footnote. I would suggest that those who do not know Biblical languages but want to go deep into the text should access that version. It is available in an excellent online edition at NEXT Bible.

    Hebrews 2:8-9

    In this case the question is whether in verse nine it should say that Jesus tasted death “by the grace of God” or “apart from God.”

    Versions supporting “by the grace of God”: REBf, TNIV, NKJV, KJV, ESV, NRSVf, CEV, NLT, NET.

    No version supports “without God.” UBSIV rates “by the grace of God” as an A reading.

    In this last case, the NET does not include a footnote.

    Conclusions

    I would conclude two things from this. First, in most cases, one can access significant textual differences through various English versions. While the NET has the best notes for the first two examples, it has none for the last, which is only noted by the NRSV and the REB. This is a good argument for using multiple versions and reading the footnotes.

    In addition, if people paid more attention to the resources available to them things that Ehrman points out in his book would be much less shocking to them.

    Discussed in study notes (Learning Bible, Oxford Annotated, Oxford Study)

  • You are a Bible Translator

    Some readers here may be interested in a devotional I wrote for my wife Jody’s devotional list, titled You are a Bible Translator. Not the normal exegesis, but a thought! 🙂 Enjoy!

  • Galatians 3:2: AKOE PISTEOS

    Or should I make that AKOH PISTEWS? Note that a similar question can be asked in Galatians 3:5, but I will assume due to theme that one will give the same answer in both places.

    Writing an exegetical article on this verse could be quite lengthy, but I agree with J. Louis Martyn in his commentary on Galatians when he says:

    . . . Paul is not asking the Galatians which of two human acts served as the generative locus in which they received the Spirit, a decision on their part to keep the Law or a decision on their part to hear with faith. On the contrary, he is asking rhetorically whether that generative locus was

    • their act in becoming observant of the Law or
    • God’s message (akoh).

    — page 288 [some punctuation/formatting including Greek rather than transliterated text is mine-HN]

    The specific translation of akoh pistewj depends on two factors. First, should the word “hearing” be active or passive, in other words is the thing that generates the reception of the Spirit the act of hearing, or the content of what is heard, the message? The second is how does faith relate to the message. Is it a message that is faith, or is it a message that elicits faith? Martyn (op. cit.) Romans 10:16-17, where the message is much more clearly established as that which elicits faith, and the word akoh is also pretty clearly established as passive in intent.

    So how do translations compare on this. Here are some examples, showing the variety on these two points:

    • TNIV – Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard. [This agrees with the NIV, which is surprising considering the accusations of Calvinist bias in the NIV translation.]
    • REB – did you receive the Spirit by keeping the law or by believing the gospel message?
    • NLT – Did you receive the Holy Spirit by keeping the law? Of course not, for the Holy Spirit came upon you only after you believed the message you heard about Christ.
    • ESV – Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?
    • CEV – How were you given God’s Spirit? Was it by obeying the Law of Moses or by hearing about Christ and having faith in him?
    • TEV – did you receive God’s Spirit by doing what the Law requires or by hearing the gospel and believing it?

    I don’t see any translation that gets quite the nuance that I see in this passage, though perhaps I’m being a bit too tense. In this case, I think the NLT actually has the best translation with the CEV and TEV following very close after.

    Of course, it’s hard for translations to get everything right. In this case, however, I think that formal equivalent translations, such as the ESV really leave the English reader hanging, because “hearing of faith” cannot possibly elicit the same semantic ranger as akoh pistews, with unfortunate results.

  • Response to Misquoting Jesus – III

    I’m continuing my chapter by chapter response to Misquoting Jesus with a discussion of chapter 2, “The Copyists of the Early Christian Writers.” I continue to see this book as a basic introduction to New Testament Criticism (in agreement with Elgin Husbheck, Jr.), though the hype connected with it tries to make it sound more controversial than it is.

    The second chapter starts with the basic problem for texts in early Christianity–Christians were heavily oriented to texts, but they lacked professional scribes in general and a tradition or standards for proper copying. Thus manuscripts were copied generally by whoever needed them, or by whoever was literate and could do the job. As a result, there are numerous errors in the manuscripts. We can verify this assumption by observing the manuscripts we have and the tens of thousands of variants they display.

    Here we get started on one of the key scholarly issues that lies behind this book. How many variants are the result of errors in copying and how many are the result of scribes trying to improve the text? On this issue Ehrman in his scholarly writing is an advocate of the view that there is a high proportion of variants that result from intentional changes. Those changes may have generally resulted from good motivations, but they nonetheless changed the text.

    Ehrman continues with the issue of precisely what should be considered the “original text” of a document, using Galatians and the gospel of John as examples. Since Paul dictated the letter to the Galatians to a scribe, and then the letter was sent to more than one church, which probably necessitated copying that original, what precisely should be considered the “autograph?” There is room for error even in the dictation process (pp. 58-60). Add to that the fact that our earliest copy of Galatians comes from 150 years after the letter was written, and one begins to get an idea of the difficulties involved in textual criticism.

    I would note in addition that the issue of finding just what we should call the “original” starts to cross the line into what is known as higher criticism, involving source and redaction criticism. Ehrman uses the gospel of John, but what about the synoptic gospels? In general, no matter which theory one assumes for authorship, at least two, and probably all three of the gospels largely consist of source material edited into a new form. Why should this new form be regarded as an autograph? Would not the earlier versions be more authoritative?

    Ehrman tends to favor the work of the original author, as illustrated by this quote:

    . . . As we saw in chapter 1, Christianity from the outset was a bookish religion that stressed certain texts as authoritative scripture. As we have seen in this chapter, however, we don’t actually have these authoritative texts. This is a textually oriented religion whose texts have been changed, surviving only in copies that vary from one another, sometimes in highly significant ways. The task of the textual critic is to try to recover the oldest form of these texts.

    Modern Christians inclined to a conservative evangelical or fundamentalist position will certainly find Ehrman’s stated goal appropriate. What other option could there be? But I think it is not nearly so obvious as that. In fact, by the time the texts were officially designated as authoritative, they were already somewhat altered. In fact, due to the fact that early manuscripts were copied without standards by non-professionals, the greatest number of variants would occur early in the process, thus it would be a somewhat easier task to discover the text of the New Testament at the time when a document was finally designated as canonical. How God might act in the formation of a text is also not a finally settled matter.

    I don’t intend to try to settle these questions, but rather simply to raise them. The boundary between higher and lower criticism is not as precisely defined as many would like to think.

  • Response to Misquoting Jesus – Ia

    I wanted to follow up briefly on my first post on Misquoting Jesus to provide a quotation and make a couple more comments on inspiration. The quotation comes from page 13:

    It is a radical shift from reading the Bible as an inerrant blueprint for our faith, life, and future to seeing it as a very human book, with very human points of view, many of which differ from one another and none of which provides the inerrant guide to how we should live. . . .

    This is certainly a shift that often occurs when someone with a very strict view of Biblical inspiration is confronted with the facts of Biblical history. But there is a huge amount of spin that is possible in circumstances like this. Discussions of Biblical inspiration, for various reasons, tend to be dominated by extremes. Either one can trust everything in the Bible, or one can trust nothing. Either it is without error on everything, or it has no valid information at all. I’m not accusing Bart Ehrman of taking such extreme views, though he has made a very radical shift in his own appreciation of the Bible.

    I could quite easily say that the Bible is “a very human book, with very human points of view, many of which differ from one another and none of which provides the inerrant guide to how we should live.” Yet at the same time, I regard the Bible as inspired. It seems to me that both fundamentalists and skeptics have a similar assumption about what a divinely inspired book must contain. Both agree that it must contain accurate information and precise instructions. The debate between them is over whether the Bible provides any such thing. But why should we assume that God wanted to provide us with that particular type of guide?

    Christians place strong emphasis on 1 Timothy 3:16 and “God-breathed (theopneustos).” In fact, in any discussion I’m involved with on Biblical inerrancy someone is sure to quote that text in support of the doctrine of inerrancy. Once they have quoted this verse, which they seem to think I will never have read, they look hopefully at me, assuming they have made their point. When I fail to see support for inerrancy in the text, I can see that they conclude that I must surely be a very perverse man. (In this paragraph I use the term “inerrancy” in the very loose form in which it is normally used. The Chicago Statement is generally a bit more nuanced.)

    But where is the definition of what happens to a speech, a text, or any form of message when it is breathed by God. A partial analogy might be found in Genesis 2:7, when God breathes the breath of life into the first human. The result was that the person became a living person, but Genesis 3 very quickly suggests that the man did not become inerrant.

    I tend to take my clue on this from he remainder of 2 Timothy 3:16, which tells us that the scripture is useful for training, rebuke, correcting faults, and training in righteousness. The Bible can be all of those things without also being inerrant. In fact, we regularly manage to live our lives and learn new things while using resources that are not totally without error.

    Of course a more nuanced view of inerrancy is normally included in doctrinal statements. That version applies only to the autographs. Ehrman mentions this issue a few times. The following question comes from page 11:

    Even so, what is one to make of all these differences? If one wants to insist that God inspired the very words of scripture, what would be the point if we don’t have the very words of scripture?

    While I agree with Elgin Hushbeck that we truly have substantially recovered the original text of the New Testament, I think that Ehrman’s question is relevant. Why must the autographs be inerrant, if we do not possess them?

    Let me illustrate. (I discuss this in greater detail in the tract What is the Word of God?.) God speaks to a prophet, the prophet verbalizes the message, a scribe copies the message at the prophet’s dictation, then other scribes copy that. Not all of these steps occur every time, but that is a good general view. Let’s assume that God speaks the message correctly. If the prophet errs in hearing the message, then we have a problem with inerrancy. If a scribe to whom the prophet is dictating the message errs in hearing or writing, we have a problem with inerrancy. But once the text has gotten to paper, papyrus, or parchment, there is no problem if the next copyist makes an error.

    Why? This certainly seems like the view of a textual society, where the written form is given priority. But no matter where the error is introduced, the result for us is the same–an error in the text as we possess it. And as most supporters of Biblical inerrancy would agree, we can get everything necessary from the Bible as we have it. So why worry about the state of autographs that we have never had?

    Thus I think textual criticism itself makes it pretty clear that one can deal with a text in which there are errors, and in which we have doubtful readings in those few cases where the evidence is not extremely strong.

  • Amazon.com UnSpun Best English Bible Translation

    I discovered Amazon.com UnSpun (and wrote a bit about it here) and of course immediately located a list of the best English Bible translations. Here it is:

    Update: I am going along with Peter Kirk as posted on the Better Bibles Blog and replacing this poll with the one he suggested.

    I think it would be interesting to get the votes of many of the well-informed folks in the blogosphere to vote on this one and perhaps change the rankings a bit. I suspect that with the votes, there’s a great deal of simple name recognition involved in the current rankings.

    So those of us who have nothing better to do than vote in useless polls–how about we give it a try? I notice the CEV and the TNIV, two of my favorites, are way down the list.

    PS: Actually I would note that the CEV, TNIV, and REB were significantly improved in ranking by my votes.

  • Response to Misquoting Jesus – I

    I have finally started reading Misquoting Jesus, by Bart Ehrman. It came in about a week ago via interlibrary loan, and I have now gotten through the introduction and the first chapter. Unlike my response to The God Delusion, I’m not going to post all sections at once, but rather I’ll just post my reactions a chapter at a time.

    Before I get started, however, I want to mention that Elgin Hushbeck, Jr. has joined the list of speakers at Running Toward the Goal, a 5 minute +/- audio podcast sponsored by Pacesetters Bible School, Inc.. Elgin will focus on Christian apologetics and chose to give his response to Misquoting Jesus in his first podcast. There is also a link to the transcript there. Elgin accepts the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, as he mentions in the show, so he will have a somewhat different perspective than I do, though his response is surprisingly similar.

    I read the introduction to Misquoting Jesus with a great deal of empathy. Going into college, I was in many ways where Bart Ehrman was. I benefited from three important differences, however. First, though my parents were very conservative in their own beliefs, they did not discourage me from questioning. Second, I had already seen the number of manuscript variations by looking at the New Testament in the old Nestle-Aland text (25th edition, I believe) that I started Greek with. Third, my undergraduate professors gave great attention to dealing with questions that arise because of the differences.

    Amongst my own experiences I would count a time when I was 12 years old and became concerned with just how one could prove that the Bible was true. This happened some time during Sabbath School (I was raised Seventh-day Adventist), and by the end of church I had found my solution–Bible prophecy. We could be certain the Bible was true because of prophecy. I proudly proclaimed my solution to my Dad who affirmed that prophecy was important, but pointed out that there were ways to get around prophecy. The bottom line was faith, he told me.

    In college I recall facing question after question. I confronted a young earth when studying the texts of the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11. I located the paper I wrote at that time when going through my files recently. The contents are hardly stunning, and my conclusions appear somewhat timid to me now, but I was raised on the 6000 years period–no 6-10 thousand variation for me–and the textual differences were the first break with the young earth view for me.

    So dealing with manuscript variations has played a huge role in my own development as it did for Dr. Ehrman, even though the outcome was not the same. I would note that I did leave the Seventh-day Adventist Church out of seminary, and didn’t return to church, now as a United Methodist, until 12 years later, but that didn’t have to do with doubts about the Bible. I was liberal enough by the time I was working on the MA degree to have some difficulties at the SDA Theological Seminary. They were rather minor problems, to be sure, and I managed to resolve them quite reasonably, but they made it clear to me that not everyone was primarily interested in finding the truth, particularly in Biblical studies.

    Since I do not believe in Biblical inerrancy myself, and have not almost from the time I formed a conscious view of inspiration, the fact that there are variations in the wording is not that major of an issue. (Note that while my views of a number of issues were altered as I discovered manuscript variations, I had not truly formulated my own view of inspiration before I was a college student. It was all sort of ad hoc.) But there is a certain shock in discovering the actual history of the Bible if one hasn’t spent serious time thinking about it.

    This is very important for Christian education. I think that we are wasting most of our available educational time in the church in the mistaken view that if we have reaffirmed the doctrines enough times as a young person is growing up, they will stay in the church. Of course at the same time, many church leaders complain about the number of young people who leave the church when they get to college. The shock, in my view, is not how many leave, it’s that any of them stay.

    The time is past when one can get by with providing only part of the truth. It was never right, but with the internet and the available of information generally, any young person who is reasonably curious will have access to all the negative information that the Sunday School teacher may be trying to avoid.

    I realize it seems like a risk to expose children and young people to other religions, but a faith that cannot survive information is not going to be much of a faith. I have blogged on this before here.

    Since I have already read chapter 1, I believe I can fairly confidently say that I will post a few thoughts on it (canonization) tomorrow.

  • Carrying the TNIV

    I started carrying the TNIV recently. I had been using it only in electronic form to do some studying and comparison, but I decided to see how it would work as a “carrying” Bible. That means I take it to church, Sunday School, study groups, and I keep it at hand during my study time in the morning.

    Since I study primarily from the texts in their original languages, that doesn’t mean that the TNIV has become my study Bible. But it does mean that I follow scripture readings in church with it, and that I will read from it as appropriate in various groups.

    Now this isn’t a review, nor is it a statistical study, nor is it a careful comparison of the TNIV to its source languages. This is just a personal “feel,” a general impression I’ve gotten over the last two weeks.

    This value of this version has been completely lost in the smoke of the controversies about it. There is no reason for this to be a controversial Bible!

    I can easily follow scripture readings when my pastor reads from the NIV. I find many less instances in which a single translation choice tends to obscure other possibilities. I don’t think it leans substantially more toward the dynamic equivalence end of the scale than did the NIV. I have yet to find a significant theological point put in jeopardy by differences in TNIV renderings.

    The single reason this version has come under criticism is the issue of gender accuracy. None of the other issues would come to the fore if it were not for that one. And the TNIV is not all that far to the “gender neutral” end of the spectrum. The problem is simply that the NIV has been the Bible for many conservative evangelicals, and a certain percentage of them object to gender accurate renderings. Everything else follows from that position.

    I’ve written elsewhere about all those issues (search Threads or this blog for TNIV to see more information). Here I just want to give my impression, which is simply that if a certain small number of theologians who have “persecuted [the TNIV] without a cause” (with apologies to Psalm 119:161), and that if they had not done so, the TNIV would have taken an honored place amongst those versions that have helped advanced scriptural knowledge.

    I hope that this can happen even now.

  • Continually Translating the Message

    A post-Easter meditation.

    Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the curtaine, that we may looke into the most Holy place; that remooveth the cover of the well, that wee may come by the water, even as Jacob rolled away the stone from the mouth of the well, by which meanes the flockes of Laban were watered. Indeede without translation into the vulgar tongue, the unlearned are but like children at Jacob’s well (which was deepe) without a bucket or some thing to draw with: or as that person mentioned by Esay (Isaiah), to whom when a sealed book was delivered, with this motion, Reade this, I pray thee, he was faine to make this answere, I cannot, for it is sealed. (The Translators to the Reader, King James Version)

    I thought of this passage when I read this easter post on Monastic Mumblings, which points at the empty tomb and parallels it with the empty throne between the cherubim above the ark. There are many minor points about idolatry in the Bible, but the major one is simply this: You cannot represent God by anything whatsoever in the material world.

    We are no longer all that anxious to create images of God, though we sometimes do head in that direction. But it is not that common for someone to decide that they need a statue of God himself to grace a shrine in their house, for example. But we still seek after images. Now these images are not necessarily material. They are things that we have created in our minds, ways in which we imagine that God must act, or how God must look, or where God must be. I’ve blogged on this before, suggesting that we need to constantly have our images of God shattered by encounters with the divine.

    The connection with the empty tomb really struck me. The disciples saw the empty tomb. They saw the risen Christ, but it was up to them to translate that message for the remainder of the world. The gospel commission calls on us to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19). Now in order to make disciples of Jesus, we have to somehow present the message of Jesus and do so in a way that will be understood.

    On the one hand this relates to Bible translation, and the constant search for better ways to communicate the message in translation. It relates to preaching, and the ways in which we find better ways of proclaiming that message. It also relates to living, because the only way some people will ever understand the message is if they see it in the life of a disciple.

    Translation is not something that happens once in a while when a committee gets together to translate the words of scripture. It happens any time one witnesses to Jesus with the power of the Holy Spirit.

    Translation is a continual process for all of us.

  • Isaiah 64:6 – Menstrual Cloth

    I was planning to leave my comparisons with just Isaiah 63, as I believe that continued comparison charts will largely show the same thing. I’m still reading the translations side by side, and if something seems different I will bring it up.

    But today in reading Isaiah 64 in several translations I came across Isaiah 64:6 (5 in Hebrew) in which the phrase “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (KJV) occurs. Now having just read this in Hebrew I was reminded that the literal translation of this is “menstrual cloths” or something similar. These cloths would be unclean, as was the woman in her menstrual period. One extended discussion of the issue of uncleanness can be found in Leviticus 15:19-33.

    In the passage, there is clearly meaning in the fact that these are not merely dirty pieces of cloth. For example, had someone washed their hands and dried them on these cloths after digging ditches all day, by modern standards we might call them dirty. If I repair the car and then wipe the grease on a rag, we would escalate that to filthy rag. But the menstrual cloth implied ritual impurity, however odd that might seem to us today.

    So having read the TNIV translation:

    All of us have become like one who is unclean,
    and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
    we all shrivel up like a leaf,
    and like the wind our sins sweep us away. — Isaiah 64:6 (TNIV)

    Now this doesn’t disturb me much. In the course of the verse they have gotten in the words “unclean” and “filthy” and I would assume that the TNIV translators, along with all the modern versions I checked (quite a number), simply don’t think that “menstrual cloth” is going to be meaningful to modern translators.

    But when I turn to a translation that prides itself on word for word renderings, that “seeks as far as possible to catpure the precise wording of the original text” (ESV Preface), I thought perhaps things would be different. But here the desire for literal translation escaped the ESV translators:

    We have all become like one who is unclean,
    and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. — Isaiah 64:6 (ESV)

    Now I definitely think “polluted” is better than “filthy” in the context. But we have still replaced one metaphor in Hebrew with a completely different English expression. The Message carries this the furthest, using “grease-stained rags,” which does not reflect the basic idea all that well, but has the advantage of conjuring an immediate image in English.

    Though I found only one modern version, the Complete Jewish Bible, that uses any word referring to menstrual cloths (menstrual rags), I did find that ancient translators used that. The LXX, Vulgate, and the Peshitta, all translate with something that includes the original literal meaning in its semantic range. Interestingly enough, the Isaiah Targum, according to the text I have available, uses an even better euphemism than any of the English versions, “cast off garment” or I might prefer the translation “garment thrown far away” (Stenning, The Targum of Isaiah, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949).

    So is there an element of meaning in the actual Biblical wording here or not? Is it possible to convey that meaning accurately in a literal translation? Such a literal translation does not appear common in modern translations.