Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Bible Translation

  • The Clear Word Bible: Reversing the Meaning

    Update (12/28/06): There’s a good review of the Clear Word Bible on Thinking Christian titled Book Review: “The Clear Word”. This review goes into much greater breadth and depth on this book that is not even truly a paraphrase of the Bible.

    Since I regularly come to the defense of various Bible translations some folks may be wondering what would annoy me about a Bible translation. Amongst the generally available translations, I really do think that the vast majority are generally accurate. Readability varies widely. A number of passages in The Living Bible concern me, and generally I don’t recommend the acknowledge paraphrases for serious study, though I do recommend dynamic equivalance translations for such study, though some people still call them paraphrases.

    But the Clear Word Bible, paraphrased by Jack Blanco, and published by the Review and Herald Publishing Association seems to cross the line in some instances. My problems with this translation are not due to Seventh-day Adventist doctrine, but rather to Blanco’s apparent softening of the text.

    Many of the notes are explanatory. For example, Matthew 20:16, which reads literally, “Thus the last shall be first, and the first, last” becomes:

    That’s the way it’ll be when God’s harvest ends. The last will be first, and the first will be last. Many are called to work for God, but not all of them can be saved. Some of God’s workers gladly do what they can with no thought of pay. Others work very hard for God but think only of what’s in it for them.

    This is clearly beyond even paraphrase or a cultural transposition, such as the Cotton Patch Bible. It’s substantial commentary added to the text. To be fair, Blanco does indicate in the preface that this is a paraphrase and that it should not be used “for in-depth study or for public reading in churches.” It is difficult to limit what people do with paraphrases, however, as many tend to view them just as another Bible unless they have some knowledge of translation. Few people think about the specific use of a Bible–they just like them or they don’t.

    (more…)

  • 1 Timothy 2:12 – Assume Authority

    The following quote is taken from the fifth part of Adrian Warnock’s interview with Dr. Wayne Grudem. I want to note some principles related to the translation and interpretation of this verse.

    In the following I identify sections by numbers in parentheses, as in (1), following an emphasized phrase. This is to prevent breaking the quote into tiny portions.

    To take one example: in 1 Timothy 2:12 the TNIV adopts a highly suspect and novel translation (1) that gives the egalitarian side everything they have wanted for years in a Bible translation (2). It reads, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man” (italics added). If churches adopt this translation, the debate over women’s roles in the church will be over, because women pastors and elders can just say, “I’m not assuming authority on my own initiative; it was given to me by the other pastors and elders.” (3) Therefore any woman could be a pastor or elder so long as she does not take it upon herself to “assume authority.” Then in the footnotes to 1 Timothy 2:12 the TNIV also introduces so many alternative translations that the verse will just seem confusing and impossible to understand (4). So it is no surprise that egalitarian churches are eager to adopt the TNIV.

    Now to respond briefly.

    1. My electronic edition reads “have authority,” but the version on Bible Gateway has the reading as Dr. Grudem quotes it. I’m afraid I don’t see what is so highly suspect about this reading. There seems to be an agenda here to read more into the phrase “assume authority” than would normally be read into that phrase. That translation is provided also by BDAG. Based simply on the English I don’t see the huge difference between “assume authority” and “have authority,” nor how that could make a substantial difference in the interpretation of this verse in context. Having said all of that, I would personally probably translate “have authority” or “exercise authority.”
    2. Following on my first point, I fail to see how this particular translation excites the egalitarian side. Personally I’m comfortable with “exercise authority” but I’m not disturbed, nor am I overwhelmingly pleased by “assume authority.” Let’s look at the translation from two other translations Dr. Grudem cited as gender neutral:
      • I do not let women teach men or have authority over them. Let them listen quietly. (NLT)
      • permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man;she is to keep silent. (NRSV)

      Wow! Us liberals sure aren’t very careful when we try to obscure the masculine truth of the Bible, are we? Since I use the NRSV in teaching, I guess I just miss this one!

    3. Please see point #1. There is a severe problem even with careful exegesis that does not fully take context into account, including scriptural trajectories
    4. My electronic edition has two alternate translations. The one on Bible Gateway has three, though only two of those refer to the Greek word translated “assume authority.” I don’t know what sort of congregations Dr. Grudem works with if having two alternative translations in the footnotes results in confusion.

    In all, this appears to me to be a rhetorically excessive complaint about the TNIV. This passage (not so much this specific verse) has plenty of interpretational issues in it, but the TNIV translation does not appear to add to them.

    [Update 12/12/06 14:53 CST] Peter Kirk has posted a number of deleted comments on his blog. Since those comments relate directly to the material in this post, and in some cases are clearer than what I’ve said, I want to call the attention of my readers to them.

  • I’m the Guy Wayne Grudem Warned You About

    Well, not really. He warned you about some other, much more important guy. But I agree with the guy Wayne Grudem warned you about! Hey! Come on down to the bottom of the slippery slope! The water’s fine!

    Adrian Warnock’s interview with Wayne Grudem continues with its fifth part, Must a Woman Always Remain Silent in Church?. It is at times like these that I begin to wonder why I’m involved. Of course, the answer to that is that I advocate continued communication, however distant, between liberals and evangelicals, and in my view even more importantly between liberals and charismatics. For that reason alone, I read Adrian’s blog, regularly consult conservative commentaries, and generally read more conservative literature than liberal. But when the title of a post asks whether women should always remain silent in church, I am reminded that there is a great gulf present in the way we think and approach subjects. One may hope that the great gulf is not fixed, but one fears otherwise.

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  • Does Gordon Fee Discard Part of the Bible?

    In the third part of his interview series, Adrian Warnock makes the following comment in asking a question of Dr. Wayne Grudem:

    I was impressed by your compassion and fairness in the introduction of your new book expressed towards your egalitarian colleagues who you mention by name.

    At a later point, talking about Dr. Gordon Fee, Wayne Grudem says:

    I doubt that people understand the full implications of a move like Gordon Fee’s in his commentary on 1 Corinthians when he basically says that 1 Corinthians 14:33

  • Textual Critism on 1 Corinthians 14:34-35

    I’ve posted something on this over on my Threads blog, titled Does Gordon Fee Discard Part of the Bible?. That post is a response to part of a interview with Wayne Grudem by Adrian Warnock.

    I think it will be of interest to readers of this blog for the textual criticism aspects, though less so for the controversial theological aspects.

  • Can a Translation be Completely Accurate

    There’s an interesting thread in the Religion Forum right now, What is a Biblical Translation?, which goes into the issue of whether one can create a 100% accurate Bible translation.

    Of course, the answer is “no.” If you want 100% accuracy, you need to go to the source language. But even there you bring yourself into the process, and because you bring yourself, a fallible, finite human (unless you’re special), into the process, your reading will never be 100% accurate.

    In a later message, one member asks the question of whether God could make a translation 100% accurate. I sense that all theists are supposed to automatically respond with “yes!” But I disagree. Only by changing the very nature of language could God create a 100% accurate translation. Only by changing the very nature of humans, making us non-finite and not just sinless, could God make us understand such an accurate translation with 100% accuracy.

    The bottom line is this: If you use a translation, you will indeed lose something. I’ve commented before about the need to compare translations and be very careful with context in order to alleviate this problem. But none of those options are equal to knowing how to read the source languages.

    But beyond this, we must face the fact that no matter how versed one becomes in the source languages one is still human, still fallible, and still well removed by history and culture from the writers of the source. We have a drive to find the one and only totally accurate revelation, but we really have no mechanism for understanding such a thing. We see dimly in a mirror, and we’re going to have to get used to the humbling reality of living with that.

    If you comment, please go to the thread there.

  • Gail Riplinger and Isaiah 26:3

    This is in the “I just couldn’t resist” category. Stating that Gail Riplinger’s “New Age Bible Versions” is poorly researched is to cast aspersions on shoddy research everywhere. Today as I was preparing a post on Isaiah 26 for this blog (which will be in the next entry), I recalled her use of Isaiah 26:3, so I took a quick look on the internet to see if there was anything more recent.

    (There’s no particular reason to actually track Riplinger’s work in any detail. The errors are too widespread and pervasive to merit serious discussion.)

    For those who may not be aware, in a chart (she loves charts) on page 455 of my edition (identified as 5th printing) Riplinger quotes the first part of Isaiah 26:3 in the KJV and the NASB. She then supplies a period where there is actually a comma in both versions. This prevents one from noticing either that the verse is only half quoted, or that the point of her chart is completely destroyed if the entire verse is quoted.

    Her claim is that the NASB is saying that it doesn’t matter who one trusts in, that it is the steadfastness of mind that results in peace. She goes so far as to claim that people would not seek psychologists so much if the translators of the NASB had not translated as they do.

    Now look at the two translations of the full verse, side by side:

    NASB KJV
    “The steadfast of mind You will keep in perfect peace,
    Because he trusts in You.    		 Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.

    Now notice that the claim that the “steadfastness of mind” is somehow presented as adequate for perfect peace is completely false. The fact of dependence on God is made clear by two factors: 1) God is the one who keeps the person in perfect peace, and 2) the reason for the peace is that the person trusts in God. Of course these very plain statements are removed in Riplinger’s deceptive chart.

    Now on the internet today I find her response to White. This isn’t terribly recent, but it just caught my attention. The response is just as deceitful as the original:

    White hopes his readers are as weak in grammar, syntax and theology as he is. He tells easily noted outright lies, which only the “simple” (Rom. 16:18) will swallow. He begins his lambast, storming:

    “[T]he rest of the verse actually contains the ‘key words’ she alleges are missing!…This kind of actual miscitation of the modern versions is rampant throughout the text of her work.”

    If White can find the missing words “on thee” in that verse in his NASB, I’ll give him $1 million dollars. He is lying, the rest of the verse does NOT “actually contain the key words she alleges are missing!” His accusations fall under the category of “false allegations” (not “fair comment”) in the courts.

    Actually, as I’ve pointed out, those words are there. But Riplinger apparently believes that by blustering and using strong terminology she can intimidate people into missing them. Of course they are not in her chart. But they are in the NASB.

    After ranting about psychology in the church (you can read the whole thing here), Riplinger continues:

    One cannot pretend, as White does, that because the words “in Thee” are a part of the next subject (he), verb (trusteth), and prepositional modifier (in Thee), that they have any grammatical connection to the earlier sentence and its syntax. The KJV has BOTH “on thee” in part one AND “in thee” in part two. The NASB omits one, thereby changing the meaning. White misses, not only the grammatical differences and hence the factual differences here, but he misses the basic biblical distinction between the heart, which trusts in God, and the mind which thinks on God. The “because” phrase tells WHY it works; it does not tell WHAT works.

    Considering how much she rants about White’s English comprehension, Riplinger should perhaps study a bit of literature herself. In poetry, words can pull double duty, but even that is not the point here. The NASB correctly translates the Hebrew phrase “in you” precisely the number of times it occurs. It carries additional freight in this verse because of the Hebrew parallelism, but that is very clear in any of the major versions.

    This is a case of misrepresentation, and that misrepresentation is stubbornly maintained down to the present by Riplinger. James White is correct in his analysis of the passage.

    Note: Updated 3/30/08 to place blockquotes around this section. I respond to the issue of italics elsewhere. These words are quoted.

    The KJV uses italics when the theological sense of a verse demands the insertion of English words to accurately complete a Hebrew thought. It is the only translation that is honest in this way. Both the NIV and NASB insert 1000’s of words, but give the reader no clue as to which words are inserted. One NIV editor’s article “When Literal Is Not Accurate” gives expression to the frequent use (6000 in the NIV) of such insertions.

    The veracity of the italics in the KJV have been proven true to such a degree that this author feels no need to pick them out and set them apart as uninspired. The ten words in italics in 1John 2:23 have since been vindicated by ancient manuscript discoveries. Note the following ‘miraculous’ coincidences:

    * The italics of Ps. 16:8 are quoted by Paul in the Greek text of Acts 2:25.
    * The italics of Is. 65:1 are quoted by Paul in the Greek text of Rom. 10:20.
    * The italics of Ps. 94:11 are quoted by Paul in the Greek text of 1 Cor. 3:20.
    * The italics of Deut. 25:4 are quoted by Paul in the Greek text of 1 Cor. 9:9.
    * The italics of Deut. 8:3 are quoted by Jesus in the Greek text of Matt. 4:4.

    I miscited nothing; my allegations regarding the NASB’s omission are true. White’s wrong again.

    Update 3/30/08: Note that even though I did not respond here at the time I wrote this post, this issue of the use of italics, and the very suggestion that the italics are quoted in Greek is ludicrous.

  • Junia in Romans 16:7

    Suzanne McCarthy has a series of posts on the Better Bibles Blog about the name “Junia” in Romans 16:7. I’ve discuss this before on the Compuserve Religion Forum, but Suzanne covers all the major points. Here posts are, in order:

    List updated to include parts 7-10, written after I posted this.

    I’m writing this for two reasons: First, I want to commend the entire series to you for your reading pleasure and its educational value. This is some good blogging. Second, I want to comment indirectly on this verse and the way we make theology and practice out of Bible passages. I really have nothing to add directly.

    The handling of this text illustrates to me two elements of the way in which we make theology from scripture that are problematic. (Yes, I guess I’m on a 2’s kick today!) I believe that we tend to take the propositional statements of scripture over its narrative, and secondly, we tend to avoid the implications of the cultural context. (For further notes on context, see my essay Understanding Context.)

    Dealing first with the issue of narrative and propositional statements, I do not mean simply that we take passages that present propositions over those that are narrative in nature, for example, taking Galatians over Acts. I mean to say that we take the theological propositions over the narrative background. There is considerable narrative background even in non-narrative passages. For example, in Galatians we have both the theological heart, of the book, and we have some application toward the end. In the first part, Paul is presenting theology, in the last, he is talking behavior. In my seminary class in Galatians, a quarter long study, we never got out of chapter 4. Now I understand that when doing in-depth study, you can’t always cover all the ground you’d like, but is one’s view of the book balanced when you read the heart of the argument but not the conclusion?

    Similarly, you might compare the heart of Galatians to 1 Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians you can get a good deal of narrative by looking just below the surface. What is actually happening in the church in Corinth. Gordon Fee uses the narrative in chapter 11 to note that obviously women were prophesying and praying in church, otherwise why comment on their headgear? He follows this up with his textual arguments that chapter 14:34-35 is an interpolation. (See The First Epistle to the Corinthians in the New International Commentary on the New Testament, pages 699-708. I regard Fee’s comments here as definitive.)

    Romans 16:7 falls into the narrative. It tells us what the church was actually doing, and here we have that exception to the rule that intrudes on one’s comfortable assumptions. The easy thing is to explain this quick reference away so that we can keep our interpretation of other passages about women intact. I must note here that I do see as the only strong reason for rejecting the idea that Junia was an apostle is a preconceived notion that a woman cannot possibly be an apostle. The most probable reading of the text, in my opinion, is that she was.

    And that’s were the other element comes into play–cultural context. We come to the text of scripture, not hearing the text speaking directly to us, but rather listening in on the divine conversation with someone else, in this case God to Paul to the church in Rome. This is true of all of these passages. In the background we have to realize there is a patriarchal society. Now certain people want to make that patriarchal society normative.

    But think of it this way. Supposing that today I write that we need more women active in church leadership. I believe that to be the case. I feel no need of qualifying my statement. Supposing that someone reads my statement 2,000 years from now. Women’s liberation has succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams and extended itself into nightmare. We have a matriarchal society, and men are not permitted in positions of leadership. How will my statement be understood then? It should be understood as irrelevant to the existing situation. Women are in all the positions of leadership, but it could be understood as advocacy of an all female leadership.

    In a patriarchal society, I think we need to look for the exceptions to discover the answer to the question of whether other indications of all male leadership are simply an artefact of the particular culture, or whether they are a moral imperative. In fact, by looking at those exceptions, such as Romans 16:7, I believe we see the church willing to accept female leadership, but not yet ready to push for equality in the church when the church lived in a very unequal society.

    I believe a combination of observing the narrative of scripture and the cultural background will lead us to a more balanced view of church leadership roles.

  • Distinguishing Ideology and Linguistic Differences

    I located a post on Bible translations through the Methodist Blogs Weekly Roundup (for which I thank John the Methodist for his usual good job). The post is Ideology in Translations, but while I certainly believe ideology is involved in translations, I don’t see a battle of liberal vs conservative ideology here, and I also see some potential problems in the understanding of the linguistics involved.

    Conservative Seminarian points to the NIV translation of Genesis 2:19 “had formed,” rather than “formed” as it is in many translations, and seems to believe that this is evidence of bias in the translation committees:

    The difference is that the second one seems to have a time order contradiction to the Genesis 1 story (God made man, then the beasts), while the first one switches the verb tense slightly to make it fit (God made man, and had already made the beasts).

    Now, the professor admits that “had formed” is within the semantic range of the verb (יצר). But apparently, it is invalid to use that even though it makes the most sense within the text.

    . . . [snip]

    Now, the question is, doesn’t this make his determination of the verb form actually the one that has a theological axe to grind? The NIV committee seems to have simply chosen the tense of the verb (of the range of valid choices) that makes the most sense within the text. He wants to choose the one that makes the least sense, which just so happens to coincide with what he likes about the way the Hebrews collected scripture.

    Now I’m not writing this to beat up on Conservative Seminarian. I congratulate him on choosing to attend a liberal seminary and to learn better to defend his point of view. I also congratulate him on challenging any notion his professor might have that he responds to this topic without any ideological concerns. But the references that he provides also argue this largely on the basis of ideology, taking an apologetic approach. Now there’s nothing wrong with an apologetic approach where appropriate, but it works much better when the problems are correctly identified.

    The translations cited here, NIV and NASB, are both very conservative translations. In fact, quite a number of conservative translations support the position of the NASB. A quick list gathered from my Logos software includes CEV, TEV, ASV, ESV, KJV, The Message, NCV, NKJV, NLT, NRSV, YLT. Note that the TNIV continues the NIV translation, and Darby also supports it. From my bookshelves let me add that the JPS Tanakh and HCSB support the translation “formed” while God’s Word translation uses “had formed.” Now please don’t count these versions in order to determine which is the best translation. The question is this: Why do quite a number of conservative translations, such as the NLT, NKJV, ESV, and NASB, not take this easy option, and translate with something that “makes the most sense within the text?”

    There is another problem. One cannot simply take the semantic range of a word and choose whatever particular gloss one prefers in a particular context. One must consider the syntax involved. Now I’m not going to get into the technical details. One of many excellent sources on the topic would be Paul Jouon’s A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, Part Three: Syntax, pp. 389-396. The syntax here–a sequence of uses of the “wayyiqtol” form of the verb–is normally used in Hebrew to portray a series of events in sequence. It is not impossible for the sequence to be broken, but this is not normally the way it would be done. The normal procedure would be to interrupt the sequence with a simple perfect, and then continue with the consecutive presentation until the next break in time.

    There is one excellent way to alter the translation here, and that is to alter the pointing of the Hebrew text, preserving the older consonantal text, but altering the vowel pointings. Thus one could, simply by changing the vowels, produce the past perfect (English term) meaning here, and create the good order. I would note that there is a certain amount of difficulty with that option, in that the next “wayyiqtol” form “brought” would normally also be translated past perfect, which doesn’t fit nearly as well. But it is a workable option.

    And here is the ideological catch. I’ve expressed my ideology in the sentence above, in which I see the vowel pointings of the Hebrew text as having less authority than the consonants. There are many people who would disagree with me, including Orthodox Jews at least. Many conservative scholars are very hesitant to alter the pointing and word spacing of the Massoretic Text without stronger evidence than the fact that it fits better. What they are doing, in fact, is being faithful to their ideology of the sacredness of the text, and putting their best effort at providing an accurate translation of the text they have in front of them ahead of further theological considerations.

    What is clear, I think, from the list of translations on each side of this issue, is that this is not a liberal/conservative issue, however much some particular professor may portray it in that way. It is a linguistic issue on which one’s ideology can impact in a variety of ways.

  • Literary and Artistic Snobbery

    I recall my first college English class when I informed the professor that I was going to write on patriotic elements in the poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson. He made it clear that he would prefer a different author; for some reason Tennyson didn’t match up. He also made it clear he’d prefer a different theme, that he thought patriotic poetry was a less kind of poetry. The kind of battle between my professor and me continued through the semester and even to his critique of the paper (he graded it A-), in which he lamented my espousal of Tennyson’s themes. But I truly appreciated Tennyson and I still do.

    I had a friend who was a musician. His pet peeve with me was my appreciation for Franz Joseph Haydn. My single favorite piece of music of any type and any period is Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in E flat. My favorite oratorio is Haydn’s Creation. Now my friend would allow that those were acceptable music, but I also like Haydn’s concerti and symphonies as well, and he thought those had been produced by cookie cutter. Sorry! I still like them.

    In art, I recall the day that a monument was put up at my alma mater to four students who had been killed in a car accident. I was working as a teaching assistant in a nearby private school, and remarked to my students that it looked to me more like someone had forgotten to haul out the garbage. The great art appreciaters, however, were ready to praise it as a great artistic accomplishment, and I was informed by a few folks that I was horrifyingly irreverent.

    To extend this on literature, an area a bit nearer to my heart, there are a number of “classics” that I simply don’t find all that interesting or useful. In many cases I still regard them as important, simply because they have impacted many people. It just happens I don’t like them. After that first college English class, I was able to avoid further annoyance because of a change in academic requirements. I was allowed to take a course in literature in any major language offered, and I did so in French. Let me note that I didn’t enjoy reading Les Miserables in French or English. In political science I was assigned selections from Dostoevsky. Sorry! Not interested. I read what I had to, and I did find some value in it, but nothing that would make me put it on a “must read” list.

    In fact, I started way back in college calling those “must read” lists “snob lists.” They simply reflect the personal tastes of one particular person, and I see no reason to regard their taste as particularly binding on me. Now I would note that if you can’t read the books on their list, or you haven’t tested the waters to see what you actually like and will benefit from, then perhaps you ought to work your way through a few. Note that I have read a bit of Dostoevsky and substantial amounts of Victor Hugo (the latter in French), and thus didn’t lay them aside without some consideration.

    Now I hear the same sort of thing in terms of Bible translations. One should read the KJV because it’s superior literature. But why is the KJV superior literature. Even if I regard it as an excellent translation for its time and place and a major achievement, which I do, why should I now regard it as a superior translation? Literature professors and literary snobs will point to superior elements in its language and style, but superior for whom? I have never even been able to get these literary elitists to discuss the objective basis at all. It is, to them, simply obvious that what they appreciate in literature is superior. So what if other readers don’t really comprehend any of this additional value. It’s still superior.

    And I can agree with them in one sense. For English professors and literary elitists, it probably is. I have to confess to appreciating the style of the KJV. But I have found that modern readers just don’t understand it. Even many of those who profess to love it and to think it’s the greatest, aren’t actually getting any value from those stylistic features. The passage may be wondrously translated, but it’s wondrously translated into something that simply flies right past most readers.

    I could suggest that they all learn how to appreciate that sort of literature, get to know the vocabulary and the archaic grammar. After all, it’s also helpful in reading Shakespeare (another author who doesn’t make it to the top of my reading list). But my question is this: In today’s world is learning 17th century English a priority for my children and grandchildren?

    The answer is, absolutely not! I would like them to be able to express themselves well in contemporary English and communicate with friends and neighbors. I would like them to be able to read well. I would like them to have the technical knowledge necessary for the modern world, especially computer literacy. Liberal arts are simply losing a race with time. It’s not that the goals of liberal arts are bad, it’s that culture is growing and changing, and there are lots of works of contemporary literature that need to be examined and read, but educators want to spend their time on a snob list of “things every literate person should have read.”

    We would get much further in teaching our children to read if we dealt with the more important things–the things involved in current living first. That obviously includes reading and writing. After that, those who have the time and inclination can proceed to the literary antecedents of the things they deal with. I know that the literary crowd will bemoan the fate of those people who are not well acquainted with Shakespeare, or who don’t know the King James Bible, but history is moving forward and there are going to be allusions in current writing to things most folks have never read. One of the wonders of the internet is that we can look such things up quickly.

    In practical terms, I’m saying that I’m going to read what I consider important, and I’m going to appreciate the art, literature and music that I appreciate (logicians, get off!), and when it comes time to vote on budgets, I’m going to be voting for people who are very practical and down to earth about their selection. (Warning: Don’t try to get rid of the arts; but consider contemporary material right alongside all those wonderful classics.)