Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Christianity

  • Textual Criticism – Briefly

    Note: This is a second excursus in my series on Biblical criticism. When I begin my next entry, dealing with the parable of the sower, I will begin by discussing textual issues and applying these principles.

    I was encouraged to make a few notes on textual criticism after I read the collection of essays The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research. This reminded me of some of the issues of textual criticism that tend to give non-scholars problems in reading the Bible.

    Non-scholars usually encounter textual criticism when there is a note in their Bible that says something like, “Other ancient authorities read . . .” or “mss . . .” followed by an alternate reading for a passage. Sometimes this starts with brackets being put around a block of text. John 7:53 through 8:11, for example, is bracketed in my NRSV Bible with the note “The most ancient authorities lack 7:53-8:11; . . .” The question many laypeople have is what are these ancient authorities, and why should they care?

    Textual criticism is simply the study of the various manuscripts, or witnesses, to the text of the Bible in order to determine the text that is closest to the autograph. “Manuscripts” here may include Greek manuscripts, lectionaries, quotes in church fathers, or versions in other ancient languages. For textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, some of the witnesses are different, as are some of the details of practice, but in general they are quite similar. In addition, many scholars are also interested in other stages of the text. They recognize that while we use the manuscripts to determine the original text, for the person who made the manuscript, and those who used it, that was their Bible. It wasn’t a stage leading to something else. They would use it as their scripture. We can learn something about them from the way that manuscript was made and copied.

    But for this entry, I’m focusing on how we work to discover the text closest to the autograph. First, no two ancient manuscripts are completely alike. Thus we must do textual criticism in some sense before we can have a Bible. We might just decide to grab one manuscript, presuming it’s complete, and use that one, but even that is a decision about the text. In practice, translators depend on textual critics, who produce editions of the text. An edition is basically a text produced by the editors’ best conclusions about the text of each passage. Usually, it will have a critical apparatus, which is simply a listing of the other variants, or options that could have been chosen.

    The textual critic is presented with two types of evidence:

    1. External evidence – the manuscripts, quotations, and so forth, that are available to him. From these he can get a picture of all the different readings for the passage he is working on.

    2. Internal evidence – the things that are likely to have happened in copying. We know from observing how people copy that certain errors are more likely. If copying is done by ear, with one person reading a manuscript, and the other writing down what he hears, similar sounding words may be confused. Letters that look similar can be confused when copying by eye, or the eye can skip over from one word to anther that looks much like it. This can result either in duplicating part of the text or in omitting part of it.

    There are some simple rules for this. In general, in evaluating external evidence, an older manuscript is better than a newer one, simply because it is likely that it has not been through as many generations of copying. You can see that a more precise rule would be to look for how many times a manuscript has been copied, i.e. how many generations it has been through. Unfortunately, we don’t usually know that for sure. On average, however, an older manuscript will have been through less generations.

    Internal evidence is more slippery. Here are some of the basic rules:

    a. Choose the more difficult reading, provided it is not nonsense. Basically, if a scribe corrected a passage, it was probably from something he did not understand to something he did.

    b. Choose the shorter reading. This is based on the notion that scribes generally tending to add rather than to omit. This has been called into question, however, by James R. Royse, “Scribal Tendencies in the Transmission of the Text of the New Testament” in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research. He cites studies that have found that scribes tended to leave out more than they added. It would be easy to think this is more important than it is, but remember that each of these rules is simply one piece of evidence in the whole puzzle.

    c. Choose a reading that agrees with an author’s style. We know something about how Paul wrote. If a reading is substantially different, it might be an error.

    d. Choose the reading that best explains the others. One reading may create an error that another one corrects. The one that motivates the correction must be earlier than the correction.

    You can see that internal evidence is much more subjective, but it is often the only way to choose various readings.

    This is a very short introduction. I will comment further as I examine textual issues in the passages I use for examples in this series.

    For more information see my book What’s in a Version?. For more information specifically on textual criticism, see my review of The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research. In that review I link to some more basic volumes as well.

    [Updated January 18, 2015 to correct links to my book review of The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research.]

  • Dating the Book of Daniel

    Note: This is a small excursus in my series giving an overview of Biblical criticism. In this entry I want to apply some of the material I discussed about authorship and dating to the book of Daniel. Next, I will write an additional entry on methods of textual criticism in general, and then I will continue my overview of the method by working through the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-9/Mark 4:1-9/Luke 8:4-8) applying the methodologies I’ve been discussing. Then I’ll discuss the individual methodologies in a bit more detail, and then look at Isaiah 24-27 as a block to discuss how they are applied.

    In this entry I’m going to focus on the arguments as presented by Alexander Di Lella in the Anchor Bible volume The Book of Daniel. I intend to return to the book of Daniel a number of times as I discuss Biblical criticism and other issues of Biblical interpretation, and I expect to discuss dating further as well, but Di Lella makes an essentially conservative argument for the late dating of the book of Daniel. He is also a bit more respectful of arguments for an early date than are many critical scholars, though he does reject an early date unequivocally.

    If you are unacquainted with general issues of dating in Daniel, please read my entry Determining Date and Authorship, in which I discuss the basics of how a Biblical book would be dated, and also make reference specifically to the book of Daniel. There are two major views on dating Daniel, and several compromises between these views. First, there is the view that the book contains narrative history in its stories, and that it should be dated according to its internal chronology. This has generally been the conservative view of this book. This puts it in the 6th century BCE, and therefore sees the prophetic passages as definite and quite accurate predictions of the future. The second major view, which now has the overwhelming support of the scholarly community other than conservatives (and some conservatives as well) is that the book was written during or just before the time of Antiochus Epiphanes (175-164 BCE), king of Seleucia, and that the majority of the prophecy in it is retrospective rather than predictive. Depending on the details of dating and authorship in this second view, some of the final elements of each prophecy may be predictive in nature.

    Though I don’t intend to present my own views on Daniel at any length in this entry as I’m interested in methodology here, I will note that I would reject the idea that one can a priori reject the early date because such a date would involve predictive prophecy. Indeed Di Lella does not argue that the predictive element makes the early date impossible, though some scholars would. Norman Porteous, for example, in the Old Testament Library commentary Daniel, pages 169-170 comments on the point at which the book turns to genuine prophecy (in his view Daniel 11:21-45), in which he sees an inaccurate prediction of the death of Antiochus Epiphanes. Thus, the majority of the apparent predictions in the book, in his view, are accurate, but once we arrive at genuine prediction, it is inaccurate.

    Di Lella, on the other hand, makes the following statement: “. . . it should be emphasized that in no way at all does the argument presented above [which I will discuss below-HN] impugn or even call into question the sacredness, authority, and inerrancy of the Book of Daniel which are accepted here without question as truths of the Christian faith” (p. 54). Since I do not accept the doctrine of inerrancy, I have a hard time judging this, but this is the first commentary on Daniel that I have read that both affirms inerrancy and also a late date.

    Let me summarize the basic arguments, and then look at how they can be evaluated. Let me repeat that I’m not trying to present my own view on dating the book of Daniel, but rather a general set of arguments (using Di Lella in the Anchor Bible [AB] as model), and how they might be evaluated. I will present my own set of arguments in a future entry.

    1. Language – AB suggests imperial Aramaic, 700-200 BCE, and more specifically later than the Aramaic of the Elephantine Papyri (late 5th century BCE).

    2. Internal chronology – AB rejects the internal chronology of the book on the grounds that there are extensive historical errors that make it difficult to take seriously. The errors include the date of Daniel’s exile, which does not fit any known siege of Jerusalem, and actually comes a year before Nebuchadnezzar’s accession, the presence of the Median empire in the sequence of four empires in the book’s prophecies, the madness of Nebuchadnezzar for seven years (Daniel 4) for which there is no space available in the known history of Nebuchadnezzar. Di Lella would reject moving this to Nabonidus, who is known historically to have suffered a period of madness on the fascinating grounds of inerrancy; such a correction would save the outline of the story, but not the precise setting. Darius the Mede is not identifiable as an historical character, and thus the chronology related to his reign must also be rejected, along with the entire Median kingdom. It is precisely because of these historical errors that Di Lella rejects the sixth century dating. They convince him that the genre is not history, but rather edifying stories accompanied by apocalyptic.

    3. Externally, Daniel is quoted by I Maccabees (c. 100 BCE), but is not mentioned in the section of Ben Sira, on praise of the fathers (44:1-50:21) in which he mentions Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the minor prophets as a group, but not Daniel. This seems to comfortably bracket the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-164).

    4. Given the interpretation AB espouses of the apocalyptic portions of the book, the predictions lead nicely into the time of Antiochus and end there.

    Now this short entry is getting rather long, but I do need to comment on some of the arguments.

    1. The language is an interesting argument, and in fact it first caught my attention as an argument in favor of an earlier date. Porteous (p. 13) describes the Aramaic as “late” and states it is not earlier than the 3rd century. (His copyright date is 1965.) The AB volume copyright date is 1978. Why is this significant? Because much evidence has been discovered since then, including the Genesis Apocryphon discovered amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls. Desmond Ford summarizes the linguistic evidence in his commentary (Daniel), pp. 31-33. That dating evidence is clearly in view in the AB comments on the language, which are much less precise, as they should be. (One of his major citations is Gleason Archer, in a book I do not have. I have it on request from interlibrary loan and will likely comment further once I have it in hand.)

    2. Internation chronology is much harder to deal with. I’m simply going to comment here that your understanding of the internal chronology is heavily dependent on your understanding of the prophecies of the book as a whole. For example, until I read Porteous’s commentary when I was in graduate school (1980), I was unacquainted with the view that the Median Empire formed part of the sequence of Daniel 2 & 7. Now that may be mostly an indication of my own ignorance, but it does show that one can’t assume that interpretation, and then use it for dating, without providing support. The AB does, indeed, provide support for that view, but before you accept the argument in terms of dating, make certain that you accept the arguments that underlie that point. In addition, note that a number of solutions to historical difficulties in Daniel are apparently excluded by Di Lella’s belief in inerrancy. For example, I’ve already noted the possibility of moving Daniel 4 to Nabonidus rather than Nebuchadnezzar. Is that a valid approach? That is another topic. Here I’m simply noting that it is a possibility that’s excluded.

    3. One should be concerned about the possibility of an argument from silence. But Di Lella is not guilty of such an argument here. That Ben Sira does not mention Daniel in his list is significant, in that it indicates that it may be possible that Ben Sira did not know of Daniel. If Ben Sira mentioned Daniel, of course, we could be certain that the book was extant at that time. As it is, the more convinced you are that Ben Sira was trying to be exhaustive in his list, the more likely you are to accept that passage as evidence that Ben Sira did not, in fact, know about Daniel. It cannot, however, prove it. Note that this does put some tension on the language evidence. The latest date for the language is suggested at 200 BCE, while Ben Sira wrote around 180 BCE. One option is to suppose that the author intentionally used archaic language.

    4. This point is contingent on interpretation. There will be some circularity here, as the interpretation also depends on the dating to a significant extent. The question will be how does it all fit together best?

    Again, let me remind you that I’m just outlining some material here. I will be more forthcoming about my own views in a later entry.

  • What Billy Graham Regrets

    Newsweek has an excellent interview with Billy Graham in their online edition. I think his response to the issue of the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina was excellent. Very often we can only answer “I don’t know” to the “why” questions that people have in times of trouble. Graham provides an example and encouragement as an experienced and respected pastor in being willing to give this answer.

    But the main reason I wanted to comment on his interview was to call attention to what he said at the end: “I have regretted that I have not spent more time in prayer, in Bible
    study and in the pastoral ministry that pas­tors are usually called to
    do.” (Make sure to read the whole interview.)
    It’s so easy for those of us involved in Christian ministry of any kind to get too involved in the busy work, in the nuts and bolts of keeping ministry going. Those things certainly need to be done. But we all need to remember our focus. If we don’t make our relationship to God our priority, we’re going to regret it.

  • Truth Value of Numbers

    Christianity Today reports in an article titled Too Inclusive that Pastor Carlton Pearson’s Higher Dimensions Worship Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma has now begun meeting in a neighboring Episcopal church, since membership has dropped by 90% from an initial 5,000. I discovered this story by reading the Wesley Daily blog, which titled the story Pastor Says Nobody Goes to Hell – Now Nobody Goes to His Church. It’s really not too surprising a result, and while 90% decline in membership may not quite qualify as “nobody going to church.”
    I must confess this is a second-take on this story. My first reaction was simply that he got what he deserved. I’m not a universalist (it’s one of my unliberal positions). Without a requirement that one repent and turn away from sin, I see little of the rest of the salvation story that can hold up. As a believer in free will, I cannot accept choice without consequences. I’m afraid I lack sympathy for Rev. Pearson’s position. Did he expect Trinity Broadcasting and Oral Roberts University to go along with his position?

    But my second take is simply that we may be looking at the wrong point. I believe Rev. Pearson is wrong because all of my doctrinal indicators–scripture, tradition, reason, and my own experience–stand against his position. But we seem to be either gloating because he was punished by loss of members, or judging the validity of his position by the fact that he lost members.

    I suspect that if he built a church of 5,000 members while preaching a feel-good message weak on repentance and turning from sin, and then suddenly was convicted that he needed to preach a message of repentance, I would not gloat over the result. I’d feel called to pray for him and for his congregation. I’d be concerned for the 90% who left.

    On the other hand I regularly hear that evangelical and charismatic congregations are growing while liberal and mainline congregations are not. As I understand the statistics, this is a fact. But is this any sort of argument to use? If the vast majority rejected evangelical or charismatic doctrine and left such churches in droves, would it be any comment on the validity of that doctrine? I don’t think so. I would hope that those pastors and teachers who espouse those doctrines don’t do so because their churches will grow as a result, but because they are convinced that what they teach is right.

    I really don’t think that any substantial number of pastors of any persuasion hold their beliefs because of the numbers. I think they believe what they do for very honest reasons. But there is a danger in using numbers arguments even to back up something we know for other reasons is true.

    People who become used to following the crowd, may well also follow the crowd when it heads off in the wrong direction.

  • Grace and Choices

    “Grace gives us choices,” says Pastor Tom Sims in a blog entry entitled Paradoxical People.

    Good point. Tom is talking particularly about our ability to be ourselves. I like to call the alternative “putting on your faith face.” I see it primarily in churches. You can’t possibly go to church, after all, without making sure that you are modelling a “self” that other church members will find acceptable. Unfortunately churches are often places where you will most likely be judged–and condemned.

    That is where grace is supposed to come in. As Christians, we are people who are what we are because of God’s gift, his grace. I can hammer the point about not judging, and quote Matthew 7:1 all day, but the key is in realizing that we are all the products of grace, and we need to extend grace. Church should be the place where you can truly be yourself, where it is safe to be yourself, because God’s grace is extended by everyone there.

    Tom continues: “The real person is the one in the blueprints, the finished product in the mind and heart of the Creator – fearfully and wonderfully made, beloved, creative, awe-struck, funny, joyful, and caring.” That’s God’s grace in action.

    Let me make a few suggestions for congregations that would like to be grace filled:

    1. Be honest. Each person who is honest and open about his or her experiences encourages someone else to do the same. If you’re open, people can trust you when they are also open.
    2. Don’t condemn. This doesn’t mean that you pretend that wrong is right. When someone brings a real problem to you, they don’t need to hear that things are fine as it is. It may be the hardest thing to do, but we are called upon to recognize sin, but show grace to sinners. If we can’t do that, we really can’t carry out the great commission.
    3. Don’t get stuck on the negative. God’s grace is building us all. We need to recognize what’s wrong and take action, but we don’t need to dwell on the wrong or wallow in the muck. Grace doesn’t mean we stay down. Grace means we get to move on toward the plan in God’s mind.

    Make each day a graceful one!

  • The Kingdom of God is a Monarchy

    Brian McLaren, author of The Secret Message of Jesus and co-author of Adventures in Missing the Point with Tony Campolo, among many other books, has an article currently on the Sojourner web site entitled Found in Translation. I want to thank Shane Raynor of Wesley Blog for calling my attention to this article with his entry Brian McLaren: Shark-Jumper or Prophet. Raynor expresses his concern at abandoning the kingdom terminology.

    I first want to say that I have really appreciated Brian McLaren’s writing. While I did not agree with everything in it (who could?) I found Adventures in Missing the Point to be challenging and helpful. Indeed, I found the article itself quite helpful. McLaren offers six new metaphors to use in discussing what the rest of us would call “the kingdom of God.” He calls the term “kingdom of God” so “last century.” All of these metaphors have an element of truth in them about God’s work. All of them have some value in communicating God’s will and God’s way to modern people. He says, “In addition, for many today, kingdom language evokes patriarchy, chauvinism, imperialism, domination, and a regime without freedom

  • Characteristics of a Living Church

    43Now awe came upon every person, because many miracles and signs were accomplished through the ministry of the apostles. 44All the believers were in unity and had there possessions in common. 45They sold their possessions and assets and divided among all those who needed them. 46Every day they went faithfully to the temple, they broke bread in their various houses, receiving their food with rejoicing and simplicity of heart, 47praising God and being gracious to all the people. And the Lord added daily those who were being saved  (Acts 2:43-47, from the TFBV project). 

    When Paul says, “You are the body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:27) he introduces a powerful metaphor for use all around the church.  One of these applications is the question of life.  A live body has breath, blood flow, and most importantly doesn’t have substantial dead pieces falling off of it.  (I’m aware of dead skin and hair cells.)  Visitors to a church will often say something like, “This congregation is really alive,” or “This congregation is totally dead.”  They don’t mean, of course, that the members of the one are physically alive and of the other physically dead.  They mean that there is a spiritual life of the whole body, collectively, that can be seen, felt, and experienced.

    So what makes a church alive?

    I find the definition in the passage from Acts that I quoted above.  I’m not one of those people who want us to closely imitate the early church in every detail.  I believe that there can be a wide variety of ways in which a church can work in a community.  I live in Pensacola, FL, and I don’t expect every little detail of the church in 1st century Jerusalem to be the same as it is for my church in 21st century Florida.  But I do think the principles will be the same.

    From this passage about the early church, I see several principles:

    1. Continuing “power” ministry
    2. Unity and mutual support
    3. Faithful common worship
    4. Worship that extends beyond the worship center (homes, small groups)
    5. Continuing “God-powered” outreach

    I believe I can summarize these points with the word “discipleship.”  It’s important to note that discipleship is closely related to mission.  In fact, one cannot exist without the other.  A church may have different specific missions, and various emphases, but at some point in all churches there must be the two elements of following Jesus (discipleship) and mission (reaching out to others).  Try operating without the element of mission, and you get an ethical club.  Without the element of discipleship, you have a simple social service organization.  (Either option may be alright under appropriate circumstances, but they do not constitute a church.)

    Now let’s look at individual points.

    First, the necessary elements of “power” ministry are the infilling of the congregation, as a group, with the Holy Spirit, the empowering of the members with the gifts of the Spirit, and releasing all the membership to do ministry.  Not all of these elements are specified in Acts, but they can be supported scripturally through 1 Corinthians 12-14, Ephesians 4:9-16, and Romans 12:3-8.  But they can also be established logically.  If only the pastor or a small leadership group carry out the ministry, very little can be accomplished.  The goal clearly must be to have everyone acting together.

    Logically, the need for unity and common support follows.  If the entire body is to work together, it must be healthy.  Too often we work with numbers and percentages, assuming that if a portion of the body is in good shape, we can just ignore the rest.  I would add a note on the church owning everything in common.  That seems to me something that was practical and appropriate in Jerusalem, but not so practical now.  But there is a principle that should be applied today.  We should be ashamed that there are people in our churches who are in need and are not taken care of.  The resources exist for us to make sure people are properly taken care of, and we should consider this a responsibility of the church, not just an option.

    Faithful common worship is an essential of maintaining unity.  Our common times of worship must offer us the opportunity to worship, but also an opportunity to fellowship–to worship together and to bond as the body of Christ.  This fellowship involves encouragement and accountability.  We encourage one another in our discipleship and ministry, and we hold one another accountable for what God expects of us.

    At the same time, the larger the church, the less of the encouragment and accountability can take place in a large, common worship service.  We have the need of smaller groups to provide this additional needed fellowship.  Such small groups also provide additional opportunities for mission.

    This fellowship will include at least the following elements:

    1. Bible study
      In a living congregation the members knows why they are doing what they are doing.  They will be aware of their basic doctrines, and they will be able to study these things for themselves.  This does not mean that “doctrinal purity” is a primary essential of a living church.  It does mean that Biblical and doctrinal awareness is important so that members know why they are doing what they are doing  (see Acts 2:42 and 17:11).  There are some basic essentials that are important, and we should learn to distinguish the essential from the non-essential.  (See the Participatory Study Series pamphlet Understanding Christian Apologetics.)
    2. Prayer
      Prayer is communion or conversation with God.  This is an essential part of keeping the body breathing.  The Holy Spirit is the breath in the body of Christ, and we receive it in communion with God.  (See I Want to Pray! pamphlet and book.)
    3. Grace
      We are recipients of God’s grace, and if we understand that, it will motivate us to have grace ourselves. Many people believe that having more rules and better enforcement is the way to go, but people don’t come to church to find out what the rules are.  Most people know the basics of behavior.  What they are looking for is the motivation and the ability to put that knowledge into action.
    4. Action
      If a new member does not find a way to get active, they will not remain in the church.  Some may continue to attend out of habit, but they become dead weight.  It may be risky to have everyone active–some of them will make mistakes, but it’s the only way to go.

    God-powered outreach brings us full circle.  We are not called to do what we can do; we are called to do what God can do–through us.

     

  • Pacesetters Bible School Newsletter

    As many of you know, besides my work in writing and publishing, I’m president of Pacesetters Bible School, Inc., an organization dedicated to religious education, and particularly in bringing sound Biblical scholarship to local churches. Pacesetters is a totally volunteer organization (I’m not compensated as president), and is a non-profit. I’ve been pretty lax about getting Pacesetters news out, and hopefully this newsletter in blog form will help correct that. Most entries will probably be made by other people involved in Pacesetters Bible School activities.

    You’ll find a link to Pacesetters Bible School under the Religious Education heading on by sidebar. I think it is very important for Christians to get serious about providing a sound basis in their faith to all church members, especially young people. This should not be indoctrination. Members should be aware of what other people believe, and have adequate knowledge to make an informed choice for themselves.

    Keep an eye on Pacesetters! The newsletter url is: http:///news.

  • My Wife and the Spirit of Women

    On February 21 I was priveleged to attend the Spirit of Women awards sponsored by the Sacred Heart Health System. My wife, Jody Neufeld, was one of the nominees, 113 women who were nominated for their service to the community. Only three of those could be recognized with awards, but I was impressed that the bulk of the program was designed to honor all 113. It is kind of nice to see my wife’s picture more than life size on the screen as she is introduced to the audience and honored for her service.

    I think an event such as this is very important for two reasons. First, we very often don’t pay attention to the ordinary contributors to the public good, the volunteers who make community programs function. We pay much more attention to the folks who can contribute thousands and tens of thousands of dollars. But without the many individuals who do the little bits of work, fitting in their contribution between jobs and caring for families, all the big contributions would do very little. Second, we often don’t recognize the contribution of women nearly enough. I talk about this regularly in churches. By limiting the roles that women can play we deny the body of Christ the benefit of their gifts.

    That’s why I appreciated this recognition ceremony so much. The keynote speaker, Dr. Alexa Canady, commented that her remarks were not for the nominees, but actually for the rest of the audience, whom she challenged to get busy. She’s right, but only partially so. The challenge to get involved needs to get out of that room. Most of the folks there were there to honor a loved one or to show their support for the various community projects. The challenge to ordinary people to get involved in ordinary ways needs to be heard far and wide. If everyone put in just a few more minutes a week, we could change the world.

    I’m glad that my wife provides that example to her community.

  • Translations: Getting Back to Results

    Wayne Leman, on the Better Bibles blog, has posted a note about Ben Witherington’s apology for his remarks about the ESV (Ben Witherington apologizes for ESV comments). I’ve been pretty busy the latter half of this week, so I missed part of the action and had to review it through several blogs. I admire someone who is willing to apologize openly and honestly for an error in what he has written.

    Wayne goes on to make an important point when he says, “He has, in my opinion, now placed the focus where it should be for any Bible version, on its own merits, not on what one perceives to be the motives of its translators.” Ben Witherington has also moved forward to precisely this type of information with his post A Sample of More Literal Translations. These are some good examples of the types of decisions that translators must make irrespective of their approach to the final product. I’ve discussed details of the translation methods in my book What’s in a Version?, and in various notes on my Bible Version Selection Tool.

    But as a Bible teacher working primarily with lay members, I must also get involved with the question of how the individual Bible student gets an accurate idea of what the Bible means. In other words, by “results” I need to look at the final product. Once I’ve talked about Bible translations, study tools, and how to make use of them, how do laypeople test their work and study with confidence? The question I’m asked most often is just how one can be sure. Those who want to use more literal translations do so for the very good reason that they think they will get an more accurate understanding. For reasons I’ve explained elsewhere, I don’t think that is true. “More literal” is not the equivalent of “more accurate.” Both extremes on that spectrum of methodology, and everything in between, involve choices and compromises.

    The type of questions that Ben Witherington is asking in this post are a starting point in looking at the result. Too often scholars remain in a totally scholarly environment, commonly known as the ivory tower, and determine whether the meaning has been expressed in discussions between scholars. Expressing a meaning is kind of empty unless someone hears and understands the expression. In translations, that involves field testing.

    But for the average person the question again is this: How can I be certain of an interpretation? How can I be certain the meaning I get from my English text is right?

    Well, to be most certain, you need to learn the Biblical languages. Notice that I says most and not absolutely. Even when you know the Biblical languages, there remains differences in the level of skill between various readers, points on which honest disagreement is possible, and simple human error. In my own study, though I generally produce a translation of any passage of scripture I’m going to use in preaching or teaching, I also compare my own work with a selection of English translations. Why? Because I am as subject to error (and sometimes more so!) as the next guy.

    But there is still one more step. Even when I am as certain as I can be about the meaning of a particular verse, to be sure I’m understanding the full meaning and the application, I need to do two things:

    • Study the verse in context
      By this I mean to study entire passages. Sometimes “in context” becomes the equivalent of reading the verse before and the verse afterward. But if you want to understand Paul’s argument in a verse in 1 Corinthians 14, you will need to read the entire chapter at a minimum, and that will almost certainly lead you to reading chapter 12, and then surely Paul had a reason for putting chapter 13 between the two. To be confident that you understand a single admonition in chapter 14, you really need to put some work into studying all three chapters. Going beyond that, an overview of the entire first letter to the Corinthians will help you understand what Paul means about being spiritual.
    • Study the verse as it stands in relation to the canon of scripture.
      This means to look at the teaching in the light of other scriptures on the same topic. Try to do this after you have taken a serious look at the scripture you’re studying. Often people lose nuances of various portions of scripture by simply overriding them with another scripture. At the same time, a good principle, long used and tested, is to let what is plain and widespread help explain what is simple.

    These two principles can correct your understanding of an individual passage. It is especially important to do this type of study if your impression from a particular scripture seems odd or out of place. That’s the time to check especially carefully for misunderstandings.

    My final check, which I normally teach first in classes on Bible study, is the hanging principle. When Jesus said that all the law and the prophets hung on the two commands of love for God and love for one’s neighbor, I think he also gave us a check on how we read. Try to hang your interpretation from the two laws. If it doesn’t fit, reconsider it.