Insanity and Bible PER-versions

The other week Chris Roseboro's item about The Voice, the new Emergent 'Bible version' caught my attention, and I considered blogging it. I decided not to at the time. But now a new story has come to my attention that means that Bible per-versions are on the menu again for this blog.

It cannot have escaped the notice of anyone who has not been living under a rock for the last few decades that there has been a proliferation of new Bible versions, from the excellent ESV to the Good News Bible (an Anglican clergyman once remarked to me "If I hear about 'God's Covenant Box' one more time I think I'll go mad."), to the horror that is The Word on the Street (formerly The Street Bible). I for one have nothing against the desire to translate the Word of God from the original languages into the language of every tribe and nation on the planet, including English. The Authorised Version is a good translation, but it is not inspired, and some of its language is archaic. What is more, the translators were restricted in some of their choices of words, and Greek language study has advanced since 1611, as has the number of manuscripts available to modern translators. It is simply irrational to confine ourselves to sixteenth century scholarship, and Anglican Scholarship at that!

Having said that, do we really need so many Bible versions? Ignoring the multiplicity of study Bibles for just about everyone (except me, because I'm just an ordinary white Brit, and we don't count), there are dozens of translations out there. But that's just a thought.

No, my main point has to do with what I call Bible perversions. I know this language is used by rabid KJV-Only writers such as Gail Riplinger to describe any version other than the Authorised Version, but I use it in a more restricted sense to describe supposed Bible 'versions' that are in fact guided not by a desire to accurately render the Greek and the Hebrew in the receptor language, but by a partisan and personal agenda.

This 'Princess Diana Bible' (warning, do not follow the link if of a nervous disposition, or holding a drink over your computer keyboard) is a prime example. That is, if it is not a parody, which I am not convinced that it is not. Look at it, it's linked to a movie, and it could well just be a publicity stunt. My advice is not to take this too seriously until the truth is revealed. Of course, if it is a parody, it works because it is close to the truth, just one step ahead of it. So take the whole thing with a pinch of salt until you see one of these things in print, because it looks like a publicity ploy to me.

Parody or not, one of the statements on the official website caught my eye:

According to Mitchell, "There are 116 versions of the Bible, why is any of them better than ours?"

If this is not a parody, the answer is "because the ESV and other genuine Bible versions are carefully translated from the original languages with a concern for the actual meaning of words, and are not driven by a personal desire to make the Bible say what I want it to. Whether or not Mitchell is actually serious, his words challenge us to ask the question: What makes a good Bible version? One way to answer that is to look at a bad one.

An example of this that is genuine is the Voice New Testament (official site). This is trumpeted as "A dynamic Translation that brings the Biblical narrative to life." 'Dynamic' is definitely the word, but 'translation' is stretching it a bit. This is actually a paraphrase of the Biblical text. This chart is used to show how The Voice compares with other 'versions' (although The Message is actually a paraphrase, not a translation). The Voice italicises those words that have been added 'to clarify' the text. This is acceptable when it is done properly, but rather than adding just a few words here and there to make Greek into good English, the Voice adds whole clauses and even sentences wholesale. Take this random example from their site:

"When you are filled with the Spirit, you are empowered to speak to each other in the soulful words of pious songs, hymns, and spiritual songs; to sing and make music with your hearts attuned to God; and to give thanks to God the Father every day through the name of the Lord Jesus, the Liberating King, for all He has done." Ephesians 5:19-20, in The Voice translation

Remember, words in italics are not in the original Greek Text (I looked, I can't find them). That means that two clauses in this text are simply added to it. The original says nothing about being 'empowered' by the filling of the Holy Spirit, nor does it refer to 'soulful words'. Then look at some of the language chosen for actual translations. To translate 'Christ' as 'Liberating King' is introducing an interpretation into the text, not translation. I would have no objection to 'God's anointed one', since that is an English version of 'Christ', but that is to miss the fact that 'Christ' or 'Messiah' had become a personal title by the time of the New Testament. So of this text, abut 60 words in this English version, fifteen, or a whole quarter of the text, have no antecedent in the Greek whatsoever, and have been arbitrarily inserted because someone thought they made it sound better!

How did this happen? The Voice website gives the answer:

"Previously most Bibles and biblical reference works were produced by professional scholars writing in academic settings. The Voice uniquely represents collaboration among scholars, pastors, writers, musicians, poets, and other artists."

There is a completely different philosophy at work here. The reason why Bibles have historically been translated by textual scholars is that the Bible was viewed as being inspired by God, and so the aim of translating was to render the original text faithfully in a receptor language. In 2 Timothy 3.16 we read:

"All Scripture is God-breathed..."

Despite the Voice's declaration that it:

"Respects cultural shifts and the need for accuracy"

The level of accuracy in this 'translation' is terrible. It adds reams to the Word of God (in a side-note, I found myself wondering how much longer than a proper New Testament The Voice is). But the Greek is very specific. every word of the Bible is breathed-out by God. The Voice is no more an accurate Bible version than the New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses or the Inspired Version of Joseph Smith. And if the Princess Diana Bible really exists, then I add that to the mix as well.

The Voice certainly does speak, but what it speaks is not the pure Word of God, but the Word of God twisted and distorted by our ideas. Let the Bible speak, let God speak, and let people read what God has said. The old Bible Societies committed themselves to distribute the Word of God 'Without note or comment' beyond mere textual and translational notes. There was a good reason for that, which is that notes in a Bible can easily be mistaken for inspired (I think of the way some people have viewed the Scofield Reference Bible). If that's true of notes in the margin and under the text, when notes are actually inserted into the text, it is almost certain that people will think they are what God has said. My only advice must be: Don't buy The Voice.

[Illustration: a reader expresses his opinion of these false Bible 'versions'. If Centuri0n can do it, why can't I?]

G. K. Chesterton on comparative religion

As any who have read his Father Brown stories know, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was a man of uncommon good sense. His book Orthodoxy is much read, and deservedly so. This quotation concerning the idea that 'all religions are really the same in essence' is a gem, and so I make no apologies for bringing it before the world:

"The things said most confidently by advanced persons to crowded audiences are generally those quite opposite to the fact; it is actually our truisms that are untrue. Here is a case. There is a phrase of facile liberality uttered again and again at ethical societies and parliaments of religion: "the religions of the earth differ in rites and forms, but they are the same in what they teach." It is false; it is the opposite of the fact. The religions of the earth do not greatly differ in rites and forms; they do greatly differ in what they teach. It is as if a man were to say, "Do not be misled by the fact that the Church Times and the Freethinker look utterly different, that one is painted on vellum and the other carved on marble, that one is triangular and the other hectagonal; read them and you will see that they say the same thing." The truth is, of course, that they are alike in everything except in the fact that they don't say the same thing. An atheist stockbroker in Surbiton looks exactly like a Swedenborgian stockbroker in Wimbledon. You may walk round and round them and subject them to the most personal and offensive study without seeing anything Swedenborgian in the hat or anything particularly godless in the umbrella. It is exactly in their souls that they are divided. So the truth is that the difficulty of all the creeds of the earth is not as alleged in this cheap maxim: that they agree in meaning, but differ in machinery. It is exactly the opposite. They agree in machinery; almost every great religion on earth works with the same external methods, with priests, scriptures, altars, sworn brotherhoods, special feasts. They agree in the mode of teaching; what they differ about is the thing to be taught. Pagan optimists and Eastern pessimists would both have temples, just as Liberals and Tories would both have newspapers. Creeds that exist to destroy each other both have scriptures, just as armies that exist to destroy each other both have guns." G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Pp. 333-4 of The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, Vol. 1 (Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1986)

The Church Times is an Anglican paper, and the Freethinker a sceptical journal. Surbiton and Wimbledon are London suburbs where one might reasonably be expected to find a stockbroker, at least in 1908 when Chesterton was writing.

The use and Abuse of History

Phyllis Tickle, an Emergent author, has declared that the Emergent Church is 'the Great Emergence', part of a pattern of great events in the Church every 500 years (source, source).

The problem with this is that it is not an interpretation of the evidence, it is a cherry-picking of the evidence to fit a pre-conceived pattern, so as to 'conveniently' wind up with the Emergent Church as being the latest great work of God. But this is not how you do history! What about the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century? It doesn't fit into the 'pattern' at all, yet it produced the modern missionary movement, the Methodist Churches, the New Connexion of General Baptists, and so on. The revival of 1859, which also had worldwide effects, doesn't fit in to the 'pattern' either. Of course they don't, because the 'pattern' doesn't exist, it is, if I may be allowed to borrow a 'postmodern' term, a powerplay, manipulating the evidence to back up one's position. Thus it answers objections by saying: "But this is the Great Emergence. If you don't support us, then you're opposing God's next Great Work!" This is history as propaganda, as a wax nose that can be manipulated into any shape the manipulator desires.

I am an amateur historian (in the sense I don't get paid for it), and the son of a professional historian (in the sense that he does get paid for it), and this sort of pretended historical study irritates me. It has as much to do with real history as the Landmark Baptists' 'trail of blood', and as the Roman Catholic doctrine of Apostolic Succession (in fact those two are the same thing, but we'll let that pass for now). This is simply the manipulation of historical evidence on behalf of a party. It is, in the worst sense of the term, sectarian history.

So then, the reader may ask, what is the proper use of history? First of all, history must be honest. We accept our forefathers 'warts and all'. Christians are sinners saved by grace, not perfect people, and the same goes for those in the past. But then again, we cannot be like the artist who would paint a picture of the wart and entitle it 'Cromwell'. That too is wrong.

History is to the Church what memory is to individuals, it is the life-story of the Church. We read history to inspire and to teach, and we do it to learn, not to buttress our preconceived notions. Unless we read history responsibly and sensibly, we shall find that we have forgotten it.

The preaching we need

Something from my study of John Calvin:

"There is no threshing himself into a fever of impatience or frustration, no holier-than-thou rebuking of the people, no begging them in terms of Hyperbole to give some physical sign that the message has been accepted. It is simply one man, conscious of his sins, aware how little progress he makes and how hard it is to be a doer of the Word sympathetically passing on to his people (whomhe knows to have the same sort of problems as himself) what God has said to them and to him."

-T.H.L. Parker

Animal Rights or Human Responsibilities?

The Spanish government has decided to grant 'rights' to certain apes. Now, some may ask, what objection do we have to animal rights? Actually, we DO have an objection to the idea. Not because we dislike animals. Quite the reverse, we like pet cats and dogs, and we love pigs, cows, deer, sheep and chickens. They're delicious. And add Rabbits and squirrels to that second list, they taste good too. But we do not think that people should mistreat animals. Only we think that this is not so much a matter of animal rights as it is of human responsibilities. We have the responsibility to treat animals well, to rule the creation as God's stewards, taking care of it, not abusing it. My dog doesn't have rights, I've got responsibilities towards her.

The distinction between rights and responsibilities is with whom they lie. If we speak of Animal rights, we say that the animal possesses these. But no animal can push its rights, it cannot plead for itself. To say that we, as human beings made in the image of God have responsibilities towards animals puts the full burden on us, where it ought to be. I have a responsibility towards that dog that I might see being abused, the responsibility of speaking up for it. God has made us stewards of His creation, not tyrants over it.

Let's think clearly about this, shall we? Dr. Albert Mohler discussed the subject on Friday 27th June. Well worth listening to.

Pulpit Language and Eccentric Preachers

While I was at the London Theological Seminary, the then Homiletics tutor recommended to us Mr. Spurgeon's little book 'Eccentric Preachers'. Something of an apologetic for Spurgeon's own preaching, it is a delightful little book about some of the more unusual preachers of the past. In it Spurgeon revels in that 'eccentricity' that is the result of men being themselves in the pulpit. In preachers who, like the Apostles, 'turned the world upside-down'. Men like John Berridge and Rowland Hill, both of whom just could not avoid being humorous at times.

But there is also a bad eccentricity, Spurgeon warns, when a preacher behaves in an odd way with the intent to shock people, and to get publicity. It is one thing for a man to be naturally humorous in the pulpit, and to speak as a common man to common men, as Billy Bray did, but it is quite another to be vulgar. "Real vulgarity lies in foul allusions and indelicate hints," Spurgeon writes (P. 38) "Tinge your stories or your figures with dirt, Mr. Slopdash! and we anandon you: Nothing which is indelicate can be endured in the service of a holy God." (P. 39). This set me thinking about the question of appropriate pulpit language. Perhaps an appropriate response from the man who referred to 'a great steaming pile of manure' in the pulpit yesterday. Not that it was gratuitous, for it was in illustration of a Biblical figure. Read Philippians 4 for context, and use the Greek or the Authorised Version, some modern versions tone it down.. And it wasn't a generic pile of manure I was referring to as an illustration, it was a specific one that I have to go past on the way to work. I am a countryman, after all, and it was a rural congregation.

There was a man called G.A. Studdart-Kennedy, an Army Chaplain in World War I, who went by the nickname of 'Woodbine Willie' because, in an attempt to get closer to the private soldiers, he smoked cheap cigarettes and used bad language as they did. Thankfully the experiment failed. But it seems that we have a resurgence of 'Woodbine Willies' today, who think that the language of the trenches belongs in the pulpit. It does not. Let a man be himself, but please remember that there is a time for everything. I recall a young man speaking at a Christian Union who did not actually use foul language, but used a risqué story to introduce his message, a story that another young man at the same university had been reprimanded for using to introduce an after-dinner speech for a secular political society! If it not appropriate for an after-dinner speech, how can it be in the pulpit?

It is not only foul language and vulgar allusions that are out-of-place in the pulpit. There are some preachers who, having read perhaps that C.H. Spurgeon and D.L. Moody used humour, make the 'sermon' into a stand-up routine, with no aim other than to leave the audience (for that is what they treat them as) rolling in the aisles. To them I say with Mr. Spurgeon that they should at once cease to call themselves ministers and to receive a salary for that end, and let them try to make an honest living on the boards. Humour in the pulpit should have a serious end, and those who like to remind us taht Spurgeon made his hearers laugh need to remember that he made them mourn as well, and that his sermons were in earnest as whole productions.

I conclusion, let me suggest that no minister should ever speak in the pulpit things that would not be welcome in mixed company (excepting of course the things of Christ), that no language that is not allowed on television before nine in the evening is appropriate in the pulpit, and that no story, comical or not, should be allowed in the sermon that does not contribute to the edification of the hearers. Also that no man should be allowed to preach someone else's sermon as if it were his own, and that all artificial tones of voice or mannerisms should be banished as well!

Theses for Discussion with Dispensationalists. 3.

III. Confession of sins.

Since we hold one another to be brothers in christ by profession, we confess before Almighty God that we are all guilty sinners before Him. In this matter especially seeing that...

1. We have called our brothers heretics because they differed from us in minor things.

2. We have used language to describe our brothers that is not appropriate, nor conducive to rational discussion.

3. We have not listened to each other as we ought to have.

4. We have allowed rhetoric to get in the way of reason.

5. We have taken the worst from our brothers' arguments, and we have ignored what is good.

6. We have followed our prejudices more than Christ.

7. We have allowed these issues to define our denominations and ministries, and to divide churches.

Therefore we earnestly repent of these things, and we resolve to discuss this issue without recourse to hostile rhetoric, to name-calling and abuse. We resolve to talk to one another, and not only that, but to listen. To speak more about our own position than about that of those with whom we disagree, and to strive to come to unity in the faith.

Furthermore, we resolve that these issues, as they do not enter into the substance of the Reformed faith as it is found in the Second London Baptist Confession, the Westminster Confession and the Savoy Declaration, will not divide us one from another, but we shall follow the examples of those saints of the past such as C.H. Spurgeon, David Brown and Horatius Bonar who, while they disagreed on these matters, nevertheless were glad to confess themselves brothers in Christ, and to act like it.

We shall NOT follow the example of J.N. Darby, who separated from his brethren over these issues, although he was a good man.