I wrote this for CRC-Voices in response to a discussion on the multiplication of translations.
Over the last few years I’ve been doing detailed Bible study with my adult sunday school class. Each week I reproduce for them a multi-columned handout with two or three English translations of the text we are studying plus the Greek (which is really there for my own use if someone asks me a question.)
As you go through the books in this kind of detail, especially armed with good commentaries and some knowledge of Greek what you begin to be able to do is understand some of the questions that the translation committees wrestled with and then see some of the decisions they made in rendering the translations as they did.
In our Bible studies we often wander into discussion not only about the texts but also translations. Translations have biases, agendas, strengths and weaknesses, some of them because of a biases that I have and some of them by virtue of the commitments to language and philosophy of the translation committees. The inclusive language debate is of course one of these, but there are more, not the least of which is what role New Testament filters should be employed in rendering Old Testament passages.
The revelation of these issues do interesting things to readers of the Bible, it add complexity and sometimes difficulty. It also reveals in them many of the assumptions, theological and language based that they brought to the text and if there is opportunity affords a chance to discuss some of these issues in the context of a trusted small group. What does it mean that this is “the word of God” and “inspired” when the English words I have made commitments to seem so up for grabs and so covered with human fingerprints from scribes throughout the history of manuscripts (more than 2/3rds of Biblical history as a matter of fact) as well as modern translation committees and even older ones as in the KJV. The fact that many people find this unnerving is at least as indicative of the assumptions we bring to the text as it is the nature of these volumes we hold in our hands.
It also opens up the question of the nature of knowledge. Is more information always and necessarily “good” for us? In our culture we are biased towards “more is better” especially when it comes to options, information and knowledge. I don’t think that opinion has been shared by wise people throughout the ages. Sometimes additional knowledge adds additional complexity that makes the life we need to live very difficult. I remember a very interesting WNYC Radio Labs where a man had a certain kind of injury to his brain which made him incapable of emotion forcing him to make all of his decisions from a purely informational basis, and it destroyed him. He could never chose whether to write with a blue or black pen because he was held bound by the endless pros and cons involved in even this minor decision. Most of us have experienced this with decisions in one way or another. Choice and information are weightier things than our cultural bias admits and we aren’t always aware of the bills that come due to use on their behalf.
So is it better to have the current market (theological and publishing) based proliferation of Biblical translations? The question is moot, we’ve got it and it isn’t going away and the reason for it is technological. The plethora of Biblical translations exists because it can and it will be for our good and our ill no matter what we think of it.
The reason I expose my congregation to these levels of the text is that on the whole I think it is a good thing for them to realize. Most of those who participate in the Bible studies where I go into this detail are for the most part mature, committed, well educated Christians for whom this will not upset their spiritual or emotional equilibrium. If they are interested in this close an examination of the text and are self-motivated to do so on a weekly basis they can handle the content. They know God well enough that it doesn’t disturb them.
I think it is also important to understand that there is another level of use for the Bible and to get comfortable with it. Part of this is in fact learned from the hidden yet exhaustive complexity behind these volumes we hold. The NT authors had no trouble talking about God speaking and then feeling free to quote the LXX or the MT or even patch together a translation themselves that more fit their context than the one of whatever manuscript they were in touch with. It was all God’s word. This should give us comfort when confronted with lots of texts available to us to be quoted. The point here isn’t so much to have faith in the particular words in English you are employing to make your point, but rather to have faith in the one behind the words and hopefully the veracity of the point you want to make with that organic author not only of words but of worlds.
Lately I’ve been doing more reading about Tolkien, interested in not only his philosophy of language but also his how he understood what he was doing with his novels. Tolkien imagined that we are sub-creators, creating dependently upon the one creator and therefor what we do with words is hopefully revelatory of the creation and then ultimately the creator himself. We’re not always very good at this, but this is the goal of our culture making. So the “value added” we hopefully sub-create through our handling of the canonical texts will hopefully not just be faith to the minutia of the passages we site (we don’t always get that right obviously) but more importantly that we get it right in the revelation of the author of words and worlds.
I hope in the process we learn two things. That God is larger, sturdier, deeper, more determined, more earnest and more loving than we could have imagined, and that he is revealed in this hodgepodge of a library we glibly hold in our hands more faithfully and truly than we can imagine. pvk
