When A Bible Isn't A Bible...
Years ago, I first read about the "KJV Only" movement that, for lack of a better description, was convinced that if it was good enough for the apostle Paul, it should be good enough for us! Yes, the date on it is 1611 (or 1613, when the typos were caught and corrected), but for these folks, four hundred and two thousand years were about the same length of time, which is to say, way back there, before even their grandparents were born, meaning FOREVER.
Now, if I squint, I can see some of the problems they have with the NIV translation and give them a bit of weight. We don't have the earliest manuscripts of the texts, Old or New testaments. We don't have the original, from-the-hand-of-the-author version of the story, and we never will. Unless carefully preserved, paper just doesn't last that long - even the Dead Sea Scrolls were falling apart, for the most part, and they were preserved about as carefully as possible! Old books like that are not like things in the Internet age - once they're gone, they're GONE, and not even the most dedicated hunt will turn them up!
That being said, we do have many manuscripts that are very old indeed. Unfortunately, they're not always identical. Remember, these had to be copied by hand for centuries, and the original manuscripts didn't include punctuation!!
IMAGINEASCROLLTHATWASPAGEAFTERPAGEOFCAPITALIZEDSCRIPTLIKETHISWITHOUTBREATHMARKSORCOMMASORPERIODSELLIPSESBRACKETSORANYTHINGELSESUCHASGODFORBIDAPROPERLYUTLIZEDAPOSTROPHETOSEPARATEOUTTHEWORDSANDTHENIMAGINETHATYOUCANTACTUALLYREADITBUTAREJUSTCOPYINGTHELETTERSBECAUSEYOURHANDMAKESTHINGSSONEATANDTIDYOHANDDIDIMENTIONTHATTHEWORDSARECUTWITHOUTHYPHENSWHENTHECOPYISTGETSTOTHEENDOFALINE.
This is just part of the trouble with those manuscripts - if you can't read and you get to, say, an E and decide to break for lunch, then come back and start again, you find an E close to where you thought you were on the page and go from there. You can't read the words to see if what you're now writing makes sense or context, so you just keep going. And the next guy who will copy what YOU wrote doesn't realize it's missing either! And when you get to someone who does, they might try to change it back to what "other" manuscripts they've read say, or maybe they write in their own interpretations "to make things clearer."
So, the NIV translators made choices. So did the NRSV translators, and the CEV's and NASB's, the TLB's, and the rest.
So did the KJV's.
One website I was perusing today was screaming (via capital letters) that the KJV is the AUTHORIZED version of the Bible, and I wanted to say "Yes, but authorized by whom?" The answer is, King James I, who took over the throne of England after Elizabeth I died without producing an heir and who wanted a Bible in the vernacular that echoed the style and tradition of the Anglican Church. It's language has a Shakespearean beauty to it, which is absolutely understandable, but it used some words that we don't use or define the same way today, and reflected some theological choices that are also different now than they were then. It was also an authorized translation into English. The Old Testament basis is Hebrew; the Gospels are Aramaic and Greek, and the epistles are almost entirely in Greek (that is, what manuscripts we have). The words don't translate directly. We have words that they didn't have, and they had words that we don't have any longer. Four words for "love" and we just use the one and expect people to know the difference by inference.
Also, this was not a book that was "authorized" by God Himself, although I can see God having a hand in the whole affair so that more people might have His Word in their hands in a language they could understand it. No, it was authorized by a man, but God continues to speak to His people even today... and not necessarily in Greek, Aramaic or Hebrew!
And then there's a final point for dispute that so many people try to bring up: Paul says in 2 Timothy 3 that "all Scripture is God-breathed and useful for edification..." etc. Combine this with Jesus' declarations in Matthew that every "jot and tittle" of the Law will be fulfilled and John's adamant resolve in Revelation that if anyone adds to or subtracts from the prophecies within that book they will receive them all in full, and we end up with a conflation of ideas that is built on quicksand. The KJV-only crew combine them to say that the whole Bible as we've received it, in sixty-six individual books, is what is God-breathed, that no one should seek to change any of it, and that if it is changed or altered in any way, that person is callin down the plagues of heaven upon themselves!
Except, Paul didn't view his writings as "scripture." They didn't fall into that category in his mind. Indeed, when he spoke of "Scripture" he meant nothing more or less than the Old Testament - since he was a Pharisee by nature, that would have meant the Oral Law as well as the Written Law, but not the gospels, not his letters or recollections, and certainly not a book of radical visions used as a climax because it describes the end of the world as we know it and the ushering in of the Holy Age. Those weren't declared to be "Scripture" for some three centuries after they were written!
It is, therefore, impossible to be exact when it comes to the Bible. And the fundamentalists splutter, and the conservatives gape, and somewhere, somehow, the head of some random Calvinist explodes. But it's true. The closest we can come is "fairly sure" and, in this world where an accidentally used double negative or a dangling participle might just get you shot for inexactitude of meaning, that comes terribly close to not being good enough.
But get back to the basics for a few minutes. Read Exodus 20. Read Luke 10:27 (and then the cross-references in the footnotes - c'mon, do your due diligence!). Read John 13:34-35, then skip down to 15:12. Remember Romans 3:23 and then 6:23. These are seeds. These are roots. These are the words upon which everything else is based, for which everything else is merely commentary! If you have nothing else but these few verses, you have the whole of the Bible's meaning and truth before you.
I'm all for "testing" Bibles to see if they proclaim God as Creator and Jesus as Lord and all that, but these words are the ones that have to point us in the proper direction.
All the rest is commentary.
Now, if I squint, I can see some of the problems they have with the NIV translation and give them a bit of weight. We don't have the earliest manuscripts of the texts, Old or New testaments. We don't have the original, from-the-hand-of-the-author version of the story, and we never will. Unless carefully preserved, paper just doesn't last that long - even the Dead Sea Scrolls were falling apart, for the most part, and they were preserved about as carefully as possible! Old books like that are not like things in the Internet age - once they're gone, they're GONE, and not even the most dedicated hunt will turn them up!
That being said, we do have many manuscripts that are very old indeed. Unfortunately, they're not always identical. Remember, these had to be copied by hand for centuries, and the original manuscripts didn't include punctuation!!
IMAGINEASCROLLTHATWASPAGEAFTERPAGEOFCAPITALIZEDSCRIPTLIKETHISWITHOUTBREATHMARKSORCOMMASORPERIODSELLIPSESBRACKETSORANYTHINGELSESUCHASGODFORBIDAPROPERLYUTLIZEDAPOSTROPHETOSEPARATEOUTTHEWORDSANDTHENIMAGINETHATYOUCANTACTUALLYREADITBUTAREJUSTCOPYINGTHELETTERSBECAUSEYOURHANDMAKESTHINGSSONEATANDTIDYOHANDDIDIMENTIONTHATTHEWORDSARECUTWITHOUTHYPHENSWHENTHECOPYISTGETSTOTHEENDOFALINE.
This is just part of the trouble with those manuscripts - if you can't read and you get to, say, an E and decide to break for lunch, then come back and start again, you find an E close to where you thought you were on the page and go from there. You can't read the words to see if what you're now writing makes sense or context, so you just keep going. And the next guy who will copy what YOU wrote doesn't realize it's missing either! And when you get to someone who does, they might try to change it back to what "other" manuscripts they've read say, or maybe they write in their own interpretations "to make things clearer."
So, the NIV translators made choices. So did the NRSV translators, and the CEV's and NASB's, the TLB's, and the rest.
So did the KJV's.
One website I was perusing today was screaming (via capital letters) that the KJV is the AUTHORIZED version of the Bible, and I wanted to say "Yes, but authorized by whom?" The answer is, King James I, who took over the throne of England after Elizabeth I died without producing an heir and who wanted a Bible in the vernacular that echoed the style and tradition of the Anglican Church. It's language has a Shakespearean beauty to it, which is absolutely understandable, but it used some words that we don't use or define the same way today, and reflected some theological choices that are also different now than they were then. It was also an authorized translation into English. The Old Testament basis is Hebrew; the Gospels are Aramaic and Greek, and the epistles are almost entirely in Greek (that is, what manuscripts we have). The words don't translate directly. We have words that they didn't have, and they had words that we don't have any longer. Four words for "love" and we just use the one and expect people to know the difference by inference.
Also, this was not a book that was "authorized" by God Himself, although I can see God having a hand in the whole affair so that more people might have His Word in their hands in a language they could understand it. No, it was authorized by a man, but God continues to speak to His people even today... and not necessarily in Greek, Aramaic or Hebrew!
And then there's a final point for dispute that so many people try to bring up: Paul says in 2 Timothy 3 that "all Scripture is God-breathed and useful for edification..." etc. Combine this with Jesus' declarations in Matthew that every "jot and tittle" of the Law will be fulfilled and John's adamant resolve in Revelation that if anyone adds to or subtracts from the prophecies within that book they will receive them all in full, and we end up with a conflation of ideas that is built on quicksand. The KJV-only crew combine them to say that the whole Bible as we've received it, in sixty-six individual books, is what is God-breathed, that no one should seek to change any of it, and that if it is changed or altered in any way, that person is callin down the plagues of heaven upon themselves!
Except, Paul didn't view his writings as "scripture." They didn't fall into that category in his mind. Indeed, when he spoke of "Scripture" he meant nothing more or less than the Old Testament - since he was a Pharisee by nature, that would have meant the Oral Law as well as the Written Law, but not the gospels, not his letters or recollections, and certainly not a book of radical visions used as a climax because it describes the end of the world as we know it and the ushering in of the Holy Age. Those weren't declared to be "Scripture" for some three centuries after they were written!
It is, therefore, impossible to be exact when it comes to the Bible. And the fundamentalists splutter, and the conservatives gape, and somewhere, somehow, the head of some random Calvinist explodes. But it's true. The closest we can come is "fairly sure" and, in this world where an accidentally used double negative or a dangling participle might just get you shot for inexactitude of meaning, that comes terribly close to not being good enough.
But get back to the basics for a few minutes. Read Exodus 20. Read Luke 10:27 (and then the cross-references in the footnotes - c'mon, do your due diligence!). Read John 13:34-35, then skip down to 15:12. Remember Romans 3:23 and then 6:23. These are seeds. These are roots. These are the words upon which everything else is based, for which everything else is merely commentary! If you have nothing else but these few verses, you have the whole of the Bible's meaning and truth before you.
I'm all for "testing" Bibles to see if they proclaim God as Creator and Jesus as Lord and all that, but these words are the ones that have to point us in the proper direction.
All the rest is commentary.