- http://www.gracebpc.org.sg/
- http://www.zionbpc.org.sg/
- http://www.lifebpc.com
- http://www.presbyterian.org.sg/main/
- http://www.trac-mcs.org.sg/
- http://www.lutheran.org.sg
- http://www.calvarypandan.org
- http://www.febc.edu.sg
28.9.18
Brothers in Christ?
My Statement is clear
1. The writer of this blog, does not believe the KJV Bible is the one and only perfect Bible. There are flaws and incorrect translations in KJV Bible, because KJV Bible is a man-made translation.
2. Inerrant Bible in autograph. All Subsequent copies of Hebrew and Greek manuscripts content God's Written Word.
3. We have God's written Word preserved in NIV, KJV, ESV... There is no such doctrine as Verbal Plenary Preservation, the writer does not believe that whole Hebrew text and Greek text underlying the KJV Bible, or the TR is perfect without errors.
4. The writer believes in Verbal Plenary Inspiration of the Bible.
5. The writer prefers NKJV, NIV, ESV and Good News Translation.
6. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Living Word, the Bible is the written Word.
BPC is praising the LORD YAHWEH
Praise God From Whom all Blessings Flow
Praise God from whom all blessing flow; Praise Him, all creatures here below;Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen
My plea for a perfect unity
To new readers,
I greet you in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, may God grant us good theologians and scholars, humble servants of the Lord, and faithful believers in these last days, may God use this blog to call someone for heart-searching and repentance, and here we are, blogging in theological debates.
Unity In Diversity for Bible Presbyterian Churches
Like a peal of bells the word allelon-'one another'-rings through the pages of the New Testament.
'Accept one another' allelon
'Serve one another' allelon
'Wash one another's feet'
'Confess your sins one to another'
'Pray one for another'
'Forbearing one another and forgiving each other'
'Teaching and admonishing one another'
'Comfort one another and build each other up'
'Bear one another's burdens'
'Love one another as I have loved you'
...
Those who have the flow of mutuality in their relationship with each other need not be vocal or exuberant in expressing it.
If brothers in Bible Presbyterian Church live in unity
When brothers live together in unity!
Psalm 133
A song of ascents. Of David.
How good and pleasant it is
when brothers live together in unity!
It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
down upon the collar of his robes.
It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the Lord bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.
We must pray like Dr Martin Luther
Luther's Morning Prayer
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
BPC pastors and scholars must pray like John Calvin
A Prayer of John Calvin (1509-1564)
Lord, save us from being self-centered in our prayers and teach us to remember to pray for others. May we are so bound up in love with those for whom we pray, that we may feel their needs as acutely as our own, and interceded for them with sensitivity, with understanding, and with imagination.
Statement of Belief
I believe God preserved His Every Word perfectly!
He preserved them in all the OT and NT manuscripts.
He preserved His Word in and among all the faithful translation like KJV, NKJV, ESV, NIV, CUV....
No perfect translation.
Case Closed.
Church Theme is good, but do you love one another or not?
Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain. (Philippian 2:16)
25.9.18
Homosexuality › Related Verses
Topic Guide | Homosexuality › Related Verses
Key Verses
Genesis 19:4–8
4 Before Lot and his guests had gone to bed, all of the men came from every part of the city of Sodom. Young and old men alike surrounded the house. 5 They called out to Lot. They said, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us. We want to have sex with them.” 6 Lot went outside to meet them. He shut the door behind him. 7 He said, “No, my friends. Don’t do such an evil thing. 8 Look, I have two daughters. No man has ever made love to them. I’ll bring them out to you now. Then do to them what you want to. But don’t do anything to these men. I’ve brought them inside so they can be safe.”
Leviticus 18:22
“ ‘Do not have sex with a man as you would have sex with a woman. I hate that.
Romans 1:21–27
21 They knew God. But they didn’t honor him as God. They didn’t thank him. Their thinking became worthless. Their foolish hearts became dark. 22 They claimed to be wise. But they made fools of themselves. 23 They would rather have statues of gods than the glorious God who lives forever. Their statues of gods are made to look like people, birds, animals and reptiles. 24 So God let them go. He allowed them to do what their sinful hearts wanted to. He let them commit sexual sins. They polluted one another’s bodies by what they did. 25 They chose a lie instead of God’s truth. They worshiped and served created things. They didn’t worship the Creator. But he must be praised forever. Amen. 26 So God let them go. They were filled with shameful longings. Their women committed sexual acts that were not natural. 27 In the same way, the men turned away from their natural love for women. They burned with sexual longing for each other. Men did shameful things with other men. They suffered in their bodies for all the twisted things they did.
1 Corinthians 6:9–10
9 Don’t you know that evil people will not receive God’s kingdom? Don’t be fooled. Those who commit sexual sins will not receive the kingdom. Neither will those who worship statues of gods or commit adultery. Neither will men who are prostitutes or who commit homosexual acts. 10 Neither will thieves or those who always want more and more. Neither will those who are often drunk or tell lies or cheat. People who live like that will not receive God’s kingdom.
Jude 7
The people of Sodom and Gomorrah and the towns around them also did evil things. They gave themselves over to sexual sins. They committed sins of the worst possible kind. They are an example of those who are punished with fire. The fire never goes out.
See Also
Genesis 19:5
They called out to Lot. They said, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us. We want to have sex with them.”
Leviticus 18:22–23
22 “ ‘Do not have sex with a man as you would have sex with a woman. I hate that. 23 “ ‘Do not have sex with an animal. Do not make yourself “unclean” by doing that. A woman must not offer herself to an animal to have sex with it. That is a twisted use of sex.
Leviticus 20:13
“ ‘Suppose a man has sex with another man as he would have sex with a woman. I hate what they have done. They must be put to death. Anything that happens to them will be their own fault.
Deuteronomy 23:17–18
17 A man or woman in Israel must not become a temple prostitute. 18 The LORD your God hates the money that men and women get for being prostitutes. So don’t take that money into the house of the LORD to pay what you promised to give.
1 Kings 14:24
There were even male prostitutes at the temples in the land. The people took part in all of the practices of other nations. The LORD hated those practices. He had driven those nations out to make room for the people of Israel.
1 Kings 15:12
Asa threw out of the land the male prostitutes who were at the temples. He got rid of all of the statues of gods his people before him had made.
1 Kings 22:46
Jehoshaphat got rid of the rest of the male prostitutes who were at the temples. They had remained in the land even after the rule of his father Asa.
Romans 1:24–28
24 So God let them go. He allowed them to do what their sinful hearts wanted to. He let them commit sexual sins. They polluted one another’s bodies by what they did. 25 They chose a lie instead of God’s truth. They worshiped and served created things. They didn’t worship the Creator. But he must be praised forever. Amen. 26 So God let them go. They were filled with shameful longings. Their women committed sexual acts that were not natural. 27 In the same way, the men turned away from their natural love for women. They burned with sexual longing for each other. Men did shameful things with other men. They suffered in their bodies for all the twisted things they did. 28 They didn’t think it was important to know God. So God let them go. He allowed them to have dirty minds. They did things they shouldn’t do.
1 Corinthians 6:9–11
9 Don’t you know that evil people will not receive God’s kingdom? Don’t be fooled. Those who commit sexual sins will not receive the kingdom. Neither will those who worship statues of gods or commit adultery. Neither will men who are prostitutes or who commit homosexual acts. 10 Neither will thieves or those who always want more and more. Neither will those who are often drunk or tell lies or cheat. People who live like that will not receive God’s kingdom. 11 Some of you used to do those things. But your sins were washed away. You were made holy. You were made right with God. All of that was done in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
1 Timothy 1:8–11
8 We know that the law is good if it is used properly. 9 We also know that the law isn’t made for godly people. It is made for those who break the law. It is for those who refuse to obey. It is for ungodly and sinful people. It is for those who aren’t holy and who don’t believe. It is for those who kill their fathers or mothers. It is for murderers. 10 It is for those who commit adultery. It is for those who have a twisted view of sex. It is for people who buy and sell slaves. It is for liars. It is for those who give witness to things that aren’t true. And it is for anything else that is the opposite of true teaching. 11 True teaching agrees with the glorious good news of the blessed God. He trusted me with that good news.
“What Makes a good Biblical Scholar or Theologian?”
“Humility, faith, faithfulness, worship.”
~Jeanette Hagen, Assistant Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies, Talbot School of Theology, Biola University
Signed, Sealed, and Delivered—to Satan?
Throughout the New Testament, “family language” is used to describe the relationship of believers to God and Jesus. The Lord’s prayer instructs us to address God as “our Father” (Matt 6:9). Hebrews 2:11–12 reveals that Jesus considers believers his own siblings. Paul says Christians comprise “the household of faith” (Gal 6:10). How is it, then, that Paul tells Christians living in Corinth that believers unrepentantly living in sin should not only be put out of the Church (1 Cor 5:9–13) but also “delivered to Satan” (1 Cor 5:5)?
If a person is given over to Satan, does that mean they then belong to Satan? Does the person lose salvation and have to be re-converted to Christ? Nowhere in the passage does Paul suggest that the believer in question becomes an unbeliever or is without hope of salvation.
After demanding the unrepentant believer be delivered to Satan, Paul notes the goal of such a decision is “for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord” (1 Cor 5:5). What does Paul mean by “destruction of the flesh?” Paul often uses the word “flesh” (σάρξ, sarx) to refer to the physical body, but sometimes he uses it to refer to self-sufficiency, worldliness, or manner of life. Since someone expelled from a church is not going to die as a result, the second possibility is best. Paul is insisting that the unrepentant person be dismissed from the church to live in his or her sin and endure the consequences of their behavior.
Paul’s explanation in verse six helps answer what he means by “destruction of the flesh,” but it does not explain what the phrase “delivered to Satan” means. For that, we need to look to the Old Testament. The Israelites viewed their land as holy ground and the territory of the non-Israelite nations as controlled by demonic gods. Israel was holy ground because that was where the presence of God resided. The opposite was true everywhere else.
This perspective shifted after the formation of the Church. God’s presence was no longer in the Jerusalem temple, but in the temple which is the body of believers (1 Cor 3:16–17). Where a church was, the Lord was present. Therefore, the church was considered “holy ground”; anywhere outside the church was the demonic realm. Hence Paul’s thinking: to be expelled from the church—the local manifestation of the place God lives—was to be thrust into the realm of Satan.
***
Dr. Michael S. Heiser is a scholar-in-residence for Faithlife, the makers of Logos Bible Software. He is the author of The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible and has taught many Mobile Ed courses, including Problems in Biblical Interpretation: Difficult Passages I.
This article is excerpted from Dr. Heiser’s book I Dare You Not to Bore Me with the Bible.
CONSISTENCY IN ALL (James 2:10–13)
CONSISTENCY IN ALL (2:10–13)
2:10–11. James was aware there would be some who would tend to dismiss their offense of prejudice as a trivial fault. They would hardly consider themselves as lawbreakers. James went on to make it clear that this was no small offense. Whoever keeps the whole Law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. There are no special indulgences. Utilizing the extreme instances of adultery and murder, James showed the absurdity of inconsistent obedience.
2:12–13. Total obedience is the key. One must both habitually speak and act (Gr. pres. tense imper.) as those to be judged by the Law. God’s Law, because of its wise constraints, brings true freedom (cf. 1:25). Disobedience to God’s Law brings bondage; and to those who have not been merciful, God’s judgment is without mercy. Just as love triumphs over prejudice, mercy triumphs over judgment. The verb “triumphs” or “exults over” (katakauchatai) appears only here, in 3:14, and in Romans 11:18.
God has ordained unalterable laws. Complete and consistent obedience is required if spiritual maturity is to be attained. The believer is commanded to accept his brother with courtesy, compassion, and consistency.
J. Ronald Blue, “James,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 825.
A copyist’s mistake
Lindsell makes a sound point that “a copyist’s mistake is something entirely different from an error in Scripture. A misspelled or a misplaced word is a far cry from error, by which is meant a misstatement or something contrary to fact” (The Battle for the Bible, p. 36), although the latter statement overlooks the possibility that a misplaced word could in fact yield a misstatement and contradiction of fact. Likewise, the addition of questionable vowel pointings by the Massoretic texts does not “mean there are errors in Scripture.” Lindsell insists, however, that textual reconstruction by lower criticism has “produced a product” that can unqualifiedly be said to be “the Word of God.… We can say honestly that the Bible we have today is the Word of God” (p. 37). It is, of course, the case that evangelical Christianity insists that both the ancient originals and the copies of those originals give us the revealed truth of God in propositionally reliable form, and that in popular parlance we speak not only of the inspired Hebrew and Greek originals but even of our contemporary Bible translations as “the Word of God,” but surely in the latter case not unconditionally so.
Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, vol. 4 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), 230–231.
Scripture is not sufficient to convince an infidel
Book I
On the Knowledge of God the Creator
Chapter VIII
Rational Proofs to Establish the Belief of the Scripture
John Calvin wrote:
Now, all these rational proofs, that have been advanced for the Divine origin of Scripture, are still not sufficient to produce firm faith in it. The Scripture will only be effectual to produce the saving knowledge of God, when the Holy Spirit also acts to produce that internal persuasion. Without faith, which is the Holy Spirit’s work, no amount of rational proofs of the Scripture will convince an infidel.
Original Text Is Without Errors, Not the Copies
Original Text Is Without Errors, Not the Copies. As noted in the article Bible, Alleged Errors in, this does not mean that every copy and translation of the Bible is perfect. God breathed out the originals, not the copies, so inerrancy applies to the original text, not to every copy. God in his providence preserved the copies from substantial error. In fact, the degree of accuracy is greater than that of any other book from the ancient world, exceeding 99 percent (see NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS; OLD TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS).
Norman L. Geisler, “Bible, Evidence For,” Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 92–93.
BIBLE, TEXTS AND VERSIONS
BIBLE, TEXTS AND VERSIONS OF Ancient manuscripts and translations of the Bible which exist as important witnesses to the text of the Old and New Testaments. Ancient translations into other languages provide important evidence in establishing the text of the Bible.
Importance
The books of the Old Testament were originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic and then copied and transmitted from generation to generation. Similarly, the New Testament was written in Greek and then copied as it began to spread throughout the Church. The vast majority of our English versions of the Bible today are based upon texts that resulted from this transmission in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
Faith communities going back to 250 BC were also translating the Bible into their own languages so that they could read and understand it:
• Greek-speaking Jews in Alexandria, Egypt translated the Old Testament into Greek.
• Christian converts in Edessa, Syria translated the entire Bible into Syriac.
• The New Testament was translated into Latin, Gothic, and Armenian.
These ancient translations of the Bible in different languages are very important in two essential ways:
1. They provide additional witnesses to the text of the Bible.
2. The ancient versions provide examples of ancient exegesis and interpretation of the Bible.
The available Hebrew and Greek manuscripts are late and come from the latter part of the transmission process. Although the copying of texts was done very carefully, scribes would often commit some errors, including:
• misreading handwritten letters
• smudging the ink
• accidentally omitting a word
• repeating a word they had already written
Once an error was introduced into a text, the copies of that text would also repeat the error. The ancient versions present a “snapshot” of the biblical text at an earlier time. In the process of textual criticism, Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible are compared to the ancient versions in an attempt to determine which readings most accurately reflect the original documents.
Additionally, translation is essentially a form of interpretation; translators come to an understanding of the source text and then convert it into a different language system. The ancient translator was required to interpret the Bible in order to communicate it to his audience. Therefore, in addition to explicit interpretive texts demonstrating how faith communities understood the Bible, translations provide insights into Jewish and Christian opinions of biblical interpretation and passages of significance. Some ancient versions, such as the Aramaic Targumim (plural), intentionally expanded and interpreted the text. Other versions, such as the Greek Septuagint, attempted to give a more literal rendering of the text; the translator still interpreted, but in a less obvious manner. The versions are also helpful in interpreting the minutia of the biblical text. When translation of a particular Hebrew or Greek word or idiom is difficult, the versions demonstrate how ancient exegetes understood it. Many of these exegetes were near-native speakers of Hebrew and Greek and who lived closer in culture and time to the original authors of the Bible.
Old Testament
Hebrew Texts
The biblical texts found at Qumran, near the Dead Sea, in 1947 are extremely important. Dating from the middle of the second century BC to the middle or late first century AD, they were likely created by a Jewish religious sect called the Essenes (Vanderkam, Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 97ff). These “Dead Sea Scrolls” are significant early texts in Hebrew. They provide direct evidence from the turn of the era—almost 1,000 years earlier than the oldest complete Hebrew manuscript possessed before their discovery.
A number of additional Hebrew texts with fragments of biblical material have also been discovered. The oldest known fragments are the “Silver Scrolls,” which date to the seventh century BC and contain part of the priestly blessing in Num 6:22–27. Other texts include:
• Nash Papyrus—first century AD: a damaged copy of the Decalogue or “Ten Commandments”
• Manuscripts from Masada—first century AD: fragments of Psalms, Leviticus, and Ezekiel
• Nahal Hever manuscripts—first century BC—first century AD: fragments of the Pentateuch
• Biblical manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza—AD 1000–1400 (Wegner, Textual Criticism, 148–55)
The absence of vowels or punctuation in Hebrew texts until about AD 500 resulted in certain ambiguity in some readings. Between AD 500 and 1000, Masoretes—Jewish scribes—in Palestine and Babylon began updating the text of the Old Testament so that it contained accents, vowels, and other annotations designed to remove uncertainty and preserve a vocalization tradition. The Aleppo Codex was completed about AD 930, but 1/4 of it was destroyed in a later fire during persecutions of Jews in Syria. The Leningrad Codex, completed about 50 years later, is the best complete surviving manuscript of the Old Testament in Hebrew. It is the main source for most recent critical editions of the Hebrew Old Testament and the basis for most English translations.
For further details, see these articles: Codex Leningradensis; Masoretic Text; Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, History of Text; and Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Methodology.
Versions in Other Languages
Significant versions in other languages include:
• The Septuagint (from Latin Septuaginta, often abbreviated “LXX”)—created for Jews living in Alexandria, Egypt who needed a copy of the Torah in their own language—Greek. According to the Epistle of Aristeas, the Torah was translated in the third century BC with the Prophets and Writings following in stages by the end of the second century BC (Tov, Textual Criticism, 136–37). This translation was influential on the writers of the New Testament who worked in Greek. It is the basis for many of their quotations and references to concepts in the Old Testament.
• Targum (תַּרְגּוּם, targum, plural Targumim), “interpretation” or “translation” (Jastrow, Dictionary of the Targumim, 1695)—Translations into Aramaic to enable Jews in Palestine and abroad to understand the Bible once they began to lose their knowledge of Hebrew. The Aramaic Targum was read alongside the Hebrew liturgical reading as an interpretive guide in the synagogue or personal study.
• Peshitta (ܦܫܝܛܬܐ), “simple”—Translations of the Old and New Testaments into Syriac, a late dialect of Aramaic. The translation was made in Edessa (modern-day Syria) in the second century AD, probably by Jews who had converted to Christianity (Weitzman, The Syriac Version, 258–59).
• Vulgate—(Vulgata), “common”—A translation of the Bible into Latin made at the end of the fourth century AD. The church father Jerome undertook to translate the Old Testament, with help from Jewish scholars, directly from the Hebrew. The name “Vulgate” probably reflects the version’s everyday language and popularity.
• Other minor versions of the Old Testament are of limited value except to understand the transmission of the Greek Septuagint (Tov, Textual Criticism, 134):
• Coptic (the final stage of Egyptian) in the third and fourth centuries AD
• Ethiopic in the fourth century AD
• Arabic in the eighth and ninth centuries (Wegner, Textual Criticism, 139)
For further details, see these articles: Aquila’s Version; Greek Versions of the Hebrew Bible; Hexapla of Origen; Masorah; Masoretes; Masoretic Text; Pentateuch, Samaritan; Peshitta; Septuagint; Symmachus’ Version; Syriac Language; Targum; Theodotion’s Version; and Vulgate.
New Testament
Greek Manuscripts
Many more manuscripts and texts exist for the New Testament than for the Old Testament. The Greek manuscripts of the New Testament have traditionally been divided into four categories (Black, New Testament Textual Criticism, 18–20):
1. Papyri—the oldest and most fragile type of manuscript. They are notated with a “p” followed by a number. For example, p45 in the Chester Beatty collection comprises portions of the Gospels and Acts, and it dates to the beginning of the third century (Wegner, Textual Criticism, 257).
2. Uncials—There are approximately 274 known uncials, named for their style of Greek letters which might be compared to capital letters in English. They are designated with either a capital letter taken from Hebrew, Latin and Greek, or by a number. Significant uncials include (Black, New Testament Textual Criticism, 19):
• Codex Sinaiticus (א, ') dating to the fourth century AD,
• Codex Alexandrinus (fourth century and designated with the letter “A”)
• Codex Vaticanus (fourth century and designated with the letter “B”)
3. Minuscules—Named for their small letters. By the end of the 10th century, miniscules had essentially replaced uncials (Black, New Testament Textual Criticism, 20). Denoted by a number, there are presently 2,555 minuscules on record.
4. Lectionaries—Contains biblical text in a liturgical sequence rather than in a canonical order. All the books of the Bible except Revelation are found at least partially in lectionaries, which date from the fifth to the 10th centuries or later. Lectionary manuscripts are denoted with the letter “l” or the abbreviation “Lect” (Black, New Testament Textual Criticism, 20–21). There are presently about 2,300 lectionary manuscripts (Wegner, Textual Criticism, 264).
For further details, see these articles: Bodmer Papyri; Chester Beatty Papyri; Codex Alexandrinus; Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis; Codex Ephraemi Syri; Codex Sinaiticus; Codex Vaticanus; Codex Washingtonensis; Elephantine Papyri; New Testament Manuscripts; Oxyrhynchus; Papyri, Early Christian; and Textual Criticism of the New Testament.
Versions in Other Languages
Early translations also provide a witness to the text of the New Testament. As is the case for the Old Testament versions, translations must be used with care as all translators must interpret their source text. The target languages themselves may also be fundamentally different than Greek, which introduces obligatory shifts and changes into the text.
The early versions of the New Testament can be divided into eastern and western. The eastern versions include translations in Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, and Ethiopic. The western versions include Latin, Gothic, and Old Church Slavonic. There are also many minor eastern and western versions of more limited value.
Bibliography
Black, David Alan. New Testament Textual Criticism: A Concise Guide. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994.
Fernández Marcos, Natalio. The Septuagint in Context: Introduction to the Greek Version of the Bible. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009.
Hurtado, Larry W. The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2006.
Jastrow, Marcus. Dictionary of the Targumim, Almud Bavli, Talmud Yerushalmi, and Midrashic Literature. New York: Judaica Treasury, 2004.
Metzger, Bruce Manning. The Early Versions of the New Testament: Their Origin, Transmission, and Limitations. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
Shanks, Hershel. Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Reader from the Biblical Archaeology Review. 1st Vintage Books ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.
Talmon, Shemaryahu. “The Old Testament Text.” Pages 159–99 in The Cambridge History of the Bible. Edited by P.R. Ackroyd and C.F. Evans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Tov, Emanuel. Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001.
VanderKam, James C. The Dead Sea Scrolls Today. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010.
Wegner, Paul D. A Student’s Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2006.
Weitzman, Michael. The Syriac Version of the Old Testament. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1999.
ERIC TULLY
Eric Tully, “Bible, Texts and Versions of,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).
Psalm 21
1 The LORD controls the mind of a king as easily as he directs the course of a stream.
2 You may think that everything you do is right, but remember that the LORD judges your motives.
3 Do what is right and fair; that pleases the LORD more than bringing him sacrifices.
4 Wicked people are controlled by their conceit and arrogance, and this is sinful.
5 Plan carefully and you will have plenty; if you act too quickly, you will never have enough.
6 The riches you get by dishonesty soon disappear, but not before they lead you into the jaws of death.
7 The wicked are doomed by their own violence; they refuse to do what is right.
8 Guilty people walk a crooked path; the innocent do what is right.
9 Better to live on the roof than share the house with a nagging wife.
10 Wicked people are always hungry for evil; they have no mercy on anyone.
11 When someone who is conceited gets his punishment, even an unthinking person learns a lesson. One who is wise will learn from what he is taught.
12 God, the righteous one, knows what goes on in the homes of the wicked, and he will bring the wicked down to ruin.
13 If you refuse to listen to the cry of the poor, your own cry for help will not be heard.
14 If someone is angry with you, a gift given secretly will calm him down.
15 When justice is done, good people are happy, but evil people are brought to despair.
16 Death is waiting for anyone who wanders away from good sense.
17 Indulging in luxuries, wine, and rich food will never make you wealthy.
18 The wicked bring on themselves the suffering they try to cause good people.
19 Better to live out in the desert than with a nagging, complaining wife.
20 Wise people live in wealth and luxury, but stupid people spend their money as fast as they get it.
21 Be kind and honest and you will live a long life; others will respect you and treat you fairly.
22 A shrewd general can take a city defended by strong men, and destroy the walls they relied on.
23 If you want to stay out of trouble, be careful what you say.
24 Show me a conceited person and I will show you someone who is arrogant, proud, and inconsiderate.
25 Lazy people who refuse to work are only killing themselves;
26 all they do is think about what they would like to have. The righteous, however, can give, and give generously.
27 The LORD hates it when wicked people offer him sacrifices, especially if they do it from evil motives.
28 The testimony of a liar is not believed, but the word of someone who thinks matters through is accepted.
29 Righteous people are sure of themselves; the wicked have to pretend as best they can.
30 Human wisdom, brilliance, insight—they are of no help if the LORD is against you.
31 You can get horses ready for battle, but it is the LORD who gives victory.
2 You may think that everything you do is right, but remember that the LORD judges your motives.
3 Do what is right and fair; that pleases the LORD more than bringing him sacrifices.
4 Wicked people are controlled by their conceit and arrogance, and this is sinful.
5 Plan carefully and you will have plenty; if you act too quickly, you will never have enough.
6 The riches you get by dishonesty soon disappear, but not before they lead you into the jaws of death.
7 The wicked are doomed by their own violence; they refuse to do what is right.
8 Guilty people walk a crooked path; the innocent do what is right.
9 Better to live on the roof than share the house with a nagging wife.
10 Wicked people are always hungry for evil; they have no mercy on anyone.
11 When someone who is conceited gets his punishment, even an unthinking person learns a lesson. One who is wise will learn from what he is taught.
12 God, the righteous one, knows what goes on in the homes of the wicked, and he will bring the wicked down to ruin.
13 If you refuse to listen to the cry of the poor, your own cry for help will not be heard.
14 If someone is angry with you, a gift given secretly will calm him down.
15 When justice is done, good people are happy, but evil people are brought to despair.
16 Death is waiting for anyone who wanders away from good sense.
17 Indulging in luxuries, wine, and rich food will never make you wealthy.
18 The wicked bring on themselves the suffering they try to cause good people.
19 Better to live out in the desert than with a nagging, complaining wife.
20 Wise people live in wealth and luxury, but stupid people spend their money as fast as they get it.
21 Be kind and honest and you will live a long life; others will respect you and treat you fairly.
22 A shrewd general can take a city defended by strong men, and destroy the walls they relied on.
23 If you want to stay out of trouble, be careful what you say.
24 Show me a conceited person and I will show you someone who is arrogant, proud, and inconsiderate.
25 Lazy people who refuse to work are only killing themselves;
26 all they do is think about what they would like to have. The righteous, however, can give, and give generously.
27 The LORD hates it when wicked people offer him sacrifices, especially if they do it from evil motives.
28 The testimony of a liar is not believed, but the word of someone who thinks matters through is accepted.
29 Righteous people are sure of themselves; the wicked have to pretend as best they can.
30 Human wisdom, brilliance, insight—they are of no help if the LORD is against you.
31 You can get horses ready for battle, but it is the LORD who gives victory.
24.9.18
I KNOW YOU KNOW WHAT YOU THINK I SAID...
I KNOW YOU KNOW WHAT YOU THINK I SAID …
The most recent books of the Bible are almost 2,000 years old. Therefore, the customs, ideas, and common everyday knowledge that was shared by the apostles and their first-century readers are as foreign to us as the rhythm of village life in Indonesia’s remotest valleys.
Even if we could come to the text with intimate knowledge of the history and folkways of biblical times, to read the Bible the way it was written would require an understanding of three ancient languages that only a few scholars can claim. The Bible I read is an English translation, and all of us who read our Bibles in translation stand one step removed from reading it the way it was written.
Every translation, no matter how literally the translators intended to duplicate the original, is to some extent an interpretation because no two languages are alike in vocabulary, grammar, or thought.
A missionary friend of mine is fond of reminding me that English has no decent word for “worship.” Although we think we know what worship means, it’s not because our English word for it tells us. If it did, we wouldn’t hear so many sermons, see so many articles, or have such heated disagreements over worship in the Christian community.
Some things that can be said easily in one language, can hardly be said at all in another.
I served as an intern under a remarkable man who is both a brilliant scholar and a godly pastor. One of his multitude of talents is the ability to preach in Swedish as well as English. This ability stood him in good stead in the community his church served, because many people there had grown up speaking Swedish (the way they knew the Lord intended). Every year or so he’d be called to conduct a Swedish service where they could sing, pray, and hear some good preaching, all in Swedish. On occasion, when Dr. Nelson was preaching to his regular, largely English-speaking congregation, he’d stop in mid-sentence, assume a characteristically pensive look, and then say, “I can’t think of a good way to say this in English, but in Swedish it would be …,” and then favor us with a phrase or two in that language.
All we transplanted Irishmen, Germans, and assorted Anglo-Saxons would scratch our heads in bewilderment at this, but those old Swedes would beam with new understanding, certain they’d heard the Word exactly the way the apostles had written it!
Translators are faced with Dr. Nelson’s predicament on every page of the Bible. A word or phrase that makes perfect sense in Greek or Hebrew may have no English equivalent, but only rarely do they dare say, “I can’t think of a way to say it in English, but in Hebrew it would be …”
The chance of there being any Hebrews or Greeks from the old country to understand that word are zilch. The translator needs to make an informed judgment on what English word, or group of words, comes closest to the meaning of the original. As any comparison of English translations will show, there are many places on almost every page where the informed judgment of different translators is simply not the same.
The first verse of the Bible offers a good illustration. The KJV reads, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” The NIV, along with most contemporary translations, translates the same Hebrew word as heavens. The difference that one letter can make in the way we understand the verse is profound.
For us, the word heaven overflows with theological meaning. Heaven is the dwelling place of God. It is the home that all believers look forward to some day. It’s the place that is as high above the earth in splendor, majesty, peace, and holiness, as God is above humanity. The word heaven rings with the anthems of angelic choruses and the shouts of adoration rising from the throats of God’s people gathered around His throne. It would be hard for most of us to read Genesis 1:1 and not hear the echoes of that sound.
With the single letter s added, however, those overtones are hushed. Moses wrote not about heaven, but about the heavens, not about pearly gates and golden streets, but about the vast expanses of the universe. The reason there is a difference in the two translations is that translation work involves far more than looking up Hebrew words in a Hebrew/English dictionary and finding their English equivalents.
In this case, although the words themselves are among the first learned by beginning Hebrew students, Genesis 1:1 uses them in a figure of speech.
Scholars call it hendiadys (hen-DIE-a-dees). In hendiadys a writer will use two words, linked by the conjunction and, to convey a single concept. Flesh and blood is a good example of hendiadys. When we speak of flesh and blood we usually mean natural, material, human life, as opposed to supernatural, immaterial, or non-human.
The KJV translators rendered Matthew 18:17, “Blessed art thou, Simon-Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my father which is in heaven.” If we read the same verse in the NIV, we see that the translators recognized the figure of speech and translated it using the single word man.
Both translations are accurate, although in this instance I prefer the King James because it retains the figure of speech Jesus used to make his statement more colorful and memorable. That’s what figures of speech are for. In reducing the hendiadys to its ultimate meaning, the NIV translators were accurate but they robbed Jesus’ statement of its poetry.
Understanding Genesis 1:1 as an example of hendiadys yields the meaning: “In the beginning God made everything that is, without exception.” Moses opened the recorded revelation of God’s activity with the magisterial pronouncement, so vital in the polytheistic world of ancient Israel, that nothing existed without the creative Word of God. To today’s non-theistic world it says that God’s creative act included everything the eye of humanity could see and the mind of humanity could imagine. Every new scientific discovery has already been explained as merely another fragment of God’s handiwork.
THE GREEKS HAD A PARTICIPLE FOR IT
No one who has struggled with the first year of a language will ever forget the frustration of translating every word in an exercise perfectly, according to the dictionary, learning exactly what every word meant, and coming up with a sentence that might have been composed by an orangutan pounding on a typewriter with a ball-peen hammer. As slippery as the meaning of words can be, however, understanding their meaning is the easiest part of translation. Words are only the building blocks of language. Without the mortar of grammar to hold them together, they have about as much meaning as the barking of dogs or the cackling of chickens.
Knowing how difficult it is to translate words directly from Hebrew to English, think how much more difficult it is to translate the grammar of Greek or Hebrew into English. In Hebrew, for example, there are not tenses as we think of them in English. Struggle with that for a minute. Hebrew tenses have more to do with kinds of action than time. Hebrew verbs are concerned with such questions as:
Is an act completed?
Is it ongoing?
Is it intensified or turned back on the one who did it?
So how do we get Hebrew verbs into English, where sense of time is so important?
The two Hebrew “tenses” are called “perfect” and “imperfect.” The Hebrew perfect tense is usually translated into the English past or perfect tenses. It isn’t always precise, but it gets the job done. What it really tells us is that an action has already been completed in the past, or is so certain that it can be spoken of as complete even though it won’t actually take place until some time in the future.
Prophets used the perfect tense in this latter sense, so it’s called the “prophetic perfect.” An event can be far in the future from the perspective of the prophet, but since the act is promised by God it can be spoken of as if it had already happened. The time sense of the tense is past, but the action is still future.
When God promised Abraham, “To your descendants I give this land” (Genesis 15:18), He spoke in the perfect tense. Even though He spoke to Abraham 600 to 800 years before the promise was fulfilled, it could be spoken of as a fact of human history because it was already accomplished in the mind of God.
Translation is an incredibly complicated process. That beloved phrase of some preachers, “If you could only read it in the original language …,” contains a kernel of truth. (Most of us preachers can’t actually read it in the original language, either, but we like our congregations to think we can!) But if we can’t read it in the original language, we’ll never actually read it “the way it’s written.”
OF THE MAKING OF TRANSLATIONS THERE IS NO END
As difficult as translation is, however, godly scholars through the ages have labored diligently to bring the Word of God to His people in languages they can read and understand. Even before the time of Jesus, devout Jews in Alexandria had translated the Old Testament into Greek for the growing number of people who no longer spoke, or read, Hebrew. The Roman scholar Jerome rendered the Greek and Hebrew into the Latin of the common people in the fourth century A.D. Wycliffe and Tyndale performed the same service for the English-speaking world. The German translation of Martin Luther has held the same place of honor among German speakers as the Authorized, or King James Version has among English speakers.
Through the work of translators on the committees that gave us the New American Standard Bible, the New King James Version, Today’s English Version (Good News Bible), and the New International Version, believers today have access to God’s revelation in language they can understand and trust. Beyond our English-speaking world, numerous Bible Societies, teams of Bible translators, and men and women from a multitude of mission boards strive to reduce non-written languages to written forms so that residents of the Third World can also read the words of God.
In many ways, the process of Bible translation testifies to one of God’s great, on-going miracles. He not only inspired Scripture, but He continues to oversee the faithful transmission of His Word. An infallible original would be of little value if the copy we read is riddled with error. Our Bibles are so faithfully preserved that we can read our English translations with nearly the same confidence and reverence as the first century church read its personal letters from the apostles. No important doctrine or teaching of Scripture is subject to question because of the problems with translation that I’ve mentioned earlier. The ideas that God taught His prophets and apostles are accessible to us today, even though we are sometimes unable to fine-tune our interpretation the way we’d like.
Problems in interpretation usually arise out of isolated passages dealing with obscure issues. When it comes to knowing how to be saved, how to live the Christian life, or what God requires of us, we need have no doubts about the reliability of our Bibles.
Think of it! God’s self-revelation took place over thousands of years, to people who spoke at least three different languages, and lived lives as foreign to us as the lives of an Afghan nomad or a Vietnamese rice farmer. Yet we and others from all over the world can read that revelation, learn from it, grow by it, and meet the God whose book it is!
LITTLE PIECES OF KITTY, AND OTHER MYSTERIES
The problems in translation aren’t all on the side of biblical languages. The English language also places a barrier between us and the Bible. The language we speak both shapes and limits our understanding. We interpret the unfamiliar in terms of what we already know.
When my wife was about two and one-half years of age she was introduced to her first litter of kittens. Peering into the box and seeing those tiny, squirming creatures, she exclaimed, “Look, Mommy! Little pieces of kitty!”
No one today, including my wife, knows exactly what reasoning process was going on in her young mind. Perhaps she thought someone very naughty had dropped the cat and it had shattered into “little pieces of kitty.”
The sayings of children, filtered as they are through such limited experiences, are filled with examples like this. To understand sights, experiences, and ideas far beyond their powers of comprehension children translate them into terms of their familiar world. We find their statements amusing and adorable. We treasure them because they outgrow that sort of thing so quickly. Or do they?
In the late 60’s or early 70’s some ingenious graphic artist devised that maddening bumper sticker that said JESUS in large white, block letters on a black background. It sounded straightforward, but it was a visual riddle. The artist ran his white letters to the limit of the page, eliminating their outer edges. To read block letters, our minds depend on those dark borders. Without them, we are forced to interpret the word from outside our usual experience.
Almost everyone I knew tried to find letters in the black shapes because experience teaches us that letters are printed black on white. That led quickly to frustration. Only after we learned to read the white spaces and allow the black to recede into the background did the name of Jesus become visible.
We can almost hear Him saying, “If you have eyes to see, then see.”
Our problem was perceptual. We were not used to seeing letters presented that way and our minds refused to process the otherwise obvious information. Even today, knowing what the sign says, I have to struggle when I see it to make my mind overcome the conventions it’s used to working with.
This illustrates, in a trivial way, a problem that sometimes obscures our understanding of Scripture. Our known world limits our abilities to understand what is unknown. Our use of language is one of the most subtle forces at work in shaping our perceptions.
In recent works on decision making, its effect would be called “framing.” We “frame” an issue when we start out with assumptions of what can and can’t be. Because we think in words, we will usually perceive reality in forms for which our language has words and ignore realities for which we have no language.
Because words are arbitrary symbols, they take on whatever meaning we give them. For instance, near Wausau, Wisconsin, stands a hill named “Rib Mountain.” To people from Colorado, the word mountain conjures up images of the majestic Rockies, so they would laugh at Rib Mountain. It rises out of the north woods to the lofty height of 1,950 feet. It’s not Mount McKinley, or even Long’s Peak, but for those who live in the flatlands of northern Wisconsin, it’s the closest thing to a mountain they’ve got.
One of my favorite students was a bright young woman who’d come from Hawaii to attend school among God’s frozen people. After the first mild snow fall in November, I asked her how she liked it. She’d never seen snow before and thought it was beautiful and fun.
The following spring, after five months of living the semi-snowbound life of a Minnesotan, I asked her whether or not she still thought winter was fun. As I’d expected, the fun had worn pretty thin by that time.
Prior to her experience, how could I have explained adequately to Vicki what living through that winter would be like? She had never even seen frost, let alone 19 inches of snow in one day.
I had a seminary classmate from Nagaland, India. He had grown up in a village that probably hadn’t changed much in hundreds of years. One day shortly before we graduated and he returned to minister among his people, I invited him to speak at the church I was working in. On the way home we stopped at a fried chicken place for lunch. As we ate, he began to laugh, thinking about the problem he’d have explaining Colonel Sanders to his people. In his village, if you wanted a chicken dinner you first had to catch the chicken. Depending on the comparative athletic abilities of the catcher and the catchee, that procedure alone might take longer than it took us to order, eat, wash our hands on the packaged towelettes, and leave. He finally decided it would be better not to mention it because they’d never believe him.
People from his village might understand “chicken dinner,” but there was no way to convey the image of a red-and-white striped box filled with pre-caught, pre-killed, pre-cleaned, pre-cooked chicken.
The Bible often presents us with similar perception problems. Psalm 1 was written from the semi-arid climate of southern Palestine. In most of that country, wild trees are rare. Yearly rainfall barely supports scrub vegetation, and in some places the deserts are as desolate as any in the world.
When the psalmist wrote of “a tree planted by the streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither,” he knew that trees growing away from the steady water supply of canal, river, or oasis were doomed to fruitlessness, if not death. When the burning desert winds blew from the east, the trees whose roots had no constant source of water, withered, lost their leaves, and struggled to survive.
Readers from the American southwest understand the power of that image better than I do. As I look out my dining room window at a grove of trees in their spring foliage, I have to struggle to see trees as the psalmist saw them.
When the woman with the issue of blood touched the hem of Jesus’ robe, Jesus said, “I perceive that virtue is gone out of me” (Luke 8:46, KJV). Today, virtue is a feminine word, often a synonym for chastity. Generations of preachers have struggled to make sense of what it meant for Jesus to lose virtue. But virtue had a different meaning in Elizabethan England when the KJV was translated. The word in the Greek text was dunamis (DUNE-a-miss), and it meant power. How different the verse is in the NIV, where we hear Jesus saying, “Power has gone out of me.”
What meaning fills our mind when we read the word church in Scripture? Biblically, it never refers to a building, nor to an organization. Yet in our world confusion exists between the building, the organizational structure, and the true church. To avoid this damaging confusion the Pilgrims, when they landed in Plymouth in 1620, built a “meeting house,” not a church. They understood, as the writers of the New Testament had, that they themselves were the church. Now, after centuries of intermingling meanings, the word needs to be qualified very carefully to avoid confusion.
Even when dealing with words in our own language, the meanings intended by the translator and the meaning our background has taught us may not be the same.
How loaded with meanings words can be! Whether Greek or German, Hebrew or English, they all carry burdens of meaning far beyond our casual understanding. The fullness of language is a great gift, but when it comes to precise understanding of Scripture, it can be a great stumbling block in the way of “reading it the way it’s written.”
David E. O’Brien, Today’s Handbook for Solving Bible Difficulties (Minneapolis, MN: David E. O’Brien, 1990), 111–119.
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