The Words on the Bibilical Page

I really enjoyed Tuesday's class session of "Introduction to the New Testament." I thought that everyone was engaged with the material, which is a great thing. I was happy to see so many people and to have so much discussion.

Reading this morning, I've come across a couple of articles that comment about something that I've spent some time explaining in the class -- how complex the process of creating an English translation of the Bible is. There's two different phases of complexity -- first, the process of determining what the Biblical texts originally said in their original language, which is a process of careful reconstruction; second, the process of translation.

In the past few decades, there have been strong disagreements over English translations, particularly regarding gender usages in the Bible. Most often, conservative translators say, God is described as "he" in the Greek of the New Testament -- as opposed, I guess to "she." More accurately, God is represented by a 3rd person, masculine, singular pronoun; the masculinity of that pronoun can refer either to God's masculinity -- "he" -- or that the word for God, deos, is a masculine word in the Greek (as opposed to feminine or neuter). There's also controversy rooted in the way the plural is used in Greek. A plural masculine of believers, say "brothers" (adelphoi), can mean either a group of males or a mixed group of males and females. The technical translation of "brothers" is correct, but it omits the recognition that the plural is really gender inclusive. This is particularly problematic when using what become job titles in the church -- were all of the church leaders in the New Testament males?

Anyway, the impact of the translations on practice and theology are immense. So translations are fought over intensely. Here is a brief essay on some of the battles over translation, produced by the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School. And here is an article about the conservative reaction -- I think to the current process of creating an updated version of the New International Version (NIV) -- to translate the Bible conservatively (whatever that might mean).

The issue/controversy over translation will never go away. It's something that people of faith will have to struggle with until the end of days. But it's interesting to see how the debate ebbs and flows. And it's an interesting "newsy" thing touching on the "Introduction to the New Testament" class.