MetaCatholic

This month, April DeConick has had one series of posts, and begun another on the status of the Nag Hammadi texts in scholarship. Both are worth reading, together with the range of reactions. Scholarship, of course, does not exist in a vacuum, which is also why I contended earlier that it was primarily the uses made of the texts that led to problems, not their existence.

 On the Amazon UK site, there are two lay reviews of Meyer and Robinson’s The Nag Hammadi Scriptures: The Definitive International Edition which go some way to illustrating the problems of the non-scholarly context. Here’s the first:

This is not in harmony with any of the Gospels, there is only one writing in this that seemed to hold with the Truth and that is a very small letter writings of Melchizedek. I only read in samples, I decided I needed to dispose of this book as I sensed it was NOT healthy to even have it in my home. I am thankful that I bought it just so that I could warn Christians to stay away.

This view of “unsound texts” as contagious does, it seems to me, have its academic equivalent, which is nowhere so naively expressed as this, but does believe that undue attention to these texts endangers claims to the historicity of orthodoxy. Hence “lateness” is used to stigmatise them, and put them largely beyond use. In one sense they do belong more with the study of the second century on, than with the study of the first. Equally, one has to ask what it was about the early Christian gospel that generated these competing readings, and so with careful use they may be illuminating of the first century.

The second review is the polar opposite of the first:

The ancient texts were found buried in Egyptian soil in the year 1945, and they gave a better view to origins of Christianity. The gnostic view. In place of blind faith the inner knowledge of oneself (=gnosis) is seen to be the key factor in one’s religious experience.  The Nag Hammadi texts were not included in the Bible for some hazy reasons/irrationalities, and one can see that the Bible is missing many points of view. It takes some patience to read the Nag Hammadi texts too, but the new views to existing concepts are definetely worth it. — The jealous God of Moses’n'Israel was not good at all, true Jesus was not crucified, the world is seen as a mere illusion, Holy Spirit is associated with thought/thinking, Jesus with knowledge of truth, God with true love, etc…

The claim here is in one sense that of conspiracy theory, and again it has its academic counterparts. Hidden texts are equated with hidden truth: if someone concealed it, it must be because it is true (and therefore dangerous to those who hold power).  In academic terms, the view is that only with these texts does real primitive Christianity come fully into focus, as we better appreciate the range of Christian options before orthodoxy suppressed some of them. For some, therefore, there is no orthodox (or mainline, or catholic) Christianity before the third century, and orthodoxy is a creation of ecclesial power.

Here, I want to voice a moderate scepticism. Yes, these texts show us something of some groups speaking in their own voice, whereas before we had them speaking only as the orthodox ventriloquist’s heterodox dummy. That is very valuable. But what we know about the existence and spread of the groups is still largely dependent on the same sources as before their discovery. All else is reconstruction. It is possible to reconstruct a history in which they were always perceived as a minority group within a larger but still diverse catholic Christianity, and it is possible to reconstruct a history in which there was no mainstream catholic Christianity but simply different competing groups.

The long burial and late rediscovery of these texts has decontextualised them enough to make such reconstructions problematic, so that all sorts of history may be deduced from them, hiding in the interstices of a limited public record. My own view is that these texts may usefully and valuably flesh out and modify the previously existing picture of a developing catholic Christianity, but they don’t, in fact, either threaten it or destroy it. They are not, after all, simply to be weighed against canonical scripture (as is sometimes implied), but a range of writing through the Apostolic Fathers, Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Tatian and more that already gave us a diverse picture, bearing witness to the emerging canon of scripture, and with a clear thread of catholic continuity and development.

written by doug

(Part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England, which so far includes an Introduction, Article I, update, Article II, Article III, Article IV, Article V)

The first five of the 39 articles represent a kind of credal summary, a statement of the church’s regula fidei, and a means of anchoring the Church of England in the historic deposit of faith expressed by the fathers and the early ecumenical councils. From this point on they begin to engage more specifically with controversy, and begin to put down boundary markers for particular understandings of how that faith if maintained and worked out.

The sixth article is on scripture, but before dealing with it, it is worth noting this order. One comes to the discussion of scripture already holding the faith of the Church, and, whatever critical role scripture has to play for that faith, they are books written within and read by those who already share a fellowship of faith in Christ. This reflects the norm for reading: if we are reading these books as scripture, it is because we already hold the faith of the church that so recognises them.

But it also presupposes that the church’s historic reading of those books is a proper one, and a guide to how they should be read. When and where new readings of scripture are deployed to criticise the received readings rather than expound, elucidate and apply them, as they have been, and no doubt always will be, that enterprise should not be taken up carelessly or arrogantly, but with due attentiveness and humility.

It is perhaps with that in mind that the Reformers felt the need to draw on an earlier traditional voice like Jerome’s in looking, as article six does, at a revised canon.

VI. Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for salvation
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be. believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those Canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.
(A listing of the Hebrew / Protestant canon follows)
And the other Books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine; such are these following:
(A listing of the deutero-canonical books follows)
All the Books of the New Testament, as they are commonly received, we do receive, and account them Canonical.

I’ve already made a number of posts about canon (this and this are particularly relevant to this article), some of them interacting with John Hobbins’ fine series (which begins here) exploring its history, development and use. The point I want to underline here is one which is often ignored, that when it comes to the books of the Apocrypha, the article says “the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine,” and the implication is that this is precisely because some call their authority into doubt, whereas of the books of the Hebrew Bible, “[their] authority was never any doubt in the Church.” It’s fairly pointless using disputed books to establish doctrine, because it cuts away the ground for argument and agreement.

But we need to give that phrase “the Church doth read” its full weight, first by what it definitely does not say. The Calvinist Westminster Confession says:

The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of the Scripture, and therefore are of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings.

By contrast, the article prescinds from judging the relative inspiration of the books, and far from not making any more use of them than “other human writings” it states clearly for Anglicans that the church reads them “for example of life and instruction of manners.”

If we want to know more positively what “the Church doth read” means, then we need to remember that the articles were normally published as part of the BCP, and therefore together with the lectionary setting out the pattern of readings through the year. These readings were to be followed in every cathedral and parish church, every day of the year. And the lectionary includes virtually all of the apocryphal / deutero-canonical material as the first reading, towards the end of the year, following on in course from the undisputed books of the Old Testament. In terms of the liturgy, clergy and congregations were required to read and hear these books indistinguishably from the ways in which they read and heard those of “whose authority [there] was never any doubt in the Church”

Lectionaries of the last century, under evangelical pressure, coming from inter-evangelical and inter-denominational co-operation, alliances and shared Bible publishing ventures, have slowly departed from this pattern, until now all the apocryphal readings are optional. Historically, this is an undoubted departure from the position of the Anglican Reformers (and in my view a serious mistake), and whenever conservative evangelicals today (as some do) claim that they and not catholics or liberals represent the true historic faith of the Church of England, they should be more aware that on this fundamental point of practice, they have seriously departed from their heritage (however good they think their reasons may be).

The other matter worth considering is the remarkable restraint in what the article says. It simply states the claim that the scriptures are sufficient. They contain all that is needed for that faith which leads us in God’s path. If something is in scripture, or can be fully argued for and proved from it, then the Church can require people to believe it as part of the faith. If something is not there, or can’t be proved by it, then no such requirement may be made. It does not prevent people from believing what is not in scripture, although other articles make clear that these other beliefs should not go against scripture. Scripture acts, in this sense, not only as an authorizing word for the Church’s teaching, but as a critical restraint on what might otherwise become the Church’s unbridled authority.

The other feature of this restraint is that the scriptures are acknowledged as sufficient for salvation. In one sense that could do with a lot of unpacking. The framers of the article were not intending thereby to undercut “justification by faith” as they understood it. What is required for salvation in that sense is minimal, and God’s work, not ours. But they see the scriptures purposed for the knowledge that develops that understanding, moral, theological and spiritual, and the life befitting it. They are not a compendium, encyclopedia or almanac for every purpose and every type of knowledge. They are a guide to knowing God, praising God, and living with and before God. That is a lesson some parts of the Christian world seem to have great difficulty learning.

written by doug

The Times is currently showing its listing of the fifty greatest movie robots (of the making of many lists there is no end). Its choices and ratings are somewhat odd, and have given rise to a number of comments. The most bizarre omission, however, is Blade Runner, and its many replicants, the most dangerous of which Roy Baty (played by Rutger Hauer) is pictured here.

I saw this with a friend when it first came out, and we were both raving about it afterwards. We were very surprised when most reviewers disagreed with us, and it took a long time for the film to be critically appreciated as we were sure it should be.

Apart from the wonderfully realised dystopian vision, and a very good script, (enhanced, in my view, by the voiceovers of the original) the film used the idea of replicants to explore ideas of humanity in dramatic ways. Surely this tends to be why some of the best robot fiction and film really fascinates us: it probes what we understand ourselves to be. How then, could it be omitted from any list of robot films, when it does this better than any other film in the market?

written by doug

(Part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England, which so far includes an Introduction, Article I, update, Article II, Article III, Article IV)

In one sense, the fifth article, dealing with the Holy Spirit, is a bare minimum of what might be said.

V. Of the Holy Ghost
The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one substance, majesty, and glory, with the Father and the Son, very and eternal God.

This is a fairly straightforward affirmation of the Spirit as third person of the Trinity, and in its unquestioning adoption of the filioque clause, located clearly within the Western Catholic tradition. I commented in a previous post on the filioque, and don’t have anything new to add to what I said there.

This bare credal statement in some respects is almost the opposite of a great deal of contemporary talk about the Spirit. It may be that my experience of this is atypical, but I would suggest that, particularly but not exclusively among charismatic Christians, and those influenced by them, talk of the Spirit tends to be instrumental, and mainly about empowering the Church or Christians. The language of gift and empowerment has a wide-ranging scriptural background behind it, and there is certainly far more room for talk of the work of the Holy Spirit than the article would superficially suggest. I don’t want to deny the validity of this language. Equally, perhaps more attention to the Spirit as Person might lead to a greater stress on relationship, and less obsession with power.

written by doug

In yesterday’s post on the resurrection (dealing with the fourth of the 39 articles) I referred to Paul saying:

What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed (1 Cor 15:50-51 NRSV)

In the comments on that post Peter Kirk dissents from my view that one cannot ascribe flesh to Jesus’ risen body (and indeed wishes to ascribe blood to it too!) and refers me to St Luke’s gospel:

Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” (Luke 24:36-39  NRSV)

I think this interesting scriptural collision (I nearly called this post “When Scriptures collide”) deserves more than a debate in the comments on that post, and it raises, for me, some more general interpretative issues. I should note, whether others agree or not, that Peter and I both agree on the empty tomb, and that there was a real transformation of Jesus’ body in the resurrection. I am not going to re-argue those important points here.

First, I want to note that there are (at least) three options (and combinations thereof) available in dealing with conflicts (whether real or apparent) between scriptures.

1. The different scriptures represent different views of the resurrection held in the early church and are both equally of importance.
2. The scriptures must be harmonised. One way of doing that in this instance is to say that Luke effectively has a two stage process. Jesus takes again his body of flesh and bones in the resurrection, and transforms it in the ascension. I find that unsatisfactory, because there is nothing in the text of Luke-Acts to suggest Luke held such a view.
3. One text should be hermeneutically privileged over the other, and guide its interpretation.

In this case I begin essentially by taking the third course. This is a well-worn path, and noticeable examples from the past might include the way in which texts like “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30) are used in a theological framework against texts like “the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him” (1 Cor 15:28) to refute the Arian view.

In this case, I note that Paul’s argument is a major piece of theological reflection on the views the Corinthians are putting forward, whereas Luke’s statement is a single isolated narrative detail. Moreover, Paul is particularly dealing with the question of what appropriate language we may use to describe resurrection. His use of terms such as flesh (σὰρξ), spirit (πνεῦμα), “soul / natural life” (ψυχή) and body (σῶμα) are actually being defined by the argument, and by the ways in which they are combined or opposed. Thus his statement that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” belongs not to an incidental comment, but to his definition of resurrection, and what “body” might mean when used in that context.

By contrast, in Luke’s account “flesh and bones” (σάρκα καὶ ὀστέα) is simply contrasted with “ghost / spirit” ((πνεῦμα). Leaving aside the fact that different authors do not necessarily use the same vocabulary in the same way, there is a lack of the defintional nuancing here that the additional vocabulary of Paul brings to the discussion. Luke is pursuing a dramatic narrative better served by this simple contrast which serves to stress the reality of the event he is portraying.

We may also, linguistically take this a step further. Describing how Jesus is with God takes us into the difficulty all language faces in describing God, where we have to admit that our words must necessarily be difficult and inadequate. How do we describe a body that has no physical earthly locality? Such descriptions must perforce strain the normal semantic domain of the word body. All our language about God is by way of analogy (St Thomas (ST 1.13) is still worth reading on this) and that is, it seems to me, also true of what we predicate of the risen Jesus.

Trying to univocally impute bones, flesh and blood to this body flies in the face of Paul’s affirmations that the stuff of this risen body is spirit, not flesh and blood or soul / natural life. What we normally mean by body includes those things, of course, and also patterns of eating, sleeping and defecation (which would seem to be the normal corollaries of having flesh, blood and bones). We apply that language ordinarily to that which has physical location in time and space. Paul develops a different vocabulary of body at the stretches of what is describable, and creates effectively a new analogical use of the term, and we would do well to follow him, both in acknowledging the limits of our language, and in reticence about what may be said.

written by doug

John Hobbins draws attention to Pope Benedict’s recent remarks on creation and evolution, and offers a fine comment on them. It is indeed good to hear the pope state that any suggestion that belief in the Creator and acceptance of evolutionary theory are incompatible “is an absurdity.”

What I would like to emphasize is this point of John’s:

Biblical cosmology provides a basis for holding that experience might be intelligible and meaningful in the first place.

One of the most significant features of Genesis 1 is that it portrays creation as ordered. Form is given to the formless and organisation to the chaotic. It is precisely this affirmation that makes science and faith compatible. It is precisely this that affirms the worthwhile nature of scientific endeavour. Science, in the light of faith, is discovery of what is really and meaningfully there, rather than an imposition of human meaning on a meaningless cosmos.

written by doug

(Part of a series on the 39 articles of the Church of England, which so far includes an Introduction, Article I, update, Article II, Article III)

First, let me note two recent posts of mine on the resurrection. One engages with a lecture by Tom Wright, the other engages with a post by April DeConick. Both those conversations are relevant to discussion of the fourth of the 39 articles. I summarise the main points I argued there:

• The resurrection of Jesus is an eschatological event that happens in our history.
• It has no historical cause, so it is not strictly speaking an historical event.
• It leaves historical footprints: the empty tomb, and the believing church, so we may properly speak of it as an event in history..
• Jesus’ body is transformed from the body of his earthly life. The resurrection body is not physical in the sense it was before.
• We should neither minimise the eschatological nature of the event  nor should we minimise its happening in history

Given that as my basic position, it is unsurprising that I find myself with serious questions about the wording of the article:

IV. Of the Resurrection of Christ
Christ did truly rise again from death, and took again his body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of Man’s nature; wherewith he ascended into Heaven, and there sitteth, until he return to judge all Men at the last day.

There are significant and positive affirmations here: the reality of the resurrection, and Christ’s not leaving behind human nature, but taking it into God’s own triune life in such a way that our created human nature is now in no sense alien to God, but may find its proper home in God’s eternal presence. The article also affirms the completion of that work with that brief “sitteth” and the place of Christ as final judge, when humanity is measured by the one who has shared our weaknesses.

There is, however, some curious phrasing, and an odd apparent omission. The differences in the relevant section of the Augsberg Confession highlight these:

[he] truly rose again the third day; afterward He ascended into heaven that He might sit on the right hand of the Father, and forever reign and have dominion over all creatures, and sanctify them that believe in Him, by sending the Holy Ghost into their hearts, to rule, comfort, and quicken them, and to defend them against the devil and the power of sin.

First, the omission is any sense of activity by the ascended Christ. When the article is set beside the Lutheran document, that “sitteth” looks remarkably passive. In one sense, of course, spelling anything out gets us into serious difficulties. We can only speak temporally of Christ’s “actions” in eternity, so that whatever we say will be inadequate. Nonetheless the experience in time of the Church is of the Lord of the Church active within its life, and the article is curiously muted about that.

By contrast there is the, to my ears frankly bizarre, expansion of the Lutheran view on the resurrection. Christ “took again his body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of Man’s nature.” (A recent post by Peter Kirk took this even further by adding blood to the mix.). Now if the intent is to state in the strongest possible terms that what we truly are as humans has an eternal  home in God, because all that makes us human is taken by Jesus into the fullness of the divine life, then I want to agree. But I honestly can’t get my head round this way of trying to say it, and think it is at best misleading.

In the longest scriptural discussion of the resurrection, Paul is at some pains to stress that one’s body (which seems to stand in part for one’s actual real existence) needs to be appropriately constituted for one’s domain. In that particular discourse, flesh and blood belong to this existence, but not to that of the kingdom (1 Cor 15). Paul concludes:

What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I will tell you a mystery! [i.e. revealed secret] We will not all die, but we will all be changed (1 Cor 15:50-51 NRSV)

The article seems to me to so minimise that transformation, that it is barely visible. Paul is relatively reticent about his affirmations, but is positive both that the earthly stuff of the body will be transformed into another spiritual kind of stuff, and that the transformed body will share a continuous identity with what it was before. Just as for us, so for Jesus (or vice versa), resurrection implies both continuity and discontinuity. The problem with the article is that there is no discontinuity, just a temporary blip of death in the same body. It seems to me, here, both to state less than Paul (no discontinuity) and more than Paul (ascribing flesh and bones to the body).

I don’t know enough to be certain, but find myself wondering whether this odd statement is prompted by disputes over the location of Christ’s body in eucharistic doctrine. At its simplest, Lutherans wished to speak of Christ’s body as ubiquitous and so conjoined with the bread and wine in every celebration of the Eucharist, Calvinists denied this in favour of its single heavenly location. This would tie in with the so-called Black Rubric of the 1552 Prayer Book (scroll to the end):

And as concernynge the naturall body and blood of our saviour Christ, they are in heaven and not here. For it is agaynst the trueth of Christes true natural bodye, to be in moe places then in one, at one tyme.

I will eventually get to the articles dealing with the Eucharist, so I’m not going to get into the sacramental debates here. But this idea that Christ’s resurrection body is a “natural” body (natural??!!) that can only be in one place at one time, and that place is heaven, would seem to point to one explanation for the article’s wording. It perhaps also helps explain that rather inactive “sitteth”. It makes some sense to see them together, and realise that some serious category confusion is going on between temporal and eternal existence. Heaven is not a place like earth, eternity is not a moment in time. Christ is not  confined to sitting around as though his Father’s right hand is some kind of waiting room for the parousia, but is present to and for the world in the working of the Spirit. Where this article (when read in conjunction with the rubric) goes badly wrong is in ascribing the temporal physical limitations of the incarnation to the ascended and eternal Lord.

We can affirm with the article the transformation in history of the body of Jesus from death to life, leaving the tomb empty. We can affirm the identity of the one who was born of the Virgin Mary and crucified under Pontius Pilate, to be the very same identity who was raised by the Father. But we must, I think affirm with Paul, and against the article, that there is indeed a real transformation that takes place between the one and the other, and see in it the first bodily expression of eschatological promise that all creation will be so transformed as to be fitted for living in the fullness of the divine presence.

written by doug

Back in the dim and distant days of 1981 someone published Not the Church Times. One of the few bits I still recall from it was the delightful celebrations of The Sodality of St Anne, Grandmother of God. The note of the day’s celebrations included this gem:

Holy Annie,
God’s granny,
Ora pro nobis.

Remembering this I did a quick Google, and found some kind soul had put images of the pages of this now rather dated spoof online. The page referencing the feast of St Anne and St Joachim is here. (Right-hand column about halfway down.)

Anne and Joachim are first referenced in the Protoevangelium of James. One of the features of some of the NT apocrypha is precisely the fleshing out of details about which the canonical gospels are silent. They became particularly significant in mediaeval devotion. The historian John Bossy suggests that in the face of a great emphasis on the divine Jesus, stress on and devotion to his family was a way of continuing to affirm his human reality. Jesus, like them, was embedded in a large and extended human family.

Anyway, today is their feast day in the Catholic and Anglican Churches, and here’s the Anglican collect of the day.

Lord God of Israel,
who bestowed such grace on Anne and Joachim
that their daughter Mary grew up obedient to your word
and made ready to be the mother of your Son:
help us to commit ourselves in all things to your keeping
and grant us the salvation you promised to your people;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

written by doug

On Better Bibles Blog, Peter Kirk offers a practical reflection on the problem of unifying translations in response to my post yesterday. In it he relates the practical experience of working with a range of churches in seeking a unifying translation. It’s well worth reading, though I suspect that all the Protestant churches being willing to work together was helped by a sense of being a minority (and possibly a slightly precarious one) in the face of Russian Orthodoxy.

But Peter also suggests there were two areas I didn’t consider in yesterday’s post.  First:

It is interesting that he does not mention translation principles, apart from the gender issue. It seems to me that there would be a very real problem, which Doug does not note, in getting all Christians to accept either a dynamically equivalent translation or a rather literal one. I think the best that can be hoped for in this area is agreement on a largely formal equivalence translation which makes real efforts to use natural modern English, as HCSB and TNIV do, for use as some kind of standard for formal public reading in church and for study purposes, while recognising that various dynamic equivalence translations, or perhaps a single one accepted by all, may be used privately and in informal situations.

I did wonder about this, but thought it was not a significant problem. (Lacking Pater’s experience, I may be naïve about this) It seemed to me that, precisely because dynamic equivalence necessarily introduces more scope for interpretation, any unifying translation would have to adopt the kind of approach Peter suggests, and that this could be easily and quickly agreed in theory. The NRSV and TNIV are not that far apart on this issue. (Though I have to confess myself amused at what I see as the prestidigitation of the HCSB’s invention of “optimal equivalence” as a way of describing this approach. It sounds much more impressive put that way.) However, I do see the gender-related language question as the sticking point in working out in practice exactly what this approach would mean. It is the proving ground for whether such an agreement can be put into practice.

Peter’s second point is acceptability:

Also Doug does not mention the problem of acceptability, the “not invented here” syndrome which leads to people rejecting something in which they do not feel they have had a personal stake. This would be a serious barrier to wide acceptance of a Bible translation like HCSB originating from a single denomination. Products of ecumenical bodies are likely to be more broadly acceptable - although perhaps not to hard line evangelicals who reject ecumenism.

I think I assumed that this was, as it were, built into the project in the first place. Only if enough people from enough diverse perspectives and churches could agree on the desirability of the project, would it be possible to go ahead. (But would the question of inclusion of Jewish scholars for the OT be a sticking point?) And yes, there would almost certainly be some who would regard any such project as something akin to supping with the devil. When it first appeared, the RSV was greeted by many evangelicals with great hostility, and ignored by Catholics (this was well before Vatican II). Over time it won its way on merit. It did, of course, have the advantage of a far less crowded market-place. However, if the initial group of translators was drawn from a deep enough pool, and backed with wide-ranging support, it is, I think, still possible for a translation to win people over by its quality.

written by doug

ElShaddai Edwards asks a very useful question:

What would it take to create a Bible that was acceptable to liberals, conservatives, baptists, methodists, lutherans, evangelicals, twice-a-year church goers, traditionalists, fundamentalists, catholics (little “c”), Catholics, Orthodox and whatever other labels you want to apply to Christians as the body of Christ?

I think it’s fair to say that no translation has attained that status among English speaking Christians (the KJV managed it for the churches of the Reformation), although for a short time the RSV came close at least in England. (I have no idea what has happened in other languages.) It would seem to me also that there was a period when the Good News Bible (GNB / TEV) had a fairly wide-ranging acceptance across doctrinal barriers in the UK. (Other people had problems with its language.)

I’ll make some general observations here, in order, I think, of increasing difficulty 

1. Canon. Is there any possibility on reaching agreement about translating the deutero-canonical books? It would still be possible (and perhaps necessary) to publish different editions, without them, with them as Apocrypha, with them in the LXX positions etc., but it does seem to me that the translation committee would need to agree on the propriety of translating them as part of the same project, with an integrated approach to translation methods, and allowing, as much as possible in a translation for, say, echoes of Sirach to be heard in John, or Wisdom in Romans.
2. Language. Inclusive or gender-neutral language has become far more of an issue than it should be. Most recent translations have made their use, non-use or limited use of this one of their fundamental unique selling points. In doing so they have probably helped intensify the debate, and made it harder to find a solution. The loss of a generic “he” in English is at one level an indisputable fact of the language as it now is. At another level it is representative of a cultural change: as patriarchy recedes in the West (or is pushed back) it genuinely does distance our culture in one particular way from that of the authors of scripture. Equally, we cannot and should not pretend that the forms of pre-feminist Western patriarchy were remotely those of the Bible’s authors either. If we are genuinely translating into today’s English, I see no way of avoiding a maximal use of generic language for men and women where the generic is articulated or implied in the original language.
   At the same time, there is room for serious discussions about what the proper exceptions to this general principle should be. A exemplary case in point is the difficulty of the phrase “Son of Man.” While individually each translation choice can be justified, I’m unconvinced that the NRSV does its readers any favours by rendering it “O mortal” (Ezek 2:1), “a human being” (Dan 7:13) and ”the Son of Man” (Mk 2:10). There are some, of course, who would argue that the only bad translation is the apparently titular use of the phrase in Mark. But the point I want to make is that the translations of Ezekiel and Daniel make it even more of a titular phrase for the average reader of the NRSV than it would have been for the average reader of the KJV.
3. Text. Most difficult of all, I suggest would be the need for agreement on the principles of establishing the text to be translated, and how to handle significant variants (and indeed what counts as a “significant” variant). For the OT there has been more convergence in recent translations on the MT as a base text among English translations. I think, however, that the Orthodox continue with the LXX (and can mount a very good case for doing so). Do we need a parallel column OT?
   There are issues here for the NT also: to what extent do those who extol the NKJV, for example, do so out of love for the KJV, and to what extent out of attachment to the Textus Receptus? Again this might be a problem for Orthodox Christians: as far as I know, they also follow a Byzantine text type. Most (even “conservative”) English translations are committed to an eclectic text, and such a text would seem to be a sine qua non of a common translation. Is this an insuperable problem for a completely common text, or could it be handled with a careful footnote policy? This begins to look more like a study Bible than a pocket Bible.

I hope to return to this question in looking at some specific texts, but are there, in the meantime, other large general problem areas I’ve overlooked?

written by doug