Sunday January 24, 2021 PM

Well, okay, everybody. We're gonna try to finish up our section on our study, coming to the Bible, finish up our talk on translations tonight. And we had to break off last time as we were talking about textual criticism, which is probably better to simply talk about the fact of the matter is that for three quarters of church history, the Bible was copied by hand so that others would have copies.

And as the church spread from place to place, it was needful for the Bible to be copied so that the churches and the Christians would have the word of God in their language. Of course, that's about translations.

What we were talking about last time was the fact that the copies of the Hebrew and the copies of the Greek, the copies of the original languages needed to be spread so that more people would have access to them and be able to make translations in other languages.

And so this was done by hand. Because of that, you have some degree of variance in the copying of these manuscripts. But as we talked about with 5 ,800 different, just the New Testament Greek manuscripts, 5 ,800 different manuscripts, you have about a 2 variance between all of them, which is a testimony to the providence of God and assuring that we have a solid understanding of what his word was from the original autographs, from the original writing.

And so there is a need to do some study and to do some labor in understanding when a scribe made a mistake. The scribes were not perfect. They were not infallible. The original autographs, the original manuscripts are infallible and without error.

This is how the Holy Spirit and God works. He does not make mistakes. He does not make errors. He doesn't slip up. And so his word is without error and is unfailing, perfectly true and perfectly correct.

As these copies were made again and again, some of the scribes would make errors from time to time. Since we have so many of them, you can tell when this is a one-off error, maybe it was copied by another scribe, but you see from over here, this wealth of textual evidence shows that this was an error.

And in general, those decisions have to be made. We began to talk a little bit about some of those presuppositions that the beliefs about the Bible that were informing some of the decisions about what people thought this manuscript would be more reliable than this manuscript over here.

And we talked about the critical text as it's now called, how their approach tended to say, well, we want to emphasize the fact that the older manuscripts are the more reliable and the preferred, and they would call them the best manuscripts.

And in the word best, by that they mean, we can prove that these are older than others. There's some other principles that they are employing in order to choose, but in general, older is what they consider to be best.

Now, their presuppositions, however, in that, now that makes sense to me, some of you know the old game telephone, but the presuppositions behind that were that the original autographs, the word of God was something that was full of rough style, full of difficult language and even contradictions.

And that later scribes smoothed it all out. So it appeared better than it actually was. And that's the, now that's me streamlining the, it's very academic and very respected the way that they talk about it.

That is not the only necessary conclusion of why these older manuscripts, once they were found, why are not some of their variants preserved in these other later Greek manuscripts? It's possible that these were seen to be too defective to keep using in certain regards.

And thus they were laid aside for they were very valuable, but they were not destroyed, but they were laid aside and preserved. And thus we discovered, archeologists and scholars discovered them at a later time.

And that the reason why this group, this batch of manuscripts and their flow of readings, why that was preserved was because that was the one that the church knew was the most faithful to the original autographs.

And so they just stuck with it. And because those were used more, they wore out. And so we don't have the earlier ones because they were in use. Well, that makes sense to me too. So, the older versus the ones who were more used, I can understand the back and forth on that kind of debate.

What I said last times, I can agree with the presuppositions of those employing the critical text that the original manuscripts, the original autographs by the writers of the New Testament was full of difficult style and contradictions.

I don't agree with that at all. I think that is an unbelieving starting point. Now, some of the work that they have done, some of the labor that they have put in can be helpful and useful. And even by terms of contrast, helping to clarify one's own approach.

Now, there are seven principles of textual criticism which I think are helpful. And that is in terms of antiquity or primitiveness, obviously the older that it is, the more helpful it can be. That's not the only consideration though.

Because as I said, the best manuscripts would be used and therefore wore out as they were copied. Also the consent of witnesses or the number of them. If you have, let's say a reading in one of Paul's epistles and this is, well, there's a variant reading on this.

Well, if 20 of them say this and two of them say this, well, that's a consideration. There's more, the more that read this way. Also, there's the idea of if you have somebody ministering and preaching and a church, a healthy church group that they are copying the original manuscripts and then doing translation work and they are over in, let's say the area of Rome and you find the exact same readings over here in Alexandria and you find the exact same readings up in Antioch, you see how widespread that is and they're all agreeing with one another.

That's even better, right? The spread of the witnesses shows you the reliability of this variant versus let's say there were 100 copies made by very industrious scribes, but they are only ever in this one area.

Okay, well, at that point, the multiplicity of the manuscripts doesn't mean as much if the wider distribution of the manuscripts doesn't have that one variant. It's possible that that variant just came from a slip of one of the scribes and it was just reproduced over and over again by guys who were really industrious, had nothing else to do.

There's also a consideration of just respectability of witnesses or weight. You would have, for instance, church fathers and we have writings from the church fathers in the 200s and 300s and so on and boy, they loved the Bible.

They loved the scripture and they quoted it all the time in their conversations with other people in their writings and if we find that a whole bunch of the church fathers for a couple 300 years all were quoting the very same passage of scripture and they all quoted it basically the same and then later on, we have a manuscript about 200 years after them and there's something extra there that wasn't there when they were quoting it.

Well, maybe a scribe made a little note on the margin at some point and then the later scribes ended up incorporating it in the text instead of leaving it out in the margins like it should have been, right?

So those are some things to consider. We have so much of this information. It takes a while to read through but the assumptions are still believing at this point and also the idea of continuity or unbroken tradition, saying it century after century and then other considerations are just simply if there was a slip where it makes the context unintelligible because of the slip of spelling, a word was changed from one meaning to another because an added letter or a removed letter.

Like, well, that doesn't make sense. That's just goofy. Obviously, it's supposed to make sense and we have these readings over here that do make sense. I think they left out a letter here, right? So that kind of study and reading and looking at that but coming at it from a believing standpoint, I think is the way to do textual criticism, not assuming that there are problems with the original text that others are trying to make it look better than it was.

So that's where that is helpful. Something that I also wanted to talk about and I got to mentioning it a little bit and some of you may have already heard this or noticed, when I went through seminary and did the textual criticism part of my seminary, it didn't sit well with me but when I was doing my translation work, I was laboring in the Greek and the Hebrew, trying to do translation and the New American Standard always was just so helpful to me and that's why I stuck with it and I liked the way which the 1995 New American Standard labored to give a word for word translation of the original language.

I appreciated the way that that translation committee did that. What I didn't agree with or didn't like was the fact that they were using the critical text rather than the majority text because again, the critical text was based on what I said, unbelieving assumptions and so I hadn't thought much more about it since seminary until I came to this and I was having to go back through all the material again, reacquaint myself with the information and the original unsettledness came back but then in addition, as I mentioned, the New American Standard came out with a 2020 version.

Now if you were to go, let's say a few years ago, if you were to go to Mardel or Lifeway and you say, I would like to buy a New American Standard Bible, please and the Bible man would say, oh, well, here's our selection and you would go over and you would pick it.

He wouldn't tell you, now this is the 95, not the 77 and if you asked him for the 77 New American Standard, he'd be like, we don't have that. This is their update, you'll want the 95. I have problems with how the translation committee did the 2020 New American Standard Bible.

I have some convictional issues about that now, very solid about their English translation choices and now if anybody were to go to Lifeway, Mardel, go on Amazon, whatever, so I need a New American Standard.

Preacher down here, he preaches out a New American Standard, I wanna get the same Bible they have. You're gonna get the 2020 update. You're not gonna get the 95 and moving forward, all that's gonna come out is that you're gonna have the 2020 in your hand or if you look it up online, it's like, oh, which version is the preacher?

Okay, NASB, N-A-S-B, here we go. That doesn't sound the same because I would be reading out of the 1995, studying out of that, developing my points out of that and everything and then you would be with your NASB if you got a new one or you're using your device and it would not look the same at certain places.

So at that point, I said, well, what do I do? So for me to resolve my convictions on both matters, I've gone back to the New King James Version, which I grew up with and my dad preaches out of. So that's where I've gone.

I've gone back to the New King James Version and as I've been using, I don't know if it's just simply this particular printing, but there are plenty of footnotes to let me know in every single verse where it occurs if there is a variant reading.

They don't drop words out. They don't bring words in to what they're using, which is kind of a combination between the Textus Receptus, which was the King James based off plus majority text, but they let you as the reader know if there's a variant reading in Nestle-Alan's Greek New Testament or in the UBS fourth edition, for those of you who know what that means.

So, but what that's doing is that's letting me know, but letting me make the decision on how I study and how I approach that. It is not doing it for me and then not letting me know what's happening, if you see what I mean.

And to me, that was an important change to make. So I, so some of you may have thought, this is reading differently than the week before. That's why. So, but that's where I'm at right now on that. I just wanted to let you know, I'm sorry for everybody who invested in New American Standard 95 and went gangbusters on that.

I'm sorry. This was a really big decision for me, but it wasn't a hard decision for me, if that makes any sense. Okay, back to Wonderland. We talked about going down the rabbit hole. And then we started talking about Wonderland and translation choices in the English.

Why are we choosing certain English words to cover the original words that we have? And talked about how sometimes sacred cows get in the way between you and the target and how people are taking extra special pains to keep all the sacred cows alive, rather than translating it in a way that is the most clear and direct way.

Well, another Wonderland issue is translator choices now. It used to be translation choices, but now it's translator choices. And now it's not just the producing of an every human affirming translation, which of course, the idea is that would sell better than others, but it also involves getting the right kind of translators involved.

Growing demand for a diverse panel on the translation committee. And I'm reading out of an article now by the Reverend Dr. Esau McCulley, who is a professor at Wheaton. He says, language is a living evolving thing, which is true, language is changing.

But then he goes on to make his application of this deep insight. The insight experience and skills of female scholars might open our eyes to nuances that a committee of all men might miss. Christians for whom English is a second language might highlight the ways in which our word choice is unclear.

Similarly, black Christians may call it to mind neglected aspects of the text. Well, this is called ethnic Gnosticism. That's a term that Voddie Bauckham has coined. Ethnic Gnosticism, basically, another way to say at a standpoint of epistemology.

And what it's saying is, if you do not have the lived experience of this particular identity registered in politics, you know, female, immigrant, black, if you don't have the lived experience of one of these identities that have been codified in politics, then you, you just don't understand.

And so in order to have a translation that is effective, what you need is a committee of people from all these different groups, all these, especially from the oppressed groups who can then translate the Bible because otherwise it won't really communicate as well as it should.

The implication then is, of course, that if you're reading the Bible, if you're reading a translation, wherein the translation committee was not made up of that kind of diversity, you have something less than what it should be.

And so there are many people interested in seeing translations, not only bring the diversity awareness through the English words being selected, but you have to have it in the translation committee as well.

Translation, it seems, is no longer a matter of lexigraphy and syntax, but of sociology and woke craft. Let's consider what the Bible has to say about the importance of getting things clear for other people.

Faithful Translation and the Fear of the Lord

So 1 Thessalonians 2, 4 through 5, in the spirit of errors, there's my error in the outline. It says 1 Thessalonians 1, 4 through 5, but it is 1 Thessalonians 2, verses 4 and 5. Paul writes, but as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who tests our hearts.

For neither at any time did we use flattering words, as you know, nor a cloak for covetousness, God is witness. So the apostle Paul is noting that the desire to please men with words is very often connected to covetousness, a desire to gain something from the people that you are flattering.

But Paul says the way in which we spoke was a way in which we were entrusted with the gospel approved by God. That's how we spoke. We spoke in a way that we knew would be pleasing to God. And again, this brings us back to the principles of translation.

The very first thing that we need is a fear of the Lord. When we do translation work, there needs to be a fear of the Lord first and foremost. If we base our translations in the fear of man, then there is no end, no end to the variety of ways in which we can compromise on this subject.

In the terms of having a plurality of translations, obviously I have several translations of the Bible in on my shelf. And of course, we have a variety of translations of the Bible in different Bible apps and Bible software.

And you can go to biblegateway .com and read the Bible there. And it has all sorts of translations there. What does the Bible have to say about the plurality of translations within the same language? Obviously, we understand that it's essential for mission work.

And just we rejoice with the completion of the New Testament in the language of the Palica. And we rejoice in the continuing translation of the Bible into all manner of dialects of people throughout the world.

We've talked about that. But what is the point or the use of translations within the same language? Is it wrong for us to have more than one English translation, especially with the variety of confusing aspects that come along with that?

Well, the plurality of translations in one sense is good for a multi-century expanding kingdom of Christ. Language does change over time. And so to have more than one English translation would be essential moving from say 1611 till today.

It's good to have more than one English translation to be able that we would understand the Bible in our own vernacular, our own language. That's a good thing. And it can be helpful for certain types of study.

When we're reading a passage of scripture and we look at more than one translation, it can help us to some degree to understand the nuance of some of the words. For instance, of course, one of my favorite words in the Bible, the Hebrew word chesed is translated as mercy, covenant faithfulness, loving kindness, and so on.

It has a variety of different translations. And you can, it's the same Hebrew word and the English is trying to capture the beauty of it, the grandeur of it, the good of it. So a plurality of translations in that regard can be helpful.

I think that translations are unhelpful when they censor your study rather than aid your study. So sometimes that's just the printing that you get or the type of Bible that you get. A Bible which tries to streamline everything for you and spoon-feed you may not be the best.

To get a Bible that will let you know, oh, by the way, this is what's going on here, that's the kind of Bible that is helpful in terms of the different types of printings. Now, it is interesting that, remember that the Old Testament in Hebrew and Aramaic was translated into Koine Greek, decades and decades before the time of Christ.

It's called the Septuagint. And a Septuagint itself is a bit of a misnomer. It's, in some ways, it's better to call it Septuagints because there was more than one Greek translation of the Old Testament.

And there, of course, there's the Septuagint that was preserved by scholars and passed down for academic study and so on. But there was more than that. There's evidence that there are great translations of the Old Testament considered Septuagint, but they're not the exact same thing as, perhaps you would go online to an academic store and buy, I want a copy of the Septuagint, maybe an interlinear, so I can see the Greek squiggles.

And then I have my English words over here that I can follow along. Well, that collection of Greek there that translates the Old Hebrew and Aramaic, that wasn't the only Septuagint out there, and there's evidence for that.

And in the New Testament, it's very interesting, in the New Testament, when the apostles and the writers of the New Testament quote the Old Testament, there is no evidence whatsoever that they're all quoting from the same Septuagint.

They are quoting from a variety of translations in the Greek from the Hebrew and Aramaic. And there is no way to know if this was their own translation work, if they were educated in that way, like Paul would have been.

There's no way to know if he's doing his own translation work out of the Hebrew and the Aramaic, or are they relying on somebody else's translation work, but there were plenty of Septuagint material out there because of the importance of the Bible being translated into Koine Greek.

They had more than one translation into the vernacular of their day than just one. As we find ourselves in our situation, we have more than one English translation of the Bible today. And not much is made of this in the Bible.

They just translate the Old Testament, they translate the Hebrew and Aramaic into Koine Greek, and they say, thus sayeth the Lord, and they write it out in Greek and they move on. So I think in that regard, we must then conclude with the providence of translation that when we have in the New Testament, the apostles, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, with more than one translation into the Greek from the Old Testament, from the Hebrew, and they say, thus sayeth the Lord, and they're using this translation of the Hebrew, and the next apostle says, thus sayeth the Lord, and they have a different translation from the Hebrew, but it's this, you know, but and they say, thus sayeth the Lord.

Well, thus sayeth the Lord. Consider the providence of God in the truth, that they knew they had the word of God. They had it by God's providence. It wasn't by the wisdom of man or the might of man. It was by the Spirit of the Lord.

It was by the providence of God. And we have to rest on that. And yes, it is a matter of faith. The only alternative is to do something that the King James onlyists do, and make an idol to bow down before and worship.

And we should not do that. We don't have to do that. In the providence of God, we have a translation. I want you to consider just the wisdom of God in this, and this is where we will conclude. Just the wisdom of God in the way that he worked to bring us his word in a way that not only we could understand, but people from every generation could understand.

Think about all the different timestamps in the Bible indicating what was written and when it was written. That's not very interesting information, you know, as you're reading through. But it is important to consider what was written down and when.

When Moses was writing down the first five books of the Bible, and when John was writing a revelation, all of the time indicators about the word of God, when it was written and what was written down and when, and then all the places that the Bible was written down.

And all these different areas where people have different ways of speaking, different ways of talking, and so on. There's the multiplicity of areas. Down in the, I lived in the South for a few years. You may know that this isn't the South.

This is Oklahoma. I lived in the South, and they just talked differently. It wasn't an accent. There was actual expressions and phrases that I would not have known unless someone took the time to explain it to me, okay?

That's just the way it is. That's the way it is with language and culture. So all the different places that the Bible was written, and think about all the different, the authors writing in three different languages, and the very long, consider this, the very long period during which the Hebrew language was used from the time of Moses all the way to the time of Malachi.

Don't you think Hebrew changed over that period of time? It had influence put upon it, and things changed in that language over time? Think of the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, and its use in the New Testament, and the very fact that here we have Greek words covering Hebrew words, and then when we have Greek words in the New Testament referring to Old Testament things, we have that extra context.

What I'm saying is sometimes people wonder why God didn't just say everything at once to one person and keep it simple. He crafted his word over a 1 ,500-year time period in three different languages on three different continents through 40 different authors so that we would know the meaning of a word when we read it, and we could translate it with confidence, because we have all of that context to make it clear.

How does God give us a word in a practical way that we know the meaning of that word no matter what time period we live in and what region of the world we live in? He gives us that word in that kind of a large context where if I wanna know the meaning of a word in the Scripture, I look in the rest of the Scripture, and I get the definition of the word.

And so his word is infallible. It is timeless. It is for all people in all places of all languages at all times. The wisdom of God, and so we see the providence of God in translation. Well, any questions or thoughts about our study on translations?

Do you think some of the people? Well, we do have the warning in Ecclesiastes that studying too much is not necessarily helpful. Well, there is such a thing as ever learning but never able to come to the truth.

Because that wasn't the intent. Right, so what is the intent that you start with exactly? So there is a way of questioning but not really wanting to know the answers. And so we have to proceed from a position of faith, not a position of unbelief.

Skepticism does not honor God. How did y 'all like it, Dan? It was tolerable. Tolerable? It was right tolerable. Tolerable. Right tolerable. Just three syllables. Right tolerable. Okay, well, let's, oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Yeah. So, it's a prayerful. Yes, so reading in faith means prayerful and dependent upon Christ who is Holy Spirit. Not, you know the difference between, there's two different types of people who came to ask Jesus questions, right?

There are those who came in faith and those who came, yeah, as a skeptic. And it wasn't that asking questions was wrong but you could see those who came in faith and those who did not. And there was a very clear difference.

And so, likewise, when we come to know what God has said to us in his word, coming is a matter of faith. Asking questions isn't bad. How do we come? You gotta come in faith, not as a skeptic. Okay, well, let's close by singing the doxology together.