Sunday Night, January 17, 2021 PM

Alright, everybody, let's head back to our seats and we'll take a look at 2

Corinthians 10 and then Genesis 2 if you want to start thumbing that way. We are returning to our study, coming to the

Bible and asking some basic questions about the Bible and trying to answer those questions from the

Bible. These questions are simple in nature, very fundamental questions that people ask.

They may not be in the order that you would normally ask them, but at some point, these are questions that do get asked.

And the one we are asking right now is, which translation? We have talked about the priority of translation in that the

Bible clearly evidences that God wants people to have His Word and to have it in the language they know best.

And that this is part of His plan to spread His fame and glory in the news of Jesus Christ, Sovereign and Savior, throughout the whole world.

So there's the priority of translation and that being established. We then think about the principles of translation.

And we talked about the fear of the Lord and accuracy and clarity as principles that we can tell from the

Scripture are part of that need for translation.

First of all, to be fear of the Lord and then accuracy and clarity. Tonight we're talking about the perils of translation and we're going to talk about rabbit holes and wonderland.

Rabbit holes and wonderland. Under the heading of the perils of translation.

Now, with this regard, we need to understand that not every translation is a good one. And at the same time, maybe they break the principles of translation and so on.

But considering the perils of translation is a very big topic and one which a lot of time may be spent.

But I want to at least deal with some of the main particulars. Let's keep in mind a passage of Scripture that we went over several times from our last study.

2 Corinthians 10 3 -5 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh.

For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God. For pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

In regards to translation, sometimes there are arguments or lofty speculations, imaginings against God that are involved in some translations.

And so we need to keep that in mind. Now, there is a great concern and rightly so, and you can turn over to Genesis if you like,

Genesis 2 16 -17 and Genesis 3 2 and 3. There is great concern and rightly so that we get the

Word of God right. That is a good desire. That is a right priority that we want to get the

Word of God right. We talked about how the original autographs, the original writing down of God's holy words,

God -breathed words, holy men moved by the Holy Spirit, wrote down exactly what God wanted them to say, and that these were, without error, these were unfailing, true, the very words of God.

Now, beyond that, of course, we have to translate. There were copies made of the

Hebrew into Hebrew, and then there was Aramaic copied into Aramaic, and then eventually the

Hebrew and Aramaic got translated into Greek, and then the New Testament was written in that same form of Greek, and then that got copied.

And so there is the question that we have about the copies that were made, and we have a question then about the

English words that are used to cover those copies. So that's what we're going to talk about tonight.

But let's be clear, first of all, the need to get the Word of God right.

Genesis 2, verses 16 and 17. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying,

Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

Basic instructions to Adam. Before God made

Eve, let's hear it again. Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

Let's compare that to Eve's response to the serpent. Verse 2 of chapter 3.

And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden,

God has said you shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. Now tell me what's different between what

God said to Adam and what Eve said to the serpent. The most obvious thing is she added, and do not touch it.

Are there any other changes that you can detect? Yeah.

So she says she's identifying the tree by its location, whereas God identified the tree by its name.

There's a difference there, isn't there? Any other changes that we can detect?

That's right. God said you may freely eat of all these trees, but this one tree you may not.

And she didn't use that word freely. She dropped that out. So as we consider, and there's more nuances there we could talk about, but we see the danger, do we not, in this story.

From the very beginning, whereas Satan has said, did God really say? Has God indeed said?

And the response that Eve gave is she trying to recall, recount, and quote the word of God that she didn't get it exactly right.

And this is a problem. This is a major problem. You know, if there's a word that needs to be said and it needs to be transmitted carefully and exactly, much care must be taken to do that.

There's this great story about a brief civil war which occurred in the days of the judges, in the days of Jephthah.

And the men of Ephraim got a little bit too big for their britches and got engaged in a civil war with their own countrymen.

And Jephthah's people had taken the fords of the river, and any time an Ephraimite came by and they wanted to get across, they were commanded to say the word shibboleth, shibboleth, which begins with the

Hebrew letter sheen. And it looks almost exactly like the Hebrew letter sine.

There's a dot on either side. And they said sibboleth because they couldn't pronounce shibboleth correctly, and everybody who couldn't say the word just right died.

So you can tell when a word, on the basis of the accuracy of a word being pronounced correctly, spelled correctly, that your life depends on it.

How much more when eternity is in question about the very words of God?

So it's important to get the word of God right. So in this regard, the church, in the name of getting it right, at some level has to travel down two different but related rabbit holes.

And the first goes by the title of textual criticism. Now, that's the modern name, but it's been the necessity for it.

It's been around for most of the history of Christianity, though that's not the name that was used.

For about three -quarters of Christian history, the Bible has been copied by hand. Of course, we have the invention of the

Gutenberg Press, 1500s. But even then, that technology was not immediately widespread.

And the copying of manuscripts by hand continued for some time even after the Gutenberg Press was invented.

With this, these manuscripts being copied by hand are extremely valued by the church, and much care is taken in looking at these, not only in their writing and their copying, but also in reflection upon them and examining of them after they are completed.

And very, very close attention is given to them, so that where they differ from one another is exceptionally highlighted.

So if there's a monk somewhere in the 800s copying down, let's say, the

Gospel of Luke by hand, and he lives somewhere in what we would now call

Germany. And there's another monk somewhere else copying down the

Gospel of Luke, and he's living in what we call modern -day Sicily. And they're both copying the ancient

Greek one after the other, page after page. They're copying it down.

And the monk in Germany puts the conjunction and, where the monk in Sicily puts the conjunction but or.

And there's a variant. Well, now we look back and we're reading both of these manuscripts, and it's like, well, why are they different?

And the question of why these manuscripts that were copied and copied and copied, why are they different? And which one was the correct reading?

That's the field of textual criticism. Why are these ancient manuscripts different from each other?

There's 5 ,800 -plus manuscripts of the

Greek New Testament. It's a lot. No other ancient document ever even gets close to that number.

And at the maximum from opposite ends of the spectrum, there's about a 2 % variance between the most different of the two.

So if you were able to draw them all out on the spectrum, and that's not really how it works, but if you were to find the two most different from each other, they'd be about 2 % different from each other.

So that is definitely providential, and reminds us that the original

Word of God is without error, but those who copied were not perfect, and relieves our faith in the actual

Word of God and not in any artifact that we now possess. Now we know in our guts that any variance at all, even if it's 2%, is unsettling.

But we need to remember something, that the vast majority of the variances, the vast majority of the differences, will be one -off misspellings that no other manuscript has.

It's just clear that, oh yeah, that was a slip. A slip of the scribe in this regard.

And it's obvious that this doesn't agree with these 20 over here. So it's clear that that was a simple mistake.

Sometimes it's a misspelling, sometimes it's an obvious omission, sometimes it's a repeated word, or they write a line, and then they write the same line again.

Anybody who's done any trying to copy by hand, or reading something while typing can understand some mistakes.

But the people, the monks and the scribes making copies of God's Holy Word were exceptionally more careful than any of us are in our writing today.

Far more reverent in many cases. The reason we know which reading is the correct one in the main is due to the number of the texts that cover the same ground.

So if you have 100 texts, and 98 of them say this, and 2 of them say this, you understand the, oh well this is kind of obvious.

Now textual criticism is the process by which scholars try to determine which variant is the original, and then the translators decide what they're going to include in their versions.

That scribes aren't always doing the right thing is clear from the scriptures.

Scribes often don't get it right, and sometimes they don't get it right on purpose. This can happen, and there is evidence of that in history.

But the scripture itself testifies to this. Jeremiah 8 verse 8, How can you say we are wise, and the law of the

Lord is with us? Look, the false pin of the scribe, the scribe is the one who made the copies, the false pin of the scribe certainly works falsehood.

Now at some level, is this them tweaking the word of God itself? Is this them putting in some of their own glosses and their own comments along the way?

They get copied, and then everybody reads it with those copies and with those glosses and those comments included.

But in any case, we can see from the word of God that the scribes copying the word of God, some of them make mistakes and some of them do it intentionally.

Now this is a rabbit hole, because when we think about the importance of getting the word of God right, especially when it comes to the copies of the

New Testament, there are various reasons to look at these 5 ,800 manuscripts in which the

New Testament is written down. And then you've got to make choices about, okay, this is the right reading, not this one over here.

Now why are you deciding that scholar? Why are you deciding that church and so on?

And the reasons given by various camps in this regard sometimes don't always fear

God. And sometimes they aren't always followed consistently. And in this regard, we have to be aware of what's going on.

Have you ever noticed that a lot of you just grew up with, you had nothing but the King James basically, and some of you maybe just grew up on the

RSV, maybe had access to the New American Standard back in the 60s and early 70s, and then it became clear that what you were reading in the

King James, the New King James, seemed at some points rather different than what you were reading in other translations.

In the more modern translations, this has become even more obvious. Have you ever experienced that, where all of a sudden there's a verse gone or half a verse gone or a paragraph gone?

And that is disorienting. Now I want to talk about why that is and what's going on. Well, there are three camps, basically, when it comes to textual criticism.

There are those who are textus receptus, which is what the King James uses.

And there are those in the majority text. The New King James does not use the exact same manner of text choice as the

Old King James does. It's more of a majority text camp. And then almost all of the modern translations say that they follow an eclectic approach where they look at textus receptus, which is about 12 or 15

Greek manuscripts that Erasmus was able to collate and others helped to edit to get to a point where they felt that it was quality.

And in fact, there was a couple of scholars and printers who were issuing copies of this

Greek New Testament that had been worked on for quite a while, and they were publishing it for people to buy and to use in their scholarly work.

And they said that this was the text received by us, and they were writing it in Latin. This is the text received by us and is without error, they said.

And basically what it was, it was an advertisement.

They were saying, this is the best one out there, guys. Everyone's using it, and there's nothing wrong with it.

Well, now that's become an entire doctrinal movement, textus receptus without error.

The majority text is saying, the philosophy basically comes down to, well, whichever reading has the most out of all the manuscripts, majority reading is in the mains what we're going to use.

And then there's the critical text. Majority text uses the Byzantine text group, which is basically saying there were a bunch of manuscripts that were generally labeled this, and there's a group of texts that are considered a little bit older called the

Alexandrian text, the critical text. Now, let me try to make this as simple as I can.

5 ,800 manuscripts, at the most, they're going to be about 2 % different from each other. The scholars have spent so much time looking at these things and trying to trace back the archaeological history of them, tracing them back to their origins as much as they can.

They say, okay, well, this one was written first, and we can tell that because this was copied into a similar style, and we found it in the general same region, and it has all the same peculiarities in these critical parts that we see, and so we can tell that this was the fountainhead of this whole group.

And you say, well, these were all copied off of one another, best we can tell. And, oh, here's one right here, and we can tell that all these over here, somehow they were copied off of this one at some point, and we can tell, and they just try to trace it all back.

It's mind -numbing, actually, and I'm thankful for the people who have the brains for it. The reason why, when you read perhaps in the

ESV or you're reading in the Christian Standard Bible, and you read and there are verses missing, maybe a story missing, or words missing, or critical words seemingly just changed, and somebody's like reading the scripture up here, and then you're reading like, that was not at all what was there.

There are two reasons for this. One of them we're going to get to is the choice of translating particular

English words, translating the Greek into English, there's some translation choices going on. But the main reason why things look different is because most modern scholars have decided that in the main, the older the text, the better the text.

The older the text, the better the text. And the reasoning is this, we want to get as close as we can to the original autographs.

So the older we can discover that something is, the more likely it's to be the original.

And some of these older texts had not been discovered for the vast majority of the time that, you know,

Erasmus didn't have access to all these. He knew about a bunch. Chose the ones he thought was best.

But some of these were not known. And the majority text says, you know, it's not that the older ones are the best ones, it's the ones that were used were obviously the best ones.

And the old ones that were left by the wayside were left for a reason. And the texts that were copied again and again were in use, that was the one that the church knew was the right one.

Okay, yeah, great points on both sides. I'm a little concerned about any modern translation, even if they are, you know, folding in the

Alexandrian text or what they consider to be the older text. If they drop things completely out of the reading of the text,

I have a problem with that. If you want to put a little footnote, you say, you know, some of the earlier texts don't include this.

All right, I'm for the priesthood of believers. I'm for us being able to read that, hear that for ourselves and make a determination on our own.

But dropping it completely out I think is hubris. Now, I want to talk about a difference.

Now, I was, I remember going through some classes in seminary that I didn't really enjoy.

One of them was on text criticism. And I remember reading this and I remember going through it and I remember it didn't really sit well with me.

But here are some principles used to put together the critical text versus the majority text.

The critical text is the one they consider the older and there are some things missing, things that aren't included and so on.

And Bruce Metzger outlines some principles that they use in determining what to keep, what they think is the right reading, what they think is probably not original.

And here are the principles he gives. He says, in general, the more difficult reading is to be preferred. In general, the shorter reading is to be preferred.

And he says, since scribes would frequently bring divergent passages, he says, into harmony, the divergent reading is to be preferred.

And he says that scribes would sometimes replace an unfamiliar word with a more familiar synonym. They would alter a less refined grammatical form or less elegant expression to something better.

And they would add things to make things smoother. And this is in his book,

Textual Criticism. It's a very slim volume, standard seminary publication.

Now, I know scribes aren't perfect. And I know that men are sinful and flawed.

And I know that if we have a love for something, very often we're willing to fudge.

And maybe we'll say things about those we love and the things we love in a way that glosses over and doesn't really give the hard facts of the matter.

I can understand that's a very... In our sinfulness and in a way that we are sometimes prone towards deceit,

I can understand that. I don't have any problem believing that scribes get it wrong. I have no problem believing that scribes may get things wrong on purpose.

No problem believing that. The difficulty I have with these principles are the presuppositions being made about the

Word of God itself. And the presuppositions that are assumed about the

Word of God itself are these. That the

Scripture itself, he says, was written in a difficult language style.

That there were divergent readings originally. There were obvious contradictions in the text.

That it wasn't written well in many places. And that all the work of the scribes later on down the road was to fix it all and make it look better.

That's what I don't agree with about the presuppositions being made about those who are pushing the critical text. The assumption is that there were contradictions, divergences.

The assumption is that it wasn't written well. And those assumptions

I think run contrary to the testimony of the Word of God itself. Now this doesn't mean that you have to throw out textual criticism altogether.

There are some decisions that have to be made. One of the most famous examples is the story about the adulteress woman whom

Jesus forgave. And how in early manuscripts it's missing. The earliest manuscripts it's missing.

Well sometimes it's missing, but sometimes it's appended to the end of the Gospel of John in the ancient manuscript.

They don't tell you that part. And sometimes, and actually I think it's in Sinaiticus, which is one of the oldest codices out there, there's even space left for it to be added in.

But you have to see that for yourself. I forget where it's being housed right now. It's probably in London somewhere.

Now the majority text critics use some of the same things.

Look, let's say there's a manuscript that there's only one manuscript that has this reading.

But then let's say 20 others written about the same time have it differently. Well obviously, this reading is probably the right one.

And somebody just made a mistake over here. You still have to engage with some kind of textual criticism. And God has providentially 5 ,800 manuscripts brought us to a place where I think we are able to have the actual reading of the original as best we can.

I have no concern about that. My concern is if there's unbelieving presuppositions guiding the choice of what readings.

I don't agree with that. And most modern translations follow the critical approach because it's considered more scholarly and more academic.

Now I'm not against modern translations per se. I think that they are helpful and they can be good.

But I don't want there to be any kind of official group that is straining what they think is appropriate for the laity to know about the

Bible. Because I'm a Protestant. I protest against that.

I believe in the priesthood of all believers. I think as much as possible we need to have as much information as we can about the word of God and that nothing should be hidden and spoon -fed in such a way that you don't know what's going on.

So that is a very quick overview.

There's a hundred questions about that. The other side of that is to say, well, since there are variants, we just need to pick our group of texts, our manuscripts.

These are it. And everything else is wrong. And this brings us down to the other rabbit hole of translation war or worship.

Wherein the current manifestation is that faith and trust are pledged to the King James Version who died on the cross for our sins.

Now the Texas Receptus, the dozen or so out of the 5 ,800 manuscripts, the dozen or so manuscripts which make up the

Texas Receptus are not bad. But to say that it is, that this is

God's special revelation and any alterations, any other readings in any other

Greek manuscript or any variant of the English translation is

Satanism. I think that's cultish, if not a cult.

And there are some issues with the Texas Receptus. There just are. There are readings in the

Texas Receptus in the King James that they just cannot find in a bunch of the other manuscripts.

And that's just the way it was, and Erasmus did the best he could and the Reformers who followed him and his work did the best they could and praised

God for them. So that's two rabbit holes. Having ungodly presuppositions to question the actual original manuscripts and then the translation war, the translation worship.

Two rabbit holes. And then there's Wonderland. The other parallel of translation is what

I call Wonderland. And this is where man's lofty imagination seeks to obscure the offensiveness of God's Word.

You see, translation has the nasty side effect of making the unpleasant undeniable. Do you remember the story about when

David had to go to war with his own son, Absalom, and how he gave specific instructions that the young man

Absalom not be harmed? Of course, Joab killed him anyway. And a message had to be sent to the king about the state of the battle and the state of Absalom.

And a Cushite, who was a pretty good runner, was sent. And there was this other servant there,

Ahimaz, and he's like, I want to go report too. Joab's like, there's going to be no reward for you.

Cushite's already gone. You'll never catch him. Ahimaz is like, I still want to go. Joab's like,

I'll go. Ahimaz knew a shortcut, and he was faster. So he got there first.

And David asked him, how goes the battle, and how goes it with the young man Absalom? And Ahimaz gave a report that was fairly accurate, but obscured the unpleasant parts.

He got his word in first. Then the Cushite came and gave his report, and it was accurate.

This just reminds us that sometimes we're concerned about saying things in a certain way to certain people that we don't want to offend.

We've all had that temptation. We've all had that feeling. We know what that's like. Do you remember in 2

Kings, when the Assyrians were closing in around Jerusalem, and the

Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, sent his servant Rabshakeh to Jerusalem. And Rabshakeh began to proclaim all sorts of doom and gloom to the people in Jerusalem, and he spoke in Hebrew.

And the servants of King Hezekiah told him, we don't want to hear that in Hebrew. Speak Aramaic. We're the educated group.

We can hear Aramaic. We know Aramaic. Just speak to us in Aramaic. Don't talk in Hebrew. He said,

I'll talk in Hebrew. I want them to know. And that translation got his point across.

But the king's servants didn't want that translation, because it was going to bother the people inside the city. And this brings us to the concern about translation choices.

This is not necessarily about picking which Greek manuscript has the right reading or the right variant.

This is about what English words are being chosen to cover the Greek text, or the

Hebrew text, or the Aramaic text. Translation choices. I've got a problem.

Ever since I was in seminary and going through my original language classes, I had a crutch in my classes called the

New American Standard Bible. The 1995 update.

It came out in the 60s and it was redone in the 70s, I think 77. The 95 update, boy howdy, that was so helpful.

I had to do all these translation homework and everything, and the New American Standard was my best bud.

Just so helpful in even the word order and the translation choices and just, oh, it was amazing.

And so I just fell in love with it. Man, I'm going to preach out of this, because I feel like I'm really getting to the original text.

Of course, the New American Standard uses the more modern critical text approach, which

I didn't care for. Well, I've just recently discovered that there's a new

New American Standard Bible. And they've actually been so audacious as to label it the 2020 version.

And in fact, if you were to go to Mardell or Lifeway and find a

Bible man somewhere and try to buy yourself a New American Standard, I bet you it's going to be the 2020 version.

And in fact, if you use an app or if you use an online Bible program or so on and you try to use the New American Standard, it's going to take you directly to the 2020 version, which just is going to say

New American Standard Bible, NASB, and nothing else included. They might have the 95 older version for a little while, but I think that's going to go away.

So folks, we've got a problem. I've been preaching to the New American Standard the entire time

I've been preaching. And now we've got a problem because the new 2020 version does not read really a lot like the old one.

They have decided to strive for gender accuracy, which means that when they come across the

Greek word for brethren, they're going to help us poor folk out and tell us when it means brothers and sisters and when it only means brothers.

We don't know how to interpret the text. They're going to interpret for us and tell us when we're to think of sisters and when we're not.

Now, that's not formal equivalence, trying to find the word that fits the word lexicographically, semantically.

That's not even really dynamic equivalence. That's ideological equivalence.

Many, many versions like the CSB and the NIV got started in 1996 on this, have been striving for gender accuracy or removing gender using the pronoun they or the pronoun you instead of him or brothers and so on.

They make all these changes so that you don't get that because you don't need it. You don't need that. It's not good for you anyway.

You don't need what the original text said because you need to have it in a different type of parlance.

That's an ideological agenda. Here's something fun to do.

You ready for some fun? I thought you would be. Who here has got themselves a good old trustee

King James or a new King James? Anybody? King James? Okay. Red, would you please look up First Timothy chapter four and verse seven?

I don't read it yet because I want to have you go second. Okay. Because it's more funny that way.

And I don't mean to pick on anyone here at all. I'm not really picking on you. I promise.

And so someone with a device might be a more safe bet because you can always get all the versions on that one. Can somebody look up the

ESV, First Timothy chapter four and verse seven? ESV, First Timothy chapter four and verse seven.

Norm, brave man. You ready for it? Okay, Norm, read out big and loud. Everybody can hear. I think so.

Am I doing the wrong one? No, I'm sorry.

Okay. Let's back it up. I'm sorry. I gave the wrong reference.

We're getting it done. Okay. Hang on a second.

Let me see. Okay, yeah. First Timothy four seven. That's right.

First Timothy four seven. Yeah, New Testament, Red says. Okay.

All right. Go for it again. Blame it on the device.

Irreverent. Okay. Irreverent, silly myths.

All right, Red. Go ahead and read it real loud. Old wives fables.

Okay. Okay. Now, why did the ESV take the Greek words that says old wives fables and change it to irreverent and silly myths?

Any guesses? Don't want to offend women and don't want to offend old women and don't want to offend old people.

Well, what did Paul write? That's what's in the text. Why did they change it?

Well, this is what it really means. And you don't need that original. What you need is just the idea behind it.

Okay. Now, they do that as well in other places. First Corinthians six nine is one of the most famous places.

And we'll go there next. Everybody can turn over to First Corinthians six nine. I'll give you another one that's interesting. Deuteronomy 22 five.

Two different Hebrew words in Deuteronomy 22 five. And it says that a woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man.

And then it says that a man should not wear a woman's clothing. In the Hebrew, it's two different words.

And the clothing, speaking about a woman's clothing, has to do with a dress, a robe, something that a woman would wear.

Men aren't supposed to wear women's clothing. And all sorts of people are doing that today in the name of freedom.

But the word used prior to that is that the woman should not wear any equipment that belongs to a man.

The word is actually equipment. It has the idea of armor. It has the idea of all kinds of aspects of what a man might do in his vocation.

A woman is not supposed to wear that. And that's what God's rules were for that society that he crafted perfectly for Israel.

So in the modern translations to one, they all say they don't use two different English words.

They use the same English word, and they say that a woman should not wear a man's clothing, and a man shouldn't wear a woman's clothing.

But why do they obscure the word for equipment? Why would they do that?

Well, because the opinion of the church at large today is that a woman can do anything a man can do just as long as she isn't ordained.

Well, that last bit is obviously going away quickly, too. There's no difference.

Male and female are fungible. There's no difference. I mean, a woman can do anything a man can do, and there's absolutely no difference, and there should be no restrictions whatsoever.

All pledge allegiance to feminism. Well, you've got to cover that up. You can't say that there's two different things.

Anyway, that's interesting, and none of the modern translations do that. And then we have 1 Corinthians 6, 9, because this is a hot topic.

Do you not know? I'm reading out of the New King James tonight. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God, do not be deceived?

Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

This is a wonderfully easy passage to translate from the Greek. It's the negative particle in the

Greek, the same negative particle every single time, with the next word being some kind of sin, all set in the same case.

So easy to parse, so easy to translate. This is beginner Greek student stuff.

It's the same pattern. Neither this, nor that, nor that, nor that, nor that, nor that, nor that. And the manuscripts are all in agreement here.

There's no disagreement. There's no textual variance whatsoever. So, somebody read.

Oh, let's pick on the ESV again. Okay. So they broke their pattern.

Did you hear that? There's four Greek words, neither this, nor that.

And I think the King James says, neither the effeminate, nor the sodomite, or the homosexual.

What does the King James have? Yeah. We're translating.

Now, the modern translations wipe out that first part, because effeminacy, saying that effeminate is bad, well, that's heresy today.

The more men are like women, the more they're celebrated. So that first part is completely wiped out in the modern translations, and their word choice makes it different.

Why? What's the point? That's not what's in the text. What is the point? Why are they making these word choices?

So, again, I'm not against using modern translations. Let's just make sure we know what's going on there. Let's make sure we know what's going on.

Now, I'm going to stop with this, because there's some things we'll pick up next time we have availability.

Now, I'm just going to stop with this last thought as part of the wonderland in translation choices.

People point out about the word brethren. Well, yeah, but that no longer means what it used to mean, and we've got to change.

Language changes, and translations should change. I don't understand if you ever read an actual 1611

King James. Most of you read a 1769 version,

I guess it was called. That's the latest update, the way they stopped updating it. Reading an original 1611 would be beyond the skill of most of us in this room.

Language changes, so translations have to change. Oh, yeah, absolutely, I agree. That is the fact.

What happens, though, when some of the changes in the language, what happens when the language of a culture has changed precisely to obscure the will and the word of the creator?

Because language and the changes in language are not neutral. They're not neutral.

There's a reason why the language is changing. Language and culture are not neutral. We're trying to get to the right word, the formal equivalence.

Here is the Greek word in the text. What is the most equivalent expression or word that we have in our current language?

And this takes a sniper shot. We want to get it exactly right, a sniper shot.

And when language changes, it is not as if we are only merely adjusting our sniper shot due to a change in the wind.

Sometimes it's like that, but other times a big sacred cow has been interposed between the translator taking the shot and the lexical target.

And there's a big sacred cow in between the sniper and the target.

And then alternative semantical targets are offered and the shot taken and the sacred cow preserved. And when those things are going on, and it takes a little bit for us to identify that that is indeed the case, when that's going on, we say, that's a bad translation.

Now, we can make a big deal out of it. This only happens in a few places. But if we don't pay attention to it, acknowledge it, then it's going to happen in a lot of places, more and more and more.

So we've run way over time, but it's the nature of the topic.

Let's close by singing the doxology and then we can talk some more in fellowship.