NIV reliance on "Lord"

WE NOTICED SOME wonderful words have evolved more slowly despite their place in an evolving language like English, like "love", "grace" and "true", perhaps because they transcend their rapidly shifting linguistic housing. In English Christendom, at least one central Christian word seems to have survived for other reasons: “Lord”, the primary focus of my current research. It continues to prevail in song, sermon and Scripture (although I would argue to a lessening degree in conversation and testimonial). 

In Scripture, ‘Lord’s bedrock, it comprises no occasional reference! While English translations will vary, the total number of occurrences of ‘Lord’ is usually situated in the mid-to-high 7000s[1] translating various Hebrew and Greek terms. The NIV appears even to consciously seek to reinforce the word. For instance, to translate the New Testament’s Greek word ‘hagiōn’, traditionally translated in English by ‘the saints’, the NIV writes, “the Lord’s people”[2]. As a result, it succeeds in bringing its own New Testament ‘Lord tally’ to nearly 700. Next to ‘God’, ‘Lord’ must be said to occupy one of the most important roles in the New International Version.

However, given the NIV's Committee on Bible Translation strong stance on respecting language dynamics, does this fit the usage of 'Lord' today? In my next post, we will attempt to answer that question according to three different metrics.

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[1] God was usually known in Hebrew by his personal Name, ‘Yahweh’, which I count at 6,867 occurrences. These are systematically translated ‘Lord’ by NIV and other mainstream translations, following a centuries-old tradition that can be dated back to Tyndale and Luther’s publications in and around the 1530s, with Tyndale using “LORde” in (Genesis) and Luther “HERR(N)” (although we know that ‘Lord’ translations had already been around a long while even before that, e.g. Wycliffe, late 14^th century). Add to 6,867 tally all the human ‘lords’ of the Old Testament mostly derived from Hebrew’s 'adown, the divine ‘Lord’ from,  ‘Adonai’, and the hundreds of occurrences of ‘Lord’ in the New Testament, largely as a title for Jesus, and reach the high 7000s pretty quickly.

[2] This particular choice is peculiar. Even if it were felt that the Jesus-Yahweh relationship were to be emphasised, it does not appear to have been done so via this route by the New Testament writers. Manifestly they were aware of the Septuagint translation into Greek of the Hebrew Bible and its specific wording, and cited it frequently. When the Hebrew says something very close to “Yahweh’s people/congregation” (NIV: “the Lord’s people”) ‘Kyriou’ is present and ‘hagiōn’ is not (e.g. LXX Num 11:29, 1 Sam 2:24, 2 Ki 9:6, 2 Chr 23:16, Ez 36:20). This is the opposite of the New Testament wording.

Four perspectives on Bible translation

What might this constant change mean for Bible translation? We can suggest four logical basic Bible translation perspectives:

1.       Static source to static targets

2.       Static source to dynamic targets

3.       Dynamic sources to static targets

4.       Dynamic sources to dynamic targets

The first perspective would imply that not only a given Greek term like ‘Kyrios’, usually translated into English as “Lord”, always held the same usage and meaning (static source) but also that ‘the Lord’ has always held the same usage and meaning (static target). Even though we haven’t yet considered how we should imagine the source Bible languages functioned, we already should realise that this first approach to Bible translation is ill-fated since we know that our target languages are constantly on the move. For example, a couple of hundred years ago we might have described our clothes as “gay” even though today we might not.

The second perspective marks a significant improvement: the source language is still perceived as fundamentally static (after all, no-one speaks that Greek anymore, right?), but it is conceded that the target language is a shifting target. Thus, “ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing” (James 2:3, King James Version) has now become “you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes” (New King James Version).

No-one really holds the third perspective, at least to my knowledge. It would imply a deep understanding of the living dynamics of interconnected languages of Hebrew and Greek, while presuming the opposite to be true of languages spoken today.

The fourth perspective is where I think all Bible translation should land, regardless of readership (readership should of course be integrated, but that is a subsequent stage of reasoning). Here, the source languages and the target languages are both perceived as dynamic, alive and interconnected. If this fourth perspective is to be truly embraced, then we must bid farewell to simplistic word-for-word translation, just as the Chair of the Committee on Bible Translation, Dr. Douglas Moo, has recognised:

Do we continue to require our second-year language students to translate “word for word,” perpetuating a simplistic and ultimately false view of language?[1]

With other CBT members also echoing this perspective, it is encouraging that the NIV appears fully resonant with this reality. That is why I have chosen this particular committee as my primary intended readership and the NIV as my primary base translation for reviewing modern ‘Kyrios’ treatment.

Clearly, however, this process of linguistic change is a complex one. In many of our modern target languages, especially those that are among the richest, most developed and innovative languages, some words have evolved with slower dignity and perhaps more flair than others, both inside and outside the confines of religious discourse, like “love”, “joy”, “peace”, “God”, “hope”, “grace”, “divine” and “true”. At least one central Christian word seems to have survived for other reasons: “Lord”, the primary focus of my paper/book. So why might some historical religious language still function so prominently in some of the most successful Bible translations of our day and should that exempt it from the demands of Perspective 4?

 

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[1] Moo, D. J. (2014) The Challenge of Bible Translation, Zondervan. p. 11, retrieved from https://www.thenivbible.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/The-Challenge-of-Bible-Translation.pdf 

NIV evolutions

A couple of times on the blog I have zoomed in on what appears to be an important shift in the NIV in its more recent edition (2011). There have actually be three main "incarnations" to this translation:
1. 1984
2. 2005 (TNIV)
3. 2011

In the process of compiling my Psalms reading plan (Psalms: God's keys to our presence), I have discovered many of these discrepancies that, for me, lean in favour of the older translation. Before I mention my difficulties there, let's look at how wide-reaching those changes have been:

(taken from http://www.biblewebapp.com/niv2011-changes/)

So far I have discovered two main (great) sources for tracking the changes:

• http://www.biblewebapp.com/niv2011-changes/#001-001
• http://www.slowley.com/niv2011_comparison/

You won't believe how in-depth they are! One important thing to note is that it is actually no longer so easy to find electronic versions of the 1984 NIV now. The reason for this is that most sites just updated their version with the 2011 version. It is not called "NIV 2011". It is simply called "NIV", so it is not always straight forward to know unless you are aware of a key change. But for the most-part, 1984 has gone.

One place I still go, especially for the Psalms study, is http://classic.studylight.org/. Just select NIV on the drop-down menu, and (although you would have no way of knowing this), you are provided the 1984 version. However, if you go to the main studylight.org site, and make the same selection, then you are provided the 2011 version! Crazy, huh? I think it's useful to know.

A while back while looking into Christ's role in creation, I noted a rather subtle but essential recognition of an inaccuracy in Colossians 1:16. Perhaps under the influence of a renewed Jesus movement in the evangelical churches (I speculate), the Father was even eclipsed here:

For by in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were have been created bythrough him and for him.

Note how essential "Father-space" (see 1 Cor 8:6) had been filled by a Trinity-subsuming Christ who was simply understood to be Creator. So these little tweaks are, in my view, very significant. So why am I unhappy about the Psalms direction? Rather than bore any readers here with more examples, let me just grant that the word "soul" is grossly misunderstood. I acknowledge that this word in a worn-out evangelism of soul-saving has become unhelpfully unclear. The 2011 NIV has opted for a rather novel way out. Where it feels like it can get away with it, it scraps the "soul" and replaces it with the person as a whole (or a pronoun). 

I'm not satisfied with that solution, because it is precisely the wholeness of a person that is at stake and that is lacking when the person is not entirely present. To be present requires strong intra-connecting aspects of hands, face, eyes, bones, thoughts, emotions, words, tongues, heart and soul. There is a spectrum of parts comprising the whole that goes from visible to invisible, tangible to intangible, emitter to receptor, and even teacher to student. This is why I recommend reading the Psalms in the 1984 version: in my view, you will be less confused by the pronoun play.

The Son of God: Three Views of the Identity of Jesus (2)

This is part 2 of my response to Irons' opening case, which is very focussed on a few specific arguments. This is important to note, as some apologists are not nearly so focussed and are banking on a cumulative effect. For some folk, like myself, this is a less profound or impacting methodology. So, apologies if the previous post was quite critical - it is nothing against Irons or his methodology (except the comment about his and Holmes' use of "being", which I think, is quite telling of the difficulty of the position to which he and other "one-self" Trinitarians hold).

Irons is going to have a lot to say about John - this is right. In my own research I found dozens of suggestive passages in this gospel, and it is the boldest in the claims it attributes to Jesus, and the absolute quietest on the Kingdom of God. One thing Irons rightly highlights is John's emphasis on Jesus coming "in the flesh". Why say that Jesus came in the flesh? That sounds like a strange thing to say if you did not have to defend against faulty thinking about the Christ, one that came from God not in the flesh. So it is readily agreed and understood to be an early or prototype anti-docetic affirmation, a heresy that for some reason Irons neither mentions nor explains. A reason for this perhaps is his keeness to show that the pre-existence of Christ is simply self-evident in such a passage as this. It is a good point that he needs to make in defense of a Trinitarian view, but here it needed better situating, which would have nuanced his quick conclusion somewhat.

Irons leaves John briefly to visit Paul, anticipating the argument that John's writings are late first century, allowing for christological development. He heads unswervingly to Philippians 2, the great, and early christological poem (p12). However, like with some translations (the NIV being among the worst in this instance), Irons does a little paraphrasing. He states:

"Jesus' decision not to regard equality with God as something to be used for his advantage".

Here the lexical decisions are all made for us and all ambiguity removed without any discussion whatsoever. That is a pity.  The Greek word used here by Paul/the poem is rare and difficult to trace within the canon, but outside it is used. Main usage seems to be (and I have checked this in other ancient literature) to pillage, take what is not already owned, like in a raid. So by assuming that this equality with God is something that Christ already has, Irons is steering the translation of Harpagmos away here from a common definition of the word. This assumption ignores other probable (and incompatible) meanings, justified primarily by the exact place he wants to take his readers: pre-existent coequality, which is a separate argument to pre-existence alone. This is therefore a little misleading given the subtitle he provides the reader (simply referring to pre-existence in Paul). A more likely translation is therefore "grasped after", and a more neutral translation that leads both options open (like the NET translation) is simply "grasped": He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, full-stop. The Greek does not allow for anything more.

Now Irons continues by conflating that Jesus:
"humbled himself by becoming a man".

This is a conflation of the Greek. Irons strikes me again as slipping in his conclusion too early into his argumentation. If you want to look more into this you can check out the "raw" Greek here. There is not space here to discuss Philippians 2 more, but I recently did a post on the conclusion to the poem here.

Two tests of ontological deity

"Does divine sonship mean ontological deity in the sense of being eternally part of the divine being?...That is precisely what I believe the New Testament teaches." 

Where does it teach it? Teaching is explicit right? And how does that square with Irons' inconsistent use of "being"? We already saw that just two pages earlier, p11, he has stated that "the Word existed as a divine being distinct from God the Father". Irons is really confusing me now. Quite how does he define being? 

When he criticises (p. 13) his finally-fictitious counter-arguments for saying that the Trinitarian claim is a noxious exaggeration, I simply noted in the margin that you cannot exaggerate to a category not yet identified, by which I mean Christ's status as the Christ and Son of God is so totally unique and awesome by everyone's standards, that exaggeration is hardly the name of the Trinitarian game. Irons is trying to battle against 17th century Unitarians, but they just aren't present in this discussion.

His first test of ontological deity is one of my own top-suggestive themes in the New Testament: Creation. John, Hebrews and Paul share this creation-by-God-through-Christ language. 

1. John 1 - there is some great context for understanding John's presentation of logos through Philo, which I found while thinking about this. Wikipedia has a great little summary here on Philo. It is important because it precedes John by a few decades and gives us access into a wider philosophical current, and takes us away from thinking that this kind of language was just invented by God who downloaded it to John this way. This passage fails to defend the eternal begetting hypothesis, or that the pre-incarnate Word pre-existed as a son. He might have been, but like any Christian doctrine, you have to widen the search from any one passage, which Irons I think also agrees with, since he continues.

2. 1 Corinthians 8:6

3. Colossians 1:16. This one is a whopper. Unfortunately, especially for someone who claims to be more influenced by the Greek stream (starting with three and working out how they are one), he opts for the confusing preposition "by" in translating "ἐν". What am I talking about? God the Father is always and consistently the source of creation, and that is precisely why the New Testament authors never place the active emphasis of creation on the Son. If the Son (if he was already the Son, but let us assume that for the moment) was both the active instigator and the means of creation, then the Father's role is totally annulled. The roles as clearly delineated and distinguished in the 1 Corinthians passage above do not permit anyone, especially Trinitarians, to translate "ἐν" with "by". NIV realised this on the 2011 revision and changed this. Irons prefers "by", and leaves me wondering why he thinks he is so Greek in his thinking.

The second argument of ontological deity from Irons is Aseity. I feel fairly sure that David Bercot would disagree with Irons, and fundamentally challenge his so-called Greek-allegiance. They would agree on the definition, a se, a latin phrase meaning that one's being is "from oneself". But they would not agree that aseity is a good Trinitarian-Scriptural argument. If you have some time - check out Bercot's video on the doctrine of the Trinity. Some other time I will probably look at it in more depth on the blog.

Aseity is often argued by evangelicals, even when they don't use the word. What it often looks like, in its most ugly guises, is WHO CARES if there is a Father or his empowering Presence? Jesus is everything, he doesn't need anything or anyone, he is GOD. Of course, Irons is not nearly so crass, but the argumentation, heavily reliant on a single verse (John 5:26) - sorry, I meant John 5:26b. For me, Irons scores much better on his creation argumentation than his aseity. We will see what Dixon and Smith have to say later.

In the next post, let us see how Irons treats the exaltation of Christ.

There is hope for the NIV! A quick peak at Titus 2:13

I had a period where I started to really like the NASB, and also at times the NET Bible translations. You know what they say, it is always worth checking another translation. Well, if you are reading the older translation of the NIV then it is also worth checking the updated one, I think around 2011 for the full Bible. The version many evangelicals were reading in the 80s and 90s, and still many today, has some subtle but very significant differences. There is a very notable one I spotted in Hebrews 1, where we shift from Jesus being made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honour and everything put under his feet, to MANKIND being made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honour and everything put under our feet. That might seem like a big jump, but that is simply what is now understood to be in the original Greek. Too much had been made of the title "son of man", and all the glory, honour and authority so naturally seeming like something Jesus should have.

But the passage that is bouncing around my brain right now is from Titus 2:10-13. Up until now, I had been thinking that Titus was a really special book in terms of Christology, because my study was showing it to consistently assume that Jesus simply was the highest form of deity there could be. Jesus is God for the Titus writer. I was looking forward to writing a special section about it. Until I stumbled over a very significant change from old NIV, which follows the KJV, to new NIV.

Old NIV:
...while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us...

New NIV:
...while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us...

Can you see why this update is significant? It is actually significant on two levels, both of which I think are of great importance.

Firstly, in terms of my quest for the biblical justification of the fourth-century doctrine of the Triune God as something more than an "interpretation", I thought I had a solid "blue" text here, that is to say suggestive and compatible with later developments. It is now possible from the current NIV rendering - which I note to be now the mainstream reading - to understand the original passage differently, that Jesus is the glory of God that is to appear. But I suspect it is even more than that, and I am not alone. Literally the Greek says:

awaiting the blessed hope and [the] appearing of the glory of the great God and Saviour of us Christ Jesus.

Huther refers for proof to Buttman and Wince, perhaps affirming essentially that the "—" (dash) after "hope" is OK, because it is impossible to treat "the hope" and the "appearing" as one subject. Jesus is the glory of our great God. So the second [the] is justified, and the appearance of Christ Jesus is also the blessed hope.

This update from NIV is also significant for me on a second level. I feel very encouraged that while theological commitments will always have their influence on translators (and that can historically be shown without a shred of doubt), that this discipline with regard to bible translation and textual criticism is showing true advances toward neutrality, thus better translations, even at the cost of trinitarian proof texts! I admire that.

Before closing, I should also note that quite a few scholars seem to also keep open the possibility of another older interpretation, from a point of view of grammatical and author consistency, that the sentence requires in English the insertion of a second "our", which means that while Christ and God are distinguished, the eagerly awaited glory is shared and non-personified, as opposed to the previous interpretation. Suffice it to say that the chances of the Titus-writer meaning Titus to understand that Jesus just is God here seem to me slim according to current textual scholarship.