Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Announcement. I am not a smoker, despite all appearances to the contrary, right now. No judgment. If you're a smoker, whatever, everybody's got their thing. We all struggle with it. We got our stuff. My thing that I'm dealing with right now is an unending head and chest cold. We now enter day seven of my voice held hostage by whatever this stupid thing is. Really, I am sorry that it sounds this way, but this is a daily podcast. And so we just do it. And whatever the day is, is what the day is. But I have yet another favor to ask of you, in addition to bearing with me with my stupid voice. And this second favor that I need to ask is bear with me as we do some heavy lifting today. We've got some on the fly, real-time investigation that we need to do because we have a Bible conundrum that's been lingering here in John chapter one in this prologue that I have not touched yet, but probably, I mean, there's a reasonable chance you have noticed it. So let me get us oriented and then we're going to go tackle this Bible conundrum. Right now, in the grand scheme of us working through the book of John and this season, we are working on a prologue that is divided into four quarters. Quarter or movement number one of this prologue is the in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God stuff. It's the Lagos, it's the Word, it's Jesus and God, that relationship. The second quarter of the prologue, or the second movement of the prologue, is the Lagos and Creation. Movement number three of the prologue is the Lagos and revealing the light, the Lagos and Revelation. And then quarter number four is the incarnation. It's the Lagos and taking on flesh, which we haven't really got to very much yet, but you know, we're getting there. And before I tear into that very important fourth one, there's just been a few things lingering back here in the first three quarters that I knew we were needing to go back and tackle. And so today we're going to tackle one of them. And it all hinges on this one word that maybe some of you caught when I was reading my translation, or as I've been reading my translation, maybe some of you are like, man, that one word clangs every time because my Bible translates it in a way that seems completely different than the way your Bible translates it there. Whitman, what are we doing? So here's the word in question. And because I'm trying to sneaky backdoor you into accidentally memorizing this prologue, I'm going to read all five verses to get us up to this verse. Here we go. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Nothing tricky there. All of our Bibles are saying pretty much the same thing. Through him, all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. Again, whatever translation you're using here, unless you have sort of a parachristian cultier Bible, there's some goofy translations out there. But if you're using any reliable historic English translation, boom, it all like it all looks the same. But here's where we get the rub. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not. What do you have there for your next word in your translation? Or if you've already memorized this, how do you have that next word memorized? The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. Or do you have, and the darkness has not overcome it? Those are probably the two most common ways that that one pivotal word gets translated here. And at least on the surface, it feels like those mean very different things. So let's start by talking about translation here as we try to get to the bottom of this. English translation from really from anything is not a one-for-one. Those of you who speak two languages, you know this. You can't just decode another language and move it over into English. Languages are built differently, they evolve differently. Constructions sound very clumsy if you just translate literally each and every single word directly in the same order from the source language to the concluding language. So translation is science, but translation is also art, and language is always changing. So translation is also a bit of a moving target. You have to take into account not what you wish words mean in your language. You know, if you're a translator, you can't just say, well, I liked the way words sounded in 1931. That is when the English language was at its peak. And I don't care about the modern audience, I shall translate it the way I think it ought to have been 100 years ago. Well, that doesn't work. The point of translation is service to your audience so that people who do not naturally speak the source language can understand it cleanly in their native language that they do speak. So translation is a service to the audience, and as a result, new translations and updates to translations happen all the time in an effort to make things make the most sense possible to a modern audience. So I am reading on a daily basis, almost every day I'm reading just from my old Bible, the one that I have in front of me, is a 1984 edition of the New International Version. That is not God's unique, wholly inspired Bible, but you know, it's it's solid. And it's the one that I learned in when I was a kid and that I have a lot of memorization in. So I continue to use it quite a bit because it's just the one that my brain has. At other times, as we're going along, I'm reading from the English Standard Version, which is born out of a little different translation philosophy. Here's how the ESV reads The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Here, however, is what Bible is this? I have a lot of them open. My desk is funny. You would like it. Oh, this is the cultural background study Bible, and this is the 2011 version of the New International version. And it reads like the ESV: the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. And then what do we have here? Oh, this is an HCSB, Holman Classic Study Bible. So this is the Baptist one. Let's see what the Baptists do with it. The light shines in the darkness, yet the darkness did not overcome it. So understood seems to be the minority translation. Even the New International Version Committee has moved on from that. But if I recall correctly, and I don't have a King James in front of me, I think the King James rendered it, understood it back in the day as well. If not, I know there are other translations that do. So, all right, what gives? This obviously raises a question about the passage, but it also raises a question about the reliability of the text, right? Like I'm guessing there are a ton of you who are here. You've never done anything like this before. You are at a place where you're like, look, it's time in my life to think about God and the Bible. This made sense maybe to my grandparents, and I didn't understand why it did, but now I'm in a place where I'm getting into life and I'm doing things and the world is a little more complicated than I thought. And some of the things I thought were good answers kind of turned out to be fads. They just came and went. And now here I am. I'm trying to grasp this timeless thing that meant so much to people who came before me in my life. Then I run into things like this and it's discouraging. You know, I I could totally see you feeling that way. So what do we have going here? Is this a contradiction? Is this an indication that the Bibles we read are not reliable? Well, I would argue no and no. I think what we're seeing here is a function of that translation phenomenon I was talking about earlier. It is incredible that we have multiple English translations in front of us of this ancient document that has been so carefully preserved and handed down. Someday maybe we'll talk more about those processes, but this is not some game of telephone. In many ways, we are closer to the original text now than we've been since close to the earliest days of Christianity, because we've been able to gather so many early manuscripts and compare and contrast and make sure that what we've got is reliable. And what we discover is just enormous uniformity from the handwritten copies of the Bible that exist from way, way, way back in the day. That gets us down to a baseline of what the original language does. And sitting over here, I've got uh Greek New Testament. It's just a beautiful little edition, and I really have to labor with it. I I'm not great at the Greek. Good people taught it to me. I really did pay attention, but uh it's hard. You got to keep that thing sharp, and I don't want to embarrass myself in front of everybody's. I also don't want to make you feel like you have to learn Greek to understand the Bible. So we don't do a lot of the source Greek. We're gonna labor through it a little bit with this word in particular tomorrow. But today it's enough to say the following. One, there is a tension here with this word, but the word that is rendered sometimes understood it, and that is rendered sometimes overcome it. And next thing, from time to time, you're just going to run into that. There are words and concepts that make a ton of sense in one language, but that don't neatly go one for one to an identical word in another language. Not only is that okay, that's kind of a feature of language, it's kind of part of the fun of what makes each language unique. And in some ways, certain languages seem to be a little bit better at efficiently conveying certain ideas. And when you translate them, you I mean it takes more words and more clutter to get that same elegant point across from the source language. The third and finally, let's just consider the text for a second before we suspend here for the day. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. Is that a true statement, given everything else we've seen in John, and given what you've seen in the world? Is it true that there's a light from God? There is a truth that is bigger than us, that shines into the darkness of this world, and the darkness of this world, including darkness in our own eyes and in our own perception, does not understand it fully or completely. Well, that's absolutely true. That would be a true theological statement that would be in keeping with what we see in John, to use the word understood here, absolutely makes sense. Okay, now I'm gonna read you another one and tell me if this is true. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Is that true? Logically, theologically, from your own observation, anecdotally, has there been a divine light from God, a revelation in this world? Has God been involved in this world and has the darkness of the world at times resisted, or kind of at all times, resisted the light of God and the work of God, but not been able to defeat God? Is that true? Well sure. And let's take it one step even further, just out to the realm of physics, like we've been talking about here. When light comes into darkness, does darkness defeat it? Does darkness overcome light, just quench it? No, it's not like flame and water. It's a different relationship. It just isn't the same thing. No, darkness retreats relative to the brightness of the light. Understood or overcome, either way, the statement is true. But also, as I think we're going to see tomorrow, either way, the translation is both true and not completely complete. This is one of those places where we have to let the context do the work because the word is not a neat one-for-one translation. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.