Say More about Bible Translations

This week we discuss questions that came from our Sunday morning sermon on March 22nd about Bible Translation at Fullerton Free Church

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:33

How's it going today? We are here at the Say More Podcast, which is a weekly podcast put out by Fullerton Free. And today's podcast is about the message from Sunday, March 22nd. And I'm joined today. Oh, my name's Kyle. I am a person, and I have two friends with me today. They taught this Sunday. Um, we have Kristen and Christina. Good morning to y'all.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Good morning. Good morning.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

How's it uh being? How's it going? Share a little bit about what you talked about this Sunday as we hop into today's uh oh, wait, I should do my whole podcast intro. We are a podcast that discusses uh discusses the sermon from the week before. Uh this week, y'all did a really cool uh message talking about Bible translation. And here's my sales pitch for it. Um, I went home and my wife had to work that day because uh she makes the monies, and uh and so she was like, Hey, I really like both of their teaching. I wasn't there. What was it? And my response was you know how you could do like a message that kind of feels like it needs to be really educational, but then somehow it like makes you feel really grateful for what God's done by offering you like the Bible in your life. I was like, that's what I walked away with today. And so that was my response. That's all share a little bit about what you thought about the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Thanks, Kyle. Yes. Yeah, it was super fun to get to do this together. We've both been doing a lot of work on Bible translations and kind of how how we got as Americans to this place of having so many amazing translations. And so we really wanted the morning to be a time of gratitude and reflection on the abundance we have and also just a little bit, a little bit educational on what translations theory is, how we, how scholars do this work. And then ultimately that we are making a shift in our services for our primary teaching text to go from the ESV to the NIV, which is actually a pivot back in some ways. It's a translation that we have used as our primary teaching text in this church before. Uh, but we really wanted to just look at the breadth of what it means that people spend the time to translate the word of God so that we can have a relationship with him and really interact with him, clearly know him. Uh, he obviously knows us. But yeah, anything you want to add to that?

SPEAKER_02 2:56

Yeah, we said this a lot on Sunday, but it was a very, very like high-level overview. Um, there's so much scholarship on translations. You can get like super in details. So we really um we intentionally actually left out a lot because there's just too much to do for a Sunday morning service, and we really wanted to have it be um both like informative, accessible, and also like worshipful and not just a lecture. So um we said this on Sunday, but we let a think well. And there in the Think Well, we go way more into like actual like translation theory, translations in general. So again, Sunday was more high-level, very overview, kind of surface on a couple things, helping us understand why we're gonna make this switch as well.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Well, it was awesome. And uh, and yeah, I love that the ThinkWell's available. I know that this has been a slow rollout, like uh between the Think Well and then the kind of teachers and leaders meeting for the different community groups, and then this all service. And before that, even you had presentations to our staff and to the elder board. It's just I'm I'm impressed knowing the amount of effort that's gone into it. It's such a big deal, and it is a revert back. I um I've only been on staff like nine months, but I did come to the church one time in 2010 and I spoke in the youth group, and I definitely stole an NIV Bible from the high school room then. So I know they had them before, like it's not brand new.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

Um, yep, going back to the NIV.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

We still have it. Um, well, we have a couple questions. Uh, some people, thank you so much for emailing in. If you have questions, uh, you already know about this because you're listening to our show, but it is podcast at forwardinfree.com. And the first two questions we're gonna combine a little bit because they are pretty similar. And essentially the question is we talked a lot about on stage about you know the uh masculine plural um that is pretty common throughout the Bible, and sometimes it could mean like men, and sometimes it means like mankind. And really, like, how do we know? Like, uh, what is the way in which we figure it out? What explain a little more? I know you went into it, but uh let's go. Well, talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 5:12

Yes, this is a great question. I'm glad um we had, like Kyle said, a couple people asked this question. Um, and this is this is great because it's really helpful um to think through this. So uh bear with me because I'm just gonna talk a little bit about Greek and Hebrew words because you just have to when you're talking about this. Um, you also have to, you know, we we talked about this on Sunday, but just to fill people in who are listening, um in Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic and also other languages, even modern languages, uh, they use masculine plurals to refer to groups of men and women. And modern English does not do that. So old English did, modern English doesn't. So now we have this interesting barrier where if our translations are translated just for masculine plurals, like they just say men, uh, modern English readers are less and less looking at that word men and thinking, oh, this means men and women. Whereas old English or a Greek reader or a Hebrew reader or speaker would understand that that's implicit within that masculine plural right there. So the NIV, we this is what we talked about, and it's not just the NIV, actually, a lot of translations do this. Um, they're updating their translations to help us see when the text is meaning men and women, or when the word means humanity or person and not just a biological male or a group of men. Um so the question is, how do we know that they're doing that uh when they should be? And how do we know when it should just be speaking about men? This is great because this actually has implications for how we think about different parts of scripture as well. Um, so here's a couple things for for Greek and Hebrew. There are specific words um in Greek and Hebrew that mean person or human, and they can mean male, but they more generally mean like a human being. Um, so in Greek that word is anthropos, in Hebrew that word is adam. And those can be translated as a male or man, um, but they also can be translated as a person. And in and the biggest way we know when to translate that in terms of like not a uh a biological male is the context. So the context really helps us understand. Oh, like in the epistles, we come across this a lot. Um the the main one we see in the epistles is the Greek word for Adelphoi, um, which means brothers, which means brothers and sisters, because it's uh that's a plural masculine. And um we would translate it as brothers and sisters when the context is clear that Paul or whoever the writer of the epistle is speaking to the church, the community of God's people in that collective group. Um, and so you can be pretty confident that when the epistles are written that way, it is speaking to all the men and the women who are there together. And what's really cool about this is there are places, uh, I'll talk specifically about the NIV because that's a translation we're moving towards. There are places where the NIV actually keeps the gender of the word when it's important for um the meaning of what's happening. So Romans 8 is a is a perfect example. In Romans 8, 15, uh it says, the spirit you receive does not make you slave so that you live in fear again. Rather, the spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship, and by him we cry, Abba Father. So there in the NIV, it doesn't change it to adoption as children, even though we know that this is talking to all believers. So men and women who put their faith in Christ have received this spirit of adoption to being children of God. But the NIV keeps the idea of adoption to sonship, and you there's actually a little note within the NIV that says the Greek word for adoption to sonship is a term referring to the full legal standing of an adopted male heir in Roman culture. So right there, that's a great example where the NIV is not going to change that idea of adoption to sonship, even though it's not excluding women, but there's a embedded meaning in what it means to be adopted as a son in the Roman culture that's actually a part of the meaning of this passage. So the NIV, the translators are very careful about this. And we have to know that these translators, they're they're there's a whole committee of Bible scholars who work together. So these are not just, you know, people kind of making decisions here and there. These are people who spent their life studying scripture, their life studying these languages. And you know, every translation is there's there's things that continue to be updated, and we're humans, we can make mistakes in our translations, and so that's why we have the it's kind of a living thing, but they're being as faithful as possible to represent with integrity what the actual context really meant. And so when you read Brothers and Sisters, you can be sure that it's inclusive of men and women. Sorry, that was a little long, but that was great. That helps. Yes. Krista, do you have anything to add to that?

SPEAKER_00 9:53

No, I think it's just a good reminder that I mean, that sonship one is per beautiful because we don't know, most of us usually, we don't remember at least that adoption in Roman times, you adopted adult males, primarily. That's who got adopted, and it was specifically for passing on family wealth and inheritance and status. So you didn't adopt children and women. So like sonship really matters there for so many reasons. And so NIV chooses it. And I think that's also a good reminder, just that translation committees today are working with historical kind of dead languages and current living languages that shift, and they're not making these choices based off just the cultural moment. So they're not going to change it because today adoption for everyone would make sense, but that's not what it meant. So they're looking at all of those factors at once.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

Yeah, I grew up hearing um uh bad stigmas about the NIV. Um, I'll just say it. Yeah, I grew up hearing that uh the NIV was trying to bend to a cultural narrative, trying to include women, um, and so changing all this language to have, you know, quote unquote gender-inclusive language. And um, but that's not what's happening. Uh the language is showing us when it's inclusive, but that language is actually inclusive in the original language. Right. So there's nothing being like changed or adapted here. Um that's not how showing with integrity what the original language is actually showing. The gap is more in our cultural understanding of how language works and how we use language as modern English speakers compared to how Greek and Hebrew use language. And so it's helping us bridge that gap together.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Well, and I love that idea because like English is such it's so different than it was any day before today. Like things mean something today that didn't mean something. Like I was driving into work today and uh I drove past a gas station that closed down March 1st because they are like redoing the flooring, and the cheap gas there was 369, and then like uh and then I drove by work and it was 559 was the cheap gas in this area. So if I were to say cheap gas today or cheap gas three weeks ago, one means 559 and one means 369, and the word that I said didn't change, but the meaning changed. And so, like, I understand that, like that makes a ton of sense to me because like it's all the time, and uh so that's cool. That's uh that's awesome that uh yeah, that people are working to make that happen. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 12:21

Yeah, okay. Sorry, I'm gonna add one more thing. Done, bring it.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

I don't think I'm this is why we're doing this right now.

SPEAKER_02 12:26

Like this is um in Greek and Hebrew, like I said, there are specific words that mean more human being, and there are specific words that have uh sex or gendered attached to them. So um those those are translated in different ways as well. Um, and so you know, if there's so many cool things about how this language works together. The Genesis account is filled with really, really cool uh, you know, things happening with the words that it uses for human being, for male and female. Um, but but there's different words to communicate um when we're talking about a human being and when we're talking about a male or a female as well. So that that's coming into play here.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

So is it accurate to kind of think of it like um most of us have heard the example that in some of the um native languages there's dozens of words for snow, and in English we have snow. And so in English, we are more limited in some of our words. So in our translators today are actually helping us to see more accurately what the original readers or hearers would have gotten because they had more words.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

Yeah, they're doing their best, the best that they can, but like the Genesis account's an interesting one because there are three different words, I mean, I guess five different words used to reference the first humans. There's one generic word, Adam, which can be translated person or human being, and also can be translated male at times. It becomes Adam's formal name later on, but it can be translated human being. God created humanity or God created humans. Then there's a separate word for man and woman, and then there's another separate word for man and woman. So there's five different words that we when you're reading Genesis as an English speaker, you just can't see it, you know, and there's really no way to help us actually see that. So that's why kind of reading people who know like their commentaries on original languages could be helpful to get you some of the nuance of what's happening. Well, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Um, let's move on to the next question because we have a couple more. Um, this person came with two questions and started by saying that they loved uh the teaching time this week, and so they're thankful to you two. Um, and then they said um in the dis or sorry, um did you purposely omit any discussion about paraphrased or amplified versions? Is there sometimes helpful? Uh could you discuss? I don't really know what those are. Like uh can you talk about those things really quick?

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Yeah, we I would say no, we didn't purposely admit them. We just had limited time. And again, if you go back to the think well, we did include them in there um to some degree, and they are super helpful. Things like the message would be what some people would refer to as a paraphrase. And that can be super helpful. I love reading that especially kind of devotionally, or even as I'm prepping to teach as one of the many things I look at. Um, amplified would be like the amplified Bible, um, or even somewhat the living Bible, the old living Bible. Um, and that where it's where it gives more meaning, more possible meanings for a certain word. And those can be really helpful. They're um definitely tools that can be included in study. They're not usually what somebody would carry with them into a church service. And we were kind of focusing a little bit more on our our corporate worship on Sunday mornings. Um, but they are great. I think they are helpful and I use them.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Yeah. They also uh mentioned in their second part of their question that you know they grew up in they're they're not on the young side, and they uh they grew up, you know, memorizing passages from King James Version and that it just holds a special place. Um maybe they don't think of that as like their study Bible anymore, but still kind of hold it in some reverence. I is that okay? What are we supposed to do with like older versions? Does it mean that I need to unremember that he leadeth me by still waters and instead, you know, like it's like can you unremember Kyle? Because you've quoted. Um, how do I, you know, like is it what are our thoughts on on, you know, King James was the Bible for a long time, but then also before King James, there was other, you know, like what do we do with the older translations?

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Yeah, I think we are grateful that we have a history of multiple translations. I personally memorized most verses as a kid in New King James, and that still comes out sometimes, and there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, that's beautiful. And I think honestly, I think there's some freedom now in that nobody really knows what translation you're quoting. So you can kind of mix up your uh quotes from a few different strains there. But I think we do we do hold all scripture with reverence. And so the translations that's beautiful that you memorize scripture in whatever translation you memorized it in. And you may or may not choose to include that in your study today, but by all means, we are not, we are not disparaging any translation. And I I think we said that on Sunday, that we we're not we're not elevating, we're not trying to elevate any translation over any other. Um we're saying for this time in this place, this is what we're going to primarily teach from and still love and respect and use others as well.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

Yeah, I think I think one thing I would just add to this is there's nothing wrong with, and I'm gonna use the word nostalgia. There's nothing wrong with having nostalgia um for translations we grew up with, for uh we can translate this, translate, we can apply this to lots of different things in our Christianity um or or in our life. Um, but maybe, you know, we have nostalgia for certain songs, nostalgia for certain uh preachers, nostalgia for whatever. Those things, it's great to have nostalgia. Where we want to be careful is not letting nostalgia um lead us to a place of thinking that this is the best or better than other things necessarily. And I'm not saying that this person is saying this at all. Um, I think this is just one thing we have to be careful of is to think, oh, I was taught with this thing, so therefore this is the thing that is more right. In that regard, we have to be careful. And there can be some um air of thinking about certain translations that feels that way. Specifically, some communities feel that way about the King James or the New King James or sometimes the NASB. Um and that the truth is, all these translations, they all have strengths and they all have some weaknesses. And so that's why we want to have lots of different translations and we want to have space for different translations and not get lost in some of the cultural narratives about specific translations that actually prevent us from um holding the gift of the many translations that we have and not looking at a translation someone else uses as necessarily worse or less accurate or less right. Um, we want to have humility and know that all our translations have strengths and weaknesses.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

So yeah, I just walked away being like, I'm so grateful that God chose to give us more about him. Like he didn't have to, like he could have just been like, Cool, you exist, and that's the end of it, and no one's ever gonna learn to write or put any of this down. And it's like, why would I then go on to be like, mmm, but you're like not quite reading the same one I am, so you're worse. Like that's that's that I that's so disappointing, you know. Like uh that you're you're I just I walked away with such gratitude from the message because it does, it really did lead me to like, wow, like I get this, and the and the amount of times in my life that I've like begrudgingly read it when I was like, whoa, what you know, like uh it's not a gift that everyone gets, which kind of leads into this next uh question. Um the discussion of a lot how lucky we are to have multiple interpretations in our language made me think about the hundreds of years the church didn't have any access to a personal text in their home. Do you have any thoughts on the difference between our modern capacity to have our own Bibles and a lot of freedom to read and interpret individually versus times before the printing press when the church practiced more oral tradition or preaching from a community Bible or scroll?

SPEAKER_02 20:28

This is an amazing question.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 20:30

I love this.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

What are your th with thoughts?

SPEAKER_02 20:32

Kristen, you want to go first?

SPEAKER_00 20:34

Uh well, I mean, this sent me down kind of a rabbit trail of trying to remember pre-Reformation pre-printing press, like what was this the status? Because it's true it was more of a community aspect, but it actually wasn't quite as limited as some of us think as far as what the translations were. There was obviously the the Latin Vulgate and all of that, but there were um I just totally forgot vernacular Bibles that were existing way back. I mean, the Syriac Bible goes all the way back to the second century. So it's really cool that very early on, translations in more relatable language did exist, but that's also a shift of like in general. Yeah, nobody had very few people had their own copy. People generally didn't get to read the Bible on their own. And I think there's some beauty that I can't I can't relate to on what it must be like to have valued that oral, like even memorizing corporately scripture so that you could have it personally. Like I think there's some beauty in that that we've lost because it's so easy to just pull out your phone or pull out one of your. I mean, I don't even want to guess how many copies of Bibles I have. Right. Um, so I don't have to kind of hold it in my heart the same way. Um so yeah, it's just it it's a different culture. We live in a very different culture, although there are still cultures today where they don't have the access we have. Um so I think there's gratitude on my part for getting to live today where we have this. And also kind of some awe and wonder for communities that did it well of having, you know, the pastor, the priest, the whoever who was reading the word and then helping interpret it, and then people going and thinking about it on their own, talking about it on their own, maybe reciting catechisms they'd memorize so that they had some access. Like we it's just a whole different world that we get to live in.

SPEAKER_02 22:24

Yeah, it's so interesting because I feel like um everything in its own way can be a double-edged sword. So I would never say, oh, the fact that we have access to scripture now is necessarily a bad thing. It's not. I think it's it's amazing. It's such a gift. But maybe this question causes us to think about like what are potentially some of the challenges that come, or maybe some of the pitfalls we could slip into with that. Um, lack of appreciation is definitely one because it's so accessible to us, we just don't even think about it. I never think about like, oh my gosh, how amazing I can take out my phone and look at like, I don't know, what did Josh Wood 3 2 say? I never, I never think about that. Um so that's pretty crazy. But then you think also like these communities were dependent on people interpreting for them. Um and we have the ability to read on our own and research on our own, which is such a gift, but also can kind of also be a downfall too, right? Like because we can why we have 40,000 denominations in the world today.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

I mean, partially, partially.

SPEAKER_02 23:33

Yeah, we'd have those no matter what, because we're humans, you know. But um, yeah, I don't know. So I think maybe um holding that balance of like I can read and understand what this is saying to some degree on my own, but also like there are people who I can look to who can help me understand this, um, and and seeing the beauty of both of those things and not maybe leaning one way or the other only, but holding the tension of like I get to it's not just an individual thing. I guess that's what I'm trying to get at.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

Yeah, and I think it's maybe to our detriment that we have lost some of the need for community that they had when they had to do this together. Like, yes, you were dependent on someone else for a lot of the interpretation, but also like you did it together in a way that we can do it together, but it actually takes a lot more work for us because we have such access on our own, and we aren't forced to wrestle with it together because we can choose to go elsewhere, or we can choose to engage with it on our own and just kind of isolate. And I think there's some beauty in the communal aspect that did exist of being in it together. But yeah, it is double-edged both ways.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

What a gift, and it uh makes our lives, you know, all these things together. I love that because yeah, it is uh I want to be communal in everything, and also I'm really glad that I can read it on my own. And like, yeah, we were doing um, you know, a little family thing this last weekend, and I just on the spur of the moment was like, oh, what if I could read, you know, this passage and I'm in the desert where we don't have cell phone reception, and I'm able to pull up on my phone, you know, like three different translations that I have already downloaded. Like that's crazy. It's the idea that I can just click a button and there it is, let alone carry around a paper copy or whatever, you know, like uh I don't know. I I I've said it too many times, but I really walked away with a cool uh gratitude. I had I had a friend back in my camp days who used to, before he would get it, he would get up to teach, and before he would teach, he would stand there for way awkwardly too long, just like sniffing his Bible. Like you'd open it up to like the page he was gonna read, and he would just like breathe it in. And like it's fun, it's like that fun three-second like do it, but then he would do it for like a minute and a half until the campers were super awkward about uh why's this guy. But it was his whole thing was like, what a gift! Like, I want to appreciate this, like I want to like take a moment to appreciate it, and uh whatever. You could be like, Did he go too far? Maybe he did, but uh it stuck with you though. It stuck with me, and I haven't talked to him since. Um, we are thank you guys. Do you have any other thoughts before we and I just said guys, meaning the plural masculine form right there of everyone and not just males. Language is alive. Yeah, so there we go. Changes. Um, anything else you want to say before we hit that goodbye son?

SPEAKER_00 26:29

I would just say, like we've said before, like we love having conversations about this. So does James, who helped do the think well with us. And so if if there are more questions, like please, please ask. Um, don't assume you just have to accept all that's been said and move on. Like we we love talking about this, and this is meaningful for us as a church body. It's we're in this together.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Love it. Awesome. Well, then goodbye.