Defending the Word of God: A task that never ends.

It was just two weeks ago that I wrote about a syndicated article in the paper in which a Mormon and a Unitarian both challenged the Orthodox understanding of the Bible that the Church has held throughout its history.  For the Mormon, the challenge came in the form of believing in an Open Canon, i.e. that new revelation beyond that of the Apostles was possible.  For the Unitarian, the challenge came via disbelief in the accuracy of the Bible that we have today and ultimately doubt as to the divine origin of the original anyway.
In a recent letter to the editor, a local resident made an accusation about why he believes America is in moral decay, a position all too readily assumed by many Christians, regardless of the actual evidence, a reflection of a deep seated pessimism about the future.  The comment in question was the worst sort of guilt-by-association and causation fallacy (that because A precedes B, A must be the cause of B).  The writer was listing the signs of the "downfall" of America and claimed that this trend began in earnest in the 1970's with the legalization of abortion and the publication of the NIV Bible.  It should go without saying that one of those two things is a moral evil and truly a sign of trouble in society (although certainly not a harbinger of the end, the society into which the Gospel began its mission of transformation was well known for its infanticide, not to mention rampant slavery).  To equate the two, as if there is some sort of connection between them (other than happening in the same decade) is of course nonsense, but in this case it is part and parcel with the type of "argumentation" often put forth by those who see the world through a KJV Only set of glasses.
If I believed, for a second, that the only true Christians were those attending independent, fundamentalist, KJV Only churches in America, I'd be a pessimist about the future too.  If the Gospel were failing in our world that badly, if only .001% of the world's population were being saved by the power of the cross and the empty grave, where would hope come from?
Thankfully, the truth is far different.  The work of the Gospel, through the universal Church of Jesus Christ, is being carried out all over the world, in hundreds of languages (thanks to the tireless efforts of Bible translation teams from organizations like Wycliffe Bible Translators).  His Church is making tremendous progress throughout Africa, and is growing rapidly in Southeast Asia.  Nobody knows what the future holds for any nation, America included, but the Church of Jesus Christ is not whimpering in a corner, huddling with a few link-minded individuals, it is out there in the world today, reclaiming lost souls for the kingdom, and doing it using a variety of the many wonderful translations of the Bible that we have today.
The task of defending the Word of God never ends.

Jerome, Erasmus, the KJV, and the Wycliffe Bible Translators

The science/art of translation work will always lead to controversial decisions when the material in question is the Bible.  This isn’t new, not by a long shot.  When Jerome’s Latin Vulgate (so called because it was “vulgar”, like the way common people spoke in his day) was first read in St. Augustine’s parish the people rioted.  They had previously used the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the O.T.’s Hebrew, and didn’t want anything new.  In what seems ridiculous to us today, the people’s objection centered around Jerome’s more accurate translation of the plant that shaded Jonah from the gourd that the LXX had rendered it, to the caster-oil plant of the Vulgate.  Who cares which plant shaded Jonah?  This incident illustrates how seriously Bible translations can be taken by the people they are intended to help.

            Fast forward 1,300 years to Erasmus’ work on a Greek NT (basically returning the text in the West to its original language).  Erasmus was criticized heavily by his contemporaries when he made changes to Jerome’s now nearly sacred Latin Vulgate to the extent that he changed one important text (I John 5:7-9) to reflect the Vulgate’s reading even though it was not in any of the Greek texts that he was working with.  The Vulgate, received with skepticism at first, had become too loved to correct.

            The King James Bible followed this same pattern.  It was not preferred over the Geneva Bible for over forty years, but eventually became the primary Bible of the English speaking world.  When modern scholarship and archaeological discoveries enabled experts to correct some of the errors found in Erasmus’ Greek NT (he only had 7 of the now 5700+ manuscripts that we have to consult), the resulting modern translations came under fire by lovers of the KJV for daring to challenge their beloved text.  Even though genuine errors that had resulted from copyists’ errors were being corrected involving the 2% of the text that needed to be fixed (the other 98% was not affected, even with only 7 manuscripts, Erasmus’ work had been extraordinary), the ardent supports of the KJV were not willing to consider that a new translation of their 400 year old Bible was needed.

            The recent controversy involving Wycliffe Bible Translators regarding the use of “Allah” in Muslim countries for God, and how to best translate the familial relationship between God the Father and God the Son when our understanding of it is difficult to put into the receiving language’s cultural context, illustrates the same passion for Bible translations that plagued Jerome, Erasmus, and the teams that produced the NASB, NIV, ESV, and all the rest.

            I have no problem with those who raise well informed objections to any part of the translation process, from the Greek/Hebrew text being used, to the translation theory behind the words chosen in the new language.  Such conversations can be a useful part of the process.  What I do not accept, and will not have any patience with, is the use of personal attacks used against these men and women whose lives are in service to the Church, such that they are accused of being under Satanic influence simply because somebody doesn’t like their choices in the translation process.  How ridiculous is it for Christians to accuse other Christians of evil simply because they can’t agree on how best to convey the Word of God to the lost?  It would be laughable if this joke wasn’t so serious.  Jerome wasn’t evil when he brought the “vulgar” Bible to the people in a language they could understand, neither was Erasmus when he sought to return to the original Greek as a basis for translation work into new vernacular languages.  The modern Bible translators had no nefarious plans when they updated the text behind the KJV and corrected the minor errors that were found, and neither are the Wycliffe Bible Translators tools of Satan simply because they’re trying to bring Jesus Christ to Muslim lands.  Stop the invective, stop the pronouncements of doom from on high; it sounds ridiculous and only shows that the person making it cares more about being right in their own mind than they do about the work of the Gospel.  Informed and knowledgeable Christians can, and will, disagree about translational issues, but they cannot treat those they disagree with like enemies and lob at them baseless accusations no more accurate than a politician’s TV ad; the only one laughing at this sad joke when they do, is the person they’ve accused their opponent of serving. 

Lost in the translation

Nicole and I attended an information/fundraising banquet for Wycliffe Associates, the Bible translation missions agency whose goal is to have started translating the Bible in the remaining 2,000 languages that don't have any portion of Scripture translated into them by the year 2025.  First Baptist Church supports a Wycliffe Missions team, Dave and Joyce Briley, who have been working for almost 30 years in Papau to first learn, and then translate the Bible into, the language of the local people.  The extraordinary men and women who do this work are a rare breed, deserving of honor, that now thankfully are being assisted by technology to do the work faster than ever.  What once took a team a whole lifetime to accomplish, can now be done much faster.  The goal of having the Bible available in every language on Earth is indeed viable.
At the banquet, Jack Popjes, a translator who along with his wife spent about 30 years in the Amazon bringing God's Word to an isolated Indian tribe, spoke about the biggest hurdle he faced in the actual translation process (apart from other factors like health, governmental interference, isolation, etc.).  The people of the Amazon have no sheep.  The Bible contains a lot of sheep related metaphors that need to somehow be rendered understandable to the people.  When it came to translating in Matthew 9:36 Jesus' comment that the people of Israel were "like sheep without a shepherd", Jack was able to use a concept that they did understand, "like chicks without their mother hen".  The purpose of the metaphor remains the same, the Indians who knew about chickens but not sheep understood; problem solved.  However, when it came to John the Baptist's exclamation in John 1:29, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" Jack was stumped.  There didn't seem to be any local example that could explain the metaphor of God taking our punishment for us.  This problem persisted for ten years, other parts of the Bible were translated, the work continued, but this key concept of understanding WHY Jesus died remained beyond the grasp of the translation process.  Eventually, in God's providence, Jack returned to the tribe after a long absence (due to the government of Brazil) only to arrive in the middle of a cultural ceremony in which trouble making youths were being punished by a tribal elder.  In this ceremony, Jack witnessed for the first time, teen girls stepping forward to take the punishment for a boy with whom they had a special friend relationship.  Jack, his wife, his kids, all had these "friend" relationships in the tribal society, it was a something he was well aware of, but for the first time the connection between the Lamb of God and the tribal friend who can take your place struck Jack like thunder.  When he substituted this word for "Lamb of God" and told them the proclamation of John the Baptist, the whole tribe suddenly understood the Gospel in a whole new light.  God is good, he looks after his servants.

So, why do I tell this story that I heard from Jack?  One reason would be to encourage you to support the work of Bible translators, another would be to remind Christians here in America that even if we are all speaking English to each other, that there are people we interact with for whom our Bible-speak might as well be a foreign language.  If you've never been to Church before, the lingo we use on Sunday morning will be as incomprehensible as the techno-babble about computers, cars, or finances that so often befuddle those who don't understand it.  How is someone who doesn't even know who Jesus is, or what he did, supposed to know what we mean we we talk about justification?  The list of theological words that are difficult to grasp is long: propitiation, consubstantiation, transubstantiation, sanctification, providence, etc.  Not to mention the terms we use in ways that seem odd to those who don't understand them, like born-again and saved.  What can we do about it?  An easy enough answer is for pastors to teach and preach in a way that is mindful of those who may not understand the deep theological point you might want to make.  We need to be willing to return to the basics on a regular basis and we need to be unafraid to slow down and explain things.  What we really need is humility.  We know all we know about God because he reveled it to us.  We didn't climb a mountain to discover God, he came down from Heaven to pull us up out of the depths.  Jesus spoke about sheep, fishing, and farming to his audience because it was what they understood; we need to do the same.  "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world", what an amazing and wonderful truth, let's make sure we share it in a way that everyone can understand.

It's a small world after all

We had visiting missionaries here to talk about there work this past week at First Baptist: Dave and Joyce Briley who since 1975 have been working through Wycliffe Bible Translators with the Bauzi people of Papua, Indonesia to translate the Bible into their native tongue.  When Dave and Joyce arrived to work with the Bauzi,(who live in a dozen or so villages spread out over a large section of jungle, perhaps 2,000 people in all) they had no way of even asking the question, "what's the name of this?".  They had to learn the language from scratch, one word at a time, eventually figuring out enough of it to begin the laborious process of translating the Bible.  There was just one catch, the Bauzi language was unwritten.  So, Dave and Joyce first had to create a phonetic alphabet for the Bauzi, 6 vowels and 9 consonants, as it turned out, and then teach some of the native Bauzi to read and write.  After that came the process of trying to understand this language well enough to translate directly from the original Greek and Hebrew of the Bible while making the finished product sound authentic in the ears of the people.  Is it any wonder that it took them over 30 years to translate the New Testament?  If it were not for their single-minded dedication, the Bauzi people would not be in possession this day of God's Word.
This scene has been, and is being, repeated all over the corners of the world where there are still peoples without access to the Bible in their own native tongue (their "heart" language to those working in translations).  Thankfully, the day is coming soon when the task will be completed and each and every language spoken on Earth will have access to the story of God's redemptive love through Christ Jesus.
While my wife and I were eating dinner with the Briley's after church, I asked if they had by any chance run across one of my favorite authors, Jared Diamond, who I knew had spent considerable time in Papua and New Guinea looking for rare birds.  As it happens, Jared had come to them in the past looking for locals to help him find some birds (I asked them to get his autograph should he stop by again).  Jared Diamond is the author of, "Guns, Germs, and Steel", a fascinating book on why Western Europeans came to dominate the globe and not peoples of some other land.  The answer given by Diamond, one of resources and inherent advantages in the geography, animals, and foodstuffs, instead of the implied or outright racism of past analysis of the subject, was a refreshing contribution to anthropology and history.  Needless to say, as a history geek, I'm a fan.  To top it off, I was taking a walk with a local man named Abe today, (he stops by from time to time to chew the fat) and the subject of Native Americans came up (he has Indian ancestry), so of course I recommended he read Jared Diamond's book.  It is a small world after all.

The Bible in the language of the people

This past Sunday's sermon on Pentecost touched on the need for the Gospel to be preached (and Bibles made available) in the language of the people.  It may seem obvious today, but it was not always the case.  From 1567 to 1773 there was not a single Bible printed in Italian for the people of Italy to read.  Why such a lack?  Because Pope Paul V had banned its use by the laity in Italy.  He went so far in his zeal against the Bible to proclaim, "Do you not know that so much reading of Scripture ruins the Catholic religion?"  The Roman Inquisition went to to confiscate and BURN publicly copies of the Bible in Italian.  Regular readers of my blog know of my commitment to ecumenical unity and my wife's Catholicism, you also know that all denominations have skeletons in the closet we'd rather forget.  That being said, for a Pope, the shepherd of his flock, the deny his people the Word of God because he was afraid of what they might do with it goes beyond stupidity to cowardice and negligence.  I continue to pray that my Catholic brothers and sisters in Christ will feel the Holy Spirit burning within them and encouraging them to read the Word of God.  In my sermon on Sunday I reminded my congregation that they have a duty to always compare what I preach/teach to the Word of God.  As the body of Christ, we all have an obligation to study God's Word ourselves and determine if those who tell us what it says are accurate or not.
In the end, the Bible has triumphed over all those in history (and the world today) who have tried to silence it.  Wycliffe Bible Translators are working on 1500 translation projects at this moment in hopes of finishing the last needed translations so that all of the world's 6000+ languages will have at least some of God's Word in their own tongue by 2025.  Likewise, Gideons International distributed about 70,000,000 Scriptures last year (about 1.6 Billion total in their 100+ year history).  The text of our Bible study for this coming Wed. morning is appropriate - "For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God." (I Peter 1:23)

Sermon Video: "The wonders of God in our own tongue!" - Acts 2:1-12

The advent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost was accompanied by the miracle which allowed the disciples to speak in the languages of the multitudes in Jerusalem.  With this eye-opener, the Holy Spirit begins the age of Church missionary activity and shows us an example to live by: give the Gospel to the people in a way that they can understand.  Beginning with William Tyndale and continuining on today with the work of Wycliffe and Gideons, the Bible is being given to the people so that they too can hear the wonders of God in their own tongue.

To watch the video, click on the link below:
Sermon Video