Ussher, U Got It Bad

Many readers of the Bible have looked at chronological markers, such as “When X had lived Y years he became the father of Z” in Genesis 5, and wondered if they could construct a timeline of biblical history. The best-known attempt of this was in the 17th century by Irish Archbishop James Ussher. He famously set the first day of Creation as 23 October 4004 BC. How difficult was this task?

Let’s do the timeline again

The first decision we need to make is which numbers to use. As I pointed out in my previous article on Genesis 5, many of the ages given in Genesis differ depending on whether you use the Hebrew MT or the Greek LXX. For example, the Flood occurred 1656 years after creation according to the MT, but the LXX says it was 2242 years. From here on, I will use the abbreviation A.M. (for anno mundi) to count the years since the creation. Since modern bibles are translated from the Masoretic Text (MT), we’ll use those numbers so you can check my math, if desired.

The next decision we need to make is to decide on the birth year for Shem’s son, Arpachshad. As stated in my previous article on the post-Flood genealogies, Gen 5:32 states Noah was 500 years old when he begat Shem and Gen 7:6 tells us Noah was 600 when the flood began. But Gen 11:10 says Shem was 100 when he fathered Arpachshad and that this was “two years after the flood.” But if the flood occurred when Noah was 600 years old and the flood lasted a year, Shem must have been older than 100 “two years after the flood.” Let’s say Arpaschad was born the same year as the flood, AM 1656.

Using the data for the post-Flood ancestors in Gen 11 we get to the year AM 1946 where Gen 11:26 says Terah was 70 when he “became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.” In similar fashion, we can use other markers in Genesis (17:1; 25:26; 47:9) to get to the year AM 2236 when Jacob and his family migrated to Egypt. According to Ex 12:40-41 it was 430 years later (“on that very day”) when Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt (AM 2666) and Solomon began construction on the first Temple (AM 3146) 480 years after the Exodus (1 Kgs 6:1).

After this the chronological markers aren’t so clear. The Bible lists the various kings and their reigns, but some of them overlap. But if we ignore those technicalities, we can use the information in 1 and 2 Kgs to add another 430 years from the beginning of construction of the Temple in Solomon’s fourth year until the destruction of that Temple by the Babylonians (AM 3576). Another 50 years brings us to the end of the Babylonian captivity when the Edict of Cyrus (AM 3626) allowed the exiles to return to Jerusalem to construct the second Temple (Ezra 1:1-4). Thus we would have 480 years from the Exodus to the founding of the First Temple and 480 more years to the founding of the Second Temple.

Portrait of James Ussher by Cornelius Janssens van Ceulen (1593-1661). His head and hands look out of proportion to his body.

It’s just a jump to the left, And then a step to the right

The chronological references end with Ezra and Nehemiah and we’re left with a relative timeline. What we need is an event in the Bible that can be assigned a fixed date in our own calendar. To achieve this, Bishop Ussher turned to Babylonian, Greek, and Roman sources to find such a date. He calculated the death of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar to be 562 BCE. This was also the accession year of his successor Amel-Marduk (known as Evil-merodach in the Bible). According to 2 Kgs 25:27, in his year of accession Evil-merodach released Jehoiachin from captivity after 37 years. Ussher determined this was AM 3442 in his chronology.

But our calculations above yield AM 3602, not AM 3442, as the year Nebuchadnezzar died (see table). Given the same information to work with, how did Ussher end up 160 years off?

Let’s go back to Abram. Above we pointed out that “Gen 11:26 says Terah was 70 when he became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.” Were they triplets? If not, one of them was eldest. Gen 12:4 says that Abram was 75 years old when God called him to depart from Haran for Canaan. Ussher reasoned that Abram was called to leave Haran the same year Terah died (AM 2083). This would make Abram the youngest of Terah’s three sons, born when Terah was 130 years old.

Ussher made another modification to the chronology we derived above when he used the LXX version of Ex 12:40 which says the children of Israel “sojourned in the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan” for 430 years (the MT says it was 430 years in Egypt only). So Ussher adds 430 years to the year Abram left Haran (AM 2083) to get the date of AM 2513 for the Exodus. This puts the founding of Solomon’s Temple at AM 2993 and he finds overlaps in the reigns of kings to reduce the time from the founding of the Temple to its destruction down to 423 years. Thus he determines AM 3442 as the year of Jehoiachin’s release. With this date as his anchor, he was able to determine the creation occurred in 4004 BCE. Q.E.D.

Event	Date AM	Date BCE	Ussher's AM	Date BCE
Creation	0	4164	0	4004
Flood	1656	2508	1656	2348
Abram born	1946	2218	2008	1996
Abram arrives in Canaan	2021	2143	2083	1921
Jacob into Egypt	2236	1928	2298	1706
Exodus	2666	1498	2513	1491
Founding of 1st Temple	3146	1018	2993	1011
Dedication of 1st Temple	3153	1011	3000	1004
Destruction of 1st Temple	3576	588	3416	588
Death of Nebuchadnezzar	3602	562	3442	562
Edict of Cyrus	3626	538	3485	519
Re-dedication of 2nd Temple	4000	164	3840	164
Birth of Jesus			4000	4

With a bit of a mind flip, You’re into the time slip

Ussher’s chronology appears too neat. He calculates 3000 years from the creation to the dedication of Solomon’s Temple and another 1000 years to the birth of Jesus. Ussher seemed to like large, round numbers. One suspects he began with the desired end result in mind and jiggered things around to make his chronology fit.

But the patterns in the Bible’s timeline are too on the nose: 430 years for the Hebrews living in Egypt and 430 years from the founding of the Temple to its destruction. 480 years from the Exodus to the founding of the Temple and 480 years from the founding of the First Temple to the founding of the Second Temple.

Just as Ussher labored to fix a period of 4000 years from creation to Christ, perhaps the biblical editors were also working under their own schema. Several modern interpreters have suggested that AM 4000 corresponds to 164 BCE and the re-dedication of the Temple by the Maccabees (the event celebrated at Hanukkah). Looking at the table, our timeline and Ussher’s sync up at the destruction of Solomon’s Temple and the death of Nebuchadnezzar before diverging again. Yet our timeline ends with AM 4000 in 164 BCE. If Ussher had a specific event in mind as the terminus for his 4000-year timeline, maybe the 2nd century editors of the Bible did as well. If not, it’s an incredible coincidence.

Bottom line, the dates presented in the Bible are theological and symbolic. Despite Bishop Ussher’s assumptions, they cannot be relied upon as historical data. But we adjust biblical events to extra-biblical dates as Ussher did, can we calculate a more accurate biblical chronology? That will be the topic of my next article.

New Wineskin Buying Guide

Last Sunday morning my wife and I were waiting for a table at our favorite breakfast place. At the cashier’s station I saw an elderly gentlemen carrying a very thick book. As he headed out the door, I caught a glimpse of the book’s cover and saw it was a 900-page exegetical commentary on Ephesians. Not exactly what I would call casual Sunday-morning reading.

The Letter to the Ephesians consists of six short chapters and maybe five or six printed pages. Why would someone want or need a 900-page book on it? Well, the fact of the matter is that no matter how feature-laden your study bible is, there will be times when you need more information. Fortunately, there are plenty of supplemental sources you can turn to.

Commentaries

The most essential bible reference is the commentary. You can use a commentary to help interpret the meaning of a particular passage or as a guide in working your way through an entire book of Scripture. Finding a good/reliable commentary isn’t easy. Commentaries range from the very introductory to the very scholarly. If you want to focus on the practical application of the Bible for Christian life, there are devotional commentaries (e.g., Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible) that would suit this purpose. But if you want the history, culture, and background to the biblical text, you will need something more in-depth.

Commentaries come in mainly two formats, the single-volume and the multi-volume varieties. One-volume commentaries (e.g., HarperCollins Bible Commentary, New Jerome Biblical Commentary) provide you with basic, introductory material on every book in the Bible. If you are starting out with scripture study and building up your library, a one-volume commentary is a useful first step. But by its nature as a concise commentary, do not expect the analysis to be in-depth.

Multi-volume series (e.g., Anchor Bible, Hermeneia) have an entire volume (or two) dedicated to one of the biblical books. A commentary dedicated to a specific biblical book will usually include the author’s translation of that book with textual notes explaining the rationale behind the translation choices. Because different volumes in the series have different authors, the quality and writing style will vary.

Commentaries are geared towards different audiences. A commentary on Genesis intended for pastors and well-educated laymen will be less dense and run a couple of hundred pages, but one intended for scripture students and readers familiar with Greek and Hebrew could be 1500 pages spread over three volumes. Individual textbook-level books such as this could easily run more than $50. Before making a big investment, check out reviews and, if available, the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon to see if the reading level and style of the commentary is suitable for your purposes.

Other Reference Works

While bible commentaries are an essential study aid, other reference materials such as a bible dictionary, bible atlas, and concordance could come in handy.

A bible dictionary is really a bible encyclopedia. You use it as you would an encyclopedia to learn more about a biblical person, place or thing. They also come in the single-volume (e.g., HarperCollins Bible Dictionary) and multi-volume (e.g., Anchor Bible Dictionary, New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible) varieties. Multi-volume dictionaries are very expensive and would be considered an investment. A good one-volume bible dictionary is probably all you need and Wikipedia might do in a pinch.

A bible atlas is more than just a set of maps. Some bible atlases include articles on history and archaeology, details of battles and conquests, artistic renderings of biblical cities, etc. I would put this in the “nice to have” category, especially if your bible already has some decent maps.

A concordance is used to look up all the verses in the bible that contain a particular word (e.g., all the verses in the bible with the word “camel”). Since the Hebrew and Greek words can be translated using different English words, you need to use a concordance that is keyed to a particular translation. There are free bible concordances available online for popular translations like KJV and NIV.

A Gospel Synopsis places similar passages from the four gospels side-by-side so that you can easily compare them. It’s in the “nice to have” category but very useful if you want to study gospel parallels.

Old and new wineskins.

How They Work Together

Let’s say you want to research Jesus’ proverb about “old wine in new wineskins” but don’t know where it is in the Bible. Looking up “wineskins” in a concordance you find references to Mt 9:17; Mk 2:22; and Lk 5:37f. You could then look up these three passages individually in your bible, but a Synopsis of the Four Gospels presents them side-by-side on the same page.

From the synopsis, it is easy to see that Luke adds a non-related statement (v. 39) that no one drinking the old wine desires the new wine. This saying apparently has no bearing on what was just said about old wine in new wineskins and seems a bit odd, so now you want to know what biblical scholars have to say about it.

A single-volume commentary only has two sentences on v. 39. From this you learn that v. 39 is a unique Lucan proverb that conditions how the previous saying about “new wine” should be interpreted. The “old wine” represented by the Sabbath and practices like fasting are not to be cast aside as they also contain God’s will.

That provides some insight and many people would be happy enough to stop right there. But those wanting to go deeper could consult a commentary volume dedicated to Luke and there they would find several paragraphs devoted to v. 39. Reading the detailed commentary, you learn the proverb is referring to religious conservatives comfortable with the old practices like fasting having difficulty in accepting the “new wine” that Jesus offers, saying, “The old is what is good.” Therefore, this proverb does not contradict what was said before about the incompatibility of the old practices with Jesus’ new teachings, but confirms it.

Hopefully, this very brief example illustrates how to incorporate multiple reference works to bring out a deeper meaning in a passage that, on initial reading, seemed odd and confusing.

Scripture Notes

Bibles come in a variety of versions. I’m not just talking about various translations or formats like hardcover, paperback, or leather-bound. I’m referring to special-featured editions like devotional bibles, bibles for men and bibles for women, and ones for teens and kids and so on. My “marriage devotional bible,” for example, has features such as daily and weekend devotions, marriage quizzes, and 30 profiles showing both good and bad examples of married couples in the Bible.

Any of these editions are fine if you simply want to read the Scriptures and the features may be inspiring or help you apply lessons from the Bible to your daily life. And if that’s all you’re looking for, then read no further. But if you really want to understand Scripture, there are some basic features that a bible should have to help you towards that goal.

Footnotes

Footnotes come in many forms. Translators’ notes offer alternate readings of an ambiguous text or different readings from other manuscript sources. These kind of notes can generally be found in all bible editions, even in those that are not intended as study bibles.

Explanatory notes or annotations comment on the biblical text, either on a passage or a specific verse. Also called study notes, these annotations come from the editor of that bible and generally not the translators. Annotations may not appear in all editions and may even be frowned upon in some circles because they tell you what someone else thinks about the Bible. Study notes written by a fundamentalist, for example, will not be welcomed by a mainline Protestant and vice versa.

But, in my opinion, trying to read the Bible without some guidance is like embarking on a cross-country road trip with no maps. Sure, you can follow the road signs, but it wouldn’t take much to veer off-course and wander aimlessly.

No, my bible doesn't look like this. At most I have a few little scribbles in pencil. (Bible journaling by Shar Martinez at https://gypsymamanc.wordpress.com/)

Cross-references operate under the principle that the Bible is its own best interpreter. Cross-references help you locate other verses in the Bible that may be helpful for understanding a particular passage. If, for example, you are studying the story of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist in the Gospel of Luke, it may be instructive to compare with the parallel baptism passages in the other gospels. A cross-reference will also help you locate the verse in Hab 2:4 that Paul quotes in Rom 1:17 so you can read it in its original context.

Introductions and Topical Articles

Most bibles will include some brief introduction to each individual book in the Bible. A good introduction should explain what we know about the author and when the book may have been written. It should also describe the themes of the book and outline the major sections. This may be carried out further in the text itself in the form of unit and section headings. These help you quickly identify the contents on the page much in the same way headings and subheadings do in a contemporary textbook.

For example, my previous articles have covered the unit of Genesis chapters 1-11 known as the “primeval history,” set before the time of Abraham. This unit can then be subdivided into sections on The Creation Week (Gen 1:1-2:3), Adam and Eve (2:4-3:24), Cain and Abel (Gen 4), and so on. Sometimes these unit and section headings are embedded in the text itself, but other times these headings are only mentioned in the footnotes. I prefer the latter approach because deciding where a section begins and ends is a judgment call. Not having an editor’s decision forced upon you through the formatting of the text allows you to make your own decision.

A bible may also have general introductions to both the Old and the New Testaments as well as their major parts: the historical, wisdom, and prophetic books in the OT, and the gospels and letters in the NT.

General or topical articles would help you understand the Bible in general. These may include articles about history during the time period covered by the Bible, how the Bible came to be written, the theology of the Bible, or how to understand Hebrew poetry. These vary widely in content and quality from bible to bible. It is nice to have them conveniently available to you in your bible, but you can easily purchase an introduction to the OT or NT that would cover such topics in more depth.

Maps and Charts

The Bible takes place a long time ago in lands very far away. Although the lands are the same, the place names and political boundaries have certainly changed. Therefore, a set of maps will help you visualize the route of the Exodus, the extent of David’s kingdom, and the journeys of Paul. Ideally, the bible should also include an index to the maps to help you identify a particular location.

In addition to a good set of maps, a proper study bible may also include various charts for helping convert ancient weights and measures to their modern equivalents, for example. Or it may include a chronological table listing events from the Bible with contemporaneous events happening in other parts of the world.

Even with these helps, you will only be able to go so far without additional reference works. In the next article, we’ll discuss how to take your bible study to the next level.

Parallel Lines

The last several articles have examined various English translations of the Bible, but how do they compare to one another? Let’s take one Scripture citation and see how it looks in various popular translations available at your local bookstore.

The Test Case – Rom 1:17

Here is a hyper-literal, word-for-word translation from the Greek:

For God’s righteousness in it is revealed from faith to faith, as it has been written, “But the righteous by faith will live.”

Paul is talking about how the gospel reveals God’s righteousness. There are only two main issues in translating this verse (in bold above):

1. What does “from faith to faith” mean?
2. In Paul’s quotation from Hab 2:4, does “by faith” describe how one becomes “righteous” (option A) or how the righteous “will live” (option B)?

King James Family

(KJV) For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written. The just shall live by faith. 

(NASB) For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.” 

(NRSV) For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”

(ESV) For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

The KJV here is a very literal translation with no archaic language to confuse the modern reader.

The NASB translates “righteous” instead of “just” in the Habakkuk quotation. “Righteousness/righteous” better reflects the use of the same Greek root word than does the “righteousness/just” combination in the KJV. The NASB also inserts the word “man” (that’s why it is in italics) after “righteous,” probably because readers expect “righteous” to be an adjective and not a noun.

The NRSV translates “through faith for faith” and the ESV “from faith for faith” but these are only slight variations and neither really tries to interpret the phrase.

All versions choose option B for the Habakkuk quotation with some version of the “just/righteous will/shall live by faith”.

Just as train tracks seem endless, so do the number of new English translations of the Bible.

Catholic Translations

(NJB) For in it is revealed the saving justice of God:  a justice based on faith and addressed to faith. As it says in scripture: Anyone who is upright through faith will live.

(NABRE) For in it is revealed the righteousness of God from faith to faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous by faith will live.”

The NJB is clearly a thought-for-thought translation and not a word-for-word one. It translates the Greek dikaiosynē theou as the “saving justice of God” and expands on that in the cryptic middle term with “a justice based on faith and addressed to faith.” It chooses the word “upright” in the Habakkuk quotation, in which case it would have been better to translate dikaiosynē theou as the “uprightness of God” to preserve the connection. The NJB translates “as it is written” with the more interpretive “as it says in scripture”.

The NABRE and the NJB are similar to the phrasing of the King James tradition with two exceptions. First, they place the verb “revealed” before the “righteousness of God” instead of after. Second, both follow the ambiguous word order of the Greek in the Habakkuk quote instead of choosing between option A or B.

Protestant Translations

(NIV) For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

(CSB) For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith.

(CEB) God’s righteousness is being revealed in the gospel, from faithfulness for faith, as it is written, The righteous person will live by faith.

(ISV) For in the gospel God’s righteousness is being revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, “The righteous will live by faith.”

The NIV (and CEB and ISV) introduces the word “gospel” so the reader isn’t confused what the pronoun “it” refers to. The NIV also repeats the word “righteousness” in the middle part and is more interpretive with “by faith from first to last.” Paul would certainly agree that salvation is a matter of faith from start to finish but that is not a literal translation.

The CSB is very close in wording to the very literal ESV but the Common English Bible (CEB) and International Standard Version (ISV) go a different route by translating “God’s righteousness” instead of “righteousness of God”; this is a more natural way of describing a possessive in modern English. They both use the present tense (“is being revealed”) rather the perfect tense (“is revealed”) to capture the idea that God’s saving righteousness continues to be revealed whenever the gospel is preached. The CEB, though, is unique with the translation “from faithfulness for faith”, which to my ears is not much of an improvement in clarifying the meaning.

All these versions choose the traditional option B in stating that it is by faith that the righteous will live.

In Summary

Hopefully, this side-by-side comparison of more than a dozen different translations gives you a flavor for how translators go about doing their work. Sometimes they have to make a choice between leaving a confusing word or phrase in place or try to clarify it for the reader. Other times, the verse is ambiguous or has two meanings, only one of which can be captured in English. 

Which of these versions speaks to you?

Dr. Strangeverse

or: How the Southern Baptists Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Inclusive Language

Every year for the past several years, the best-selling biblical translation has been the New International Version (NIV), first published in 1978 (with a minor revision in 1984). A product of Evangelical scholars, it is a fresh translation from the original languages and not a revision in the King James tradition like its competitors, the RSV or NASB. How does it compare?

Questionable Translation Choices

According to the Preface of the NIV, its translators strove for both accuracy and readability, but also “the translators were united in their commitment to the authority and infallibility of the Bible as God’s Word in written form.” This commitment has sometimes led to some questionable translation choices.

For example, Deut 1:1 in the RSV reads, “These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan in the wilderness…” Since we know from the Bible that Moses was not allowed to cross the Jordan into the Promised Land, referring to the wilderness as “beyond the Jordan” or “across the Jordan” means the reference point of the writer was Palestine. This doesn’t pose a problem unless one is committed to the tradition that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, which includes Deuteronomy. Translating the phrase as “in the desert east of the Jordan” eliminates the difficulty and the NIV is the only major translation that makes this choice.

How about an example from the NT? 1 Pet 4:6 in the RSV reads, “For this is why the gospel was preached even to the dead…” Is this a callback to 1 Pet 3:19 in which the risen Christ preaches to “the spirits in prison” since the time of Noah? Perhaps. But a key Evangelical belief is that salvation comes from a conversion experience and there is no possibility of that after death. The NIV removes any ambiguity in the passage by translating “the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead.” Most scholars would agree that “the dead” in this verse were alive when the gospel was preached to them and have since died, but that commentary should be placed in a footnote and not embedded into the translation.

I even referenced a dubious NIV translation in Genesis in a previous article. There are so many harmonizing and theologically-motivated translations in the NIV that at least one website is devoted to keeping track of them. The sheer number of examples leads one to suspect the motivations of the translators.

Furor Over Inclusive Language

In 2005 a new version of the NIV was released with inclusive language. Called Today’s New International Version (TNIV), it went over about as well as New Coke. Evangelicals were the target audience for the NIV and the publishers underestimated the attachment that audience had for the NIV and its willingness to accept gender-neutral language. The main complaints were places where the translators had changed 3^rd person singular pronouns to plural (“he” and “his” to “they” and “their”), “brothers” to “brothers and sisters,” “son” to “child.”

After the outcry, the translators recalibrated a bit and released a new version of the NIV in 2011, ending further publication of the 1984 NIV and the TNIV at the same time. Evangelicals were still not pleased. Reaction among the Southern Baptist Convention, for example, was to denounce the updated NIV and request that their LifeWay stores stop selling it, a request that the trustees of LifeWay decided to ignore. But it really didn’t matter because by then the Baptists already had their own translation of the Bible.

The iconic final scene from Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964) as Major Kong (Slim Pickens) rides a nuclear bomb down to its intended target. Introducing inclusive language to the NIV had a similar impact.

The Baptist Bible

The Southern Baptists had been thinking about their own translation from the late 1990s. Biblica, the organization holding the copyright on the NIV, provided exclusive publishing rights to Zondervan Publishing House in exchange for covering the costs of the initial translation. Therefore, if the Southern Baptists wanted to use NIV text in their Sunday School material, they would have to pay Zondervan for licensing. Add to this economic issue the rumors of gender-inclusive language in future versions of the NIV and the Baptists sought to develop a translation that would be under their control. The result was completed in 2004 and named the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) after Holman Bible Publishers, the publishing arm of LifeWay Christian Resources.

One feature of the HCSB was to sometimes use “Yahweh” for the divine name YHWH where it appears in the Hebrew. So, for example, Ex 15:3 is rendered, “The Lord is a warrior; Yahweh is His name.” Use of gender-neutral language was conservative in the use of pronouns but more gender-neutral than the 1984 NIV in other places (e.g., in Rom 3:4 where the NIV reads “Let God be true, and every man a liar” the HCSB reads “God must be true, even if everyone is a liar”).

A major revision to the HCSB, simply called the Christian Standard Bible (CSB) was released at the beginning of 2017. One of the main changes – other than the name – was to revert back to the use of “the Lord” instead of “Yahweh” in the 645 instances where it had been used previously in the HCSB. Also, the CSB increased the use of gender-neutral language. While masculine pronouns were still retained, in verses like Rom 8:29 where “brothers” appeared in the HCSB, the CSB translates as “brothers and sisters” thus bringing it a step closer to the 2011 NIV that the Southern Baptists found so objectionable:

For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. (NIV2011) 

For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers. (HCSB) 

For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. (CSB)

It’s Not Liberal, It’s Biblical

This grudging acceptance of more gender-inclusive language has not gone unnoticed by the press. When The Atlantic trumpeted in an article that “Southern Baptists Embrace Gender-Inclusive Language in the Bible”, Southern Baptist scholars rose up to explain that the CSB is not really gender-neutral or gender-inclusive. It's like after years of condemning gender inclusivity as liberal and unbiblical, conservative theologians are now defending the changes as a better reflection of what the Bible actually says.

Over the past couple of articles examining the King James tradition and Catholic versions, we’ve seen how biblical translations have always been controversial. From arguments over what sources to use to arguments over whether translators are attacking Christian theology, every movement towards more accurate and inclusive translations was initially met with resistance and a demand to restore traditional language. But when we see a major conservative denomination like the Southern Baptists relax a bit on the use of gender-neutral language, perhaps the culture wars in this area may be drawing to a close.

Game of Tomes

Last week I was discussing with a co-worker this blog and my on-going struggle to make it as interesting as I can, sometimes re-writing the article to do so. He compared my writing process with that used by George R.R. Martin, the author of the books on which the HBO series Game of Thrones is based. He gave me some advice on spicing up my blog:  “You should kill off some of your characters.”

The Battle Over Vernacular Bibles

To that end, allow me to introduce William Tyndale (1490-1536), the first to translate the Bible into English from the original languages. Prior to Tyndale, English translations were made from the Latin Vulgate (such as Wycliffe’s Bible, 1382) and, being handwritten manuscripts, had a limited audience. A supporter of Martin Luther, Tyndale was suspected of heresy in 1520 and fled to Germany where he continued his translation work. Before he could complete the entire Bible, he was arrested by the imperial authorities, convicted of heresy, strangled, and his body burned at the stake.

Preparations to burn the body of William Tyndale from John Foxe's Book of Martyrs (1563). Reportedly, Tyndale’s last words were “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.”

The idea of a vernacular Bible, a Bible translated in the language that ordinary people read and spoke, was not a popular one at the time. When Martin Luther kicked off the Protestant Reformation in 1517, he encouraged Christians to read the Bible for themselves and did his own translation into German. It was the Reformation which led to an increased demand for a vernacular Bible, but many in positions of power thought it was the other way around.

The Catholic Church opened the Council of Trent in 1545 to confront the challenges of the Reformation. By that time there were already entrenched attitudes among some of the bishops that putting a vernacular Bible in the hands of the common folk would lead to more heresies. Since there was no consensus among the bishops as to whether to support or condemn Bibles in the vernacular, the council limited itself to defining the canon of Scripture and declared the Vulgate as the “authentic edition” for church use. Over the next 400 years, the attitude developed within the Catholic Church that only vernacular translations from the Vulgate were approved.

English Bibles from France

The professors of English College at Douay (in exile in France due to the English Reformation) took up the challenge of producing an English translation of the Vulgate. The NT was released at Rheims in 1582 and the OT at Douay in 1609. The complete bible, called the Douay-Rheims (DR), was revised dozens of times, mostly notably between 1749 and 1752 by Bishop Challoner of London. Although keeping the name Douay-Rheims, it was essentially a new translation but retained Latinisms from the original in passages like Mt 6:11: “Give us this day our supersubstantial bread.”

Interestingly, although the DR was translated from Jerome’s Vulgate, Jerome had access to older Hebrew and Greek texts than were available to the KJV translators. Mt 6:13 in the KJV includes a doxology for the Lord’s Prayer found in the later Greek texts: “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.” Only the concluding “Amen” is found in the Vulgate and therefore translated in the DR. All modern translations have no doxology at all because it is not present in the oldest Greek manuscripts.

In 1943 Pope Pius XII officially encouraged translations from the original languages. With this green light, Dominican scholars at the École Biblique in Jerusalem began work on a French translation from the original languages published in 1956 as the Bible de Jérusalem. The English translation, a product of British scholars (fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien worked on the book of Jonah), was published in 1966 as The Jerusalem Bible (JB). It was used as the basis for the Lectionary in most English-speaking countries outside of the US and Canada. One unusual feature of the JB was the use of the divine name (“Yahweh”) wherever it appears in the Hebrew text instead of a euphemism such as "the Lord." Thus, Ex 15:3 in JB was translated as “Yahweh is a warrior; Yahweh is his name,” instead of “The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name” (NRSV).

The French version was heavily revised in 1973 and the changes were considered important enough to warrant a new English edition, published in 1985 as the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB). The original JB was criticized for following the French translation more closely than the original Hebrew and Greek and for frequently resorting to paraphrase. These defects were corrected in the NJB. A revised NJB based on the 1998 edition of the French version will be published in late spring 2018.  

A Reading from the Letter of John Paul to the Americans

The New American Bible (NAB) is the best-known translation to Catholics inside the US because of its use in the Lectionary. The first edition of the NAB was published in 1970. The NT was revised in 1986 and the Psalms were revised in 1991. The rest of the OT was completed in 2002, but encountered problems within the US Conference of Catholics Bishops (USCCB) during the approval process.

A translation for study or devotional reading is one thing, but a separate set of rules apply if the translation is intended to be used in the liturgy (such as lectionary readings). The use of gender-neutral language in the 1991 version of the Psalms was deemed unacceptable. The Psalms were re-revised and the fourth edition of the NAB, called the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE) was published in 2011.

But despite all the sound and fury, the NABRE was still not approved for liturgical use and lectionaries continue to use a modified version of the 1970 NAB translation. In 2012, the USCCB announced plans to revise the NABRE yet again so there will be one version that can be used for private reading, study, and liturgy. Such a revised NABRE is not expected until 2025.

Psalms Not Inclusive

What was the problem the bishops had with the Psalms? Here’s an example:

The 1970 NAB translated Ps 8:5 as “What is man (Hb: ‘enosh) that you should be mindful of him, or the son of man (Hb: ben ‘adam) that you should care for him?” The 1991 Psalms translated this as “What are humans that you are mindful of them, mere mortals that you care for them?” The Hebrew ‘enosh can be translated “man” in the sense of “mankind,” but it does not have the sense of a male person like the word ‘ish. The Hebrew expression ben ‘adam (literally “son of Adam”) is a parallel expression referring to an individual human. God frequently address Ezekiel as ben ‘adam, for instance.

The 1991 translation is justifiable from a technical point of view since the psalmist is contrasting human insignificance with God’s grandeur. But the NT applies this psalm to Jesus (e.g., Heb 2:5-9) and Jesus frequently refers to himself in the gospels as “the son of man” (note the definite article). The term “son of man” thus – rightly or wrongly – takes on Christological overtones and the relationship between the OT and NT is lost when the term is translated differently.

NABRE returned to the 1970 NAB (but note the change from the definite article): “What is man that you are mindful of him, and a son of man that you care for him?” (For comparison, the NJB reads: “What are human beings that you spare a thought for them, or the child of Adam that you care for him?”)

As this brief survey shows, translators of the Bible can run afoul of everything from accusations of heresy to charges of political correctness. Fortunately, the worst that can happen today is that the bibles will be burned and not the translators.

All in the King James Family

The King James Version (KJV) of the Bible was not the first English translation from the original Hebrew and Greek (that honor goes to the work of William Tyndale), but it has become the best-known. It was translated by a commission appointed by James I of England and authorized for use in the Church of England in 1611, replacing the Bishops’ Bible (1568) and the Geneva Bible (1560). Also called the Authorized Version (AV), it had an immense influence on English literature and the wording of its verses have become immortalized in our culture. Among some, however, the KJV has become so sacrosanct that it is akin to blasphemy to either change it or question its inadequacies.

The Early Revisions

But the inadequacies of the KJV are legion. It wasn’t an entirely new translation; much of the English phrasings can be traced to earlier editions (for example, 1/3 of the NT is worded exactly like Tyndale’s). The Greek basis for the KJV was the Textus Receptus (TR), a compilation of a half-dozen inferior Byzantine manuscripts collected by Erasmus in 1516 and slightly corrected by others.

By the late 19th century, the evolution of the English language and discoveries of more ancient texts demanded a revision to the KJV. Published in 1885, the Revised Version (RV) was a product of mostly British Protestant scholars. It used a Greek text based on older Alexandrian manuscripts instead of the later Byzantine manuscripts reflected in the Textus Receptus. The RV also retained archaic terms from the KJV like aforetime, howbeit, must needs, etc.

A separate version of the RV with readings preferred by the American translators on the team, the American Standard Version (ASV), was released in 1901. One of decisions of the Americans was to translate the name of God (YHWH) in the OT as “Jehovah”. Judged too literal, the ASV never seriously challenged the KJV in popularity.

King James I of England and VI of Scotland, after John De Critz the Elder (died 1647)

No Longer a Virgin

Recognizing the deficiencies in the ASV, in the mid-20th century the National Council of Churches authorized work on another revision of the KJV. Called the Revised Standard Version (RSV), it was released in 1952. It reverted to the practice followed in the KJV of translating YHWH as “the Lord” but retained the antiquated second-person pronouns (“thou, thee, thy”) and verbs (“art, hast, didst”) in conversations directed towards God.

The RSV was mostly well-received among mainline Protestant churches, but it was also attacked vigorously by more conservative denominations. While some of the complaints related to the RSV not using the TR as the Greek base for the translation of the NT – something that would also apply to the RV and ASV – the main charge was that the RSV denied the virgin birth with its translation of Is 7:14:

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. (KJV) 

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Imman′u-el. (RSV)

I have previously discussed the differences in the Hebrew and Greek translation of this verse. “Young woman” reflects the Hebrew but it doesn’t square with Matthew’s prophetic citation of Isaiah in Mt 1:23. The RSV translation of Is 7:14 does not cast doubt on the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus because that is still clear in both Matthew and Luke.

A Conservative Reaction

Conservative denominations wanted an alternative to the RSV and got it in a revision to the ASV called the New American Standard Bible (NASB). Released in 1971 and updated in 1995, in addition to restoring “virgin” to Is 7:14, it also restored some theological terms like justification, sanctification and propitiation that had been downplayed in the RSV. Here’s an example of Rom 3:25:

whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God; (ASV) 

whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins; (RSV) 

whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; (NASB)

You can see how the word “propitiation” in the ASV was changed by the RSV to “expiation” and then restored to “propitiation” by the NASB. The NASB also followed the reverential tradition of capitalizing deity pronouns even though that was lacking in earlier translations.

Return of the Textus Receptus

While conservative in some ways, the NT of the NASB – like the RSV – was not based on the TR but on a critical Greek text giving preference to the oldest Greek manuscripts. In practice, this meant that certain verses and sometimes entire passages were relegated to footnotes because they were not found in the oldest and most reliable Greek manuscripts. Compare 1 John 5:7-8 in the KJV and the NASB:

For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one. (KJV) 

For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. (NASB)

To devotees of the KJV removing the words in bold from the passage was part of a satanic plot to eliminate vital Christian doctrines such as the Trinity. Since modernizing the Elizabethan English of the KJV was a laudable goal in and of itself, a new modern-English translation using the same Hebrew and Greek source of the KJV was published in 1982. This translation eventually came to be known as the New King James Version (NKJV). In the passage above, the only noticeable difference in the NKJV from the KJV is replacing “Holy Ghost” with “Holy Spirit”.

A "family tree" of the KJV showing its various revisions through the years. The Living Bible was a paraphrase of the ASV, but the NLT was a true translation in the style of The Living Bible. The NIV is an example of a translation created outside the KJV tradition.

All-Inclusive

As mentioned above, the RSV retained the “thou” pronouns and verbs when referring to God, so one goal for its revision was to eliminate them. Another goal was the elimination of masculine-oriented language when the source language was gender-neutral. For instance, in 1 Cor 6:18, the RSV (and all the other translations mentioned so far) reads “Every other sin which a man commits is outside the body.” The Greek word behind the bolded word is anthropos, which is Greek for human.

The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), published in 1989, attempted to correct these defects. 1 Cor 6:18 in the NRSV reads “Every sin that a person commits is outside the body”. Sometimes it gets awkward. The RSV renders Gal 4:7 as “So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir.” The NRSV translates it: “So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.” While it is laudable to be inclusive, Paul had just written in 4:1 that “heirs, as long as they are minors, are no better than slaves.” In modern English, the word child conjures up the image of an underage minor more than it does a mature adult. So it’s a work in progress.

Not surprisingly, just as the release of the RSV prompted the conservative NASB as an alternative, publication of the NRSV prompted a conservative alternative called the English Standard Version (ESV), released in 2001. The ESV – as the NASB before it – has as one of its goals retaining theological terminology like redemption, regeneration and reconciliation. Another goal was to be more constrained in the use of inclusive language. The ESV rendering of 1 Cor 6:18 is almost exactly like that of the NRSV, whereas Gal 4:7 is almost like the RSV. Is 7:14 is translated with “virgin” and 1 John 5:7-8 follows the RSV and NASB.

This brief tour through several of the biblical translations in the Tyndale-KJV tradition illustrates how some revisions are driven by changes in languages and discoveries in ancient manuscripts. Others are in reaction to real or perceived attacks on biblical doctrines or preferred readings.

In my next article, I will discuss translations outside the Tyndale-KJV family, especially Catholic translations.