Diarmaid McCullough on the KJV

Jim West posted this link to an ABC radio interview with Diarmaid McCullough on the significance of the King James Bible. McCullough, who Jim describes as "the finest general Church Historian presently working," has authored works on the Reformation and the history of Christianity that are widely regarded as the best available.

One of the interesting comments McCullough makes is to call the eighteenth century revision of the KJV, which is the one in print today, a Disneyfied "fake-up." Egad! So no Myrtle, your 1611 Bible isn't; all those KJV-only freaks take note!

The Voice

I'm currently test-driving a New Testament translation called The Voice. It's apparently a product of the 'emergent' movement. I'm frankly confused by the whole emergent thing. Where do these folk sit on the continuum between fundagelicism and sanity? Read Phyllis Tickle's The Great Emergence and you might be forgiven for thinking the latter, but I'm not so sure.

The Voice is published by Thomas Nelson, so that's minus 10 points before you even crack open the cover. Next, take the temperature with two key texts in that most incoherent of Pauline letters, Romans.

Romans 3:22 (along with texts like Galatians 2:16) can be translated two ways, and there's a wide theological gulf between them. Before the beginning of the twentieth century the text was rendered "faith of Christ," as in the KJV (and before that Tyndale, the Geneva and Bishop's Bible.) The ratbags who produced the American Standard Version (1901) changed it to "faith in Christ," and it's been downhill ever since. "Faith in Christ" leads to sawdust trails and Chick tracts. Faith (or faithfulness) of Christ puts the emphasis back on Jesus and away from propositional righteousness. The Greek lends itself to of more than in, but oh dear, there goes a handy-dandy proof text.

The Voice does the right thing: "This redeeming justice comes through the faithfulness of Jesus..." Ten points.

Romans 16:7 is the Junia text which has already been mentioned here. Here The Voice gives poor Junia a gender reassignment, and she pops up as Junias (a totally unwarranted male name.) Minus ten points.

The Voice has a distinctive (one might even say 'cool') layout, and there's the promise of a full translation, that includes the Old Testament, somewhere downstream. The notes are designed to promote a devotional (yuck, ick, has anyone got mouthwash?) reading: minus twenty points. Scholars who contributed include Darrell Bock of Dallas Seminary (minus 50 points), but Brian McLaren's influence shouldn't be understated (plus 10 points), and Phyllis Tickle is involved in the Old Testament part of the project (plus 5 points.)

What The Voice does with the sense of Romans as a whole I'm about to discover. Not that I'm sure Romans is capable of making good sense given Paul's overindulgence in complex rhetoric. Let's face it, if Barth stuffed up so badly, what chance have a bunch of middle-class emergents got? If Luther only succeeded in muddying the waters, isn't it likely that Bock will produce pure schlock?

I'll get back on that one...

If anyone is interested in the pros and cons of Romans 3:22, and is prepared to deal with some fairly technical exegesis around Pistis Christou, Bird and Sprinkle's The Faith of Jesus Christ will tell you far more than you need to know.

Gender blender?

Inclusive language, is it of the devil? The subject riles many a NASB devotee or KJV recidivist, what with all this pandering to the ladies. More surprising is the disdain inclusive language bibles generate among the good and the great, including such luminaries as Bob Price and - the most widely read biblioblogger in the known multiverse - Jim West.

Here's Jim in a recent entry: the silly debate about gender and language is the biggest waste of time since Red Riding Hood argued with the wolf. If a translation sets out to adjust the text simply for modern tastes and sensibilities, it isn’t worth a pot. If it says ‘he’ translate ‘he’ and let the exegetes worry about whether or not it’s generic for ‘humankind’ or gender specific. (source)

Jim West's blog deservedly outranks everyone else because he writes like a real person, puts on few airs and graces (except for an insufferable tendency to link to foreign language sources without warning), suffers from no false modesty, and his writing style has an "edginess" to it that slaps you around sufficiently to grab your attention. But he's dead wrong on this one.

If you attend a liturgical church, one which follows the lectionary cycle, you know that the main exposure congregants get to "the Word" is in the hearing thereof. Forget all the puff and faddle about devotional reading in the home: 90 plus percent of bible exposure is on Sunday morning via the readings.

This needn't be a particularly bad thing. This is the way it's always been, reaching back to the synagogue and beyond. In "bible times" books - and especially scriptures - were written to be shared by reading aloud. The scrolls, codices and whatnot were way beyond the means of your average person in the pews, who couldn't read them even if they had a shekel to spare.

So, what's this got to do with Red Riding Hood? Just this. Gender specific language in the context of liturgical use does alienate more than half those sitting in the pews. Week after week women get the message: they're peripheral. Liturgical use is different from that of tendentious scholarly exegetes; it is primarily pastoral. Which is why the NRSV is the best choice for most lectionary readings (don't get me started on the ESV!)

In fact, I'd recommend any serious bible reader get a hold of something called The Inclusive Bible,a radical Catholic translation that claims with some justification to be "the first egalitarian translation." If you want strict correspondence to the original languages, then it won't be your choice. But if you have a pastoral concern to speak (or be spoken to) in a way that is congruent with life in the twenty-first century, you couldn't do better. And hey, it reads as well as the NRSV - sometimes even better.

No argument from me on two matters in the West post, however. The NIV is rubbish, and the REB is an under-appreciated (even if a little dated) triumph of the translator's art.