Dumb Bible Translations

The news from the nice people at Christian Today (not a typo for the better-known Christianity Today) is that the Bible readers market continues to be dominated by the worst translations on offer.

According to the CBA, whose rankings are based on sales at member Christian retail stores in the U.S. through Aug. 3, 2013, the top Bible translations are: (1) New International Version; (2) King James Version; (3) New King James Version; (4) English Standard Version; (5) New Living Translation; (6) Holman Christian Standard Bible; (7) New American Standard; (8) Common English Bible; (9) New International Readers Version; (10) Reina Valera 1960.

The ECPA's list, compiled using adult book sales data from Christian retail stores across the U.S., includes: (1) New International Version; (2) King James Version; (3) New King James Version; (4) New Living Translation; (5) English Standard Version; (6) Reina Valera; (7) New American Standard Bible; (8) New International Reader's Version; (9) The Message; (10) Christian Standard Bible.

Sales charts from the ECPA going back all the way to January show that the NIV, NLV, KJV and NKJV have consistently wrestled for the top spot among buyers.

No sign at all of the NRSV or any of the excellent Catholic alternatives. Perhaps not surprisingly, the people who buy Bibles tend to choose comfortable (and deeply flawed) options. The only half-decent offering appearing on the lists - at CBA's no.8 - is the Common English Bible.

Daniel Wallace of (teeth gritted) Dallas Theological Seminary is quoted as saying that the venerable KJV remains his top pick, citing its "elegance and its cadence and the beauty of its language."

"But it's not the most accurate anymore," he added. "So it's elegant, it's easy to memorize out of even though the language is archaic, but it's not always real clear and it's not always real accurate."

Ya think?!

Then there's this telling comment:

Despite the number of translations available and the Bible being the world's most printed and widely distributed book, surveys have consistently showed that many Christians rarely read the Bibles they own.

Nope. Best to stick to those handy dandy proof texts, and not to wander too far off the beaten path. After all, that could lead to dangerous pitfalls like having to think for oneself!

Presumably all this says something about the demographic of the Bible-shoppers who patronise these two sources. Sadly it also says a great deal about the state of the general Christian demographic in the US, and to be frank, other English speaking countries won't be a lot different.

Latest news from The Journal

The latest issue of The Journal: News of the Churches of God has been released, and can be downloaded without charge, courtesy of editor Dixon Cartwright, in PDF format.

And in the news:

Bob “Continuing” Thiel has released a new hymnal for his micro-sect. Only one guess allowed for what he’s called it. Hint: the first word is Bible and the second is Hymnal.

Don Billingsley is convinced he’s the only one “who continues to uphold all the doctrinal teachings, including the true government of God, that Jesus Christ used Mr. Armstrong to restore within His church.”

Art Mokarow has bought three pages to inform us all about God’s Wife. Astarte I hear you ask? Nope. The church? Apparently not. “The Wife of God [capitalisation in the original], as Scripture proves, is the Holy Spirit of God.” Wow, what amazing new truth - thanks Art, you da man.

Somewhere in something called the “Illinois Republic” (zip code exempt) there’s another something boasting the rather grand title Church of God, The Most High God. Your generous donation is unfortunately not tax deductible.

If you’re ancient enough to remember 1974, Ken Westby reminisces about the “rebellion” among ministers in that year, in which he played a significant role.

In the letters section Robert Engelhart of Zion, Ill. wonders why COG folk wouldn’t be stocking up for “cyclical solar flares, comet-mass ejections, electromagnetic storms this summer, fall and spring?” (Frankly Robert, I’m more worried at the distant prospect in San Francisco of Oracle clawing back the America’s Cup from the Team New Zealand challenger. A comet-mass ejection barely competes with that prospect.)

Adding to the mix is a re-edit of the multi-part review of David Barrett’s Fragmentation of a Sect that originally appeared right here on Otagosh.

And that’s only a selection.

One thing is certain. If you want to understand something of the diversity that characterises the post-Armstrong tribes calling themselves the Churches of God, and you have a robust sense of humour, you can’t much improve on The Journal as a window on this rapidly evolving (or perhaps devolving) movement.

Rūtana Rumblings

It's not often I sound off about the faith community of my early years, the Lutheran Church of New Zealand, so it's not surprising that I'm a bit behind the times. Although I haven't darkened the door of a Lutheran church in years, I still have an admiration for the progressive strands within that tradition as well a residual sense of loyalty.

The church's greatest assets include the indisputable fact that it has a built-in resistance to the wackiness that afflicts so many Anglo denominations. So I was intrigued (and somewhat gobsmacked) to discover a couple of changes in the way the wind is now blowing in this small denomination.

The first is a local initiative, bearing in mind the the LCNZ is an outlying district of the much larger Aussie body. The second is obviously driven from the distant holy city of Adelaide, headquarters of the Lutheran Church of Australia.

The New Zealand church last year adopted an alternative Māori name: Te Hāhi Rūtana o Aotearoa (Rūtana is apparently a transliteration of Lutheran, it's certainly not found in any of the Māori dictionaries). Perhaps it's the last of the country's mainline denominations to do so, but it still comes as a bit of a shock. Whether current church president Mark Whitfield is responsible for the initiative, or whether there is any substantive grassroots support for the move, I'm not certain. Frankly, I'm all for it. It marks a long overdue commitment to a twenty-first century Kiwi identity.

The second change is also one of nomenclature. Until about five minutes ago (small exaggeration - more like April this year) the highest elected officials in the church were referred to as "presidents". This reflects in part the strong historic ties with the neo-fundamentalist US-based Missouri Synod. Then suddenly the various district presidents along with the overall denominational president in Adelaide were made-over into bishops. Bishops! Gott im Himmel!

Actually, I think this is kind of overdue too. Lutherans aren't Presbyterians or Methodists, praise the Lord, and they share a great deal with Anglican and Roman Catholic traditions in terms of liturgy and ethos. Which is why traditionalists are, on average, less loopy than the happy-clappy types who now dominate the increasingly dumbed-down Christian marketplace. It also brings the Antipodean church into line with most overseas Lutheran bodies.

All positive. Except.

Except, unless I've missed it, the Ocker-Loos still exclude women from the pastorate. The official statement on the matter, dated 2001, reads like something from the 1950s. 

"The rule of the apostles excludes the possibility of women acting as pastors and shepherds of congregations."

 Not so much a "priesthood of all believers" as "under half the believers." It's that kind of ingrained discrimination that's holding the LCA and it's Kiwi outpost in a sociological Stone Age.

The name changes may shuffle the deck chairs but, sadly, really meaningful change is yet to come. Without it, you just have to suspect it doesn't amount to much more than window dressing.

Of Spy Narratives and Toyota Manuals

With a title like Manufacturing Judean Myth: The Spy Narrative in Numbers 13-14 as Rewritten Tradition, you might suspect some dense argumentation akin to an untranslated Japanese car manual.

(The allusion is a painful one, having just acquired a vehicle with just such a manual. Thank heavens for the little cartoon diagrams.)

But back to Judean Myth. Deane Galbraith is a bloke I respect, both for his scholarship and his wicked sense of humour. The tome referred to above is his doctoral dissertation at the University of Otago, and the abstract is available here. Alas, I suspect it won't make easy bedtime reading, and I doubt Deane has provided helpful manga-style drawings.

But fear not, everyone's favourite Southern Baptist blogger, the inimitable Jim West, has done us all the favour of interviewing Deane about his work. One benefit of this is that it allows Deane to break free from the academic language and let rip a little.

I think that the term ‘minimalist’ is largely meaningless, a term of  polemic employed only by uptight and defensive reactionaries, providing about the same level of semantic value as a child who puts her hand over her ears and shouts ‘la la la la la la’ at the world.

You can access the text of the interview on Zwingli Redivivus.

From church to shrine

On Sunday I took a drive out to Waiuku.

Now I suspect not too many readers know about Waiuku, and to be frank, there's no reason you should. It's a small town on the edge of Auckland, famous for not a lot, other than being a fairly pleasant small town, and boasting New Zealand's oldest pub, established in 1853, The Kentish.

I parked the car and took a stroll down the main street, as one does, to see the sights. In Waiuku this takes all of ten minutes at a slow clip.

Which is when I saw this.

Clearly this is a church building with a history. I forget which denomination it used to represent... something fairly staid like Anglican or Presbyterian I think.

But even in sleepy Waiuku the winds of change are blowing. The board outside the former church declares this stately old wooden house of worship to now be a Shinto shrine.

I read it twice, three times. A Shinto shrine. In Waiuku?

New Zealand is a rapidly secularising society, and the traditional Protestant churches are in terminal decline. But who'd have expected that this prominent edifice, set prominently on a hill in the main street, would be transferred to an alternative world faith.

Please don't misunderstand. I don't have anything against Shinto shrines. Or mosques, Sikh temples or whatever. All communities have a right to establish centres for fellowship, affirmation and worship. Brilliant!

But what does this say about the state of those predominantly Anglo religious bodies, the Anglican church and its various derivatives, which once dominated in the English-speaking world. It seems they're greying out of existence.

So down the gurgler of irrelevance they go, rapidly; disappearing without any great trauma before our very eyes.

And I'm reminded of the adage, variously attributed; "better a live heresy than a dead orthodoxy."

Now if they turn The Kentish into a sushi bar... then there'd be cause to get really upset.

Dragonses in Revelationses

Scott Bailey makes a basic point on his excellent blog about the last book in the Christian Bible, sometimes known as The Apocalypse.

You can always tell whether a commentator on this book has even the most basic knowledge of their subject by what they call it. The correct title is Revelation, most definitely in the singular. Drooling poseurs invariably call it Revelations, in the plural.

It might seem to be a small point, but let's face it, if some nincompoop dilettante can't even get the name right, what are the chances they've got anything else right?

Which is exactly the point Scott makes. (The particular egg he refers to believes that dragons are real, and the Bible proves it!)

Of course, just because somebody can get the title right doesn't mean they have a clue about the book itself either, but at least they're approaching base one.

There was a certain philandering televangelist of fond memory who used to contest the full name as given in the KJV: The Revelation of St. John the Divine. His point was that John would never have called himself divine, or assumed such undue honours. Poor Ted (oops, gave that away...) simply didn't understand the difference between an adjective - which he took it for - and a noun - which was the translators' intent. Back in the 1600s divine was simply a synonym for theologian - presumably reflecting the superhuman seer-like characteristics needed for torturing significance out of those recalcitrant texts!

A Whale of a Tale

What do we do with the Old Testament book of Jonah? Even the mighty Luther was perplexed, saying that it was stranger than any poet's fable. "If it were not in the Bible," quoth he, "I would take it for a lie." Whales, it seems, are not famous for swallowing persons whole and then regurgitating them intact, and what could survive three days and nights in any cetacean's gullet?

But Wot ho! as Bertie Wooster was famous for saying, there has to be a faith-enhancing explanation, and to the rescue came none other than the world's most astute Bible interpreter, the inimitable Ferrar Fenton. In his turn of the last century translation, which has the distinction of being the first in modern English, he set his formidable mind to the problem and lo, came forth with the obvious solution (obvious to him anyway). Here's his footnote to Jonah 2:1.

"Great Fish" was the name of the ship mistranslated "Whale" in the version of the Greek translators whose blunder has been repeated by all subsequent translators, in all languages, to the perplexity of their readers, until I decided to go back to the original statement of the prophet in his own Hebrew.

So it seems - and which of us could doubt Mr Fenton's judgment - that Jonah was rescued by a nearby wooden tub splendidly christened The Great Fish.

As you might have guessed, Fenton was not exactly under-endowed with a belief in his own abilities, despite being an amateur in the field (he was a wealthy businessman and Bible hobbyist). I warmly recommend perusing his less than humble introduction and explanatory note to the work. Truly, a more competent scholar never walked the earth!

This is also a great example of trying to rationalise away a problem. The Jonah story is a tall tale with a message and a moral, told in an age when the open sea was a perilous but necessary method of travel, filled with little-understood dangers of the unknown. Dear old F.F. was however tin-eared when it came to subtleties of genre, so it seemed clear to him that a handy-dandy bit of clarification was needed. Didn't he do well!

These days the Fenton translation is prized by a few mad collectors of obscure English bibles (such as myself), and by the deeply racist Christian Identity movement in the US which has appropriated his jingoistic British-Israelite textual preferences to serve their own vile intents. It's a sad postscript to a pioneering version of the scriptures.