Just before I go to class, I thought I'd quickly share one of the many interesting things I've learned over the past three days. I'm never been one to be overly concerned about what the Greek root of a certain word is and so forth, at least from a spiritual growth standpoint anyway. But sometimes such knowledge can really bring a Bible passage to life.
An example of this is found in Romans chapter 1, when Paul quotes that
'The righteous shall live by faith'.
However, as Dr Arden Autry pointed out, in the original Greek text, the words in that sentence are actually ordered
'The righteous by faith shall live'.
While both sentences are true, there is a distinct difference between them. Since I don't have time to go into the nitty gritty, I'll leave it to you to reflect on the respective emphases, and if you want to leave a comment or write me an email based on any findings you, um, find, then please do so. Let's make this interactive people! I'll try and do a post on this again in the near future so it would be cool to have a whole collection of thoughts instead of just the thoughts of this tired, old brain.
An example of this is found in Romans chapter 1, when Paul quotes that
'The righteous shall live by faith'.
However, as Dr Arden Autry pointed out, in the original Greek text, the words in that sentence are actually ordered
'The righteous by faith shall live'.
While both sentences are true, there is a distinct difference between them. Since I don't have time to go into the nitty gritty, I'll leave it to you to reflect on the respective emphases, and if you want to leave a comment or write me an email based on any findings you, um, find, then please do so. Let's make this interactive people! I'll try and do a post on this again in the near future so it would be cool to have a whole collection of thoughts instead of just the thoughts of this tired, old brain.
While I don't question your belief that both sentences are true, for it is yours to have and not my place to do so, I'm a little bit perplexed with the nature of how you glaze over the fact that these sentences are distinctly different from one another. Does this not bother you? For it bothers me.
ReplyDeleteEssentially what you have here is two different sentences and so you must have an error. One must be right and one must be wrong. The first describes HOW the 'righteous' will live, the second describes WHAT KIND of 'righteous' will live. Now, it's a poor example to choose from my perspective as clearly you believe both to be true, but to me the trouble lies not in this example but in the doubting light it casts on all of the previous sentences and those that follow.
With such a glaring error made either in grammar or translation, how can you truly trust other sentences knowing that any day Dr Autry may pop up and fill you in on what the stem of the word was in Latin or how the sentence was formed in Greek?
History is written by the victors and so must be treated with a pinch of salt. We don't know what happened in the past, only what we are told happened. Added to this is a language barrier that spans countries, continents and time. There were ways to translate in older times and there are new ways now. Who's to say the errors are even noticeable anymore? And so, when you study history (and this is relative to how old the history is) you must consider these factors.
I'm reminded of a joke about a monk, who following the tradition of hand copying scrolls, goes down to the cellar of his abbey in search of an original copy. He doesn't return for hours and is eventually discovered by a younger clerk. He is in a corner of the cellar, sobbing. When asked what's wrong, he says, 'Celebrate... celebrate.. it says celebrate, not cel-i-bate.'.
Do you see my point?
The key thing to remember here is that Paul has a very specific goal in mind when writing to the church in Rome. He's giving them the gospel, which is righteousness by faith, not by works. He's using the Hebrew Bible to show them that this is not some new fangled idea, but one which was in place from the very beginning.
ReplyDeleteAs for the fact that the two sentences are different, I guess this kind of ambiguity exists all over the Bible (eg what does the "righteousness of God" mean?), but as long as it doesn't contradict then I don't see any reason to be upset.
I'm no Greek scholar, but it may be that the usual way of translating that sentence is correct, but the Greek text actually has a different word order, hence Dr Autry's other translation. For example, 'madra nua' is literally 'dog new', but that doesn't make sense so we of course translate it 'new dog' in English. However, if 'dog new' did make sense, then you'd have to try and find the correct meaning, or maybe decide that both meanings can be correct. I'm just speculating here though, so I could be wrong.
This may be shooting myself in the foot, but if you look at Rom 3:10-18, Paul gives a whole list of things that are "written", but when you look up the quotations in your OT they don't match up word for word. However, it is clear that Paul is taking the truth from these texts and phrasing it in a neat order. It doesn't appear to be an error on his part, or translation error. It's simply a paraphrase to drive home his point. Is this twisting scripture to support your own ideas? Not so, because what Paul writes lines up perfectly with Scripture, all the way back to Genesis - "Abraham had faith in God and it was credited to him as righteousness".
However, are there errors in translation? Absolutely. Take 1 Samuel 8:16. The NKJV translates it as "young men" where as the GNB translates it as "cattle". This is unlike the Romans example because one of these is clearly wrong. The GNB translates from the Septuagint (Greek translation of the OT) whereas The NKJV translates from more recent Hebrew texts. And in Hebrew the word for "your young men" is "bhrykm" and the word for "your cattle" is "bqrykm". A mistake was obviously made in copying this word, so the NKJV winds up with an error.
Do errors like these bring the whole Bible into disrepute? Hardly. Humans have translated the Bible for centuries, and humans make mistakes. The core message of the Bible remains however, and Paul demonstrates this in Romans.
So I do feel i can trust other sentences with great confidence, although I wouldn't be surprised if Arden changed my viewpoint on certain things, because I certainly don't know it all. Biblical interpretation is a very complex thing on one level, because as you say you have to take into account language, countries, culture, time etc. However, do this correctly and the bible is a book that makes sense. Then it just comes down to whether you believe what it says is true or not.
Also, you say that history is written by the victors, which is of course generally true. But the books of the New testament were written by nobody's really. Men who were killed or marginalized. Im not saying that makes what they say more true, but it definitely sets the Bible apart from most other historical books.
I see your point for sure though, which is why taking a class in Biblical Interpretation is a very good thing for me to be doing. People, and myself included, tend to treat the Bible at face value, and fail to read it as it should be read - with great care and precision.
I love the joke by the way.