|
|
I think there's a misconception
about what we're attempting to exchange for what. The NIV and its ilk want to update our
English from 1611 until now, and they put forth an effort to do so,
but the KJV dialect is older
than that and more valuable for having been incorporated into the
hearts & minds of the English-speaking people for six and a
half centuries. It's like:
"Like the RAF in the Battle of Britain. Their
problem wasn't so much Spitfires and Hurricanes. It was
experienced pilots. Every civilian who got killed in London meant
a load of bombs that should have been dropped on airfields. The
Germans had the RAF on the
ropes and switched from attacking airfields to cities."
Lawrence bit into his sandwich again,
wondering where this led.
"Well, my point is," Bennett continued,
"that nothing's changed. Even with limited numbers of high-priced
birds, it's a lot easier to produce a fighter plane than a
proficient fighter pilot. It takes, what? Eight to ten months to
roll out an airplane from the factory? It takes about five years
to put a combat-ready pilot in that bird's cockpit."39
But wait, isn't the whole idea of coming out with the NIV to make an easier-to-understand
English? That's nonsense. I was a member of Shiloh Youth Revival
Centers, the largest Christian communal organization in the history
of America, and we were not for the most part scholars. We were an
organization of disenfranchised youth with our share of high school
dropouts. All we used was the King James Version, no
problem. One fellow didn't even know how to read so he taught
himself to read form that Book. I remember our Bible studies going
through Acts in the KJV with
about 130 young people whose English was way behind that at this
current church and we didn't need any NIV.
Then I went to a Chinese church for a few years where they had a
bilingual service, and they'd give the Bible readings in both
Chinese and NIV English.
When the Chinese version was being read, I'd read the KJV and then compare it with the
NIV. The NIV never seemed easier to me, Sunday
after Sunday, month after month, year in, year out.
At the intersection of Bible Boulevard,
Madi$on Avenue and Wall $treet, there are many crooked turns of
the truth. Advertising campaigns create a cloud of confusion,
calling the KJV "obscure,
confusing and sometimes incomprehensible," while they crown the
NIV's "clarity and ease of
reading" and the NASB's "contemporary English." Christians are
coerced by full color ads written to color the plain facts by
advertising, not English majors.
The Flesch-Kincaid research company's Grade
Level Indicator betrays the strictly black and white nature of the
issue showing the new version's true colors. The KJV ranks easier in 23 out of 26
comparisons. (Their formula is: (.39 x
average number of words per sentence) +
(11.8 x average number of syllables per word)
- (15.59) = grade level.
The first chapter of the first and last books of both Old and New
Testaments were compared. (All complete sentences, whether
terminating in a period, colon, or semi-colon, and all incomplete
phrases ending in a period, were calculated as 'sentences.')
KJV NIV NASB TEV NKJV
Grade Grade Grade Grade Grade
Level Level Level Level Level
Gen. 1 4.4 5.1 4.7 5.1 5.2
Mal. 1 4.6 4.8 5.1 5.4 4.6
Matt. 1 6.7 16.4 6.8 11.8 10.3
Rev. 1 7.5 7.1 7.7 6.4 7.7
Grade
Level 5.8 8.4 6.1 7.2 6.9
Average
To extend the inquiry, one each
of the three book-types (Gospel, Pauline epistle, General epistle) were
surveyed. The resulting data confirms the readability of the
KJV.
Good
KJV NIV NASB News NKJV
(TEV)
John 3.6 3.6 4.2 5.9 3.9
1:1-21
Galations 8.6 9.8 10.4 6.7 8.9
1:1-21
James 5.7 6.5 7.0 6.0 6.4
1:1-21
Why is the KJV easier to read? The KJV uses one or two syllable words
while new versions substitute complex multi-syllable words and phrases.
The perceived difficulty has to do with adjustment to the Bible dialect.
Remember [per Marsh] that a sacred dialect had been developed for our
English Bible. Others confirm that it is a separate Bible dialect, as
opposed to, say, a 1611 dialect.40
... he had previously obtained a sight
of, and was soon convinced that the whole book was the work of some
skeptic in England, in imitation of the language of
scripture.41
In the case of the hymns, a different
technique has had to be adopted. The hymns are written in the
style of the Biblical Psalms; but to the composer this style was a
conscious archaism, while it fell on the ears of the reciters with
the same effect as does the language of the Anglican Prayerbook or
the King James' Version upon the modern churchgoer. The only
feasible way of reproducing this effect is to fall back on
'Biblical English.' Readers who may be irritated or impeded by the
'howbeits' and 'whiloms' and the like need only to be reminded that
the original reciters were, in all probability, just as much put
out by the plethora of rare and recondite words and by the
artificial manipulation of Biblical 'tags' in which the authors
indulged. But to smooth this out would be to lose the flavor; it
would be like trying to make Lyly talk the language of Housman.
And, after all, do not the English Bible and the Prayerbook Psalter
have to retain the infuriating 'Selah', even though no one
has the faintest idea what it means?42
That sounds about the norm for dialects.
Within the territory of a language, wide
deviations of dialect may be found ... Such deviations disturb
communications, they do not completely disrupt it. And they are,
in all known languages, past and present, a constant feature, like
archaisms (e.g. in religious or legal terminology)...
The distinction between kindred
dialects and kindred languages is a matter of degree. The test is
intelligibility. When communication is disturbed between speakers,
we say that we have to do with related dialects; when it is
completely broken, related languages. Thus the speakers of
standard English and German are mutually incomprehensible; but
speakers of standard English and that variety of English known as
'Lowland Scots' understand one another well enough even though at
times they may encounter difficulties.43
Generally we understand the KJV well enough even though at times
we may encounter difficulties. Communication is disturbed, not
disrupted, so we don't need to retranslate it as if it were a
different language we couldn't understand. We go back to the
passage: (I Peter 5:1-11) "... Humble
yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may
exalt you in due time: Casting all your care upon him; for he
careth for you. ..." After we've humbled ourselves in not
exalting our own current dialect above the Bible dialect developed
by our elders of old, we cast our care on the Lord who helps us
master it, through study and prayer, through helps, and also
through our ministers who know it better and preach from it. "Be
sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring
lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist
steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are
accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. But the
God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by
Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you
perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. To him be glory and
dominion for ever and ever. Amen." It's a steady process that
works while we are being careful not to let this valuable Book in
valuable form get stolen form us. It is funny how the new versions
all compare themselves with the KJV saying they improve upon it, not
with each other so much; as if it is the KJV only that is being supplanted, not
the newer versions.
Outside, he discovered that some
worthless criminal wretch had broken into his Suburban during the
night. The suitcase and Book-of-the-Month selections were
gone. The creep even swiped the Kleenex, the chewing gum, and the
breath mints from the glove compartment.
Incredibly, the thief left behind the most
valuable items: the collection of hardcover first editions of
Caesar Zedd's complete body of work. The box stood open, its
contents having been explored in haste, but not a single volume was
missing.44
As an engineer uses a model to discern the workings of a
complicated system, I was once part of a multi-denominationally
derived church whose members, all but the pastor, used the KJV. I was able to get a clue about
the transition when the pastor defended using the RSV so as not to
partake of the spirit of conformity. That was the beatniks' cry, not
to conform, right about the time the RSV came out, and carried into the hippies "do your
own thing" our whole society has been transformed. Yesteryear we were
so conformed it would be hard to imagine all the different Bible versions
being used that we see now.
In his book, McCleary says he spent the
past eight years working on it because "I contend that the hippie
era was the intellectual renaissance of the 20th century." He
knows that some may believe that romanticizing an era "that
produced rampant free sex and drug usage and contributed to the
breakdown of conservative family values does not deserve a place in
our history."
But what the hippies helped accomplish was,
McCeary says, "the emergence of new ideas and experimentation on
social, political, religious and environmental issues."45
Now, I'm sure there is some merit to the hippies' point of view,
even honoring the body that bears an image of God, but the church
might do well to impose righteous limits on it. As an example of
true righteousness:
In a remarkable apologia Job vindicates
his character further as he reacts to the cutting jibes and unjust
accusations of his "friends." He has shunned the evil of adultery;
he has acted democratically in his relations to his servants."46
He was democratic with his servants and faithful to his wife, not
the converse: "Jack adhered to the lofty view that adultery was
merely the application of democracy to love."47 Likewise we
want to be faithful to reporting the word of God, not democratic to
the point of bringing in ever newer and more inferior versions as
our ranks swell with newcomers of undeveloped reading skills. The
Bible is a mechanism for us younger to be subject to our elders-of-
old who brought it to us, and each to one another in adhering to
the same Book. It is only in that each is subject to each other
that the elder can go along with a younger if that's a legit enough
way to go, and such liberty as all liberty is subject to the
criteria, (I Cor. 10:23)
"All things are lawful for me, but all things are not
expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify
not."
Okay, it's a good idea to look and see to what extent Biblical
writers employed their liberty to paraphrase, but remember this:
"I am a minister, I have been dealing with a canon all my
career—the canon of the Hebrew scriptures and that of the early
Christian Church—called the Bible."48
Since the New
Testament was written by the early church, it does not
deal with changes in Greek over time, because there hadn't been
enough time for Greek to change all that much. "All of the
twenty-seven books of the New Testament were written within about
sixty-five years after Jesus ascended back into Heaven."49
The Hebrew scriptures, on the other hand, were developed over time
enough for their language to change some. "Over centuries, the
Bible fashioned the Hebrew tribes into a nation: Israel."50
Looking at the Old Testament gives us a more precise gauge about
dealing with language change. To ignore it is like the chess
player leaning over the board so he couldn't see the bottom row; he
might play a fine game otherwise, but even a mediocre one may
defeat him by developing a threat on that row. Okay, there is one
instance of a word change being dealt with by an OT writer: (I Samuel 9:9)
"(Beforetime in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, thus
he spake, Come, and let us go to the seer: for he that is now
called a Prophet was beforetime called a Seer.)" The old word
was defined and from then on the two were used interchangeably,
i.e. (II Sam. 24:11)
"... the word of the LORD came unto the prophet Gad, David's
seer, saying ...," (II Kings 17:13) "Yet the
LORD testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the
prophets, and by all the seers ...,"
(I Chronicles 29:29) "... behold, they are written in
the book of Samuel the seer, and in the book of Nathan the prophet,
and in the book of Gad the seer,"
(II Chronicles 9:29) "... are they not written in the
book of Nathan the prophet, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the
Shilonite, and in the visions of Iddo the seer ...,"
(II Chron. 12:15)
"... are they not written in the book of Shemaiah the prophet,
and Iddo the seer ...," (Isaiah 29:10) "... the
prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered." There
are a few places where seer is used all alone:
(II Sam. 15:27) "The
king said unto Zadok the priest, Art not thou a seer?"
(II Chron. 33:18)
"... and the words of the seers that spake to him in the name
of the LORD ...," (Amos 7:12) "Also Amaziah said unto
Amos, O thou seer, go, flee thee away ...," (Micah 3:7)
"Then shall the seers be ashamed, and the diviners confounded
..." And, of course, the word prophet is used
extensively in the Bible, but even in our secular reading we still
grasp the meaning of the old word: "Like a seer I know what's
running through his mind—a visit to his mom."51
Then we may follow a progression:
The Old Testament was originally
written in Hebrew. ... ¶When the powerful Greek leader,
Alexander the Great, conquered the known world of his day, Greek
became the universal language. Within two or three generations
many Jews, who like others used the Greek language, had lost
knowledge of their own native Hebrew tongue. They could speak and
read and write Greek but not Hebrew. In order to provide a way for
them to be able to read their Old Testament Scriptures, which were
in Hebrew, seventy learned Jews, who knew both Hebrew and Greek,
translated the Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. This
translation is called the Septuagint and is often represented by
the Roman numerals LXX, which means "Seventy." It was completed by
at least 200 B.C.52
The Septuagint version having been
current for about three centuries before the time when books of the
New Testament were written, it is not surprising that the Apostles
should have used it more often than not in making citations from
the Old Testament. They used it as an honestly-made version in
pretty general use at the time when they wrote. They did not on
every occasion give an authoritative translation of each passage
de novo, but they used what
was already familiar to the ears of converted Hellenists, when it
was sufficiently accurate to suit the matter at hand. In fact,
they used it as did their contemporary Jewish writers, Philo and
Josephus, but not, however, with the blind implicitness of the
former.
In consequence of the fact that the New
Testament writers used on many occasions the Septuagint version,
some have deduced a new argument for its authority,—a
theory which we might have thought to be sufficiently disproved by
the defects of the version, which evince that it is merely a human
work. But the fact that the New Testament writers used this version
on many occasions supplies a new proof in opposition to the idea of
its authority, for in not a few places they do
not follow it, but they supply a version of their own
which rightly represents the Hebrew text, although contradicting
the Septuagint.
The use, however, which the writers of the
New Testament have made of the Septuagint version must always
invest it with a peculiar interest; we thus see what honor God may
be pleased to put on an honestly-made version, since we find that
inspired writers often used such a version when it was sufficiently
near the original to suit the purpose for which it was cited,
instead of rendering the Hebrew text de novo on every
occasion.53
This all makes it difficult and iffy for the preacher: "The
moral and intellectual nature of man has few more difficult
practical problems to resolve than that of following the golden
mean between passion for novelty and an ultra-conservative
attachment to the time-honoured and the old."54 Be that as
it may, we've been tackling the Book of Acts, chapter by chapter in
church. Eventually we got to where the King James Version says,
(Acts 4:36-37) "And Joses, who by the apostles was
surnamed Barnabas, (which is, being interpreted, The son of
consolation,) a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus, having land,
sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles'
feet," and the older (1526) Tyndale version put it, "And Joses which was also called of the apostles
Barnabas (that is to saye the sonnne of consolacion, beynge a
levite, and off the countre off Cipers) had londe, and solde itt,
and layde the pryce doune at the apostles fete." Since
this is the same mechanism whereby the old word seer was
defined by the new one prophet—here Barnabas
(Hebrew) being defined by The-son-of-consolation (from the
Greek55)—, we can compare the two. (Evidently Luke, being a
physician, liked to name things; "She'd called him her
thirty-four-year-old cynic. Miriam labeled everything. He supposed
medicine did that to you."56) Barnabas is used
extensively through the NT,
but the-son-of-consolation never again, so we see that
names are more stable than ordinary words like
seer/prophet. Only in one other place is Barnabas called
something different, (Acts 14:12) "And they called
Barnabas, Jupiter; and Paul, Mercurius, because he was the chief
speaker." I guess Barnabas was the strong silent type.
Because names are more stable, resistant to change, this gives us
a place to look when we hear complaints that the preacher is
leaning too much towards novelty. From our own knowledge of naming
things, we'd see such a name as part of the bonding process in the
church making itself felt, like with policemen, or soldiers, and
with a staying power.
Cops always use nicknames for each
other. Wexler's is Wex, Sean's, Mac. It's some kind of
tribal bonding thing. Some of the names aren't complimentary
but the cops don't complain. I know one down in Colorado
Springs named Scoto whom most of the cops call Scroto. Some
even go all the way and call him Scrotum, but my guess is that you
have to be a close friend to get away with that.57
The two of them strode back to the
kitchen together. Ezra resumed his seat at the kitchen table, and
Isaac made a beeline to the Mr. Coffee machine. "Ever wonder about
Mr. Coffee's first name?" he asked as he got a mug down from the
shelf and filled it. "One of life's conundrums. And another
thing: Has it ever occurred to you what a snooty son of a bitch he
must be, still going by 'Mr. Coffee' after all these years, after
everything we've been through with him? It's so f___ing elitist it just
makes my blood boil."
"I think his first name is Joe," Ezra said,
but listlessly. He wasn't in the ideal frame of mind for
whimsy.
"Yeah, that kind of rings a bell." Isaac
put the coffee pot back in the machine and joined Ezra at the
table. "Military slang, isn't it? Cuppa joe. I guess he's on
more familiar terms with soldiers. Hard to take issue with that.
They're out on the front line of democracy risking their lives so
we can enjoy the blessings of liberty. Even a pompous ass like Mr.
Coffee has to appreciate their sacrifice."58
Claudia was puzzled. "What's funny
about that? 'The World-Famous Puking Dogs.' What does that
mean?"
"That's VF-143. And it's a long
story."
"Well, I don't understand. I mean, what
kind of group would actually choose an insignia like that?"
...
Bennett said, "Masher, I was telling
Claudia about One-Forty-Three's nickname. You were in the
squadron; how'd it begin?"
The query startled Malloy from his
preoccupation with Claudia's chest. "Oh, the Pukin' Dogs. Well,
it all started a long time before I reported aboard, but the
original idea was to have a griffin as the squadron emblem." He
sipped at his Coors, as if concentrating on the details with
difficulty. "One of the junior officers was supposed to make a
papier-mâché centerpiece for the commissioning. But
he wasn't too good with papier-mâché. He got the
griffin's wings all right, but the head sort of drooped and the
mouth was open too far. They ran out of time and couldn't do it
over, so they had to go with what was ready.
"Well, one of the wives walked in, took one
look, and said, 'Jesus, it looks just like a pukin' dog.' And
that's what One-Forty-Three's been called ever since."59
His advice to expectant parents: Think
before you dub. "Remember, you're tagging your child with
something that will become a permanent part of his or her
identity," he says.60
Let's see if some Bible versions don't upset the balance here
somehow, if they are used in this Acts study. "Paraphrases
translate the New Testament into the language and idiom of the
street scene."61
Living Bible: "For instance, there was
Joseph (the one the apostles nicknamed 'Barney the Preacher'!
He was of the tribe of Levi, from the island of Cyprus). He
was one of those who sold a field he owned and brought the money to
the apostles for distribution to those in need." There seems
to be a lack of information; I mean, not all descriptions are
descriptive.
Sure,"Barney" is a preacher, but what kind of a preacher? If one
were to try to emulate his preaching, he'd be at a loss, like that
story where a friend of a detective invited him to a lecture
without telling him he the detective was the lecturer.
"We've all been waiting so anxiously
for you to get here," the elderly woman exclaimed as she glanced
down at her wristwatch. "Oh dear, we really do need to get going.
You know, everybody is just absolutely dying to hear all the
fascinating things you're going to be telling us this evening," she
added as she took his free right arm in a firm grasp.
"Yeah, me too," Cellars mumbled.
"I beg your pardon?" She turned, a
quizzical look forming on her face.
"I was just saying that Da—, uh, Robert
never did tell me what he'd decided on for a lecture title."
"What, you mean he didn't even send you one
of his delightful flyers?" ...
"Flyers?" Cellars barely heard the
question. He was staring out at the animated faces of the
audience, most of whom were still engaged in whispered discussions
with their neighbors, trying desperately to remember exactly what
Dawson had told him about the lecture. Absolutely nothing about
who would actually be giving the lecture, or on what.
That much he was certain about. ...
"Oh, that Robert," The woman interrupted
his thoughts as she rolled her eyes skyward and sighed heavily.
She released his arm to fumble quickly in her tote bag, then came
up with a folded piece of paper. "Here, you can have this one."
She thrust the paper into his hands, and Cellars, distracted ...,
absentmindedly put it into his shirt pocket. Then, without another
word, she stepped up to the podium.
...
"In effect, we found our voice, and we
will use that voice to send our message to the world!"
Her emphasis on these last words, and the
resulting applause, caused Cellars to remember the folded flyer
he'd put into his shirt pocket.
"... I understand that he was just
reassigned to the southwestern region of Oregon this very week so
that he can personally investigate what our state officials are now
describing as"—she paused, giving the entire audience a
conspiratorial wink and a knowing look—"crimes of a
special nature."
Voices began to murmur appreciatively, and
a few people clapped, as Cellars drew the folded piece of paper out
of his shirt pocket and began to unfold it with a sense of
impending doom. But the woman quickly went on, and the room
immediately grew silent again.
...
"So given all of that," she smiled
brightly, "I think we can all agree that we are especially
fortunate tonight that Detective-Sergeant Cellars has graciously
offered to share with us his expertise—"
Cellars looked up from the open flyer in
stunned unbelief.
"—on how to properly preserve and collect
evidence at the point of first contact with our alien
visitors."
Before Cellars could say or do anything, he
suddenly found himself propelled up to the podium by a fragile but
firm hand, then watched with a sense of total abandonment as his
silver-haired hostess quickly took her reserved seat in the front
row.62
That would be as if you were studying to preach up a storm like the
Apostle Paul, then you go before an audience where you're required
to preach consolation like Barney the Preacher but you've just
figured that out having never read it in your paraphrase Bible.
Not big on description in some matters.
Honey, so few men have eyeballs for
anything except the profit margin and is the lawn mowed. That was
my Captain. A stranger, looking for a child of ours, once asked
Marsden to please describe our little girl. Cap went, "Well," and
held up fingers of one hand like for counting off the features of
his well-loved flesh and blood, "Well, she's kind of ... she's
about the size you would expect of a person her particular age and
weight. Now her hair is in between brown and not, only lighter,
and the eyes ... what are her eyes, honey? —But why am
I trying this. Her own mother's standing right here. Men
shouldn't have to describe."63
We have the King James Bible. Why should we expect a paraphrase to
describe something? And if we were fed the Living Bible
on this verse in a comprehensive study of Acts, we would be missing
a meaning of the name, which meaning is important.
We cannot understand a society unless
we are able to see the meaning of what its members do —
and see the meaning as they see it.64
Jung maintains the basic thesis that a
society can continue to function effectively only by providing its
individuals with meanings in which they can have a living faith.
Only then can the psychic energies be directed out into the world
and into the socially productive enterprises which a community
requires. If a culture fails to maintain psychologically effective
symbols, its individuals withdraw from the social areas of life and
turn into themselves in search of new meanings.65
In the end we cannot allow The Living Bible to be our serious frame
of reference in church. We know that anyway, but Acts 4
supplies a quick and easy chapter and verse to verify it.
Many people have difficulty
understanding the plays of William Shakespeare because the language
they're written in is old-fashioned. Now, for the first time, the
youth of America can fully appreciate the beauty and significance
of his works as MAD66
, in its campaign to bring culture to all,
presents ...
SHAKESPEARE
UP-TO-DATE
MARC ANTONY'S FUNERAL ORATION
JULIUS CAESAR ACT III SCENE II67
THE OLD VERSION
Friends, Romans, countrymen, THE MAD VERSION
Lend me your ears; Friends, Romans, hipsters,
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. Let me clue you in;
The evil that men do lives after them; I come to put down Caesar, not to groove
The good is oft interred with their bones; him.
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus The square kicks some cats are on stay
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious; with them;
If it were so, it was a grievous fault, The hip bits, like, go down under;
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it. So let it lay with Caesar. The cool Brutus
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest, Gave you the message Cæsar had big eyes;
--For Brutus is an honorable man; If that's the sound, someone's copping a
So are they all, all honorable men,-- plea,
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral. And, like, old Caesar really set them
He was my friend, faithful and just to me; straight.
But Brutus says he was ambitious; Here, copasetic with Brutus and the studs,
And Brutus is an honorable man. --For Brutus is a real cool cat;
He hath brought many captives home to So are they all, all cool cats,--
Rome, Come I to make this gig at Caesar's
Whose ransoms did the general coffers lay down.
fill; He was my boy, the real and most gone to
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? me;
When that the poor have cried, Caesar But, like, Brutus pegs him as having big
hath wept, eyes;
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff; And old Brutus is a real cool cat.
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; He copped a lot of swinging heads for
And Brutus is an honorable man. home,
You all did see that on the Lupercal Which put us way out with that loot;
I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Does this give Caesar big eyes?
Which he did thrice refuse; was this When the square cats bawled, Caesar
ambition? flipped;
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; Big eyes should be made of more solid
And, sure, he is an honorable man. megillah;
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, Yet Brutus pegs him as having big eyes;
But here I am to speak what I do know. And Brutus is a real cool cat.
You all did love him once, not without You all dug that bit at the Lupercal scene
cause; Three times I bugged him with the King's
What cause withholds you then to mourn lid,
for him? And three times he hung me up; was this
And men have lost their reason. Bear with big eyes?
me; Yet Brutus pegs him with big eyes;
My heart is in the coffin there with And, sure, he is a real cool cat.
Caesar, I don't want to double-O what Brutus
And I must pause until it come back to me. gummed,
But, like, I only dig what comes on
straight.
You all got a charge out of him once,
So how come you don't cry the blues for
him?
Man! You are real nowhere,
You don't make it anymore. Don't cut out on me;
My guts are in the pad there with Caesar,
And I gotta stop swinging till they round-
trip.
Okay, The Living Bible is a bit of an extreme, so let's look at
just a contemporary English translation. I'm of an age that when
in high school my dad gave me J.B. Phillips as the contemporary
English Bible. It had the good English style from a single
translator that helped me improve my own English.
Now, because there's such an impetus any more for really modern
translation I also have in my library, the J.B. Phillips New
Testament, which I only use on the rare occasion that quoting a
modern English version rather than the King James has some
benefit. Phillips says, "It was at this time that
Barnabas (the name, meaning son of comfort, given by the apostles
to Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus) sold his farm and put the proceeds
at the apostles' disposal." Barnabas here is given to mean
son of comfort rather than of consolation. My dictionary
defines consolation 1. comfort. 2. a
comforting person, thing, or event. So Phillips gives the
same thought with an easier word. In fact Phillips'
introduction states that he is translating so that his version has
the same effect on the reader as the first Greek
manuscripts did way back when. Since Barnabas was a single
nickname, not several, and since modern readers are already, and
had been for centuries, familiar with the name the son of
consolation, Phillips could hardly give him another name and
expect it to have the same effect; the most he could do was a
variation.
There's probably little reason in my opinion to quote the son of
comfort instead of the more widespread the son of consolation; the
latter doesn't seem at all a difficult word. Except, say, I
had a real slow learner to whom I was trying to convey that
Barnabas was a fulfillment of Isaiah 12, "And in that day thou
shalt say, O LORD, I will praise thee: though thou wast angry with
me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortest me.
Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid: for
the Lord JEHOVAH is my strength and my song; he also is become my
salvation. Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the
wells of salvation. And in that day shall ye say, Praise the
LORD, call upon his name, declare his doings among the people, make
mention that his name is exalted. Sing unto the LORD; for he
hath done excellent things: this is known in all the earth.
Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion: for great is the Holy
One of Israel in the midst of thee."
But just because I am cozy with J.B. Phillips, doesn't mean it will
be accepted by others. The itinerant campus preacher brother Jed
sure doesn't want preaching on that comfort level.
He That Hath An Ear, Let Him Hear68
The apostles effectively used the miraculous in the Book of
Acts to gain attention to their message, minister to the needs of
people and witness to the power of the Resurrected Christ and the
Holy Spirit in their lives. But their main concern was to proclaim
a message that would transform lives; this is what is so often
lacking in our generation. The gifts of the Spirit have been used
to expose sickness and disease, but not sin. Ministers who have
proudly proclaimed the presence of the Holy Spirit in their
services, have themselves, time and time again, been exposed as
hypocrites. Churches have been founded primarily to give people an
opportunity to express the gifts of the Spirit such as prophecy or
healing, but rarely has this gift been used to bring forth a
message that will convict and judge the sinner.
Paul admonished the Corinthians that when
the whole church comes together, "If all prophesy, and there come
in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is
convinced of all, he is judged of all: and thus
are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on
his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a
truth" (I Cor. 14:24-25).
Typically, in churches where prophecy
is given free reign, we hear only words of approval and acceptance.
Of course, Paul did teach that "he that prophesieth speaketh
unto men to edification, and exhortation and comfort" (I Cor. 14:3). However this should
not eliminate a rebuke, a strong, or even a harsh word. These
words are also edifying and comforting, when received and acted
upon.
If brother Jed expects the comfort to be coming out of exhortation,
then he'd rather the son of comfort be called the son of
consolation in the first place. That's similar to James Dobson
advising dating couples not to be too carried away with
pseudo-visions leading them to precipitous marriages as would be
encouraged by Phillips' "let her be guided by the Lord"
rather than simply marrying "in the Lord." Both these
translatings by Phillips illustrate Marsh's warning:
Whoever substitutes for an old word of
well-understood signification a new vocable or phrase, unsettles,
with the formulas into which it enters, the opinions of those who
have habitually clothed their convictions in those stereotyped
forms, and thus introduces, first doubt, and then departure from
long received and acknowledged truth. Experience has taught
jurists that in the revision or amendment of statutes, and in
sanctioning and adopting by legislative enactment current
principles of unwritten law, it is a matter of the first importance
to employ a phraseology whose precise import has been fixed by a
long course of judicial decisions; and it has been found impossible
in practice to change the language of the law, for the purpose of
either modernizing or making it otherwise more definite, familiar,
or intelligible, without at the same time changing the law itself.
Words and ideas are so inseparably connected, they become in a
sense connatural, that we cannot change the one without modifying
the other.69
Because the Phillips translation of the Bible keeps giving us
suspect renderings that look good on the surface but find objection
from those familiar in their respective areas, we must in the end
use it as commentary, not as authority.
Then there would be the purists who might go all the way back to
the (2nd) Wycliffite version (mid 1300's), "Forsothe Joseph, that was named Barsabas of
apostlis, that is to seie, the sone of coumfort, of the lynage of
Leuy, a man of Cipre, whanne he hadde a feeld, seelde it, and
brou3te the prijs, and leide it bifor
the feet of apostlis."
Let's try The New English Bible: "For instance, Joseph,
surnamed by the apostles Barnabas (which means 'Son of
Exhortation') a Levite, by birth a Cypriot, owned an estate, which
he sold; he brought the money, and laid it at the apostles'
feet." Here Barnabas means son of exhortation rather than the
son of comfort/consolation.
After I was graduated from college in Ohio, I headed west and got
saved in the Jesus movement and stayed here in Oregon to serve the
Lord. My friend Doug is a street preacher on campus who displays
his little signs and speaketh unto men to edification, here shown
relaxing in front of the pioneer father statue at the U. of O.:
Occasionally brother Jed, based in Ohio, hits our campus and raises
the roof, speaking unto men to exhortation after the fashion of
the familiar"Bible Jim" here shown sharing the gospel with a physics
major at the U. of O.:
Brother Jed tells his fellow Christians who happen along not to criticize
him but to remain available to answer questions of the people standing by. Me,
that's what I do, just hang around and answer any concerns addressed to me.
One day a heckler was shouting Jed down. To bolster his position,
he decided to ask someone from the audience to agree with him that
Jed was a phony. He asked me, "Isn't he a phony?"
I replied, "You're the phony." That's all I said. I didn't preach
at him (unto exhortation), or he would have overwhelmed me too.
When he tried to debate the point with me, I said not a word (unto
edification), or that would have prolonged the distraction. I was
just speaking unto men to comfort them that we didn't have to put
up with phonies. The heckler slinked off and brother Jed resumed
his preaching.
Another time brother Jed was preaching against sin and a homosexual
made some comment to me about the Christians' intolerance of sexual
diversity. I ended up in a discussion with him about human
sexuality, its various expressions, ones that Christians tolerate
well enough and ones that are forbidden. Both he and his
homosexual friends standing there were impressed that he could have
an actual conversation with a sympathetic Christian who
nevertheless stuck with the gospel message. His friend even
suggested that the fellow might want to join the Christians, they
were so reasonable, at which point he made himself scarce. he was
rejecting the gospel not the messengers.
The Book of Acts balances some firebrand preachers with Barnabas
the son of consolation. To make Barnabas into a son of exhortation
too is to unbalance the book from what it was. And how are we to
reconcile the two. Well, edification, and exhortation and comfort
are brothers just as faith, hope and charity are sisters in the
word. According to brother Jed, "a rebuke, a strong, or even a
harsh word (exhortations) are also edifying and comforting, when
received and acted upon." In other words comfort is a son of
exhortation. So Barnabas is the grandson of exhortation but the
son of comfort, and since in the Bible sometimes a son is actually
a grandson, the two names correspond.
Or we might try the Catholic approach. Since exhortation and
comfort are brothers, the son of exhortation and the son of comfort
are cousins. We know, or at least the Catholics tell us, that
Jesus' brothers were really his cousins. So if we may call these
two cousins brothers, we're saying they have the same father after
all and the son of the one is the son of the other.
I Timothy 1:4 tells
us: "neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which
minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith:
so do." To track various words and their genealogical
relationships over and over again so we can accommodate each and
every new Bible version moves us away from godly edifying, and at
any rate it probably is just not expedient to change the names all
of a sudden, although son of exhortation does at least rhyme with
the son of consolation, so we'd still have the mutually edifying
bonding with names from both versions.
The other question is suppose it's those putative better
manuscripts that prompted the change? I don't know, maybe there
are better manuscripts somewhere, but they sure haven't found their
way into our modern versions. "Wilbur Pickering, author of the
Identity of the New Testament Text and recipient of a
TH.M. in Greek Exegesis from Dallas Theological Seminary and M.A.
and Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Toronto says:
The distressing realization is forced upon us that the
'progress' of the past hundred years has been precisely in—the
wrong direction—our modern versions and critical texts are found
to differ from the Original in some six thousand places, many of
them being serious differences... [They] are several times further
removed from the originals than are the A.V. and TR [King James
Version and its foundation, the Greek Textus Receptus].
How could such a calamity have come upon us ... much of the work
that has been done is flawed ...70
"Dean John Burgon, the scholar who has collated the most early New
Testament witnesses (87,000), says of the changes in one of the
'new' versions and Greek texts:
Ordinary readers ... will of course assume that the changes
result from the revisor's skill in translating—advances which have
been made in the study of Greek. It was found that they had erred
through defective scholarship to an extent and with a frequency,
which to me is simply inexplicable. ... Anything more unscientific
... can scarcely be conceived, but it has prevailed for fifty
years. We regret to discover that ... their work is disfigured
throughout by changes which convict a majority of their body alike
of an imperfect acquaintance with the Greek language.71
"Edward F. Hills, author of
The
King James Version Defended and graduate of Yale
University, Westminster Theological Seminary and Recipient of the
Ph.D. from Harvard and the TH.M. from Columbia University says:
Modern speech bibles are unscholarly.72
"The late E.W. Colwell, past president of the University of Chicago
and the premier North American New Testament Greek
scholar, authored scores of books, such as Studies in
Methodology in Textual Criticism of the New Testament. He
confesses his 'change of heart' concerning the reliability of
readings in the new versions:
... [S]cholars now believe that most errors were made
deliberately ... the variant readings in the New Testament were
created for theological or dogmatic reasons. Most of the manuals
now in print (including mine!) will tell you that these variations
were the fruit of careless treatment. ... The reverse is the
case.73
"Zane Hodges, professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis at
Dallas Theological Seminary and co-editor of a Greek New Testament
refers to new versions as,
[M]onstrously unscientific, if not dangerously obscurantist.
The average well-taught Bible-believing Christian has often heard
the King James Version corrected on the basis of 'better
manuscripts' or 'older authorities'. ... Lacking any kind of
technical training in this area, the average believer probably has
accepted such explanations from individuals he regards as qualified
to give them.74
"William Palmer, scholar and author of Narrative of Events on
the Tracts, says:
[Ordinary Christians have little idea [concerning the New
Greek text] ... it rests in many cases on quotations which are not
genuine ... on passages which when collated with the original, are
proved to be wholly inefficacious as proofs."75 ..."76
But I don't personally know Greek or have done manuscript research,
so let's say for sake of argument that better Greek scholarship has
demonstrated that Barnabas was actually the son of exhortation
rather than of consolation. But that's a big issue.
"Jeremy's birthday is July eighteenth,"
she said. "Do the math."
"What math?"
"One more time: He's thirteen years old.
He was born July the eighteenth. I was married October tenth."
Nothing. For several seconds, he heard the
mothers chatting over one another, one baby cry, one
barista call out an order to another, and then it
happened. A cold gust blew across Myron's heart. Steel bands
wrapped around his chest, making it almost impossible to breathe.
He opened his mouth but nothing came out. It was like someone had
whacked his solar plexus with a baseball bat. Emily watched him
and nodded.
"That's right," she said. "He's your
son."
"You can't know that for sure," Myron
said.
Emily's whole persona screamed exhaustion.
"I do."
"You were sleeping with Greg too,
right?"
"Yes."
"And we only had that one night during that
time. You probably had a whole bunch with Greg."
"True."
...
"So Greg still believes ...?"
"That Jeremy is his, yes."
Myron was floundering in deep water with no
land in sight. "But you said you've always known."
"Yes."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Are you kidding? I was married to Greg.
I loved him. We were starting our life together."
"You still should have told me."
"When, Myron? When should I have told
you?"
"As soon as the baby was born."
"Aren't you listening? I just told you I
wasn't sure."
"A mother knows, you said."
"Come on, Myron. I was in love with Greg,
not you. You with your corny sense of morality—you would have
insisted I divorce Greg and marry you and live some suburban fairy
tale."
"So instead you chose to live a lie?"
"It was the right decision based on what I
knew then. With hindsight"—she stopped, took a deep sip—"I
probably would have done a lot of things differently."
...
The two men looked at each other,
comfortable in the silence. After some time passed, Win said,
"Tell me."
He barely hesitated. "Emily said I'm the
boy's father."
Win nodded and said, "Ah."
"You don't sound surprised."
Win used the chopsticks to grab another
shrimp. "You believe her?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"For one thing, it's a hell of a thing to
lie about it."
"But Emily is good at lying, Myron. She's
always lied to you. She lied to you in college. She lied to you
when Greg disappeared. She lied in court about Greg's behavior
with the children. She betrayed Greg the night before their
wedding by sleeping with you. And, if you will, if she is telling
the truth now, she lied to you for the better part of thirteen
years."
Myron thought about it. "I think she's
telling the truth about this."
"You think, Myron."
"I'm going to take a blood test."
Win shrugged. "If you must."
"What does that mean?"
"I'll let the statement speak for
itself."
Myron made a face. "Didn't you just say I
should find out for sure?"
"Not at all," Win said. "I was merely
pointing out the obvious. I didn't say it made a difference."
Myron thought about it. "You're confusing
me."
"Simply out," Win said, "so what if you're
the boy's biological father? What difference does it make?"
"Come on, Win. Not even you can be that
cold."
"Quite the opposite. As strange as this
might sound, I am using my heart on this one."
"How do you figure?"
Win swirled the liquid again, studied the
amber, took a sip. It colored his cheeks a bit. "Again I'll put
it simply: no matter what a blood test might indicate, you are not
Jeremy Downing's father. Greg is. You may be a sperm donor. You
may be an accident of lust and biology. You may have provided a
simple microscopic cell structure that combined with one slightly
more complex. But you are not this boy's father.
"It's not that simple, Win."
"It is that simple, my friend. The fact
that you insipidly choose to confuse the issue does not change the
fact. I'll demonstrate, if you'd like."
"I'm listening."
"You love your father, correct?"
"You know the answer to that."
"I do," Win said. "But what makes him your
father? The fact that he once grunted on top of Mommy after a few
drinks—or the way he has cared for you for the past thirty-five
years?"
...
As Win would say, "Showtime."
Myron gripped the ball a little tighter.
"Sit down, Jeremy. We need to talk."
The boy's face was serene and almost too
beautiful. He slid the backpack off his shoulder and sat down.
Myron had rehearsed this part. He had looked at it from all sides,
all the pluses and minuses. He had made up his mind and changed it
and made it up again. He had, as Win put it, properly tortured
himself.
But in the end, he knew there was one
universal truth: lies fester. You try to put them away. You jam
them in a box and bury them in the ground. But eventually they eat
their way out of coffins. They dig their way out of graves. They
may sleep for years. But they always wake up. When they do,
they're rested, stronger, more insidious.
Lies kill.
"This is going to be hard to understand—"
He stopped. Suddenly his rehearsed speech sounded so damn canned,
filled with "It's nobody's fault" and "Adults make mistakes too"
and "It doesn't mean your parents love you any less." It was
patronizing and stupid and—
"Mr. Bolitar?"
Myron looked up at the boy.
"My mom and dad told me," Jeremy said.
"Two days ago."77
Seems to me that if "Right-on" is really using a gift of paraphrase,
and this name meaning changes so, that he'd want to give us
the straight dope in his sermon, some kind of explanation. I mean,
I even wrote to "Right-on" about the name change of Barnabas from
my KJV, and since he
stopped for several weeks after Acts 4 before picking up with
Acts 5, he'd had plenty of time to research it, and the narrative
of Acts 5 could easily have been started by recapping the
end of Acts 4, giving us a fuller explanation of the shift of
fathers in the name of Barnabas. But nada.
He went on with the NIV as if
it were gospel.
This is not a criticism of "Right-on", because as we've noted,
balancing the old with the new is no mean feat, and not everyone
can do paraphrases well; I'm just suggesting that maybe there's
another mechanism at work here besides the gift of paraphrase.
I had girlfriend who against all my advice not to cave in to this
fellow who wanted sex with her, went and got herself pregnant and
had a baby by him. Then he split the scene, but I still kept
company with her to a lesser degree. Well, her baby has blue eyes,
but neither she nor that guy has blue eyes. My friend Doug the
street preacher was telling me about her baby and then he noted
that I have blue eyes. Then he started jiving me about maybe I
wasn't being so good after all, so I made up a proverb for him:
"The man who practices celibacy doesn't fear a paternity suit."
The Good Book calls Barnabas the son of consolation. Well, maybe
he is, despite what other speculative evidence to the contrary.
The introduction to the New International Version Bible says that
their group of scholars has translated the authors.
Now, my lecture book on translating warns that we should translate
the reader, not the author, so that what we read in the translation
will have the same effect on us as the original did on its readers;
otherwise, by translating the author, we could end up with only an
imitation of the original. The NIV in not translating the reader, but
the writer, is not under the rule of Phillips, no, they would give
us a different name from the son of consolation if in their
scholarly opinion it was closer to the Greek even though in giving
Barnabas a second nickname they were affecting the reader
differently than the original writing did theirs in attributing but
one nickname to the man. So in the NIV we read, "Joseph, a Levite
from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means son of
encouragement), sold a field he owned and brought the money and put
it at the apostles' feet." Here, if I'm a contestant for the
Bible quiz, or someone else not familiar with the NIV, and I'm asked, who was the son of
encouragement, my answer would be David from
(I Samuel 30:6b) "but David encouraged himself in the
LORD his God." My second choice would be John the Baptist
from (Matt. 11:12) "And
from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven
suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." He's
the one encouraging us to take it. His preaching style is
more like brother Jed's:
In the cobbled market square, she
noticed an impromptu evangelist set up his soapbox and start
rabbiting on about judgment and sin. It made her feel vaguely
guilty just hearing him, and as she went into the station, she
contemplated asking one of the uniforms to go out and move him
on. There must be a law against it somewhere on the
books. Disturbing the peace of an overworked DC?
Charity prevailed, and she went up to her
office. It faced the car park out back, so she wouldn't have
to listen to him there.78
This contrasted to Jesus' gentler style. (In verse 17 he
contrasts their two styles.) Like the lecture book says, the
son of encouragement is an imitator of the son of consolation,
Barnabas.
Now, my dictionary79
defines exhort v.
urge strongly, and encourage
v. urge on. As Phillips turns the KJV's the son of consolation
into the son of comfort so does the NIV turn The NEB's son of
exhortation into son of encouragement. Bravo!
Easier English, although what's the point? But now we have not
only more familiar terms, but concepts (in this easier English)
that we're liable to come across in day to day life. A fellow gets
invited to visit his old college roommate who is now a publisher in
a distant city. He arrives at his building.
Still lugging his suitcases, he headed
through the doors to the pool area. To his immediate right was the
Jacuzzi, currently unoccupied. Around the mammoth pool directly in
front of him were arrayed countless plastic yellow-and-white
chaises lounges, many of which were occupied, by men and
women uniformly gorgeous, uniformly tanned, and in uniformly superb
physical condition, all of them apparently in their twenties and
thirties. There were a few people splashing about and schmoozing
in the pool itself, and one blond Adonis in an absurdly skimpy,
absurdly bulging bikini swimsuit was perched on the high diving
board. Just as Ezra looked up, the man leapt into space, hung
there a heart-catching second, and executed a perfect swan
dive.
I've died and gone to heaven, sure, but
heaven ain't my kind of town. There's been some celestial screwup.
The whole spectacle before him looked like an elaborate tableau
vivant advertisement for a sybaritic way of life. What's wrong
with this picture? Why, I am.
Just then, he noticed, with a momentary
coronary arrhythmia, what could only be called an apparition:
Coming his way was quite simply the most beautiful woman he had
ever laid eyes on, in the barest string two-piece he'd ever seen
outside the pages of Sports Illustrated, constructed of
some loosely knit tan fabric. Her skin was the color of a
perfectly roasted Thanksgiving turkey, her copious cascading hair
the color of butter. Her body was at once so firmly toned and so
bounteously voluptuous it seemed to belong to some other, more
evolved species of primate than the people he knew; her abs alone
were sufficient to force any thinking person to reconsider the
eugenic advisability of passing on his own DNA. And she had a
moist honeyed patina, probably consisting merely of tanning lotion
and perspiration, which nevertheless lent her a radiantly lubricous
aura.
Ezra stood there, frozen, literally
breathless, his mouth suddenly dry, trying not to stare too
obviously, hoping she would take her own sweet time about passing
him by and continuing into the lobby. Simply to be in the vicinity
of such a presence was an intensely erotic experience, and,
frustrating as it must ultimately prove, he didn't want it to end.
Ever.
She smiled. At him. Although he
recognized that this was no more than an act of social charity, his
life now felt complete. He succeeded in offering her a twisted
rictus in return.
And then, her mouth started to move, and
sounds seemed to be issuing from it. "Are you Ezra Gordon?" was
what the sounds, impossibly, sounded like.
"I beg your pardon?"
She repeated the question. There could be
no doubt.
"Yes. Yes I am. Ezra Gordon is my name."
And being a total zhlub is my game.
"Hi. I'm Tessa. Isaac asked me to keep an
eye out for you." Responding to his pop-eyed look of blank idiocy,
she added, "Isaac Schwimmer."
...
The phone rang. Ezra was unsure whether to
answer or not, and then heard Isaac's answering machine click on.
The outgoing message went, simply, "Talk!" Then Ezra heard Isaac's
voice: "Ezra, if you're there, pick up the damn phone."
He crossed to the phone, on a counter near
the refrigerator. "Hi, Ike. This is some place you got."
"A poor thing, but mine own. Tessa make
you comfortable?"
"She made me
uncomfortable."80
Tessa was assigned to make the guy comfortable, just as one might,
by being a perfect specimen of a Christian, make someone
(un)comfortable with the gospel—a son of consolation.
Then the guest visits his old friend's work place.
But what seized Ezra's attention was
the art on the walls. Handsomely framed, it was a series of lurid,
crudely rendered paintings of a grossly sexual nature: One
portrayed a bosomy, sneering, black-haired, black-lipsticked woman
in some sort of skin-tight leather jumpsuit, holding a whip in one
hand and a thick, grotesquely twisting python in the other; another
showed a long-haired nude woman from behind, squatting before a
grimacing athletic blonde Marine with his tunic in place but his
trousers around his ankles, obviously (although not quite
explicitly, her shaggy head blocking the view) fellating him; a
third featured two unnaturally nubile girls, one chained naked to
a dungeon wall in cruciform posture, the other, in boots and hot
pants, sucking on the nipple of her companion's gargantuan right
breast. And there were four or five more, all along similar
lines.
Ezra turned to Isaac, who was smiling
expectantly. "Collect Renoirs, do you?"
Isaac laughed. "Not bad, huh? Wouldn't
have them in my house, of course, but they've kind of grown on
me."
"But, what are they?"
"Well, that one's called 'Bondage Ho'.'
Over there is 'Booty Bait.' 'Dungeon of Delight.' 'Rotten to the
Corps.' This one here's my favorite, it's—"
"No, I mean, what are they? We're
not talking limited-edition seriographs."
"Oh." Isaac laughed. "I see. I thought it
was obvious. They're book covers. Guy named Winkler does most of
'em for us." "'Us?'"
"He's great, isn't he? I mean, he's lousy
of course, he can't draw worth shit, but he's got that certain
something. Bypasses the eye, goes straight for the groin."
"But who's 'us'?"
"Why, the Isaac Schwimmer Press.
Obviously. You know, in this business, it's the cover that sells
the book. We` can't rely on Publishers Weekly or
Amazon.com to give us a boost."
"'This business'?" Ezra rubbed his eyes.
"Isaac, you're a pornographer?"
"Of course I am!" Isaac affirmed happily.
"And business is booming! I'm king of the f___ing dung-heap!"81
The guy's cover artist has a direct style like brother Jed's that
goes straight for the juggler, as a preacher might be encouraging
sinners to repent or the cover artist encouraging more sales. I
work in sales and I have my own place, so I know what is meant by
encouraging sales and what is meant by making a guest comfortable,
and I know the son of comfort is not the same animal as the son of
encouragement. Look, when I want to read the Bible in modern
English, I read J.B. Phillips which isn't ancient but what I had in
high school, and when I hear someone reading the popular NIV also in modern English and he's
reading son of encouragement when I am reading son of comfort, the
ideas clash and we are not communicating. But I've expected God to
be preserving his word through translations, so I see His hand in
this mixup, like: "Everything that happens in this world is an
expression of the intentions of an intelligence superior to us,
which in the end, though its ways and byways are difficult to
follow, orders everything for the best,"82 and I think of the
earlier lesson at the tower of Babel when the men's speech became
confused and they figured they would have to maintain the separate
tongues after all; likewise I conclude that God wants us to keep
the separate sacred dialect and not have all our English, Bible and
current, be in the modern dialect. This conclusion follows from
examination of the test verse which can't be brushed off as
allowable paraphrase.
There are other objections to tagging Barnabas as son of encouragement.
One of the foremost would be the way tags can backfire.
Prentice Marshall Gates III, known as Skipper, is the San
Francisco district attorney. We used to be partners at Simpson and
Gates. His father was Gates. He's now running for California
attorney general. His smiling mug appears on billboards all over
town under the caption "Mr. Law and Order." Two years ago, he won
the DA's race by spending three million dollars of his inheritance.
I understand he's prepared to ante up five million this time
around.
...
Rosie cups her hand over the mouthpiece.
"He says it's urgent." ...
With Skipper, everything is
urgent. "If it's that important," I whisper, "it can wait."
She smiles and tells him I'll call as soon
as I can. Then her grin disappears as she listens intently. She
puts the chief law enforcement officer of the City and County of
San Francisco on hold. "You may want to talk to him," she
says.
"And why would I want to talk to Mr. Law
and Order this fine morning?"
The little crow's feet around her eyes
crinkle. "It seems Mr. Law and Order just got himself
arrested."
"I'll take it in my office."
...
I present my state bar card and driver's
license to Sergeant Jeff Ditto, a mustached, olive-skinned
sheriff's deputy who administers the intake center with a steady
hand. He studies my bar card through deep-set eyes. When I
explain to him I'm here to see Skipper, he furrows his brow. "'Mr.
Law and Order' is in booking," he says. He punches some buttons on
his computer keyboard and makes a phone call. "He'll be up in a
few minutes."83
A rich guy with a fancy name has an all-purpose nickname Skipper.
He's the district attorney running for attorney general and comes
up with another nickname Mr. Law and Order. That name sounds great
in his campaign, but when he gets himself arrested and goes through
the criminal booking procedure himself, it becomes a liability to
be called Mr. Law and Order there in jail.
Likewise Barnabas the son of consolation is a great moniker. Then
we start calling him son of exhortation which works well enough as
the church is forging ahead, but then he has his falling out with
Paul whereupon Mr. Exhortation off somewhere in obscurity doesn't
sound so good.
And while son of exhortation might lack the expediency of being the
correct term, at least it sounds like the usual one, so we still
feel unified as believers reading it, but son of encouragement
sounds like a different name entirely and so does not edify, taking
away another justification for it as paraphrase.
Finally, perhaps we even have available some writings of Barnabas
so we can decide for ourselves. The epistle to the Hebrews was not
signed, but judging from its content and audience it could well
have been penned by a Levite. Its style is different from any
other NT book, so it probably
was not written by Luke, Paul, Peter, James, or John. If Paul was
"Mercury" the chief speaker, writing all those NT epistles, well, "Jupiter" could
well have written one heavy one. Then we notice in Hebrews the one
place in the NT that
encourages hospitality to strangers. Anyone from Cyprus I've ever
known was hospitable to a fault.
Okay, there are exhortations in Hebrews, but even they come with
heavy consolation. Sure we must give the more earnest heed to the
commandments but they were given by a powerful Lord, higher than
the angels and more priestly than the Levites. Yes, without faith
we cannot please God, but God definitely rewards those who
diligently seek him. Yes, we're to assemble and exhort one
another, but that's as the glorious Day approaches. And even those
strangers we entertain might well be angels. There is so much
consolation given throughout the book of Hebrews that I'll just
leave it to my reader to either remember what he's read or go back
through it and see. Even if you only pick up only half of it, it's
quite enough. As for his exhortation, it is both gentle "as unto
children"—(Hebrews 12:5a) "And ye have forgotten the
exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children"—, and
brief,"in few words"—(Heb. 13:22) "And I beseech you,
brethren, suffer the word of exhortation: for I have written a
letter unto you in few words."—If he is long on consolation
and short on exhortation, then his moniker does not become what the
NIV says, but the KJV. I would have no problem naming
the writer of Hebrews the son of consolation.
He reminds me of my own writings, the way he goes on and on,
example after example. In fact, part of the reason I'm offended
with the NIV's
treatment of Acts is that it misdirects our understanding of the guy
whose ministry I take after while treating the apostles and all better,
just as in I Corinthians it misdirects our understanding of
mixed marriages, where I date mostly nonbelievers—although some of
them get saved—,while leaving other approaches to marriage and all
intact. Christians with other approaches can seem to read these
books happily, but why should I have to go along with it? And
misdirection is dangerous.
I'm thinking about the girl who was forced to break up with
her nonchristian fiancé-of-nine-years because she was given
the light from the NIV,
and of another guy who liked modern versions and became unbalanced by
a prolonged aggressive approach to preaching to the neglect of his
basic needs. Both these people became what might be termed shipwrecked
under the influence of these modern versions in the precise
places where I am raising objections.
I believe the problem is giving heed to fables, as quoted earlier,
the one that says people spoke the KJV way in 1611, but our language has
changed since and we need to update our Bibles. When the facts are
different, that people in 1611 no more used the KJV dialect for ordinary talk than we
do today, as has been shown
earlier on this page.
The result of trying to "update" the language of our English Bible
reminds one of an historical precedent: "Then comes the ill-fated
city of Babel, with its problematic urban architecture."84
The NIV has a problematic scholarly
architecture. They've imported Paul's admonition to not be
unequally yoked from II Cor.
into I Cor. so that it
nullifies Paul's teaching that mixed marriages are sanctified, and
they've taken the son of consolation who introduced the converted
Paul to the church at Jerusalem and made him into a son of
exhortation, more like Saul himself who breathed out threatenings.
From an architectural standpoint, this is problematic, because it's
a leader's spirituality in knowing how to run his family that gives
us confidence in his vertical connection to run God's church, and
it's in sharing a nickname for a group member that gives us
confidence we belong to the same group. So we lose confidence in
the NIV as a Bible.
And then how are we going to use this book with faulty architecture
to support our position on important doctrinal matters, like the
afterlife?
My drug rundown used up four or five
sessions, and then it was on to past lives. I was asked to go back
as far as I could to try to remember my earliest incarnation.
Sitting across from my auditor, I searched the back rooms of my
mind.
Then my growing skepticism about
Scientology and my training as an actor took over. I began to
remember details from a past life in ancient Greece. I commanded
a warship returning victoriously to Athens. My father was the
king, and I was his only son. When I had cast off, he had made me
promise that on our return we would set white sails for victory and
black sails if I had been lost. I had forgotten to change the
black sails for white, and my father, in despair over my death,
killed himself.85
Before people take seriously what our Bible says on doctrinal
matters, say the afterlife, they may want to know if they can have
confidence in the book in the first place. That sister who was
made to break up with her fiancé-of-nine-years because the
NIV said a Christian
is not allowed to marry a nonChristian was quite in despair. In the Old
Testament, to be sure, God's people were required to be more
separatist, but in the NT
those black sails should be exchanged for white.
When I was a young Christian I went around trying to convince
everyone to become a Christian. I got so few results and there
were so many people remaining to be saved, that I got quite in
despair. Then I decided to just abide in the vine, develop my
gifts, do my part, and let God worry about who all gets in. if all
Christians were required to be exclusively exhorters, it would be
cause for despair.
Instead of shelving these modern versions, I find the Christians
around me using them quite a bit, some Christians. We even get
preached to from the NIV
regularly. It's as if we were taking seriously its introduction
saying it's "suitable for public and private reading, teaching,
preaching, memorizing and liturgical use."
He remembered the collection of Caesar Zedd's
self-help drivel that had occupied a place of honor in the wife killer's
former home in Spruce Hills. Cain owned a hardcover
and a paperback of each of Zedd's works. The more
expensive editions had been pristine, as though they were handled
only with gloves; but the text in the paperbacks had been heavily
underlined, and the corners of numerous pages had been bent to mark
favorite passages.86
Such a place of honor for mixed up stuff is spoken of in Proverbs,
(Prov. 26:1) "As snow in
summer, and as rain in harvest, so honour is not seemly for a
fool." When I hear the NIV preached from in church it's like
seeing a snowstorm out my window in the middle of summer, and
Christians quoting it is like when we need to finish carrots at the
cannery and the farmers can't bring them in for the rain. The one
is a snow job and the other of no benefit. Although Christians
certainly have liberty in their reading material, and a preacher on
his preaching material, it can be abused.
Besides leaning something about a preacher's exemption from
conformity when I attended that church where I was about the oldest
in the Lord, and everybody used the KJV except the pastor, there were
several other beneficial learning experiences. We were studying
Classic Christianity in Sunday school. Picture us all
sitting in a circle with our KJV's, except the pastor, reading from
a book on classic Christianity where the author was quoting from
every version but. I eventually spoke up, that if this is supposed
to be classic why don't we hear from the classic itself?
Next we started studying 1st John. When we got to love, our pastor
told us that our English word love doesn't communicate
what's meant, so we would need to use a Greek word agape. He even used it in a sentence, "I
agape so-and-so." I protested that what was the point of
having the Bible translated into English if we can't use English
words? After class we discussed it more; he said that Greek has
four words that can be translated love in English and we
can't know what is meant unless we read it in Greek. His example
was Jesus thrice asking Peter if he loved him, the third time
changing the question from agape to
philao, a more brotherly sort of
love. (Actually, as I understand it, these words for love were used
by the Greeks somewhat interchangeably.)
He doesn't understand our English very well. In this language
love can mean different things, so we learn to tell from
the context. In our language repetition cheapens a heavy word. In
the song that Doris Day sang about "The Little Green Man," a space-
alien kept following her around saying, "I wuv you; I wuv you," until finally he said, "I don't
wuv you any more." Peter's answer
that Jesus knows he loves him wouldn't carry as much weight as it
would if he'd answered him the first or second time.
Likewise in English if we want to give weight to a word that has
been cheapened by repetition, we come up with a synonym. Take the
song "Cherish." A guy wants to tell a girl that he really loves
her, but because she might misconstrue love, he decides to
say cherish instead. The whole song is about it.
Similarly in our Bibles, especially in I Cor. 13, to
convey the kind of love God has we read love as
charity.
And yet in bible dialect we have four words that can be used for
one ordinary English word to give it more precision. You
can be thee, thou, you and ye,
depending on whether the second person pronoun is subject, object,
singular, or plural.87
There is but little value to teach a
smattering of Greek vocabulary and grammar to someone who doesn't
know Greek and never will, but there is great value to teaching the
occasional point of bible dialect to someone who already knows and
uses regular English.
A lot of our clergy in general has got this reversed. I met a man
who was taught the way the Greeks used three different words for
love, who then reprimanded his young son for saying, "I love ice
cream." He told the kid to say only that he liked ice cream, but
I or anybody could have understood what the kid meant because in
our language we color love by its context.
I heard a radio preacher use the expression "you all" in his
message quoting the Bible and then say that he did so because in
the original it was a plural you, but our Bibles don't
have a plural you, so he said, "you all." But our Bibles
do have a plural for second person, both subject (ye) and
object (you).
It would be bad enough a general ignorance of bible
dialect 2nd person pronoun, but the
modern translators themselves don't even get it. NIV Preface: "As for the
traditional pronouns 'thou,' 'thee' and 'thine' in reference to the
Deity, the translators judged that to use these archaisms would
violate accuracy in translation. Neither Hebrew, Aramaic nor Greek
uses special pronouns for the persons of the Godhead. A present-
day translation is not enhanced by forms that in the time of the
King James Version were used in everyday speech, whether referring
to God or man." Yes, but a good deal has been made of the
issue of whether God is just one God singular or a multitude of
gods plural, and we've already studied the issue of changing
established formulas in
language. When a gospel group sings in church and uses songs from
the Psalms that I am familiar with and then all of a sudden I hear
what in the bible dialect is a plural pronoun—you—for
God, I am temporarily shaken up, and although I tell myself they
are changing dialect, not case, it still interferes with my
enjoyment of the song. It might be that translators of a modern
version might want to use modern pronouns, but they should have at
least considered first the implications, which the NIV ones did not.
As we went along at our Bible studies at that church where every
member was from a different denomination, we eventually got to a
spot where a woman there told us her belief related to a passage,
where only her particular kind of churches believed that particular
way, nobody else. I explained to her why believing that way
wouldn't hold water, giving her something to think about, planning
to return to the subject again. People don't change their beliefs
all at once; it's sometimes a process, and anyway, the pastor later
thanked me for making the attempt. But he wasn't content merely to
have told it right and then go on, but he took that woman to task
right there in front of the class. Of course, she never returned.
My only point here is that patience comes with maturity, not
necessarily with being pastor. People are not always going to be
changing their cherished false beliefs just because some preacher
man lays the right way on them. Oh, he should be preaching it
right in the first place, but getting straight a lot of times is
more a process of maturity than of convincing arguments, and if we
are looking to benefits from the maturing process, then we want to
be quoting important matters from the mature version.
The final lesson I learned at that particular church was
misunderstood by the ladies, but then I had no idea the pastor's
wife would be opening and reading his mail. To the pastor and me
a birthday celebration was just something we had to put up with to
please the women, and we could use illustrations from it to our
hearts' content. The church was trying to develop a leadership
structure (from scratch) and was soliciting input from its members.
To illustrate ways of slicing up that leadership pie, I used the
way the women cut up a birthday cake, an illustration I would have
avoided if I'd known they'd be reading it. Oh, well.
I was nearing social overload by the end of church. First I rode
with a bus crowd to a dining establishment where I breakfasted with
my friends. Then I rode with another bus crowd to the grange where
we I started out with the people for Sunday school. After that we
had church, and after church our regular love feast where I had my
fill of food and more fellowship. After all that, I headed for the
door to seek some solitude, but, no, they had one more activity
they insisted I stay for: a fellow's birthday celebration. This
seemed to me a good example of what the apostle Paul meant when he
said he had a desire to depart which was better for him, but to
stay was more needful for the rest. I stayed.
So we sang happy birthday to this guy and then we got in line for
the cake his wife and the pastor's wife had baked for him. Now, he
was an enormous person, and he got the first piece, of course.
Then we were each given a piece in turn, cut by the guy's wife down
the cake. I was the thin guy at the end of the line, having
already eaten my fill at the love feast, but required to stay for
cake. Finally she got to my piece which was a corner piece with
icing all around. A look of fondness passed between the wife and
her husband and she passed that big piece to him, who had already
finished his first piece by now.
Well, I had not wanted to be there in the first place, but had
acquiesced to their request that I join them. If they were going
to pass me by and give my turn at the cake to someone else, then I
wasn't going to stay. I headed out the door sans cake.
That seemed to me a good illustration for the leadership
discussion. The apostle Paul was required to stay, in print at
least, for one final act, his epistles. The passing along of Paul
in his writings is that last big piece of cake, taken care of in
translation by God's appointed men, Wycliffe, Tyndale, & King
James's appointees for our English Bible. That big piece with all
the icing on it fell to them. What falls to the pastor, fat with
responsibilities, is the little piece that comes after it, making
the Bible dialect clear in places where it's fuzzy to the modern
ear, which he can easily do as he goes along in his weekly sermons.
What has happened, though, is he was given an irresistible
temptation of a retranslated Bible in more modern English which is
clear already, and he will no more pass that by than the fat man
the icinged cake. And the elders, broadly speaking, who
traditionally have little enough to do in the church leadership get
passed over in their role of bringing us a Bible translated in a
suitable dialect. The way I put it, which unfortunately was not
appreciated by the pastor's wife for the metaphor it was, was that
the woman cutting the cake was a reverse Robin Hood, robbing from
the skinny to give to the fat.
As I was decided to leave the party at that point, Paul himself by
his own criteria won't back up the leadership at fault with its own
house, which is what the NIV
does in I Corinthians, nor from Acts is it in solidarity with
the other apostles.
If we let the minister have the big piece of cake picking the
version he reads from, then the smaller piece falls to us to try to
make that version functional. The NIV has its virtues. It promotes
positive thinking.
That was when he saw the blue car
behind him. She wore sunglasses, but he recognized her instantly.
Walker only kept his eyes on the mirror for a second because now he
was worried, and he didn't want her to notice him staring at her.
She was f___ing following
him. There was no other explanation. No wonder she looked scared
when he walked past the mailboxes. Shit. Why the hell was she
interested in him? Whatever the reason, Walker knew it wasn't
good.
In prison Walker had read Say Yes to
Success by Eddie Rollins. Walker wasn't much of a reader, but
this book cited example after example of hopeless losers like him-
self who were able to transform themselves into successful people
by following a program of easy-to-learn techniques. Walker found
it fascinating. Long ago he'd given up all hope of ever having any
kind of decent life, but maybe he shouldn't have. Eddie wrote that
if a person gives up, then he deserves to be a loser. The wrong
attitude was the major roadblock to success. After he finished the
book, Walker used a coupon at the back to send off for audiotapes,
which he listened to in his prison cell over and over again. Soon
several of the other guys were listening to the tapes, and
eventually they pooled their money to buy a set of videotapes,
which they watched with fascination in the cell of a guy in on a
second-degree murder conviction who had his own VCR.
Walker had now read all of Eddie Rollins's
books and viewed all of his tapes. He felt that his life, though
not a roaring success by any means, was a hell of a lot better than
it used to be. He wanted to keep it that way. One of Eddie's main
points was that successful people had the ability to turn negative
situations into positive ones. Walker didn't know that this woman
was going to create a negative situation, but he was inclined to
think that was how it would turn out. Whatever happened, he sure
as hell was going to do his best to turn the situation around and
make it positive. Soon as he got home he planned to pull out one
of Eddie's books and see if he could find some suitable advice.
...
Walker pulled Win, Right Now off
the shelf of the small bookcase. He opened it to one of his
favorite chapters, "The Challenge of Overcoming Negativity," and
started reading. Parts of it were hard for him to understand.
Eddie Rollins was an intellectual. Walker had read some sections
over and over for years, hoping that some of the more complicated
ideas would become understandable to him over time.88
Primarily, the NIV
takes its many negatives and turns them into positives in its Preface.
The best Greek scholars who have looked at it say the manuscripts used
were perfectly awful. The Preface tells us they used the best
manuscripts. Philologists (and my own observations) tell us it
uses more difficult English than the KJV. The NIV Preface says it's clearer.
Philologists tell us a translator should translate the
reader not the writer, but the NIV preface says they translated the
writers to be sure they were accurate. The NIV fails several of the Biblical
tests for high leadership, but the Preface tells us it's suitable
for the many uses we reserve for a reliable Bible. Its very
popularity says we cannot take seriously books like my friend's
list of its many faults. About the best spin we could put on it is
to take its Preface at face value and disregard its critics for not
following the masses.
She stayed a couple of steps behind
him, not too close. Walker was acutely aware that the gun was
still cocked. He hoped to hell she wouldn't pull the trigger by
accident. Once he crawled through the window, he would make a move
when she tried to follow him. No way she could climb in that window
and keep the gun on him the whole time. Maybe it was lucky as
hell he forgot the key. Eddie Rollins said that all men get their
lucky breaks, it's just that not everybody knows how to recognize
them.
...
She glanced at her watch. "Time's a
wasting."
"Shit, lady."
"Take off your shoes," she said.
"How come?"
"Just do it."
Walker bent over, untied one shoe, then the
other. He slipped them off his feet.
"Now take the laces out of the shoes."
Walker looked at her for a moment and then
did it.
"Tie the laces together. Then use the
laces to tie your ankles together."
Walker wrapped the laces around his ankles
and the started to tie them.
"Wrap them around again," she told him.
"They're long enough."
Walker wrapped he laces around his ankles
again and stated tying a knot.
"Make it tight," she said. "And knot it
twice."
He finished and sat up in the chair. "That
okay?" Christ, he was in a fix now.
"Yeah," she answered. Keeping the gun on
him, she reached with one hand into her purse and pulled out a pair
of handcuffs. Jesus. She got those f___ing things on him and his chances
of getting out of this mess were going to be zero. There might
always be a way to turn a negative situation positive, but Walker
was starting to think this present situation would tax even
Eddie.89
The real problem occurs when we try to introduce the NIV with all its failings into a
traditional service. Even the NIV Preface with all its accolades
doesn't go that far, to say they made the NIV a traditional book. I mean, like,
I've got my "special commemorative American Bicentennial Second
Edition Holy Bible, [hoped to] become a treasured heirloom in your
family , to be handed down to your children and grandchildren. ...
The text is the beloved King James Version with American spelling
and pronunciation aids. Accompanying God's Holy Word, to be
illumined by such company, are carefully chosen features. A
beautiful Presentation Page identifies with our God and Country
theme. There is a convenient eight page Family Register section,
... A special eight-page section reproduces famous Documents in
American history. The official portraits of all American
Presidents are beautifully reproduced in full color in an
outstanding thirty-eight page section that your family will prize.
A unique pictorial section dealing with our Bible's development
illustrates the Bible as our most precious heritage. Also included
is a special section showing the importance of the Bible in the
Christian home." Traditional Bibles use the KJV. oh, I've seen shelves full of
NIV Bibles at the store, and
even NIV study Bibles, but it
just hasn't been around long enough to be considered traditional.
Even at the Lutheran church I attended before I came here, although
they had completely gone over to the NIV, still they resorted to the
KJV for their traditional
ceremonies.
The reason I am writing to the elders is that "Right-on" wouldn't
follow my suggestion to rely mostly on the KJV in the traditional service.
Personally, I don't think the NIV should be used in any service,
but if he wanted to use it in a contemporary service, I'd allow him the
liberty, especially since he does on occasion refer to the KJV. I acknowledge that ministers want
some liberty, but they can only take so much with the Bible for the
mere nature of the beast. To start with, it's not of any private
interpretation. The pastor of the totally mixed church, when he
went to pastor his first church found that they all used
the KJV and insisted it was
the only Bible through whom God spoke in English, but he stuck with
his own version so as not to be of a "spirit of conformity." It
just doesn't work that way; the Bible is something to which we all
conform, as brought to us by the church elders from way back.
He eventually had to leave that church, so he started one of his
own from scratch. Every new member was from a different
denominational background, but each used the KJV. He stuck with his own version
because he said it would be more understandable to the new member.
They had a big evangelical drive to get new members, and the only
one they got was me. He stuck with his guns. His church fell
apart, his wife divorced him, and he moved to Florida, but I still
talk to his son sometimes.
A traditional service is similar. "Right-on" exercised his liberty
in instituting a traditional service, but the NIV isn't traditional, and it might
have trouble qualifying as a Bible. The Bible, and the KJV, is something that's come down to
us; we don't have the liberty to change it.
Maybe there are better ways to look at the issue.
"You know who Eddie Rollins is?" He
asked he.
The woman thought a minute. "I've heard
the name," she said.
"He's my favorite writer. He wrote a book
called Dare to Succeed. That's his most famous one.
Another book he wrote is called Anybody Can Be a
Winner."
"That's right. He's the self-help,
positive-thinking guy. He does those TV infomercials."
"Yeah. See, Eddie Rollins says you can
turn even the most negative situations into positive ones. The
situation we got here is pretty goddamn negative, but I figure
there's got to be some way to make it positive. Eddie Rollins
could."
"I'm sure there's a way to do that," she
said.
Walker ate the first bite of his corn and
put the plate down on the floor next to his chair. "Sometimes I
wonder if this is some sort of a test for me," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"Like I've got the worst possible situation
in the world, but if I turn it around and make it positive, maybe
my whole life will change. And maybe Eddie will write about me in
one of his books. He does that, you know. Talks about people that
have succeeded in life using his ideas. Maybe me and you'll be in
one of his books." He smiled broadly at her.
"Maybe," she said. "It's certainly
possible."
Walker thought of something. "Only one
problem," he said.
"What?"
"Eddie'd have to use different names for
us. Otherwise we both might be in some trouble with the law."
"I guess you're right. We'd still know it
was about us, though. It wouldn't matter to me."
"Yeah. Me neither. And Eddie'd know our
real names and everything." He smiled at her, and she smiled back
at him.
"Maybe I could help you," she said.
"How's that?" he asked.
"If we both wrote him letters about what
had happened, it might have a better chance of getting in a
book."
He said, "You'd do that?"
"Yes."
It was a nice thing for her to say. She
was a nice woman, he guessed, even if she had been out to kill him
and Barton. Maybe she wouldn't have been able to do it. Lord
knows, it wasn't easy.90
You know, a lot of confusion can happen just because we fail to see
ourselves in various biblical examples. I mean, do they have to
have our names in them?
I was visiting another friend a recent convert who lives up the
street from our church. I asked him if he had a Bible. He said he
was given a couple of them. I asked if he had one that was the
King James Version. He said he had a Gideon's New Testament which
was King James and that was the only version he could understand.
I showed him my Gideon's New Testament, same as his except a
different color.
He asked me if he should be reading it. I told him it was a good
idea and suggested he start with John. He told me the assistant
minister had suggested he start with Mark because it was easy to
understand. I told him they were both good places to start. We
made plans to go buy him a full King James Bible one day.
He went and got the two Bibles that were given him, the New King
James Version donated by a minister and a Contemporary English
Version donated by someone else. He told me he didn't want them and
asked me to get rid of them for him. Well, they were his Bibles to
do with as he chose, and I sure don't have much respect for those
versions, so I did as he asked. Not wanting to carry them all the
way home, I dropped them in the church dumpster I passed.
I was discussing a sermon with another friend and mentioned that
while I liked the sermon, I would have appreciated it more if it
were in the KJV. He said
that the NIV and the other
modern versions have serious problems. He said his daughter showed
a list of changes to her Assembly of God church and that came back
to the KJV from the NIV as a result. He loaned me a 700
page book on the subject which enumerates many more serious
problems than I was aware of. His whole family seems to be against
the modern versions. He'd taken his objection to a higher level
than the other, and for different reasons. He has his family
actively opposed to them, not just himself.
Me, I've wound up my objections to a higher level still. The way
Zondervan twisted the apostle Paul's words, I figure they should be
sued, but Paul doesn't have a copyright. No problem. We were
studying another Zondervan book in our Friday morning men's group,
a book that our assistant minister had recommended, when I found
they had plagiarized Walt Disney, and then turned it around to make
him look bad. Not good. Well, Disney had a copyright, so I sent
the book to Walt Disney, told them where to look, and included a
signed letter from the publisher admitting their source. Disney
sent me a thank-you letter, although they won't reveal anything
about their confidential investigation, but it can't be anything
good for that publisher.
On the other hand, "Right-on" and various guest speakers all seem
to use the New International Version or ones like it. Furthermore,
we have printed on our bulletins that we are a "family of Bible
believing Christians." Now, I maintain that it is hard to
understand how all three can be true. If our preachers are
preaching from the new versions, they are defining them as our
Bible, which then some members are going about to trash, at various
levels, so how can we as a family say we believe it?
Each following his light has led to a royal mixup, which suggests
we are following the course of the builders of the tower of Babel.
They didn't want to have separate languages which they were
supposed to do to disperse their families upon the earth, so they
were teaching everyone to speak the same Hamitic tongue. We don't
want to maintain a separate Bible English dialect so we are
promoting English Bibles in our regular dialect. (But it was from
some of the Shemitic languages that God's word came to us, and the
state of those languages in the fullness of time is in English most
accurately reflected in our Bible dialect.) God confused their
tongues so they had a hard time understanding each other. God has
confused our modern Bible translations to where the one I'm most
familiar with is in absolute contradiction to the one our leaders
are using now, and following our lights has led to a questionable
interpretation of being a family of Bible believers. They left off
building the tower, and our men's group got suspended too. They
realized they would have to maintain separate languages, and I
believe maybe we might be starting to realize we should try to
maintain a separate Bible dialect too.
Then there's the matter of trusting our leadership.
Finally, he told Denise he was out of
gin. She was so suspicious that she went into the kitchen to look
for herself, which pissed him off. If he said he was out of gin,
why'd she have to search the place? Walker had read in one of
Eddie's books that two people can't have a successful relationship
if they don't trust each other. He'd have liked to read that to
Denise and see what she thought. Probably go right over her head.
Walker did have a quart of Gilbey's under the sink, but Denise
didn't look there, so then she believed him.91
Sure if they're preaching all those neat ministries in Acts, sounds
real good, but what about the name of Barnabas there in the
background? I mean, it's supposed to remind us of what Noah's name
meant, and so give us a bit of a clue that God considered Barnabas
a righteous dude. I wouldn't have so much a problem with trust if
a contemporary name were limited to a contemporary service.
And the NIV still says what
it says about mixed marriages in I Cor. 7, and people still might read
it, and if we give the NIV
too much honor they might feel they have to follow it. I mean, the
unwarranted honor we give the NIV if we include it in even
traditional services can give false confidence in its sayings.
Walker knew that around six Denise
would be by. The thought made him shudder. He had to find a way
to end things with her. One of Eddie's books talked a lot about
screwed-up relationships between men and women and how to improve
them. Walker decided he should read that section again, but he
really wasn't much interested in improving things with Denise any-
more.92
I don't mean to undermine the trust and freedom given a minister of
the gospel, but I feel my request for a traditional version in a
traditional service has some merit too.
When he got in the car Walker said to
her, "Eddie Rollins would be proud a us. We're turnin' this
situation into something more positive every day."93
Yours in Christ,
Earl Gosnell
[TOP]
|
bibles.n7nz.org