Since the topic of the week seems to be translation issues, let me add to the debate Henry Thomas and I are having. As I have made muddled earlier, I am very concerned with word-for-word translations misleading non-students of the 1st Century in serious errors in doctrine. The Better Bibles blog points out a case where the ESV does this. They point to 2 Timothy 2:2 (1-5 quoted, emphasis added)):
1You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, 2and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. 3Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. 4No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. 5An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.
To whom is the teaching entrusted, so that those entrusted with it might spread the teaching? If one is going solely off of the ESV, they see that Paul makes it a point to say that it is only men that are entrusted with the teachings and therefore it is only the men that are able to teach it. I checked with my ESV, the one I use for personal study and there is no footnote for this verse as there is elsewhere.
Is this a case of pre-fabricated theology getting in the way of accurate Bible translation? The people at the Better Bibles blog think so, and they make a good case. They note that Paul uses anthropoi instead of pistois andrasi, which would have been used it Paul was indeed limiting it to only the faithful men.
To further their point, they point to several other translations that render the word as people, such as the NET Bible and the ISV. The translators of these translations are complementarians, just like the translators of the ESV. I like the way the NET Bible does it. They translate it as people and include the following footnote:
Grk “faithful men”; but here ἀνθρώποις (anqrwpoi”) is generic, referring to both men and women.
The Better Bibles Blog concludes, saying:
The HCSB, ESV, NET, and ISV are all recent translations. I assume that each was translated by men who are complementarians, believing that women should not be pastors. Yet the NET and ISV put Greek scholarship above their own ideology and translate anthropois correctly as ‘people’ in 2 Tim. 2:2.
The big issue here is that if one only uses the ESV, one is mislead to Paul’s message here. It might even lead one to use the verse as a proof-text to demonstrate that women are not to be entrusted with the Gospel. On the contrary, an accurate translation of the texts shows that Paul says that faithful people are to be entrusted with the teachings and they are to teach.
Does this make the ESV a bad translation? No, I am going to keep using it as my primary text. But it does underscore the need to consult different translations in personal study and teaching.
8 Comments
As I told you earlier, to really avoid all of this debate, Christians should take up studying a biblical language. They really should because it would open their eyes to see what the Greek and Hebrew conveys that the English cannot.
While I like the ESV, I do not think it is perfect, nor do the people who translated it. They are aware of many mistakes. I can point out one in James 4:4 where the ESV says, “adulterous people!” However the Greek is the vocative, feminine, plural term moichalides and it literally means “adulteresses” as in the NASB. Here they were trying to be gender inclusive and now the meaning of the relationship is skewed some, the power of the term is lost. Why? Because they took too much liberty in translating.
I do think it is an unfair statement to say, “I assume that each was translated by men who are complementarians, believing that women should not be pastors” by Better Bibles Blog. Do they even realize that women were on this translation team? My question is, how much of this is just part of the feminist movement, not saying anyone on this blog or on BBB is part of that movement. I am just very curious.
Also, if a person points to this text to say that women can’t be trusted with the gospel, they obviously don’t know who the first evangelist preachers were because they weren’t men according to Luke 24, Mary and the other women told the Eleven about Jesus’ resurrection. That person has not read the Bible. However, where does the office of pastor described as an office for women in the Bible? I like what that Wayne Leman said at the Bible Versions post, we transculturate when we remove the 1st Century culture for a 21st century culture. That is exactly why I do not recommend thought-for-thought for a primary Bible.
This is a strawman. Having women on the translation team means little. There are many conservative, complementarian women who believe that women should be pastors.
Meaning what? That only feminists would be concerned about a verse implying that the gospel should only entrusted to men? I would hope that anyone would have a problem with such a poor translation that causes harm to women. I don’t understand why you need to bring such a strawman about the “feminist movement.” And yes, I would consider myself part of the “feminist movement.”
This is another strawman that is unrelated to this post. No one, at least in this post, is saying that this verse states that women should be pastors.
Dave, you’ve seen a point I did not realize I made. When I said the statement is unfair because there are women on the team to translate the text. You seem to think that I am making too much of the word “men” in BBB’s statement, correct me if I am wrong. But isn’t that something of a point here? Are people in this culture making too much of the word “man” when we refer to ourselves openly and without hesitation “mankind”?
The question was just a curiosity I have, don’t make too much out of it.
Thirdly, you are right when I got off on a tangent that we need not go down in this post about women and pastors. But if you read the rest of the post, I did say that women can be evangelists. But…not on this post.
“The big issue here is that if one only uses the ESV, one is mislead to Paul’s message here. It might even lead one to use the verse as a proof-text to demonstrate that women are not to be entrusted with the Gospel.”
True, however if we have read 1 Timothy it it unambigious as to Paul’s view of the sexes in teaching. Women are to teach as Paul says in Titus
“That the older women teach the younger to live their husbands and to love their children to be descreet, chaste, keepers of the home, good, and obediant to their own husbands that the word of God be not blasphemed.” (Tit ch 2)
When it comes to this issue I really in my early walk was all for women teaching and defended it (not Biblically of course). But there came a day where I just sat down and asked what the Bible says about male and female roles and just submitted. That’s my advice to the more liberal (excuse me “progressive”) leaning folk.
Sure the word may not be Gender specific, but elsewhere Paul is quite specific as to the roles of men and women.
live=love…sorry going by memory
Have you considered that most women could not read in the 1st century? The most likely people reading the New Testament would be men and so it would be more natural for the authors to use masculine language when he wrote. Thus the most accurate way to translate the texts would be with masculine terms. This is especially true in the Old Testament but is certainly true in the New Testament as well. Just wondering if anyone who is reading these fun posts had considered this in the whole gender issue when translating into modern culture.
most men could read not either - so it is a moot point. That is why the stories were first transmitted orally and letters read aloud to audiences. Heck, there are accounts of people being suspicious of errors creeping in when the teachings and stories were being written down because people did not have access to the person’s character. That was how they knew a message was authentic - by the character of the person giving the message.
That is very true during the times in which the Old Testament were written down. But by Jesus’ day, the Jewish Scriptures had been written in Hebrew and then translated into Aramaic and Greek so that people could read the Bible in their own language. Also, the Hellenized world prized education. Many Greek philosophies were based around knowledge. By Jesus’ day there were many libraries all over the Mediterranean world. Reading was part of that education that was prized in the Greek world. In the Greek world, who Paul primarily wrote to, there was a slave that a family had to ensure that the sons of a family would be behaving in society and make sure that he was learning in school. Jesus was a poor Jewish peasant from Galilee but he could read. That means someone in his family taught him or he went to a school that taught him. Paul was part of the School of Hillel which encouraged its students to read not just Jewish writings but also Greek writings as well.
Twenty-one books of the New Testament was not oral tradition transmitted to the churches but rather were letters to be read. The Apocalypse of St. John was written in an apocalyptic epistle. Only five of the books were tradition before written. The ability to read was not as uncommon as one might think in Paul’s day. So I don’t think this is a moot point. It isn’t a primary argument but isn’t moot.
Also, even if there were precious few who could read and write, the vast majority would be men, not that I condone that in any way. Most of the people who would have read Paul’s epistles and the other fourteen general epistles, if not all, would have been men. Again, I don’t think this is some moot point. However, I am not basing my case for the people of the church to invest time in learning some Greek and Hebrew. I just wondered if anyone had ever considered it.