Theology for the Masses

This week’s "Point; Counterpoint" comes from Jim West and Richard A. Rhodes on Bible translation. West makes the contention that translations should be "woody" and goes so far as to say, "[they] are better because they maintain the proper distance between ourselves and the Biblical authors." Rhodes strongly disagrees with this sentiment in his reaction against West’s position. He maintains that:

"The stuff of the Bible that is of interest are those things about human nature. The differences in the worlds and worldviews is irrelevant, beyond the fact that knowing something about them helps us to better understand the motivations and reactions of the people."

I encourage you to check out both articles. I can sympathize with West’s sentiment. He is correct that the totality of the "biblical" experience is far removed from us and that it takes a lot of work in order to approach that world. However, I think this can be done and modern translations can be filtered through this necessary legwork to produce a meaningful translation for people who aren’t biblical scholars. 

For me it all boils down to a simple question: What question am I asking of the text?  If I am trying to figure out historical circumstances or do a detailed grammatical analysis of the relation of two clauses, I’ll go to the Greek and supplement that with a very literal translation like the NASB or the NRSV.  If I am seeking to teach laypersons about a saying of Jesus in Sunday school for instance, I’ll go with a translation that tries to place the text into terms and syntax that is the most understandable, thus I’ll probably use the NLV or the ESV.  Not everyone asks the same questions of a text and due to this, we should not expect for there to be one “best” translation for all situations everywhere.  Each and every translation is an interpretation, whether one likes it or not. 

Further reading:

Scholarly Legends by Rhodes

Why Modern Translations of the Bible Bungle It by West

I, like a lot of the Christian side of the blogosphere, have taken more than a fleeting interest in the Enns/Westminster controversy.

For a run down of what the hub-ub is all about, check out Kingdom People :: The Peter Enns Controversy:

1. Enns has been criticized for emphasizing the human nature of Scripture over against the divine.
2. Enns has written that the first chapters of Genesis are firmly grounded in ancient myth, which he defines as “an ancient, premodern, prescientific way of addressing questions of ultimate origins in the form of stories.”
3. Enns claims that Scripture is inspired and inerrant, however the way he describes Scripture seems to counter that belief.
4. Enns does not seek to harmonize seemingly-contradictory parts of Scripture because he believes the diversity of Scripture is complementary.
5. Enns rejects the idea of objective unbiased historiography.

Here is an exchange between Paul Helm and Enns about Helm’s review of Enns’ book.

• Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament by Peter Enns Review by Paul Helm
• A Response to Paul Helm’s Review of Inspiration and Incarnation
• Analysis Extra: ‘Inspiration and Incarnation’ one more time

Here is an interesting (and instructive) review of Helm’s review by Cdero’s Weblog entitled Bible Monopoly. Here are the central tenets of Bible Monopoly:

* An unwillingness to deal with the plural complexity of interpretation
* A failure to wrestle with the difficult matters of Biblical scholarship
* A failure to see the provisional nature of scripture
* An obsession with turning honest interaction with extra Biblical data into an evil foe of orthodoxy
* A tendency to use past theologians (the one’s they agree with) as the standard of Biblical interpretation

To say on top of what people are saying about this situation, check out Google’s Blogsearch and Technorati’s watchlist.