On his Facebook page, Eddy linked to an AP story about Biblica updating the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible and publishing it in 2011. At that time, Zondervan will also cease publishing the Today’s New International Version (TNIV) that came out in 2005. (Biblica owns the copyright on both versions and Zondervan publishes them in North America.) The TNIV sought to update some of the phrasing in the NIV to reflect changes in the English language. But it was controversial because while Zondervan would continue publishing the NIV, the Committee on Bible Translation that produced both versions would no longer update the NIV and the TNIV would become its primary focus for further revisions. The issue with the TNIV is that it uses gender-inclusive language. For example, “sons of God,” is now translated, “children of God.” Apparently some people were unhappy with the TNIV’s process and wanted more transparency even though Christianity Today devoted a cover story to the TNIV and the debate surrounding it and a whole book was published regarding the gender-neutral controversy.

I’d like to respond a bit to the criticism of the TNIV cited in the AP story. Regarding the changes in the TNIV,

Many prominent pastors and scholars endorsed the changes. But critics said masculine terms in the original should not be tampered with. Some warned that changing singular gender references to plural ones alters what the Bible says about God’s relationships with individuals.

The Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution saying the edition “has gone beyond acceptable translation standards.”

I’m curious as to what singular gender references they have in mind that have been changed so as to alter God’s relationships with individuals. In the modern English-speaking world, we don’t really have a problem with emphasizing the relationships between God and individuals. If anything, we read the Bible too individualistically, with too much of an emphasis on the individual that we run the risk of misinterpreting the texts. Granted, our language does not help us. Both Greek and Hebrew have a plural form of the second person pronoun—a “plural you,” as it were—and those pronouns are found throughout the Bible. English does not have a second person plural pronoun and so we have often read the Bible saying, “you,” as if it is speaking to the individual rather than the community. In my opinion, translating the Bible in ways that reflect the communal nature of the texts needs to be one of the primary responsibilities of translators.

I support careful gender-inclusive language in our translations and have no real issues with the TNIV. And as far as gender-inclusive translations go, the TNIV is fairly conservative in its changes. I grew up on the NIV and I think it is a fine translation. I first began using a gender-inclusive translation (the NRSV) in college when I wrote religious studies papers—the NRSV is widely accepted in academic circles. I initially liked the NRSV on a purely aesthetic level and began using it as my primary version for devotional reading. I couldn’t read Greek or Hebrew at the time, so I had no way of deciding if the NRSV was a more faithful translation or not. I still use the NRSV as my primary Bible and find it a very reliable version.

As I have studied Greek and Hebrew, I have come to appreciate gender-inclusive translations not for some politically correct reasons, but for much of the same reasons I choose to read modern biblical translations instead of the King James Version (KJV). The KJV was a fine translation for its time, reflecting the way people spoke and wrote in the 17th Century. English has changed over the centuries. We do not speak or write today as people did in the 1600’s. We do not even spell many of the same words in the same way as they did in the past. The Greek and Hebrew of the Bible have not changed—though we continue to find and use older and older manuscripts to translate—our contemporary English has changed.

The Bible was written in the earthy languages of real people who used those languages for everything in their lives: worship, conversation, trade, poetry, history, etc. Like any language, the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek of the Bible were full of idiomatic phrases. When Paul wrote to his “brothers” to address the churches in his letters, no biblical scholar would say that he was only writing to men. “Brothers” was an idiom that represented the community. “Brothers,” “man,” and “men” used to be gender-inclusive terms in English, but that has changed. So I see nothing wrong with carefully translating an idiomatic phrase in a way that reflects its meaning. I make it a practice to render “brothers” as “brothers and sisters” in my own translations when it is clear that the text is addressing more than just the men of the group. This translation reflects the way we speak and write now. I do not believe that it does violence or changes the meaning of the original texts. The historical nature of the manuscripts and the ever-evolving nature of language creates a problem for translators, especially translators of Scripture. We believe that God speaks to us through the Bible and so we need the Bible to be readable. At the same time, these are historical documents written at specific times and places and we can run the risk of trying to update them. Care must be taken and I believe that the translators of the TNIV were careful.

Even the most wooden, word for word translations of the Bible are not 100% accurate. That is not merely a statement regarding grammar since word order is different and different languages often have different verb tenses. Some translation of idioms and thoughts are required to make sense to us today. Did you know that the Bible says God has a big nose? We often render the term ‘arek ‘apim, as “slow to anger” or “longsuffering,” to describe God’s divine and gracious patience. “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.” (Psalm 103.8) When translated woodenly, the term is actually “long of nose.” It’s a Hebrew idiom and makes no sense in English without translating the actual thought.

For what it is worth, I think a very wooden, very word-for-word translation of the Bible into English would be of great help to students who do not read Greek or Hebrew. It would be wonderful for the average Bible reader to be able to see how earthy some of the original idioms are and how strange they can sound to our ears. Can you imagine giving someone a complement by telling them they have a big nose?

I am skeptical that the primary reason for the cessation of the TNIV is the mea culpa from Biblica and the NIV’s handlers with regard to how the revision process took place. While Biblica is a non-profit organization, Zondervan is a subsidiary of NewsCorp, a publicly traded company. My assumption is that the TNIV just isn’t selling like they hoped it would. When the Southern Baptist Convention denounced the TNIV, they also announced that they would not sell the version in their stores. If the TNIV were more profitable, Biblica may have re-opened revision on the NIV, but I doubt Zondervan would have shut down publishing the TNIV.

In an excerpt from The Joyful Christian, C.S. Lewis aptly describes the necessity of both personal experience and doctrine in the Christian life. He shows the connection between the two. As someone who has encountered God in the study of Christian beliefs, I face the regular challenge to remember that knowing things about God is not the same thing as knowing God. To read about doctrine is not the same thing as encountering the real God. On the other hand, I appreciate Lewis’ description of doctrine as the amalgamation of lots of peoples’ real encounters with God. Anyway, here is Lewis:

In a way I quite understand why some people are put off by Theology. I remember once when I had been giving a talk to the R.A.F., an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, “I’ve no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I’m a religious man too. I know there’s a God. I’ve felt him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about him. To anyone who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!”

Now in a sense I quite agreed with that man. I think he had probably a real experience of God in the desert. And when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds, I think he really was turning from something real, to something less real. In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will be turning from real waves to a bit of colored paper. But here comes the point. The map is admittedly only colored paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single isolated glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.

Now Theology is like the map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But the map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God—experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you or I are likely to get on our own way are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map. You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it. In fact, that is just why a vague religion—all about feeling God in nature, and so on—is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map.

My friend Josh informed me that UC Davis emeritus professor of religious studies, Lincoln D. Hurst died on November 11 of this year at the age of 62. Hurst was one of the most popular professors among the Christian population at UCD. He taught primarily New Testament and Christian theology courses. In some ways, Hurst was a rarity in the scholastic world. He taught at a secular university and believed in much of the New Testament texts his classes covered. Hurst was a proclaimed theist—he wouldn’t admit to much more in classes, though it was clear in conversations that he was a Christian. Most Christian academics dealing with that level of scholarship work at seminaries or faith-based colleges and universities. Hurst’s academic career landed him knee-deep in the interest and debates surrounding the historical Jesus, with the Jesus Seminar making the covers of national magazines. He often criticized the methods and findings of the Jesus Seminar while appreciating the work of some of its members. The courses I took from him dealt heavily with the historical settings of the New Testament and early Christianity.

Hurst acted as my true introduction to an academic treatment of the Bible and Christian origins. In his classes I heard the names and read from N. T. Wright, Bruce Metzger, Marcus J. Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and C. H. Dodd for the first time. His critical approach made sense in my mind and I found my faith deepened by his classes. We made the joke that if you sat in on the first two lectures of any one of his New Testament courses, you wouldn’t be able to tell what class that was since they always covered the historical setting of first century Palestine—e.g., the different sects of Judaism, the Herodian monarchy, Rome, etc. The students of Davis have lost a special voice on campus.

UCD’s daily newspaper, the California Aggie has a nice write-up on Hurst as does the religious studies department website.

The Bible is a big collection of books (66 in the Protestant canon and more in the Eastern and Roman Churches) and as someone who believes that all of them are inspired (I’m not going to define my view beyond that), it can be a weighty endeavor to keep them in order. Because the Bible is so diverse, people can and likely do focus on certain books and passages without giving similar time to others. Such a phenomenon appears to be the natural result of trying to digest so much writing as well as the likelihood that God will use certain texts to affect us more than others. This tendency can turn dangerous, however, when we emphasize certain books to the exclusion of others, of saying certain books are more important than others, or of developing a “canon within the Canon.”

Time has a story on ten ideas that are changing the world. Coming in at number ten is “Re-Judaizing Jesus.” Writer David Van Biema begins with describing a spat between Ben Worthington and Rob Bell over how to correctly interpret Jesus’ Jewish identity. The main point, however, is not that they disagree about understanding Jesus’ Jewishness, but that they consider Jesus’ Jewishness to be vitally important to understanding who he is as portrayed in the Gospels. We Gentile Christians are saying to ourselves, “Just about every one of those fellows who wrote all those books in the Bible were of Hebrew background. I bet that’s an important detail.”

For centuries, the discipline of Christian “Hebraics” consisted primarily of Christians cherry-picking Jewish texts to support the traditionally assumed contradiction between the Jews — whose alleged dry legalism contributed to their fumbling their ancient tribal covenant with God — and Jesus, who personally embodied God’s new covenant of love. But today seminaries across the Christian spectrum teach, as Vanderbilt University New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine says, that “if you get the [Jewish] context wrong, you will certainly get Jesus wrong.”

The shift came in stages: first a brute acceptance that Jesus was born a Jew and did Jewish things; then admission that he and his interpreter Paul saw themselves as Jews even while founding what became another faith; and today, recognition of what the Rev. Bruce Chilton, author of Rabbi Jesus, calls Jesus’ passionate dedication “to Jewish ideas of his day” on everything from ritual purity to the ideal of the kingdom of God — ideas he rewove but did not abandon.

(HT: Emergent Village)

Scot McKnight has created a Hermeneutics Quiz for Christianity Today. I’m not usually a fan of online quizzes since I don’t think they are all that accurate. McKnight’s quiz appears to be the exception even if it isn’t perfect. McKnight explains his reasons for creating the quiz:

I’m curious why one of my friends dismisses the Friday-evening-to-Saturday-evening Sabbath observance as “not for us today” but insists that capital punishment can’t be dismissed because it’s in the Old Testament.

I have become fascinated with what goes on in our heads and our minds and our traditions (and the latter is far more significant than many of us recognize) in making decisions like this.

What decisions? Which passages not to read as normative. The passages we tend not to read at all.

At the least, the quiz gives us an opportunity to evaluate and understand our positions better. McKnight divides the results into three categories: conservative (a score of 52 or lower), moderate (between 53 and 65), and progressive (between 66 and 92). The link above takes you to McKnight’s essay and description of what those categories mean and you can find a link to the quiz itself there.

So what’s your score? To find mine, highlight the following text: 68, meaning I’m moderately progressive. (Highlight between the colon and the period.)

(Hat Tip: The Blind Beggar)

In my first post of this series, I emphasized that people should come to seminary expecting to work hard. Now I want to offer advice in the other direction.

While in seminary, be sure to nurture a well-rounded life. That is, don’t do school stuff exclusively.

Seminary requires a lot of effort. While it is important to stay on top of the workload, one could also easily feel like Sisyphus rolling the rock to the top of the hill only to have it roll back down. Just when you finish one reading assignment, one paper, or one midterm, further work demands your attention. The simple fact is that one could always read more.

It is nearly a counter-cultural act to be a minister who has healthy relationships, spends time with family and friends, is disciplined in devotions, practices good self-care, observes the Sabbath, maintains boundaries between work, rest, and play. To be this kind of well-rounded minister grows more difficult in full-time ministry and therefore it is imperative that seminarians make efforts to practice a balanced life while in school.

I would say that developing a well-rounded life begins with receiving the gift of the Sabbath. Take time off from school work and all work one day a week. Focus instead on worship and practices that bring you closer to God and bring you life. I am consistently surprised by how many ministers and seminarians say that they cannot observe the Sabbath. As one writer said, you don’t hear too many people making such claims about the other Ten Commandments. That is, you don’t hear people state that they can’t keep themselves from murder or can’t keep themselves from sleeping with their neighbor’s spouse. Why then do we ministers and seminarians scoff at receiving such a wonderfully restorative gift from God?

Develop hobbies such as gardening or photography. Exercise. Read books for fun that aren’t seminary-related. Watch movies. Read the news. Go on dates with your spouse or significant other. Play with your kids. Take naps. Volunteer and serve others. Cook a meal and sit down to eat it rather than perform an acrobatic number in which you try to keep your pizza toppings from falling onto your Moltmann. Keep in touch with your family and friends from college. Go on walks. Play and watch sports.

The ministry can take a lot out of people and it is important that we develop healthy habits early. Or perhaps you have been in the ministry for years and are just now coming to seminary. Take the time as an opportunity to develop healthy habits now. A burned-out minister is hardly any good for anyone. I’m married to an ob/gyn and while she was in medical school, I met several medical students who only studied. They looked stressed and could not hold a conversation about anything but medicine. In short, they were boring to nearly anyone besides their classmates. My wife would make a similar complaint about some of my seminary friends. Develop other interests so that you can hold conversations with people in life-settings different than yours. Don’t worry that you’ll be pulled away from the demands of being a student—Miroslav Volf once said that the great thing about theology is that you can study anything and then figure out how it relates to God and the Christian faith.

Chris Spinks offered me the following challenge in the comments of his blog post regarding his teaching a couple of intensives:

I’d like to see you do a series of blog posts that offers advice to new seminarians. I’ve seen things like “What I didn’t learn in seminary.” It would be nice to see something like “What I did well and what I wish I had done better while in seminary.”

I’ve decided that this would be a fun series to write, especially now that I’ve been out of seminary for over a year. During my last quarter at Fuller, I began a series of seminary reflections, but they were more of an exercise for me to process what I had been through the previous three years. I hope that this series might prove helpful for people just entering seminary or who are considering attending seminary.

I think Chris’ statement is right on: most of what I have seen that comments on seminary focuses on its defects or lacks, even if the authors have an overall favorable attitude towards seminary. Any educational institution will have its faults and it is good to know the limits of what one can and should expect, but it is also good to know the positives. [1]

Chris Spinks has a wonderful post in which he offers ten points about one of the most controversial passages in the New Testament: Ephesians 5.21/22-33. The post is rich in exegesis while being succinct. It is well worth reading. I’ll re-post my favorite of his ten points, number three:

On the subject of modern interpretations, I have always been perplexed by something. Wives are told to submit to husbands. That’s in the text. No way around it. Husbands are told to love wives. Fine. Rarely any problem for we modern folks on this. Here’s the thing though: I imagine most people would agree that wives ought to love their husbands as well. Right? We understand the ideal marriage as one where both partners love each other. But, the Ephesians text only calls on the husband to love. We easily understand a reciprocation of this love from the wife’s end. Why do we not also just as easily understand a reciprocation of the submission from the husband’s end? Indeed, v. 21 is quite explicit about it. Yet I would imagine if we were to ask a “traditionalist” to describe a good marriage, he (purposefully exclusive language!) would say something about love between the husband and wife and the submission of the wife to the husband. Why no submission between the husband and wife? I’m perplexed.

Well said, Dr. Spinks.

As a Protestant and an Evangelical, the view of the Bible is especially crucial to my faith traditions. We throw around a lot of technical terms and then debate their definitions. A traditional split has been to say whether the Bible is inerrant or infallible, and each of those terms has several definitions (see this debate in the comments of the A-Team’s blog for an example).

While I appreciate the discussion about whether the Bible is inerrant, infallible, or something else altogether, I wonder if we miss something in our conversation, namely history. (First, a disclaimer that I do not want to take our important, but contextual terms of inerrant or infallible and place them incorrectly into a time period where these terms were not used.) What I mean by history is that the Bible as a collection of various writings has a long, rich, and varied history. When the New Testament was written, the Hebrew Scriptures were pretty well established. But let us remember that the Church did not close the New Testament canon until around 397 at the Synod of Carthage. Until that point, and even afterward, vast amounts of debate surrounded which early Church texts should be considered Scripture and which should not. Books like The Shepherd of Hermas and 1 and 2 Clement did not make the cut. Many church leaders argued that other books that were canonized should have been left out, such as 2 Peter, Hebrews, and Revelation. While some criteria for determining whether a text should be considered Scripture emerged, the early Church never agreed upon a formal set of measures.

I wonder do the facts that a) there was debate over what the NT would look like, and b) that the process of canonization took several centuries to complete, now inform our debates about whether the Bible is inerrant, infallible, etc.? Systematic theology—the area of theology that would deal with matters of biblical inspiration—does address the history of the texts, but usually at the moment of their creation. That is, theologians debate how much the texts are the works of divine action versus how much they are human products. I have seen little that discusses how the fact that the Church put together the NT relates to whether the texts should be considered infallible, inerrant, authoritative, inspired, etc. Peter Kreeft argues that in order for the Bible to be infallible that we would need an infallible Church (his argument is in his talk for the Veritas Forum on why he became a Catholic after growing up as a Protestant Evangelical). Kreeft’s assertion is helpful in the conversation. While as a Protestant, I don’t buy into the idea of an infallible Church, Kreeft at least does address the canonization process of Scripture.

I wonder what people think of this issue. If you are a Christian, how do you view the biblical texts? What brought you to that conclusion? How does the process of canonization inform your view?