Edward Hills versus James White

Another beautiful book by a beautiful Christian scholar, Edward F. Hills. You can even read it online.

Section III., 3., (d) How to Take Our Stand—Through the Logic of Faith

How do we take our stand upon divine revelation? Only in one way, namely through the logic of faith. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:16). Since this Gospel is true, these conclusions logically follow: First, the Bible is God's infallibly inspired Word. This must be so, because if our salvation depends on our believing in Christ, then surely God must have left us an infallible record telling us who Jesus Christ is and how we may believe in Him truly and savingly.

Second, the Bible has been preserved down through the ages by God's special providence. This also must be so, because if God has inspired the holy Scriptures infallibly, then surely He has not left their survival to chance but has preserved them providentially down through the centuries.

Third, the text found in the majority of the biblical manuscripts is the providentially preserved text. This too must be true, because if God has preserved the Scriptures down through the ages for the salvation of men and the edification and comfort of His Church, then He must have preserved them not secretly in holes and caves but in a public way in the usage of His Church. Hence the text found in the majority of the biblical manuscripts is the true, providentially preserved text.

Fourth, The providential preservation of the Scriptures did not cease with the invention of printing. For why would God's special, providential care be operative at one time and not at another time, before the invention of printing but not after it? Hence the first printed texts of the Old and New Testament Scriptures were published under the guidance of God's special providence. Thus when we believe in Christ, the logic of our faith leads us to the true text of holy Scripture, namely, the Masoretic Hebrew text, the Textus Receptus, and the King James Version and other faithful translations. It is on this text, therefore, that we take our stand and endeavor to build a consistently Christian apologetic system.

I fled to this book to cure me of the depressing effect of reading some of James' White's The King James Controversy earlier this evening. I'm getting far deeper into this topic than I ever wanted to get. I've prayed that the Lord would show me if He really wants me to do this or not, if it's necessary or of any real use for me to do it, and to guide me by His Spirit if so. It's a chore to do this, I can never read enough, but I do continue to read. I haven't even finished Burgon's book. I've had White's book for a long time, even read some of it years ago. I still agree with the notes I wrote in the margins then, but now I know more so my notes are going to increase quite a bit.

In his chapter 2, A Short History of Unbelief, Hills gives a wonderfully concise history of how the naturalistic and liberal approaches to textual criticism grew out of rationalism.

The contrast with White is striking. White's assumptions are all rationalistic even though he uses Christian and Biblical concepts freely. Hills' are the language of faith, which is the ONLY way we should approach the problem of Bible translation.

Repenting of disdainful and intemperate attitudes

I think I'll copy here at the top the note I added at the bottom of the post Extreme KJVOs lose the debate for the rest of us, where I lament my acceptance of a pejorative term:

Sat, Aug 23. I would like to confess that I was uneasy with the phrase "fever-swamp" although I indulged it in the above discussion. I shouldn't support insulting terms. I fell into it because I agree with Wilson's basic position, and because, well, it's descriptively apt. Some of the extreme KJVOs tend to be pantingly preoccupied with the devil's doings to the point of losing a humble reasonable and Christian perspective and making war on mere flesh and blood. However, I've never really liked the style of Credenda/Agenda either. There's a flippancy and jocularity to it that puts me off. (And a sort of artsy snobbism too). I'm glad to find them on the side of the KJV (really, the Textus Receptus), however, and hope they will continue to fight this particular fight.

And while I'm confessing and repenting, I'd like to say something about how I understand the KJVO impulse to denounce and revile an opposition that has so much apparent demonic influence as the modern Bible versions defense does, but truly that's an impulse of the flesh and accomplishes nothing. In fact I may personally have been cured forever from that particular fault by seeing how it misleads otherwise good defenders of the KJV like Gail Riplinger into indefensible accusations of other good defenders such as David Cloud, and the inexcusable way Texe Marrs dealt with James White as shown on White's series about Marrs at You Tube. Does this make me "disdainful" of God's people, and enjoying the company of the Critical Text people, as a poster here has suggested?

Well, in sharing Douglas Wilson's term "fever-swamp" as far as I did, to that extent I shared in his disdain for the extreme KJVO people. But I've repented of that. As for favoring the company of the opposition, I can hardly abide listening to James White, if you want to know the truth, it's a struggle to hear or read him. It's just that when someone on the KJV-only side attacks him the way Marrs did, I'm no happier with our side, and worse, it gets harder to see how the important issues can be rescued from such irrational and unChristian behavior.

Humility is always the right path, even when you are dealing with the devil, in fact it's the most powerful position to take against the devil. Confess your sins and he has nothing he can bring against you. We are not always right, and I don't see anything in scripture that tells us we're to revile the devil, let alone any human being. In fact "revilers" are on the list of those who will not inherit the Kingdom of God, along with fornicators and drunkards and extortioners and so on. (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).

Webster's 1828 has: REVI'LE, v.t. re and vile.
To reproach; to treat with opprobrious and contemptuous language.
She revileth him to his face.
Thou shalt not revile the gods. Ex. 22.
Blessed are ye when men shall revile you. Matt. 5.
REVI'LE, n. Reproach; contumely; contemptuous
language. Not in use.

Mt 27:39 And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads,
Mr 15:32 Let Christ the King of Israel descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe. And they that were crucified with him reviled him.
Joh 9:28 Then they reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple; but we are Moses' disciples.
1Co 4:12 And labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it:
1Pe 2:23 Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously:

Yes, this controversy is an arena where we're bound to experience plenty of spiritual warfare, but fair criticism is not spiritual warfare unless you resist it. It's really too bad when the people who are on the right side are attacking others on the same side, using the devil's own weapons.

Update on Bible translators losing their voices

I've been working on collecting some links on the Bible versions controversy and ran across this on David Cloud's site. This is on his page where he criticizes Gail Riplinger's book, New Age Bible Versions. The implication seems to be that it was Mrs. Riplinger who started the whole idea that the translators of the new versions had lost their voices, but whether she did or not, apparently her accusation that Westcott lost his voice is false:
http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/newage.htm

6. On page 448 Mrs. Riplinger says:

“Westcott's biographer cites that in 1858 ‘he was quite inaudible’ and by 1870 ‘his voice reached few and was understood by still fewer.’”

Riplinger uses this quote to support her claim that Westcott lost his voice and sees that as a judgment of God for tampering with the Bible.

The fact is that Westcott did NOT lose his voice. Riplinger cites volume one of The Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott, but the quotes are misused. The first quote is from a statement about how that Westcott, as a young student, disliked public speaking. “He [Westcott] took his turn of preaching in Chapel, but he dreaded and disliked the duty, and he was quite inaudible to many of the boys” (The Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott, vol. 1, p. 198).

There is nothing here about Westcott losing his voice. The second of Riplinger’s quotes is taken from a letter from a Dr. Butler, who said that Westcott, when he was 35 years old and teaching at Harrow, still had a weak public speaking voice.

“His voice was not yet a force in the chapel. It reached but few, and it was understood by still fewer” (The Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott, vol. 1, pp. 272-273).

Again, there is not a hint that Westcott lost his voice. It is a figment of Mrs. Riplinger’s fertile imagination.

To my mind this also casts some doubt on the KJVO version of the incident on the 1995 John Ankerberg Show where Texe Marrs and other KJVOs claim the NASB translator Dr. Wilkins temporarily lost his voice. However, from the video exchange at You Tube that I posted earlier,

http://watchpraystand.blogspot.com/2008/08/side-issues-to-be-avoided-in-kjv.html

I still can't see that the segment posted by James White could possibly have been what the KJVO people were remembering. Unfortunately I suppose we'll never know.

The readiness of the extreme KJVO advocates to read God's judgment into such incidents, and also to personally pronounce God's judgment against their opponents, on almost any aspect of this discussion, does not speak in their favor.

Extreme KJVOs lose the debate for the rest of us

Jogging around the internet looking in on sites that discuss the KJV-versus-modern Bibles controversy eventually leads me to the impression that the biggest impediment to demonstrating the superiority of the KJV is its defenders on the far fringe, those who make the KJV into The One And Only Perfect and Complete Word of God. This position attracts reams of more-or-less reasonable objections from anti-KJV people, such as:

http://members.aol.com/pilgrimpub/questkjv.htm

which detracts from the most important work of demonstrating the utter abject corruption of the modern Bibles. Whether the KJV is or is not the perfect Bible, whether it needs some minor updating or should be left alone, the fact of the matter is that it is the only clear light on the path we have, while most of the church is unaware of this fact, skipping heedlessly along in the murky light of the counterfeit Westcott and Hort Revision of 1881.

I have come to believe that it is extremely important to convince people of the falseness of those Bibles most are trusting in these days, but it seems to be the hardest thing to do, even to get anyone's ear for the subject. Then when just about every discussion bogs down in the extreme claims of the KJV-Only "fever swamp" camp, as Douglas Wilson refers to it, it seems the necessary work is unnecessarily made nigh on impossible.

Speaking of Douglas Wilson, the view I'm expressing here is pretty much in line with his, and I've meant to post a link to his site since I started on this subject. Maybe now is finally the time to do it. Here's where he refers to the KJVO fringe's "fever swamp" mentality: http://www.credenda.org/issues/10-1thema.php

Today we have a chaos of translations vying for the customer's attention, and the only people who still consistently use the King James Version are members of isolated fundamentalist groups. This means that virtually the only defense one is likely to encounter for the KJV is a defense which appeals to the usage of Moses and Paul, who both spoke Elizabethan English (a little-known miracle), or the indisputable fever-swamp-fact that the translators of the NIV also belong to the Council of Foreign Relations, which in its turn is plotting to place all nations under a one-world government. Thus, non-KJV translations are seen by some for what they really are—nefarious preparation for THE BEAST.

Are these the only choices?Do we have to choose between the Bible belonging to the fundamentalists of the fevered brow on the one hand, and the Bible for the skateboarding Youth of Today on the other? The answer is, well . . . yes, we do.

Yes, we do. Those are the only choices we have right now. He wrote that a decade ago by now, but nothing much has changed since then. (Except that I have come to the conclusion that although I don't like some of the arguments on the KJV-only side I am KJV-only myself and there are some good arguments in favor of it out there.)

(By the way, I try to keep up with the "fever swamp" facts of the fundamentalist fringe myself. I think there's something to a lot of it. Some of their rather far-out scenarios really could be on the horizon for the very last days and it doesn't help for us to be underestimating the power of the devil or the scheming of fallen human beings. The possibility that there are human beings knowingly involved in satanic deceptions isn't at all surprising, of course. I really don't know how much to believe of what is claimed about the Illuminati and similar occult organizations, but there's nothing in principle hard to believe about their existence and aims. The main thing is that it wouldn't be good for the church to be caught by surprise by some long-brewing preternatural evil scenario that could blow people's expectations of what's possible and render us unable to respond appropriately. It's not important in itself that such plots are possible, but it might be important to be aware of the possibility of some rather spectacular signs and wonders related to such plots as the last days unfold. Not to mention some odd political alignments perhaps. I hope I'll get around to a post on this general area of thought eventually).

I love the cover of this particular issue of the magazine, Credenda/Agenda, in which Wilson and company explore the problem of the "Textus Rejectus," which alludes to the substitution of Westcott and Hort's corrupt texts for the Greek Textus Receptus which underlies the KJV:
http://www.credenda.org/issues/10-1.php (Unfortunately you can't magnify the page to appreciate the picture of a Precious Moments cartoon child sitting at the desk of Erasmus, the original compiler of the Textus Receptus on which the KJV is based. I don't know how to post pictures here yet, but you can find the painting of the real Erasmus at his desk at Google Image.)

This page is a list of quotations in support of a pure Bible, the KJV and the Textus Receptus:
http://www.credenda.org/issues/10-1verbatim.php, some of which are:

I have just spent the better part of the last five years attempting to localize just what was the specific dynamic, or chain of events, that led to this bankrupt state within the modern confessional churches. Obviously we all know that Biblical criticism lay at the heart of the matter, but what I wanted to discover is how and why so many well-armed and forewarned ecclesiastical bodies could all fall in time, one after another, without so much as knowing the process had taken place. Certainly everyone rightly feared and trembled at the German higher criticism, with its speculative theories about sources and carrying out an agenda dictated by the various philosophical schools of German Idealism. But it was while everyone was staring steadfastly at this Philistine, would-be invader of the Church, that time and again an apparent out-flanking took place and fall ensued. How and why?

-----Theodore Letis

For an orthodox Christian, Burgon's view is the only reasonable one. If we believe that God gave the Church guidance in regard to the New Testament books, then surely it is logical to believe that God gave the Church similar guidance in regard to the text which these books contained. Surely it is very inconsistent to believe that God guided the Church in regard to the New Testament canon but gave her no guidance in regard to the New Testament text. But this seems to be just what many modern Christians do believe. They believe that all during the medieval period and throughout the Reformation and post-Reformation era the true New Testament text was lost and that it was not regained until the middle of the nineteenth century, when Tischendorf discovered it in the Sinaitic manuscript Aleph and when Westcott and Hort found it in the Vatican manuscript B.

-----Edward Hills

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 several times farther removed from the original than are the AV and TR! How could such a calamity have come upon us?!

-----Wilbur Pickering

A calamity, yes, yes, a calamity, but the vast majority of the churches are sleeping through it.

It's nothing but a red herring to try to answer all the objections people come up with to the King James Bible. The only way to deal with these challenges is to concede that maybe it's so, maybe it has these flaws, but that whatever its flaws they are nothing compared to the disaster that is the Westcott and Hort alternative. If you cling to the KJV perfectionist position you will never get to the Westcott and Hort problem.

I'm just going to link another page here, Wilson's debate with James White, in the same issue of Credenda/Agenda: http://www.credenda.org/issues/10-1disputatio.php Here Wilson tries to get the focus onto who should have the responsibility for determining which of the manuscripts are to be accepted, the Confessing Church or Autonomous Scientists. How exactly the church validated the KJV he doesn't make clear enough for me, and calling Westcott and Hort Autonomous Scientists has me a bit bemused too -- I might even prefer the fever-swamp crowd's Devil Followers, but I'll have to give it some thought.

I'd have been happier if he'd quoted Burgon to show the corruption of the W&H manuscripts.

More to come.
================================

Sat, Aug 23. I would like to confess that I was uneasy with the phrase "fever-swamp" although I indulged it in the above discussion. I shouldn't support insulting terms. I fell into it because I agree with Wilson's basic position, and because, well, it's descriptively apt. Some of the extreme KJVOs tend to be pantingly preoccupied with the devil's doings to the point of losing a humble reasonable and Christian perspective and making war on mere flesh and blood. However, I've never really liked the style of Credenda/Agenda either. There's a flippancy and jocularity to it that puts me off. (And a sort of artsy snobbism too). I'm glad to find them on the side of the KJV (really, the Textus Receptus), however, and hope they will continue to fight this particular fight.

Random thoughts on the KJV situation

Sometimes I ponder whether I should accept the KJV-only position that the English of 1611 was specifically inspired* by God and shouldn't be changed for any reason, even to update it so that the average person now might have fewer problems with it. What's compelling about this position is the idea that the KJV just IS the word of God and we aren't to tamper with the word of God.

But I can't stick with this position for long because it makes 1611 English into a special language, THE language of the Bible. It reminds me of the Jewish claim that Hebrew is God's own holy language, or the Muslim claim that Arabic is God's own language, and didn't the Roman church do the same with Latin at one time? There's a cultic superstitious and above all chauvinistic (cultural pride) feel to it that bothers me. In the case of the Hebrew and Arabic claims, there is the idea that special subtle God-given meanings lie embedded in the language that are not available to the rest of humanity. Perhaps something similar was claimed for Latin, I don't know, but they sure fought the idea of the people getting the Bible in their own language.

Now some KJV-only defenders go so far as to claim something similar for the English of the KJV. There are degrees of this position, the most extreme claiming that the English of the KJV is the true inspired language of God, even over the original Greek of the New Testament writers. The simplest version is just that God gave it so we shouldn't think of changing it. I do believe that in the KJV we definitely have God's inspired* word and I also believe that He providentially preserved it by means of the selection of the translators of the time. I can't say the same for any of the translations or versions that have come down from the Westcott and Hort revision. None are in that sense God's word at all. God's word has nevertheless been partially preserved in them almost in spite of themselves, but they are a corruption and should be thrown out.

But although I believe the KJV IS God's word as is, I also believe that it could be updated without losing its inspired* status, if the updating were done by men of the same caliber as the original KJV translators. As a practical matter I'm convinced this isn't going to happen, and even convinced that any such project in present circumstances would have far worse consequences than insisting on leaving it as is. But in principle I believe it could be properly done, so I'm not a 1611-English-only KJVO advocate. I believe the Lord gave His word to the entire human race and English simply happens to have been particularly blessed in the last few centuries. It is also true that the KJV makes a fine foundation for translations into new languages. But all this is merely God's providence in historical reality. That is, in fact the KJV is the perfect preserved Bible of our day, but in principle the perfect preserved Bible could just as well have been in the Chinese language as in English. Or Russian -- or updated English.

It does bother me that some KJV English words that aren't even archaic are nevertheless misread by many because they are not used by the average person now with the same meaning they had then. A couple of simple little examples are "mean" and "dumb." "Mean" in the KJV contexts I'm thinking of denotes: ...low in rank or birth; ...base; ...despicable. ... worthy of little or no regard. ...Of little value; humble; poor...

But an unwary modern reader may read it more like "cruel."

As for "dumb," surely we know in the KJV it means mute or unable to speak, as in "deaf and dumb," but I've heard it quite seriously explained to mean "mentally challenged."

These are the only two that come to mind, but there are others; one in particular I keep trying to remember but I'm afraid some of my Senior Moments are turning into Senior Months.

Those are reasons we might need to update the KJV anyway. Actually, I'd probably end up just wanting to see these words learned by readers rather than changing them.

=========================================================
Another thought that has been rolling around in my head is something Scott Johnson raised in his latest installment on the KJV: Why so many have been taken in by the new versions. It is a matter of spiritual discernment after all. If you have the Holy Spirit shouldn't you be able to recognize there is a problem there and reject them?

Well, yes, the power is certainly potentially there, but how many of us have completely put off the flesh? How easy is it for any of us to break out of a spiritual deception on our own? It was VERY hard for me to get out from under the charismatic movement for instance. And even after I knew the new versions were bad I gave in to the pressure of the Christian community around me to deny my own discernment. Pastors who accept the new versions are usually not only in a congregation of likeminded people but may be part of a community that includes their seminary colleagues, or a network of contacts within their denomination and so on, other men they admire, and often rightly so, for their exemplary Christian lives. These are all mutually reinforcing factors.

In my case the first recognition that the new Bibles were not to be trusted came just before I left the charismatics, having seen the errors there about the same time, which makes me think it helps a great deal to have at least one toe already out of the Door of Deception, as it were, in order to be open to the possibility that there is even more deception in your life than you had any idea could be so. I remember telling an elder in my charismatic church that I thought Gail Riplinger had something important to say, and getting the answer back that I needed to "test her fruit" because her book had produced the "bad fruit" of "divisiveness" in the churches. "That's not fruit!" I blurted out. That way of turning God's word against itself, so typical of charismatic thinking, had to be one of the last straws before I left that church. Truth does have a way of being a divisive influence against falseness.

I have to suppose that there is some degree of dissonance over the Bible versions in the spirit of anyone who has the Holy Spirit, perhaps at what you'd call a subliminal level, hardly noticeable, and of course we know we can drive the Spirit away too, by leaning too heavily unto our own understanding. I had a definite feeling of dissonance, an unease, a sort of grating feeling in my spirit, but I think I could have gone on in that condition to the end of my life if circumstances had never brought it to the surface of my mind.

Then too, we all have spiritual gifts in different proportions. Some have more of the gift of spiritual discernment than others do. We're the Body of Christ, composed of many members of many spiritual gifts and talents of all kinds and degrees. The ones who have it also have the responsibility to help those who don't have it, or have less of it.

And last, it may be that few of us pray enough these days, get alone with the Lord enough, fast to know His mind enough. God uses all these means to teach our spirits. If these means of grace were practiced with a serious commitment of time and concentration, we'd shake off the dullness of our spiritual condition in short order. Or, also, we just don't obey the commands enough to put on the full armor of God, test the spirits, guard our hearts, remain watchful. (I do think if we kept up the former -- prayer mostly -- it would be easier to keep up this latter too though. It all starts with looking to the Lord).

Real Christians are truly a sleeping giant, The power of God is potential in us, but what will wake us out of our sleep? What would get even a few of us to rise up as the body of Christ we are and confront the enemy who has been only too efficient at keeping us useless?
__________________________
*I realize later that "inspired" is the wrong word. Only that which God himself inspired in the original writer can be called "inspired." So I should say the translation of the KJV was "preserved" or "overseen" or "guided" by God.

Was America ever a Christian Nation?

Just had a brief discussion with a friend about whether or not the American founders were Christian, that made me realize that the question needs to be better defined.

If what we mean is that they were orthodox Christians, believers in the whole Bible as God's word, believers in the traditional Confessions and Creeds, at least the main names we think of as the Founders were not Christians, with at least the one exception of James Madison.

It is interesting that Madison is particularly revered by atheists when he may be the only born-again Christian among the founders. They claim him as their own because of his strong advocacy of separation of church from state, but they misunderstand: his interest was not in protecting the state from the church, but in preserving a pure church and a clear salvation message from the interference of the state.

John Adams was a Unitarian who denied the deity of Christ, Jefferson denied all the supernatural claims of the Bible, Benjamin Franklin found George Whitefield's preaching at the Great Awakening * (called at this link the "first") quite fascinating but he never gave in to the message. George Washington appears to have been more of a Mason than a Christian. It's possible he had a saving faith nevertheless, at least some claim so, but it isn't certain. We know he prayed, we know he attributed his successes in the Revolutionary War to God, and there were plenty of signs that God watched over him and his leadership.

It also depends on who is considered to have been one of the Founding Fathers. We usually think of the main names, but by some reckonings over eighty men can be counted as contributing importantly to the formation of the new nation. Among all those one would expect that at least a few of them would be true Bible-believing Christians.

But if what we mean is a basic Christian mindset, cultural Christianity, then all of them should no doubt be called Christians. If what counts is church attendance and the celebration of Christian holidays and the general observance of a Christian moral code, and an appreciation of the Christian heritage, including the Bible (not counting its supernatural revelations), then we can call the Unitarians and Deists among them Christians too. All of them belonged to a recognized Christian denomination.

So it depends on what we mean by "Christian" whether they were Christian or not. Is the point only to establish that the nation was culturally and more or less philosophically Christian? I think it wouldn't be hard to show that this is so based on the general thinking of the founding generation. Even John Locke's supposedly secular philosophy, from which the founders drew much of their inspiration, was Christian in its basic concepts. He'd studied under the Puritan John Owen. who had taught a strong line of religious tolerance between different Christian sects and denominations. Owen was a genuine Christian, whose books are still important guidance for Christians today, Locke may not have been a believer himself, but Locke certainly took much from his mentor.

In the most general sense, the philosophical sense, America can be called a Christian nation.

But it's also important to note that at least one preacher of the day felt the Constitution had ended up selling out the Christian cause. Can't remember his name at the moment.

On the side of a more genuinely believing Christian character of the nation is the fact that prayer was early on instituted in meetings of the Congress, at the suggestion of Benjamin Franklin. American government institutions have always acknowledged God since then. There was certainly a strong general sense that there is a God who is sovereign over nations, and He was honored and appealed to. This was often done "in the name of Jesus Christ" as well. Various Presidents over the years even called the nation to days of repentance, prayer and fasting for its protection. I doubt the nation could ever have been as successful as it was without that. The early public schools also used the Bible and Christian confessions and creeds as the basis for their curriculum. It's because this general acknowledgment and dependence on God has been waning, while violations of His Law have been more and more accepted, that the nation is now under Judgment. The National Cathedral today is also given over to every kind of false religion, pagan religions, anti-Christian religions, which shows the deterioration of the Christian mindset in the nation.

Whether individual American leaders were genuinely born-again believers is a separate question.

It's been a while since I've investigated all this and I don't know whether I'm going to follow it up beyond this much, but I wanted to get a few categories sorted out for any further discussion that may occur to me.

=================================================
* This Wikipedia article is not the best reference. I will try to find better ones later.

Later: Here's Jonathan Edwards' description of the Great Awakening in his part of New England.

Bad translation snares a good Bible teacher

Listening to a favorite preacher I'm having a problem with his use of one of the modern translations.

He's quoting Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 and instead of "the world was without form and void" he says "the world BECAME shapeless, empty and dark" and goes on to make much of how this supposedly reflects the fact that God doesn't make anything that isn't perfect, and how its becoming ugly and dark shows the entrance of sin into the world. Sort of as a parable of what was to come later.

But that point is pretty strained it seems to me, and the translation "became" isn't supported in any Bible version I have easy access to. All those at Blue Letter Bible, for instance, say it WAS without form and dark. The NIV, however, does have one of its famous footnotes at this point, saying it could possibly mean "became." Yeah, and Strong's has "become" as one of the possibilities too. So we're all made translators these days.

Why isn't it respected that eminent scholars and translators chose "WAS?" Why is the ordinary Christian given this option to translate the Bible over the experts who did so already? Especially the KJV scholars who were head and shoulders above the translators of any subsequent version, certainly above Westcott and Hort according to Dean Burgon who ought to know. So the ordinary preacher is given all this power to make judgments he's in no position to make, even if he learned some basic Greek in seminary. If Westcott and Hort's Greek was on the schoolboy level, as Burgon judged it, why should any pastor think his is any better than theirs? (This favorite Bible teacher I'm talking about did not go to seminary or Bible school, just for the record).

And then I have to ask why this Biblically grounded and highly spiritual teacher would go with a footnote anyway -- unless he's using a translation that's not on Blue Letter Bible's list. In any case it leads him into some questionable reasoning: God makes everything perfect so it MUST be that it was sin that brought the void and darkness at the beginning of creation. I'm afraid this is probably a case of his LIKING the idea of a certain kind of perfection, defending God's honor as it were, but really leaning to his own understanding. Happens all too easily to the human race. And the situation in which we're all invited to make our own decisions about what God really said certainly plays into this human weakness.

I dunno. Other explanations for the pre-world formlessness occur to me that don't challenge God's mastery. Anything in the first stages of existence might be describable as formless and void. How about the blastocyst stage before the embryo takes shape? In fact how about the early embryo itself, that doesn't yet show the form of the creature it is going to become? In fact I also think of stages of cooking, simple chemical operations. The first stages are pretty formless before the egg in a sauce thickens it or a cake emerges from the batter. I'm sure the same thing is true in chemistry in general. Or how about the example of the formless lump of clay before it becomes pottery? The biblical image of the Creation is of the Holy Spirit brooding over this unformed earth to bring it to birth, which even the human creator imitates in making something from unorganized material.

As usual, just because he has spiritual sense and basic Biblical knowledge, this preacher is able to go on to make valid points about the effects of sin and especially the sin of pride, even spiritually powerful points, but in relation to the Bible it's more of a rescue operation than a true building on the word of God, but of course the preacher who doesn't have Biblical grounding or spiritual sense has no hope of getting on track at all.