The inspiration and authority of the Bible, particularly concerning its translation, is the central theme. The sermon explores the challenges and nuances of translating ancient texts into modern languages, emphasizing the importance of retaining the original sense and effect. It delves into the historical development of Bible translations, from the original manuscripts to modern versions, highlighting the difficulties posed by linguistic differences, cultural shifts, and the passage of time. The core lesson is that while no translation is perfect or permanent, a faithful translation should aim to convey the original meaning and impact, urging listeners to approach translations critically by consulting original languages and reputable scholarship.
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The first one by Edward J. Young entitled, Thy Word is Truth, the book published by Erdman's Publishing Company and is extremely helpful on the subjects which we have been discussing this week. I'll just briefly give you a table of contents. They discuss the issue before the church and in that chapter they point out that the issue before the church is what does the Bible, what is the biblical view of inspiration. The issue before the church is not what are people holding on inspiration, but what does the Bible teach on inspiration. Then the extent of inspiration, the human writers of the Scripture, some reflections upon inspiration.
What is inerrancy? Are there errors in the Bible? Does it matter how we approach the Bible? Some modern views of the Bible and the Bible and salvation. This has been a very helpful book, and I would recommend it highly. We'll leave it on the back table. You can jot down the title and the author, publisher, if we don't have it. You can ask in the book room for it. They can get it for you if they don't have it, and they'll mail it right to your home. The second one is a classic by Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield. who's been professor of didactic and polemic theology in the theological seminary of Princeton from eighteen eighty seven to nineteen twenty one this is entitled the inspiration and authority of the Bible and is extremely reliable and useful it's quite quite goes into quite a lot of scholarly detail but you'll find this very helpful it just has eight chapters the biblical idea of inspiration the church doctrine of inspiration Then another chapter further discussing, I'm sorry, the first was the biblical idea of Revelation, then this third chapter, the biblical idea of inspiration, the real problem
of inspiration, the terms Scripture and Scriptures as employed in the New Testament, then God-inspired Scripture, then a discussion of the three statements in Scripture. It says, Scripture says, and God says. And in the last chapter, a discussion of the expression in Scripture, the oracles of God. I highly recommend both of these books as being reliable and authoritative in the doctrine of God's Word. Okay, we'll find a couple thumbtacks back there.
Not up in our... Excuse me, it seems to be up in the wall here, what is it? Five hundred days. It's a rather attacking situation. Yes, please don't attack me. And you have a blank sheet of paper that you can fill in this chart in when we come to this. The question that we have been considering the past two days is the inspiration of the Word of God.
and the canonization, that is the fact that these very words we have are God-breathed, and these are the ones that we have. Now it's very possible that God has inspired a book, but we didn't get the book. And so yesterday we considered the fact of the canonization or the fact that we do have the inspired book. But we know that God didn't speak in English. And we understand in English, if a man speaks in an unknown tongue, who's edified? And the reason that I'm giving this particular workshop on translation is not because I know Hebrew and Greek, but because of my ignorance of the language.
We're not textual critics here this morning, and we want this workshop to be practical for you. And that's why the problems of translation come to us. Now, I've jotted down some definitions, as you'll see, under number one. What do we mean by the word translation? To translate is to turn from one language into another, retaining the same sense. You see, words are the vehicle we use to carry a thought, but it's the thought that's the important thing.
And if time changes and the meaning of the word changes, we don't want the meaning of the thought to change. We want to retain the same sense that God, the very thoughts, that God brought into the minds of the inspired writers is what we want to receive in our mind. You've heard the expression in recent years, high fidelity. Everything is high fidelity. What does it mean? High fidelity. What is something that's, what does fidelity mean? Truthfulness, you see, the first fidelity bank.
It's a truthful bank. And we want high fidelity in our translation. In other words, when you put a record on your record player, it comes out in a high degree of truth as to what was put on to that record. And God has written a record by inspiration into the minds of men, and he's used them to send out the words. Now we want to receive from the speaker so that in our minds we receive the very same thought that the Holy Spirit brought into the inspired writers. So to translate is to turn from the one language into another language retaining the very same sense.
Now the second here, it's system of verba, the very words of Scripture. This is important. In contradistinction to the very words of Scripture, we have paraphrase. And to paraphrase something is to tell the same thing in other words. And explanatory, or you can say expanded translation, is to give the full meaning by addition of words, not in the autographs, as well as the sense when translating.
In other words, they may have a word for house, which means a temporary place like a hotel. And yet it may be the word that would correspond to our word house. when you see then we want to bring that in a temporary house or perhaps they have a word that speaks of a house which is permanently built or a word for a house that isn't permanently built or some of these things and in the expanded translation we add these other words to it although they are not actually there in the original autographs a modern version doesn't mean a version written by a modernist.
It means a translation into the common language of the time. We'll say a word about that later. Septuagint. It is the Greek version of the Old Testament made by seventy Jews about two sixty BC. It got its title, Septuagint, from the fact that there were seventy Jews or at least so tradition tells us. I believe tradition says there were seventy-two Jews that did it in seventy-two days out on an island. Textus receptus, the received text of the New Testament.
The autograph, auto of course, means self. The autograph is something written by the author himself. Now, with these definitions in mind, what is a good way to criticize, for you and me, to criticize a new translation when we receive it? Not only of the Bible, but any translation must not sound like a translation. It mustn't sound as though it were written in, you know, in another language, it's like when a Phil Bombard and the other Pennsylvania Dutchmen say, throw the horse over the fence, some hay.
It doesn't sound like English. It sounds as though you had said it in another language and then just turned it into English. And a good translation shouldn't sound like a translation. And secondly, it shouldn't seem like a translation. You shouldn't feel as though somebody is repeating to you something that he heard from someone else. It should seem as though you're actually hearing the other person speak. In other words, the translator's personality shouldn't come into it. Now, as an example of this, some translations are very British.
If you have Arthur Way's translation, which I enjoy very much, it's very British. He just has those little expressions in there that I can feel his personality in it. rather than the original writers. Now, to a Britisher, perhaps it wouldn't seem that way. But to me, I feel it. A good translation shouldn't seem like a translation. And third, and most important, it must produce the same effect as it did on the original hearers. So keep those three things in mind. It mustn't sound like a translation or seem like a translation, and it must produce the same effect that it was originally given for.
All right, now what are some of the difficulties that we run into when we come to translation? And these are things that you can think of right off by yourself. First of all, there is no word at all. There's no word at all. in your language which you can carry over from that language. For instance, the word saint is a word that we've just had to bring over. We don't have it. And of course, we are thinking primarily of translation into English into the more primitive languages as the missionaries, such as the Wycliffe translators go out.
into South America, especially where they're working today. There's so many words that are in Scripture that there's just no comparable word because the society hasn't progressed to a position where they need these type of words. There's no word at all. Silah, for instance, is an example in the book of Psalms. What is the English word for Silah? There isn't an exact English word for it. Some translated as Amen, some translated as Hallelujah, some translated as, well, think of that.
In that case, we've used several words to try to get the meaning. But there is no exact word comparable in our language to the word Selah. Then secondly, there is no exact synonym. There may be words that convey almost the same thought, but not entirely. Therefore you have to use two or three words to make it just that one word. For instance, the word if. What does the word if mean? It can be used in a very iffy sense. And yet it can be used in a sense not of condition, but of sense.
The word by can be used in the sense of actually going by a place around it, or it can be used in going through it. I came up here by Westminster. I came up here through Westminster, and I mean the same thing. Or I might say, well, I came up by Westminster, and I mean I bypassed Westminster. So there are other words that need to be fitted in to explain it. No exact synonym. And then we come to the language itself and its structure. A lot of things, differences in case and gender and articles and prepositions and pronouns, which vary.
There are other things that you can look up and you can see how the structure of the language varies. The tense of the verb. We don't have the same kind of tense. And therefore we get a wrong implication from it. It may mean continuing thing, and it may mean an act which is totally completed. We don't have a similar tense. These things bring difficulty. Then there may be a difference in the physical structure of the way it's written out. Certain letters that are capitalized. Rules of capitalization aren't international, they vary.
And the punctuation as it's put in, you put a period in one place and you put a period in another place, can change it entirely. And then in the spacing of the words, this can vary. The original, the oldest manuscripts that we have, we don't have the original, but the oldest ones, are in courses. There's no space. They run right along. Well, who's to decide whether the word belongs in one verse or whether it belongs in the next verse? This is a difficulty that brings about the differences in our translations.
All right. Not only is there a difficulty in the language, but there's also a difficulty in the time. Recently, the works of Eric Sauer were translated into English. Well, they'd been written in German. And some of the translations sound like a translation. Some of the parts of it seem like a translation. But if there was a question that came up as to what he meant, you could ask Eric Sauer. He died just recently. Now you see, we can't do this in our translation.
We don't have, we have a tremendous period of time here so that we can't speak to the author. Furthermore, because of the period of time, we can't even speak to the contemporaries of the author. Now the author himself would be the one that could tell you exactly what he meant. I enjoy reading stories about what some of these great operas or of pieces that some of the musical men have composed of exactly what Brahms had in his mind when he wrote this and so on. Well, they're making it up. They don't know. You exactly wanted to know what Brahms had in his mind.
You'd have to ask Brahms. When you see a piece of modern art by Picasso, You get all kind of weird ideas of what it means. Who would know what he meant to express? He didn't express anything, but what did he mean to express? Well, Picasso would be the one. They say, oh, he was showing a thunderstorm as it roared out. Someone else says he was showing a peaceful pasture in the sunshine. Who decides it? Picasso, he's the authority. You see, our authorities, our originals are gone. But if you couldn't get Picasso, who would be the next likely person?
Well, a close contemporary friend of his. You couldn't say this is absolutely authoritative, but at least you could say, well, this is probably right. But you see, our contemporaries are gone. We must keep these things in mind of why we are getting different translations. Then, too, the tremendous period of time that has elapsed. there aren't thousands and thousands of manuscripts around. There are few of them. In one way this is a difficulty, in one way it is a help. And then, because of time, there have been changes in the material.
First of all, there have been mechanical changes, where a scribe has been copying down. And as he wrote along, He's made a mistake. Now, I think my secretary understood that I was going to give this workshop, I guess, so you won't see lines and all left out as there were yesterday. But that was a mechanical mistake. She answered the telephone when she came back, why she left out a couple lines. And so we can see the early months as they were copying this and the telephone rang and they ran off to it.
When they came back, they missed a line or they missed a word or they looked at a letter and perhaps I was the one who was writing they were copying and they were sure it was one letter and it was another. And so we have mechanical, there was no intentional will on the part of the scribe to change it. Then secondly, we have ecclesiastical, where there has been an intentional will, certain people have set up a form of belief. Then someone says, well, look, you say you believe the Bible, it says that Abraham was justified by faith.
Well, we'll fix that up. And so we change a few things. We put something in. We change it a little. That's an ecclesiastical change. And this is handed down then in time and is given an opportunity. And then in time we get revision. This is necessary. The material has to be revised to the words of the time. Then another difficulty is the customs. As customs change, idioms change.
Expressions that we use. You say, brother, that's a cool cat today. When I was young, I mean, when my youth was less matured, we used to say, brother, that's a hot one. The exact opposite word. You see, and yet we meant the same thing. They are idioms. And due to the customs of the times, if we were a hotter generation or a cooler, I don't know, it changes. And these things occur in Scripture. We're going to see an example of that. As a dentist, we're going to pull some teeth this morning.
And then illustrations change. The Lord Jesus Christ, as He spoke, about fishing and so on. He was in an agricultural society. And the illustrations, an illustration is to bring out a point. And he used illustrations of its day. He spoke of the rich farmer. Today he'd have to speak of a farmer not filling his barn but going down to Washington to get a subsidy. You see, times have changed. and therefore the illustration changes. And someone comes along and says, well, you know, that illustration doesn't mean that now, so I'll put in an illustration that conveys the same thought, you say.
And we have changes then. All right. And then the personality is important in the translator. The personalities of the inspired writers themselves varied. John and his loving warmth, you can hear him say, God is love. James in his sternness and so on, and you see it in the book of James, double-minded. Why? That man with a double mind, he's unstable in all his ways.
And so because of the difference in the personality of the authors, if we have one translator, a translator will have one type of personality, and it may make him difficult. If he's a stern old brother that's translating, he'll put more into James and maybe drop a little out of John, or vice versa. He's a free-going, and after all, God is love, and we can drop a little of this wrath business. So we see if, because of the differences in the author's personalities and the difference in the translator's personalities, the differences that are arrived at in our translations.
We have the liberal and the conservative. Now then, The question arises, where did we get our Bible that we have today? Where did it come from? Well, we've jotted down some things here that I hope will be helpful to you. It's a very simple chart. It's not claiming to put in all of the translations by any means. But I want to get this fact across that the original manuscripts are lost. We do not have a single, by the way, this is the New Testament mainly, we do not have a single original manuscript.
How recently? That is, is this something that happened in the late century or? Oh, no, no. This is something that apparently because the full fact of their canonicity, their value, you see, wasn't realized. They were not kept. But these original manuscripts were copied and were sent to the different churches. And just as you go into a synagogue and you find what they call the Holies of Holies, they have a little cabinet up in the front here where they keep their... scrolls and so on, and their books.
So in the early assemblies that were formed, they had their chests where they kept the writings. Most of the people were illiterate, but they kept these writings here. Books were very scarce. It's hard for us, as we walk along and throw newspapers on the ground and everything else, a candy wrapper has printing on it, it's hard for us to realize... that you couldn't print things in those days, and writing was scarce, and it was precious. Of course, there were libraries way back in Abraham's day. Archaeologists have found libraries. These things were written, and they had writings, but they were not plentiful as we have them today.
The originals that were copied and were passed out to other churches, and as Brother Landis pointed out yesterday, the councils that met didn't make them canon, but they recognized that they already were canon, that the various churches had them and were believing them and were accepting them as the very word of God. And all they did was agree that, yes, this is so. So these things were passed out. Well, these were lost. We don't know in exactly what century, but no doubt in either the first or second. I think there's a purpose why they were lost. If they hadn't been lost, if we had the first edition of each one of these books, one person could have monopolized them, one person could have changed them, one person could have controlled it, and furthermore it could have been worshipped.
And it's not that. We don't know where the grave of the Lord Jesus Christ was. We don't have the wood of the cross. You see, the word of God is not what's printed. If I give you my word, I'm going to give you ten dollars tomorrow morning at ten o'clock. I say, this is my word. And I write it down on a piece of paper, and I give it to you. Now, it doesn't matter whether you tear that piece of paper up or not. I've given you my word.
You may refuse to believe it, but my word stands. Now if something happens to me, if I die before tomorrow morning, that's the end of my word. I'm mortal, my word is mortal. God is eternal and his word is eternal. And if you collected all the Bible, every single copy of the word of God in the world and burned it up, you wouldn't change God's word. He's given his word that when a man dies, judgment's going to follow, and nothing is ever going to change it. He's given his word that when we believe on Jesus Christ, we have eternal life.
You can burn up all the Bibles that say it, but it doesn't change God's word. So the fact that we don't have these original manuscripts doesn't mean that we don't have that his word has lost its value and authority. But we do have other manuscripts. We have three old manuscripts that date back in the first century here, just a little after the first century. And we have the writings of the fathers who quoted from these original manuscripts. We have an example of that in the Bible, where Peter says, as our dear beloved Paul has said, There were quotes, you say.
And we have the entire New Testament in the writings of the fathers. Now you have to sort it out, but it's all in the writings of the fathers. And then we have versions of these manuscripts at that day. And from these manuscripts, there was one that the Vatican had, the Vatican manuscripts, And these versions, the Church of Rome brought out in the fourth century the Vulgate, which is the Latin translation. They translated into the Latin, and that was taken as the Bible, and that came on down until here in the ninth century, you had the first Anglo-Saxon translation of the from the Vulgate now.
You see, this is a direct line. They just took the Vulgate, the Latin, and they translated it into Anglo-Saxon. Just as some people today look at the King James as though it were the original, so the Vulgate was looked at as the original. It was translated into Anglo-Saxon. And from this Anglo-Saxon, Wycliffe made his translation in the fourteenth century. You see here, from the ninth to the fourteenth was five hundred years. The Anglo-Saxon language had changed tremendously so that these people in this day couldn't understand that.
And Wycliffe then brought out his translation, but it was translated, you see, down the line. from the Vulgate and the Anglo-Saxon. All right, then we come to Tyndale down here in the sixteenth century, the seventeen hundreds, and he not only used the Latin Vulgate translation, but he drew from manuscripts too. But they were manuscripts of a later time. They were not these earliest manuscripts. You see, all this time, while we had translations in Latin, out in the monasteries, these manuscripts were being recopied and recopied and recopied and recopied.
And Tyndale translated from manuscripts that dated at the tenth century. So you see, in all this copying and recopying, we got in those mechanical eras and we got in those ecclesiastical eras. Any revision that was done was over here in the Vulgate. Then from Tyndale, we come to Coverdale, then the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, and there we reached a period then when they started bringing out a number of translations, and it was a question of which is true and which isn't.
And so King James, who was the head of the English church said, well, I will authorize someone to translate. Well, of course, he wasn't the first authorized, but we've started in the seventeenth century to have a translation authorized by the head of the Church of England, the rulers of England. And of course, the most famous is the King James Version. So when we use the word authorized, It doesn't refer to the fact that it was authorized by the apostles. It was authorized by a king.
And some people have gotten a mistaken idea that King James is the pen name of St. Paul. It isn't. It was authorized by a worldly king. All right, now then, from the authorized then, at the end of the nineteenth century, just before the twentieth century, we had the first revised version that called upon all the manuscript knowledge that we had between this time between the authorized in sixteen eleven when the king james first came out and this revised version the english revised Two other manuscripts have been found, so we now have three very old manuscripts.
The reason we know that they are extremely old is because they're written in Corsive Greek. There's no space between the letters, no paragraphs or anything. It just runs right one word into the next. And this was the way the oldest were written. And now with carbon dating and so on, carbon- fourteen, we can prove the age of these things too. So we had these three and all these other manuscripts. And now today with photography, we've gotten copies of these and scholars all over the world have access to many manuscripts, which has been a tremendous help.
Now you see, when they made this translation here in sixteen eleven, You can be sure the Pope in Rome wasn't letting any filthy Protestant hands touch the one manuscript that was available. But through the grace of God, that other manuscript was found very interesting of how one was almost burned up. This man of God came searching for it and got it just before the monks had already started to burn some of the pages and how he bought it. Very thrilling. Get the book, there is a book by this title, How We Got Our Bible. and other books by R.A. Torrey, and see how God did bring about the preservation of these other two so that we have two of these three oldest manuscripts in England and one in Rome today.
But the photos of the one in Rome are available to Protestants today. I guess it proves the popes are getting soft. So you see your revision then down there is the first one that drew upon the three oldest manuscripts, drew upon the other versions, and drew upon the writings of the fathers. Because if you have one of these manuscripts that have a verse written one way, and you have it quoted that very same way, in one of the early church fathers, but the version has it differently, you can be sure that you've got two to one there.
You see, you have something to go by, and you can trace back and figure that the version was in the era. Now, are there any questions you'd like to ask? A big one, three on difficulty. B personality is the number two translator. We have a liberal or conservative. Michael, what is the scholarship that you're in with these liberals and conservatives? In their personality. But doesn't scholarship matter?
Wilderman is a liberal or a conservative, isn't a scholar going to... There's no such thing as an impartial judge, if that's what you're trying to say. There is no such thing as an impartial judge. Now here is a word for which there is no exact word for it, say. Now where there's an exact word, there's no question. Now there are those, we're going to look at some things here in just a little while, which perhaps will help clear this up.
There are those that say, well if a man is liberal, you can throw away all this translation. That's ridiculous. These men are scholars, many of them, and are honest. But there are certainly people like Mary Baker Eddy who haven't been honest in their translation. And others of the Jehovah's Witness, you've probably seen their Bible, which is practically worthless because of their personality, which they have brought in. They have just simply turned the Scripture to their own purpose. And scholarship can prove them wrong.
But there are points where we cannot say, this man is wrong because this word is known to mean this. It doesn't. And we have not only the era, let's look at an era here in Romans, for instance. This is your King James Version now, the Book of Romans, beginning of the eighth chapter. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.
And this verse plainly teaches that if you walk after the Spirit, there isn't any more condemnation. But this isn't true. Let's look at another translation. This happens to be the New English Bible. I wonder if I could hand some of these out here in this first row, and maybe we could look up some of these verses. This is the Letters of St. Paul. I suggest you have at least a half a dozen translations in your library. This is the Letters of St. Paul by Harvard Way. One of the most poetical translating something. Very good.
I think he goes a little extreme in some things. This is the New Testament in modern English by David Phillips. Now both of these translations are paraphrases in many places. The men feel that they have the truth and therefore they are doing that. Here is Honeybears, the epistles of St. Paul. And here is the Roman Catholic Bible. Every one of you here have one of these. The tremendous increase in Roman Catholicism in this country means that you are going to be in contact with Roman Catholics.
They accept this as the word of God. And if you have one of these, you can speak to them far more effectively. You'll show them from your scripture, how they can be changed by faith. They keep a reservation in their mind. They say, well, that's your Bible. Our heart is different than that. You turn to the front of this book and show them the focus of the last thing on it, and show them this is your life. This is a word of hope. Don't be afraid of you. The Con Fraternity New Testament, I suggest, here. Con Fraternity New Testament, not a duet.
Now the duet, for instance, is an extreme example of the ecclesiastical change, where you put the word penitent and so on. But you see it didn't hold up in scholarship. Now if they could have kept all the original, they could have fooled us with that. But you see, because the Spirit was talking about them to do that. And so the pre-canthical error was straightened back. This is the RFC, the revised standard version. We're going to say more about that. This is the amplified. This is one of those explanatory things where perhaps there is a word in the original autograph, but they feel this word means it, so therefore they expand.
Now, especially in an explanatory translation, is where this liberal and conservative comes in. In a translation such as the Revised Standard Version, which is held up to the entire world, this conservative and liberal scholarship has to stay pretty close together. But when you get into an expanded translation, you get into what the word means to me. When God says he must be born again, well, that means you need to have a turn over a new leaf.
That's all it means, say. And I expand on it in my translation. All right, now let's have that Romans eight verse one in the new English here. Listen. The conclusion of the matter is that there is no condemnation for those who are united with Christ Jesus. Because in Christ Jesus, the life-giving law of the Spirit has set you free from the lost and the dead. You see, this is salvation by faith, not by works. Where did they get that expression to those that walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit?
Look down at the end of your fourth verse. This is what you call an interpolation. It was sort of like my girl did yesterday when she put that other word in when she left out a line. She put in half of another line that she'd already written down. That the righteousness of the law may be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. You see, that's where it should be. And the original, as they get back into the older manuscripts, and the writings of the Father, they find no authority whatever for putting that word in the first verse. And it certainly doesn't fit with the rest of Scripture. For we're not free and justified in God's sight because we walk after the Spirit, but because we're born of the Spirit.
But those that do walk in the Spirit do fulfill the law. All right. So we want to make another point here in these conclusions. First of all, no translation is perfect. And here's an example in the King James of that. Secondly, no translation is lasting. Languages continually change. People in Greece today don't speak the Greek of the New Testament. Now let's look at that.
Matthew twenty-seven forty-four. I told you we were going to pull some teeth. Matthew twenty-seven and verse forty-four. Can I have it in the way, Matt? Listen quickly. How about Phillips? Someone that has it in another translation, read Matthew twenty-seven forty-four. And the robbers also that was crucified with him cast upon him the same reproach. Another one?
Next. Yeah. Oh, true. Paul slipped up and didn't write Matthew. So you see here now we're going to pull some teeth. The word tooth isn't in here at all. Nowhere at all. But what did it mean? Well, in sixteen eleven to cast the same in your teeth meant to heap the same insult upon a person.
You see? But these idioms have changed and they don't mean that today. So here somebody's put something in about teeth. And I, as a dentist, I might get up and give a long message on how you shouldn't cast things in your teeth. It's not here. So what must we realize then, as we've put on to here under specific considerations, the final court of appeal is to the absissima verba. You see, the final debate on doctrine we cannot have on the amplified New Testament. I can't sit down and say, well, I'm saved by faith because look at how the amplified New Testament goes into it, you see.
It goes back to the very words of Scripture, the very arrangement of the words in Scripture. For the arrangement of the words in the original language had a purpose, even as the arrangements, the way we arrange our words in English, have a purpose. For instance, a word only. Only John can go. There only has a very specific meaning, but if we move it to an effort, John only can go. Well, perhaps that has a different shade of meaning. John can go only, say. And so we move the words around, they can change.
So we have to go back to the very words of Scripture in their original language, if we're going to get down to argue over a doctrine. So for this purpose, the literal translation is indispensable. But notice this. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that the word of God was spoken to Matt in general, not to theologians. Therefore, it must be in words that communicate with him. For it follows that belief must depend upon having heard the message.
The only message possible is the proclamation of the Messiah. You see, it's all very fine for some monks up on the hill to have something written in a language that they can understand. But the Word of God came to people. Who did the prophets prophesy to? Why, the Word of God came unto me and said, Go to the house of Israel and prophesy. Who did Jesus Christ speak to? He spoke to the multitudes on the hillside. Who were the letters written to?
They were written to the church with the elders and deacons. You see, the word of God has to be in the language which we can understand. Therefore, we must continually be having revisions, bringing it into the language which reaches me, so that the very sense that was meant to them will have the same effect in my life. in order to keep these versions, as idioms and customs change and illustrations vary, to keep these true and not change and keep changing in another direction. We have to go back to the original. Now let me point out, I'd like to mention a few things so that perhaps it'll help us in our discussions.
I think a very practical thing One of the things that has been talked about greatly was when the RSV came out just a short time ago. We can probably all remember when the RSV came out. There have been many pamphlets written against it. And here's what I'd like to read to you, and how can we judge then what to do with a translation? I'm not a translator. I can't say, well, the RSV is right or the RSV is wrong, because I don't know the Hebrew and Greek. But here are four things that can gauge me. I have a Strong's, and you can get a Strong's or a Young's Concordance, and that will give me a Greek word and its meaning, until you can get a lexicon so that you can look it up and get the meaning of the word.
And then you can take men of known faith and scholarship and look at their writing about it and then read the introduction of the translators themselves. Now here's a man of known faith and veracity of known scholarship, Barnhouse. And what does he have to say? He says, I've heard a great deal about the new revised standard version of the Bible during the past months and have found some people who are fanatically against it and some people who are fanatically for it. I've put a very telling question to many of them, have you read it completely? And he goes on down and sees the things that are mentioned here.
The book was issued with the approval of the National Council of Churches. Many men who want to be looked upon favorably in the eyes of the leaders of the NCC cried out with a loud voice and bowed toward Mecca. and accepted the RSV as a faithful follower of Islam, accepts Koran without having seen it. Others accustomed to damning anything that has the stamp of the NCC, cried out with an equally loud voice and condemned the book, often with no more knowledge of its contents than if the word Alma had been rendered young woman. And so he goes through and he defends it. very strongly in most of its position.
He doesn't say that it's perfect. And he says this, I do not believe the RSV will generally supplant the King James Version in public worship. And I agree with him on that. Now, the New English Bible has just come out, I believe it was two months ago that it came out, and I want to point out some of the type of criticism that comes out against it. And you, although not Greek scholars, can certainly judge this person. First of all, he is comparing it strictly to the King James Version, as though the King James Version were the Ipsissima verba. And this is what he says.
There is no more beloved verse than John three sixteen. The KJV reads, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that he who ever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. The Neb, the New English Bible reads, God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son that everyone who has faith in him may not die but have eternal life. Number one, forgotten has been removed from its relationship to the only Son. as it testifies to the deity of Christ. But is the word begotten in the Ipsism of Verba, or is it in the King James?
Point number two, has faith in him takes the place of the word believable in him and represents a basic shift in the translation and emphasis upon belief. has faith in him, takes the place of believeth in him, and represents a basic shift in the translation and emphasis upon belief. Who says so? To me the word faith has more weight than the word believe. Now he doesn't say the Greek word is, which definitely means believe.
and is used in and quote from various places in Greek literature where this Greek word is used as believe. But he says in the King James it says believe, so therefore it's a shift. And he goes on, May not die replaces should not perish. The word may does not give full assurance but leaves considerable doubt. The Bible does not teach this. No references, no quotes. Parish too is the fuller word. Well, who says so? Die has more value to the average person today than perish. You see, it's a complete comparison to the King James.
And so he goes down through, some of the things are absolutely ridiculous, and a few of them are very worthwhile considerations. He mentions that they change the word Christ to the word Messiah. The word Messiah... is not a more understood word than the word Christ. The real word is anointed, and they should have put the English word anointed, and it would have far more value to us today. So I point these out for your approach to the criticism of a new translation. Sit down with your concordance.
Look up the word, look up the Greek word. Get a lexicon, look it up. Look at the scholarship of the men and see if it all fits together. I have some different tracks here, astounding facts concerning the King James Version, and perhaps some of those who are leading the discussion groups would care to have some of these. to help in the discussion. They're all quite interesting. They brought out a tract entitled Astounding Facts about the Revised Standard Version. It wasn't about the version at all.
It was all about the affiliations and beliefs of the people that translated it. So this person brought out an astounding fact about the King James Version, and it's not about the King James Version at all. It's about the people who translated the King James Version. and the translators of the King James Version were the modernists of their day. You see, there were two groups in that day, and we had the official Bible, a bishop's Bible, and it wasn't received by the people. And some fanatic went over and translated it into the words of the people, and the people took it in. Therefore, King James said, well, we'll authorize a version and it'll stop this.
And you know the ones that authorized, the men who were authorized to do it with a modernist, the liberal group of their day. But their scholarship was not poor. And that's what matters in the end analysis. What set the Lord. So perhaps you've had discussions in your assembly or in other groups about the translation of the word Alma. and some of these other things and be interesting to get together and hash them over with one another today. You're dismissed now.