Gooding, David: 7 - Why do Bible Translations Differ?

And very comforted by the notes that you are to be rewarded tonight and rescued from fainting after this lecture by a cup of tea. You will surely need it because tonight we have to deal with very details and some rather astute technicalities. But anything that concerns the word of our blessed Lord is surely dear to our hearts, and we count it no trouble too much to be interested in his word and to be among those who understand how it came down to us and how it has been preserved. Now, in former evenings, we have been reminding ourselves that in the Bible we have God's revelation to mankind, and the contents of that revelation have been secured to us because all scripture is given by inspiration of God. God inspired both the men whom he chose to preach his revelation, and those, uh, men again, when he required them to write it down. We have also asserted that God's inspiration of his servants, the apostles and prophets, to write his word resulted in that he gave up verbal, verbally inspired Holy Scripture. The question, therefore, eventually arises in the minds of many believers. If the Bible is God's inspired, God's verbally inspired word, why are there so many different translations, and why do they differ, and why can't they all say exactly the same thing? Tonight I want to make my little contribution towards the answering of that question. Answering the question why do the Bible translations differ, will involve me in explaining two major areas of biblical study. The first one is called textual criticism, and I'm aware that those words, particularly the second of them, criticism, sounds very bad in the ears of many believers. It sounds as if that we are talking about criticizing the Bible, that no reverent believer would ever dream of doing. Uh, that, however, would be a misunderstanding of the term. What textual criticism is concerned with is the study of the manuscripts of the Bible. There are, as we saw on an earlier occasion, very many manuscripts of the, the New Testament. Let me remind you immediately of their large number. Total number of manuscripts of the New Testament, in part or whole, is somewhere about five hundred— five thousand three hundred and sixty six. There are also quotations in the early church fathers in the second and third centuries AD, so many, in fact, as they would be sufficient to reconstruct the whole of the New Testament except the eleven verses. And then there are early translations into other languages. Excuse me a moment while I put off the light. There are, uh, early translations into other languages, but of course, when they are retranslated into Greek, can show us what was on the manuscripts that the translators used when they translated those early copies of the New Testament. In all, then, about twenty thousand manuscripts of one kind and another of the New Testament. And textual critics are people that give themselves to the study of these manuscripts. As I told you the other night, I am not an expert in the textual criticism of the New Testament, though, of course, I know one or two little things about it. I am, however, a textual critic, so that I'm sure you'll still give me a cup of tea and a bun afterwards. I am an Old Testament textual critic, concerned not so much with the manuscripts of the New Testament, but with the manuscripts of the Old Testament, but concerned to do the same kind of work, to study those manuscripts and to discover as best we can what exactly was in the originals when they were written down. You say, why do we need to study them like that? The simple answer is this, that, uh, we in the first place do not, uh, possess the original manuscript. That is, we do not possess the actual pieces of paper, papyrus it was, on which, say, Paul wrote his epistles. We do not any longer possess the original pieces of paper that Matthew used when he wrote his gospel, and so for all the other books of the New Testament. The originals, the autographs, as we call them, have long since perished. There are reasons for that, of course. The originals were written on papyrus, and that is a very fragile material. I- it, uh, uh, it was originally grown mostly in Egypt, and then when it was turned into a kind of paper for writing on, then in Egypt it, uh, tended to last longer than elsewhere because they do not have much rainfall. And when old manuscripts were discarded and buried in the sand heap, they were preserved because there was very little moisture in the sand heap. But in European countries, uh, papyrus much more easily disintegrates. And the second re- reason is that when Paul wrote his letter, say, to Colossae, and gave instructions that this letter was to be read also in the church of the Laodiceans, you will imagine the many eager hands that were stretched out to take hold of this papyrus, and please can I take it home and read it to myself? Or my grandmother couldn't come to the meeting and she wants to read it, and Uncle George would like a copy. And then, of course, it had to be taken across to Laodicea, and it had to be read to them, and they all wanted to handle it and re- read it, and I don't know what. And you can imagine how those busy, eager hands handling the papyrus would eventually, of course, pull it to pieces, it being fragile material. Not, of course, before, doubtless, it was copied out many times. But then again, you can imagine when the early believers got a letter like that, and many of them could read, they would each want to take his own copy, and some of them would copy it well, and some of them not so well. I don't know whether you've ever tried to copy out a whole epistle by hand from your printed authorized version, for s- for instance. If you, uh, want something to do on a wet Monday afternoon, have a go at it, you'll see, and then leave it a day or two and come back and see whether you have copied it absolutely exactly, word for word, letter for letter, or whether you may have made a mistake or two. And I would almost guarantee to you, except you are a genius, you would, uh, uh, find that here and there there was a mistake or two. Uh, and then there's another reason, uh, why, uh, manuscripts, uh, in the early days peddled. In the persecutions under the emperors Valerian and Verus, um, the emperors sought to exterminate Christianity. No Roman emperor had been so bitter before in their persecution. But these later persecutions took the form that Christians were commanded to hand in their religious books, and the Roman authorities systematically destroyed them. The penalty for failing to hand in the religious books was death, of course, and that caused great searchings of heart amongst believers, which books were the real holy books of scripture that they must not surrender to be destroyed, must not do it for the sake of the Lord Jesus, and which religious books weren't holy scripture and, uh, needn't be handed over to the authorities, uh, could be handed over to the authorities, and it wouldn't matter if they demanded it. Now, the persecutions were bitter and severe, and many, many copies of Holy Scripture were destroyed. Thankfully, again, copies had been made and copies survived. But as, uh, you will see now, uh, the early autographs written by the apostles and the evangelists have perished. And you will find that when in later times the believers, uh, begin to compare the manuscripts they have of Bible books, say of the Acts or of the Epistle to the Romans, and they discover that there are differences between the manuscripts, and they want to know which is the correct original reading. They discuss it, some of them, in their writings, but never once do they appeal to the original autograph written by the biblical authors. They don't say, ah, the simple thing to do is to, well, they wouldn't ring up anybody, would they? But, you know, to to to to go to, um, Ephesus, say, or to somewhere else and get the actual original one that Paul wrote. That will settle it. Never do they say that, because in those later times already, the originals had perished, and all they had were copies. Now, as I say, there are over five thousand straight copies of the books of the New Testament, eh, let alone the, uh, quotations in the Church Fathers and early translations. And we have to, um, face the fact that in these thousands of manuscripts, when you look at them, there are literally thousands of differences. Let me tell you that, since I have professed openly to you my faith in the last evening that I believe in the inspiration of one of scripture one hundred percent and I believe in its verbal inspiration. Let me then tell you that in these thousands of manuscripts, when you look at them and compare them, there are thousands of differences. Some, most of them, are caused by mistakes in the copying out of the manuscripts. Here's an example, if you like, uh, to be reminded of it once more. Um, here's an example of how mistakes would, uh, come into the manuscripts. Here, as I showed the other night, is a beautiful manuscript. This is Tiny Ithacus, written in the fourth century, and doubtless it was a very expensive manuscript when it was written. It was written not on papyrus, but on vellum, that is animal skin, and that itself would have been very expensive. As is written, doubtless, by a professional scribe, because though that, uh, lettering looks so regular and beautiful, it is not printed, it is handwritten. You imagine if you were called upon to produce that aforesaid copy that you were going to do one Wednesday afternoon, or was it a wet Monday, and you were going to copy out an epistle. I wonder whether you could manage so regular handwriting. That is professionally written. But then you see at the top here, there are some lines, and there's a little arrow in the text here, and there is a, uh, well, let me point it out more clearly to you. There's an arrow here, you doubtless can't see it, and there's a little Greek word that says above, and they are pointing to these lines above because when the writer first wrote it out, he missed out those four lines accidentally, and someone later checking what he had written found he'd left it out and so added it at the top and indicated in the text here where it should be placed. But even in very expensive manuscripts, sometimes mistakes like that were made, accidental omissions occurred, and nobody noticed. So you'll find some very expensive manuscripts, and they've got gaps every now and again of words or lines that accidentally fell out. There were all sorts of other reasons why, and among there were, uh, why there were, were why differences occurred in the manuscript. Some of them, not so very many proportionately, but some of them were deliberate alterations for all sorts and kinds of reasons. So then there are thousands of differences. We have to face the facts. To these facts, there are two, uh, reactions that I find amongst, uh, believers, or not amongst believers, but amongst people in general. There is the one extreme, and this does come from believers. They say, we don't care what you say, you supposed experts, we believe God would have preserved his word in the copies of his scripture, absolutely without mistake, what they believe. The only answer you can give to such people is, well, read the manuscripts for yourself. It's all right to believe that God would have done it somehow and preserved all the manuscripts of the Bible without any mistakes in, but, uh, the actual fact is, when you come to the manuscripts, you will find thousands of differences between them. The other extreme comes from unbelievers, and they say, there you are, the New Testament has been copied out so many times, and there are so many differences in the manuscripts that you can no longer trust these manuscripts. You can no longer trust that we have in our Bibles what God intended us to have. That likewise is false. That is, in fact, nonsense. And let me tell you why that is nonsense. I remind you first that, uh, the copies for, uh, fourteen hundred years, the copies, all of them had to be copied out by hand. And you may praise God that they were copied out by hand and not printed. I'll tell you why. When you have to write out a manuscript, manuscript by hand, every one has to be separately written out. And of course, they were written out by many different scribes at different times from different copies all over the Roman and the Byzantine world. Consider what would happen to you, for instance, if tomorrow you had a copy of your beloved Anglian Daily Times or something. Well, that's printed, of course. And as you peruse it over your tea, toast, and marmalade in the morning, you discover a paragraph, and you can't really make sense of it. You say, just about here, it looks as if something has been left out or something. It, it comes to an end of a line and there's no full stop, and you start halfway. I, so another sentence, I think there's something wrong with this. I'll go next door and see his Anglian times. So you take your paper next door and you say, ah, Mrs. Smith, my dear, I think my Anglian times is left a bit out here accidentally. Can I see your Anglian times? And Mrs. Smith will say, but my Anglian times is the same as your Anglian. Of course it is. Came off the same printing press. And the only way you could possibly find out what the re- real original was is you could take the thing up to the head office of wherever it is and see what the editor originally wrote and compared it with what you have in your current paper. Because when it left his hand, it went to the printing press, and every copy coming off the printing press is exactly the same. So you'd have no means of checking if you couldn't get hold of the editor. Whereas where every single manuscript was written out by different people at different times on different copies, well, even though they made mistakes, they didn't all make the same mistake, mercifully. You see? Ha, that's nice, isn't it? Because now you can compare all five thousand plus of them and look at them. You'll find some share the same mistakes, like naughty book school boys who've been copying off the next door neighbor or something, but, uh, uh, you'll find, of course, they don't all make the same mistakes, and therefore you can compare them. And there is the basis that you have for working out, tracing back what exactly the originals were. I shall not, uh, worry you tonight with a great deal of the technical detail about the methods that, uh, textual critics use for working back from these manuscripts to determine exactly as they can what originally stood in the books that the apostles and evangelists wrote. That would be far too long and far too technical. Let us content ourselves tonight by listening to some of the greatest experts in these fields that ever have been. The great and famous Westcott and Hort, much maligned, unfortunately, by people who don't know better, uh, much maligned nowadays, but they were famous in their day and gave their strength and expertise to a study of the New Testament manuscripts. And they report that in their experience, when they have used them all and worked back as best they can to what stood in the originals, the amount of uncertainty, that is the places, the parts where you can't be exactly certain what was in the original, amounts to less than two percent of the whole. And of that two percent, most, most is concerned with little words and different kinds of words for and and but and so on, that make almost no difference to the material sense of the passage. So Frederick Kenyon, the great and famous Sir Frederick Kenyon, director of the British Museum, who edited the great and famous Chester Beatty papyri, he concludes his book on the subject by saying that every reader of the English Bible may rest confident that he has in his hands substantially what God originally intended him to have. And of this we, uh, this we can say with absolute confidence, no fundamental doctrine of scripture is in any doubt whatsoever as a result of differences in the biblical manuscript. And that comes about this way round, because no basic doctrine of scripture depends simply on one verse, or even one paragraph, for that matter. The great doctrines of the faith are taught all over the New Testament, and therefore, when you study all the doctrines, for instance, all the passages that talk about justification by faith or redemption by blood or the second coming of Christ or whatever it is, when you study them all together, you can very soon see if a certain manuscript has a difference. You can see whether his doctrine conforms to the rest of the New Testament or whether it goes against it, so that no fundamental doctrine at the phase is in doubt anywhere because of the differences in the manuscript. Let me give you a practical example of what I'm talking about and turn you into textual critics. That would be a something, wouldn't it, if it became known in your district that you were textual critics? But there you are. Why not begin, you'll say. Here is a very famous verse from the end of the New Testament. Revelation twenty two fourteen: Blessed are they who, and then follows a description of these blessed people, that they may have right to the tree of life and may enter through the gates of the city. You will, uh, now see that in the manuscripts, the manuscripts in general divide there into two groups. There are the majority of the manuscripts, and what they have is, blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life and may enter through the gates of the city. They are by far the majority of New Testament manuscripts that say that. But other manuscripts, they are in the minority, other manuscripts say, blessed are they who wash their robes, that is, of course, in the blood of Christ, that they might have right to the tree of life and enter through the gates of the city. So now, if you are a translator of the Bible, here's a place where you must decide which manuscripts you are going to follow. Now, suppose you were a missionary to the Ujjamburu somewhere. You'll see in the rainforests of Peru. What an honored person you would be if the Lord honored you with that commission. And you were translating the New Testament for the first time for these aforesaid Ujjamburus. Which manuscripts would you follow? Can't follow both, can you? And how would you decide which to follow? Oh, I'm sorely tempted to put your hands up who would vote for one and who would vote for the other. But I mustn't do that, that might embarrass you full sore. But you'd have to decide, can you see that? If you ask me, why do differences occur in, in translation, this is one of the reasons, because translators faced with differences in the manuscript have got to decide which way they're going to go, which are they going to follow before they start even translating it into their particular language. I'll tell you at once which one I would follow, and that is the second one. And one of my reasons for doing it is this, that when it comes to our right to enter the eternal city and come to the tree of life, as I understand the New Testament, it consistently says everywhere that it is through the blood of Christ that we are qualified to enter the eternal city. Nowhere is it put that the condition for entry into that eternal city, the condition for coming to the tree of life, is to do his command. And therefore, judging the matter by all those other verses that talk about how and by what right we enter the holiest of all, we enter God's heaven, I should say, well, the consistent doctrine of the New Testament agrees with these manuscripts and what they say, and not with these manuscripts and what they. There are other reasons why we should think that. When John talks about the, the commandments of the Lord in his book and urges us to, um, keep them, he doesn't normally say do his commandments, he talks rather about keeping his commandments. And so this doesn't look too well as a phrase that John would have used. But predominantly in my mind is the question of the fundamental doctrine. How do you enter heaven, sir? On what ground do you enter heaven? I imagine if I asked you that, you would say with, um, one accord, I choose this one, because this one says the entry into heaven is conditional upon washing your robes in the blood of the Lamb. That indeed is what chapter seven says, of a great multitude of the saved who stand before the throne, and the elder tells John, these are they that came out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, therefore are they before the throne. They think quite clearly that the ground of standing before God's throne is nothing other than the blood and sacrifice of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. Someone then altered it in early time, and just to show you that, uh, I- I- I'm not, so to speak, all that curious and uh, uh, and uh, uh, eccentric in my judgment, let me just now put on for you the translation by J. N. Darby. No one accuse- would accuse him of being a modernist, but here is his verdict on the topic. This is J. N. Darby's new translation of the Revelation chapter twenty two and verse fourteen: Uh, blessed are they that wash their robes, says he, that, uh, they might have right to the tree of life and that they should go in by the gate into the city. And in his larger editions, he then points out to you the facts of the case. Perhaps you can't read it from where you sit, but what he says in the note here is the change to do his commandments instead of washing their robes, which the manuscript Vaticanus B and others have, must have been made very early, for Cyprian and Tertullian have it, the text of the Sinaiticus and of Alexandrinus A and seven thirty eight and others likewise have it. In spite of that, Darby gives it as his judgment that the original reading would have been, blessed are they that wash their robes. It's with that kind of thing that translators have constantly to deal as they translate the New Testament into other languages. They can't begin to translate unless they have first, um, um, decided which manuscripts in any one case they are going to follow. And after all that, let me remind you which of them the authorized version follows, which you think it follows. Well, it follows the ones that say, blessed are they that do his commandments, that they might have right to the tree of life. Why do they say? Because their text is based on later manuscripts, as I would understand it and as Darby would have understand it, mistaken manuscripts or manuscripts that at this point have been wrongly changed. But I come back to the fact that when all is said and done there, the basic doctrines of the New Testament are not in any doubt, as you see surely in this case, likewise, because you can compare the doctrines throughout the whole of the New Testament and judge in any one case by whether the this reading or that best agrees with the general doctrine of the New Testament. Now, I'm not going to say any more about New Testament. I must, for a few moments, talk to you about the similar problem in the Old Testament. Now, the Old Testament is, of course, as you know, different from the, uh, uh, different from the New Testament. Its languages were Hebrew and Aramaic. The language of the New Testament is Greek, language of the Old Testament, Hebrew and Aramaic. And when we come to the Old Testament, then, of course, we begin first of all with the surviving manuscripts of the Old Testament. And as you would expect, they are necessarily written in Hebrew. Now, the majority of the Hebrew manuscripts of the, uh, Old Testament, uh, are what we call the Masoretic text. Don't bother about that term, it's just a term we have to use. It's a text that was developed and guarded and copied out and corrected by Jewish scholars called Masoretes. They became ever more expert at writing out their Hebrew Bible with tremendous accuracy as far as they could. So the majority of the Hebrew manuscripts, we call that them the Masoretic Text. Then there is a minority of Hebrew manuscripts. They call them the non-Masoretic Text, and I must stop there to tell you a little bit about them. The Masoretic Text manuscripts, that's the majority until the year uh nineteen forty seven. Those texts were very old by any standards, but the earliest one of them was written in the ninth century AD. So the earliest manuscript we had of the Hebrew Bible before the year nineteen forty seven was in the eight hundreds AD. Now you ponder that a moment. When did Moses write Genesis and Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy? What would you say? About hundred BC? And the first copy in Hebrew that we had of it until nineteen forty seven was written in about eight hundreds AD. If on a Friday night, late in the night, you can work out that arithmetic, I think that comes to somewhere about two thousand years. A two thousand years gap between the earliest manuscript surviving of the Hebrew Bible and the originals written by Moses. Of course, we had all sorts of other evidence earlier than those Hebrew manuscripts. We had quotations in the New Testament, you'll see, uh, that were much earlier, though we have them in the Greek translation, and so forth and so on. But strictly speaking, the actual manuscripts of the Old Testament, as I say, there was a thousand-year gap between, uh, Moses and, uh, the earliest copy we had. Then in nineteen forty seven and from then onward, manuscripts came to light, the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls, found in a series of caves over a distance of about thirty kilometers in the Judean desert. And they were exciting days, they were when these manuscripts were discovered, because some of them were eight hundred to nine hundred or even a thousand years earlier than, uh, uh, anything we had before. Did I say a moment ago the gap between Moses and the earlier ones we first had was a thousand? No, it's nearly two thousand years. These were a thousand years earlier than we have had anything before. This one, a photograph of which I showed you the other night, there was written about a BC. It is a scroll of Leviticus. It is in the old Paleo, old Hebrew script. I couldn't read the stuff. The script is an older script than I've ever studied. You'll see it's not the script you would find in a Hebrew Bible to the present day. Here's an actual photograph of the manuscript. It's part of a scroll, of course, was a long thing with a rolling pin at each end that they rolled up, you'll see. There it is, uh, and a very precious manuscript, that is. It cut the gap between the earliest manuscript we had had through the tool and the time of Moses. It cut it by a thousand years at least. And there were many others that were discovered, some large and complete, uh, scrolls of some books, like the famous scrolls of Isaiah, and others just tiny fragments. The major lesson that those discoveries taught us was simply this, to everybody's surprise, the vast majority of the manuscripts, when they were found, agreed, not necessarily a hundred percent, might have agreed ninety five percent or more with the Hebrew manuscripts we already had, and confirmed the tremendously high value of the manuscripts that we already possess. Those, uh, manuscripts that we possess are what we call Masoretic manuscripts. From the Dead Sea scaves, the caves, the majority of them were so close to the Masoretic text that we call them Proto-Masoretic texts. The majority of manuscripts from the Dead Sea, uh, follow that tradition. Yes, but that said, uh, that is a very important thing to say. There was, and still is, a minority of manuscripts, uh, mostly fragments that disagree with the Masoretic text. In some places, the differences are small. In some places, the differences are quite large. And that is a very interesting thing, and I'll tell you why in a moment. But, uh, I come back to add another fact, and this is what makes it complicated and why you're going to get a cup of tea at the end of this lecture. Uh, the evidence for the Old Testament was first the Hebrew Masoretic text manuscripts, and secondly, the manuscripts that were non-Masoretic texts. But in addition to that, we have another source of evidence, and that is the so-called Septuagint. That is the name given to a series of translations of the Old Testament into Greek. And the importance of these Greek translations is that they were made from two hundred and seventy BC onwards. So they were very early translations of the Hebrew into Greek. And we have scores and scores and scores of manuscripts of that Greek translation. Some of the big New Testament manuscripts, uh, uh, pictures of which I've shown you, also have the Old Testament in Greek in those same manuscripts, and they have it in these translations, you will see. They were very important. In Greek-speaking parts of the Roman Empire, when the early Christians read their Old Testament, if they were Greek speakers, they read it in this rather than in Hebrew. And when the writers of the New Testament quote the Old Testament, because the New Testament writers are writing in Greek, they often use this Greek translation in the New Testament. Gets complicated, doesn't it? But there you are, uh, that is the fact. They don't always use those Greek translations, sometimes they make up their own, but they use those translations. So now we have, uh, three kinds of manuscripts to concern ourselves with when we come to study the text of Old Testament. We have the majority Hebrew manuscripts, we have the minority Hebrew manuscripts, and we have the manuscripts of the Greek translations, the very early Greek translations. Now that's a something to praise God for, because do you remember a while ago when we were talking about the New Testament, we have thousands of manuscripts, and we praise God for that, because, you see, we can compare the manuscripts one with another, you see. Suppose, for instance, in the, uh, uh, New Testament or the Old, this was a situation. You had the original, yeah, and then somebody made a copy, and then somebody made a copy from that one, and somebody made a mistake, and then, do you see, uh, some people copied those manuscripts out, and of course they repeated the mistake. And they copied it out a thousand times, so every time, a hundred times, but every time with a mistake in it. How would you now, if you had one of these hundred, see it was a mistake? But what you have, in fact, both Old and New Testament, is not just that. You have copies made here, and perhaps they came down and made a mistake, but you have other copies here that didn't make that mistake. And when they get copied out, you can compare the two and discover the mistakes, you'll see, by comparison. It is very important, therefore, that even in the Hebrew we have these different manuscripts, two lots in Hebrew, and then those in Greek, that we can compare one with another, and so the more easily detect where mistakes have come in and alterations. It is to that work that I have given myself for many years, technically and professionally. Now I have to tell you that while the majority text, eh, the majority, the vast majority of the manuscripts of the Old Testament confirm us in our belief, uh, that we have solidly in our Bibles what God intended us to have, there are places where problems have arisen, and work still needs to be done. For instance, if you read the prophet Jeremiah, you will find that at the end of the prophet Jeremiah in your Bibles, there are a whole series of denunciations of the Gentile nations for their sins, do see. They come at the end of your translation of the Hebrew of Jeremiah. But when we looked at the Septuagint manuscript, we have known for centuries that the Greek translation of Jeremiah that would have existed in the time of the apostles, the Greek translations of Jeremiah had those same oracles, but not at the end of Jeremiah, but in the middle of Jeremiah. And they have them in a different order from what the Hebrew has them. And some of them are not so long, some are a shorter version of those oracles than you find in the main Hebrew. So now we want to know why the difference. And then we look again, and we see that some of these manuscripts from the Dead Sea, Hebrew though they are, tend to agree not with the majority Hebrew manuscripts, but with the Septuagint on this kind of thing. And therefore, scholars give themselves to considering, now why are those differences there? And all sorts of things you could think of, for instance, when Jeremiah spoke his prophecies, they were not at first written down, were they? But then when he spoke them, he had a scribe called Baruch, and he wrote them down. Then one day he was taken before the king, and he had to read what he had written down, and the king didn't like it, so he got his pen knife out and cut it into bits and, and chucked it into the fire. So Barak, nothing daunted, he wrote it out again, and he added much thereto. Ah. Now, if you look at your book of Jeremiah, uh, in your English translations, and you look at the prophecies that he gave, and you notice the date at which he gave them. They're not in chronological order, are they? Not in your Bible. Perhaps you haven't noticed that. Well, do the next time then. They're not in chronological order. Who was it that put them in their present order in the majority Hebrew manuscript? Who do you think did that? You say, that's a big difference, isn't it? Oh, but wait a minute. I showed you, uh, last night, didn't I? Come forth wherever it's gone. This, um, uh, early copy of the New Testament. Eh, the Chester Beatty papyrus, you'll say, well, you've shown that to us enough times now to make us a little tired of the Chester Beatty papyrus, you see. Yeah, but we've got it in Dublin, that's why we are so proud. And there it is, written about two hundred AD, you see. And as I showed you the other night, it is a collection of Paul's epistles. And, uh, the interesting thing is that in h- this manuscript, an early collection of Paul's epistles, he has the epistles in a different order from what you've got in your English Bible. He has Romans, and then it's followed by Hebrews, and uh, uh, Ephesians comes before Corinthians, and all sorts of wonderful things like that, you'll see. Eh, so yes, we know that kind of phenomenon in the manuscripts of the New Testament. They don't all have the writings of Paul order. And so it is evident to us now that the ancient manuscripts of Jeremiah's prophecies were not all collected in the same order in all the manuscripts. And then if you look at the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you know they have a co- and a record, don't they, of our Lord's sayings and of his miracles. Have you not noticed sometimes that Matthew will tell you a story, and it's quite short, and you find that Mark has got it, but he's got it in a slightly different place, and he's got a much longer story of the, this miracle that the Lord Jesus did. And that doesn't make you doubt the inspiration of scripture either, does it? You say, that's okay by me. Uh, Matthew took the original story, and the Holy Spirit guided him to tell it, but in a few words. Mark took that story, and the Holy Spirit guided him to tell it in longer detail. That doesn't worry you at all, you say both are inspired. So there's nothing to get really too upset about it, not even from the beginning, that, uh, some Hebrew manuscripts have Jeremiah's prophecy in one order, and some Hebrew manuscripts in the Greek translation has those prophecies in a different order, and some are, uh, uh, different lengths from what you would find them in the majority Hebrew manuscripts. So now, enough said about that. I have one or two other things to have to be said, uh, in another line, so let me leave it there. I trust I have not, um, worried you with my remarks. Eh, that is not my intention, to cause you to doubt the inspiration of God's holy word. Rather, I would leave with you the impression that in the multitude of manuscripts, we have the, uh, resources to, uh, discover the original text in a very great degree. There are still uncertainties in parts of the Old Testament, and people like myself, as I say, have worked on them. Here is a book by the present, uh, chairman of the publishers, uh, chairman of the publication committee of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and in it you will find him putting forth his view. In it also, you will find the views of other scholars, and in amongst those other scholars is one called, uh, uh, DWG, his initials are, and you will find that Emmanuel Tov constantly disagrees with him, and DWG constantly disagrees with Emmanuel Tov. He doesn't always fill in all the reasons why for the disagreement, but there you are, the work goes on. And as now a, a, a very old age pensioner, what I would like to do is to exhort my younger brothers and sisters. Someone ought to look after these manuscripts, surely. It is a very curious thing that evangelicals who believe in the verbal inspiration of Holy Scripture and would go to the stake for that belief, God bless, have provided very few men or women either to give themselves to the study and the care of the original membership. They've trained themselves, and they've kind of become doctors, well, we all need doctors, and they've trained themselves, and they've become engineers, and they have become I don't know what, and they are all necessary for all the members of the body are necessary. But there is a question that sometimes causes me to scratch my head until I get splinters in my fingers, and that is, ah, why aren't there a few more evangelicals who so believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, that they have given themselves to the study of the original manuscripts that are basic to everything else? But, uh, just let me say that to blow off a little steam, and then, uh, to sow a seed thought in the minds of our younger brethren and sisters. There is a service still to be done for men and women whom God would raise up to look after these things on behalf of all the people of God, because the manuscripts are in the big libraries of this world, not always among friends, and there is a job, like Moses' mother took on, to care for Moses when he was in the hands of the Egyptians. We raised at the beginning of our lecture the s- question of why do translations of the Bible differ so much? The first reason we've given is because there are variants, there are differences in the manuscripts, and some translators will prefer to go with one reading, one variant, and some will prefer to go with others. That's why. You have seen that, uh, Darby and all modern translations that I know of in that verse in Revelation would agree with the manuscripts that say, blessed are they who wash their robes. The Authorized Version, along with many others of the older kind, chose to go with the manuscripts that said, blessed are they that do his commandment. You have to make up your mind, and that's a reason why, uh, translations differ. But there's another reason, of course. It's a much more simple one, but an important one. That all translations need from time to time to be revised. That is an important point to remember, because translations get old. There is the title page of the authorized version, you'll see, which informs us that this version contains the Old and New Testaments translated out of the original tongues, and with the former translations, you listen to that, and with the former translations diligently compared and revised. The Authorized Translation was not the first English translation. There were many translations into English before the Authorized. The Authorized is, as you hear them say, a revised version. It is a revision, and made by, uh, diligently comparing and revising the former translations and correcting what they thought to be mistakes in the former translation. So, older translations need to be revised from time to time, or brand new ones made. Why is that so? Because in the first place, there are in, uh, translations, no translation is perfect, and therefore you will find in translations that there are mistakes in translation. Look at that one from Luke twenty three verse fifteen. Pilate sent our blessed Lord to Herod. Herod sent him back to Pilate, and Pilate says to the crowd, now you can see, behold, nothing worthy of death has been done by him, namely by the Lord Jesus. That's what it should be. Pilate is saying, I sent the Lord Jesus to Herod, and Herod has found no fault in him. I've examined him before you. I find no fault in him. It is clear, says he, behold, nothing worthy of death has been done by the Lord Jesus. That's what the Greek says. That makes sense, doesn't it? And absolutely true. Both Herod and Pilate agreed the Lord Jesus had nothing done, nothing wrong whatsoever. Alas, the authorized version, God bless those dear men, they were marvelous men, weren't they? And produced a marvelous translation that we all love. But they got this bit wrong, plainly mistr- mistranslating the Greek, and they've got it, nothing worthy of death is done to him. What, to Christ? Nothing worthy of death was done to Christ? Really? What, when Herod's soldiers mocked him and beat him and scourged him, and Pilate's soldiers beat him and mocked him and scourged him, nothing worthy of death is done to him? Well, no, no, no. Pilate, not even Pilate said that. That has come in because just once and again, the authorized versions, uh, made a mistake in their understanding and their translation of the Greek. And you will see, when, uh, you look at other translations, that they will, uh, uh, agree with what I have just said. Here comes, for instance, here comes, uh, uh, J. N. Darby of that same verse, and behold, nothing worthy of death is done by him. And the New International Version, agreeing there with JND, of course, and you can see that he has done nothing to deserve death. Yeah. Second re- reason why, uh, translations need to be revised and changed. And that is because over the years, language becomes antiquated and then possibly misleading. So you've often heard it said that in two Thessalonians two and verse six, the authorized version says, he who now letteth will let until he be taken out of the way. Well, that's Old English and actually means he who restrains will restrain. The Old English let has now in modern English come to mean not, not restrain, but the very opposite. It means to allow somebody to do something, and therefore is potentially saying the opposite to a modern English person than what the intended meaning is. I remember, uh, in my childhood, and that's a terrific memory because it goes back a long way. I met a dear lady. She was elderly by that time and a little eccentric, and she told my wandering childhood the following, that she read in the Bible in Matthew, our Lord's directive, when you pray, enter into your closet and shut to the door, do you see? And she took it not in the sense in which it originally meant in English, but in the sense that word had in her girlhood, you see. So, thinking to obey the Lord, whenever she prayed, she went into the lavatory and locked the door, do you see? And there, I hope, got down on her knees, I don't know, but there you are. She entered into her closet and shut through the door. Well, of course, in the days when the authorized version was translated, closet had meant a cupboard, not a lavatory. And in modern America, they have retained that Elizabethan English, and the closet in American language to this very present day means a cupboard. But you see, it sounds odd in English in modern days, doesn't it, to have a translation that says, when you pray, enter your closet, you see? What it means is your, uh, room, your closed room, your private room, and shut the door, you see. A closed room, that's all it means. And if we're going to evangelize our modern world, why should we make it difficult for them to, by using a translation, eh, which, if they are modern, they're liable to misunderstand all over the place, and many more such things you could, um, uh, instance from that old translation. Marvelous if you still understand the Old English. I love the Authorized Version for its beautiful English, and I'm aware, of course, as you would be, of some of the possible, uh, mistakes, uh, in understanding if you think it's modern English when all the while it's Old English. Now there is another thing, of course, another reason why the, uh, older translations need to be revised. We'll just have this example, uh-huh, or can be revised. Look at what Luke chapter five verse three says. The Authorized says he entered into one of the ships. The NIV says he got into one of the boats. You say, well, what difference does that make? Well, nothing at all, actually. He entered into one of the ships, he got into one of the boats. So there's no need to revise it if you don't want to. But now let me ask you what you say in your normal, uh, words. If you went down, uh, to the ferry to go over to France, would you tell your friend that when you got to Dover or wherever it was, you entered into one of the ships, or would you say you got onto the boat or you got onto the ship? Which would you say? I entered into one of the ships. Well, perhaps you did. Well, everybody would know what you meant, even if you said it, you see. You would use the term entering into in some context, wouldn't you? In modern English, he, he entered into an agreement, but nowadays we don't normally say he entered into a ship, we say he got onto a ship or something. And secondly, they were fishing vessels, weren't they? As we know from the context, they belong to the fishermen. If you went to Lowestoft and saw these vessels in the port, would you say they were fishing ships, or would you call them fishing boats? Well, I leave you to judge, you'll see. In modern English, we would normally say fishing boats, and of course they about all comes down to the same thing in the end, but in the translation, if you constantly use phrases that are out of date, you will eventually make it sound a bit odd. You have to be careful, of course, because in English, as in other languages, you can take a whole lot of words that basically mean the same thing, but there is a difference in emotional level. Look at that. He died. He deceased. He passed away. He went home. He expired. He gave up the ghost. He departed his life. I won't read the last one. Not in these reverent circles, you will see. Hm. They all mean the same thing, don't they? Well, eh, well, basically the same thing, but you say, no, they don't all mean quite the same thing. And what you're thinking about is they have an additional, a a a different emotional level. He died is a stark fact. He deceased, that's a sort of a legal term, isn't it? The deceased. He passed away softens the expression somewhat, doesn't it? Ah, look at the next one. That doesn't mean he died, but this is a Christian way of talking about it, isn't it? He went home. That's a lovely way of talking about it. Same thing, of course. Um, he expired. Ooh, we don't normally say that now, do we? Not really. Eh, we don't say he gave up the ghost either. Sounds a little bit odd, do you see? Yes. Um, he departed this life. If you were a translator, translating into English, which would you, would you use? You could think of others, couldn't you? He fell on sleep, says the Bible. He slept. That's a lovely Christian way of talking about it, isn't it? But if you were choosing, you'll see, you don't have to say, well, they all mean the same thing. Basically, it's the same thing, but you have to watch in scripture, don't you, t- uh, the emotional level, and that's why some of our modern translations grate on the ears of the older people. The translation is correct, but the emotional level is wrong, and so some people will find uh, uh, the new translations offensive for that reason, because they get the emotional level wrong, and it all seems emotionally wrong to them. And here we've got to ask for patience with one another, because the emotional level of things changes over the years. I was reading a little bit of Bunyan's Pilgrim Progress the other day, and he was talking about putting a key in the lock, and it was very difficult to turn, and he actually wrote, did Bunyan, the lock was damnable hard to turn. It was damnable hard to turn. Now, if I'd have dared say that in the Violet Hill Road Hall, I I would have had been censured, so I hadn't said it. But that's what Moses, that's what Bunyan wrote, you see, because in those days that word had no bad meaning with it. Nowadays it would sound like a swear word, wouldn't it? So this emotional level of words changes over the centuries. That's why you will need new translations, and yet the new translation has got to be aware of the emotional level and be sensitive to it. Some people say, therefore, well, the simplest thing is, uh, to translate word for word. It's what you want to do. And they say this, this bad NIV, some people say, that's its trouble. It doesn't translate word for word. Why can't we have word for word? We believe in verbal inspiration. Why can't we have translations that are word for word? Okay, okay, okay. Well, what about pommes de terre then? Imagine going down to your greengrocer tomorrow and saying, I'll have a stone of, translate that literally, apples of earth. Going down to your greengrocer and saying, I've got some French people coming to me, and they've written to me, and they tell me the vegetables they like for lunch, you see, and I want some of these vegetables. Please give me six pounds of apples of the earth. And what would your greengrocer say to you? So we don't keep them, sir. It's no good translating it literally. Doesn't make sense in English, apples of the earth. So what do you have to do if you translate that into English? Well, you've got to say what the English equivalent is, and that's potatoes. And ask a man for six pounds of potatoes, and he'll know what you mean, and the Frenchman will like it, because that is the English for potatoes, not apples of the earth. You cannot translate it literally. Oh, I say. Look at this thing here. Can the children of the bride chamber mourn? From one of our Lord's parables. What would your friends think if you came back from a wedding and they said, how did the wedding go? And you said, marvelous. There were uh one hundred and five children of the bride chamber there. Would be open to misunderstanding, I think. Well, I'm translating it literally, so did the authorized, translated it literally, but look how unfortunate it is in English. If you translate it literally, what on earth are children of the bride chamber? It's simply the Hebrew for wedding guests at all, and therefore you can't always translate literally, and that's why modern translations have sometimes departed from a literal translation and ga- gone over to a more dynamic translation, as it is called, and they get the meaning across better. Look at this, Romans six two. A word in Greek, me gnoita, means literally, may it not be so. It's a word that Paul would use in this kind of context. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Me gnoita. How would you translate that? Shall we continue in sin? May it not be so. Well, even the authorized couldn't stick that. They said that won't do to translate that literally because it sounds so weak in English. In Greek, meganota is a very strong term emotionally, and to translate it, may it not be so, is weak and misses the emotional strength of it. So even the AV didn't translate literally. It said God forbid, and in the Greek there's no word for God, and there's no word for forbid either. But even the authorized version recognizes you can't always translate a thing literally, and they don't. God forbid, they say. JN Darby says, far be the thought. The NIV says, by no means. They all mean the same, different ways of getting across, uh, that, um, uh, uh, particular Greek phrase. I'm nearly done, cake up heart, the kettle will soon be boiling, but you see, there it is. If you were given the choice, God forbid, never, far be the thought, perish the idea, which one is better? Well, you have your choice. It doesn't matter. None of them translates the New Testament literally. They are what we call dynamic translations. It is true that modern translations like the NIV have used dynamic translations much more, uh, than the old authorized version, but in principle, the authorized version is prepared to accept dynamic translations. There are more difficult things in scripture occasionally, when a translator has a, is obliged to not just translate, but to give his interpretation of what he thinks a phrase means. When Joshua and the Israelites were ordered to fight the Amalekites, God commanded Moses that it should be written in a book that God would have war forever against the, uh, Amalekites, you'll see. The authorized has, uh, because the Lord has sworn, the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation. Where did they get that from? The Hebrew literally says, for a hand on, or you could translate it a hand against the throne of the Lord. But what does that mean? You could translate it literally if you liked, for a hand on or a hand against the throne of the Lord, the Lord will have war. What does it mean? The Jewish Bible has the hand upon the throne of the Lord. The NIV has, for hands were lifted up to the throne of the Lord, meaning, I suppose, that people lifted up their hands to God in prayer to appeal to him. The Israelites did, and the Lord answered by saying, I will have war against Amalek for generation to generation. Great, uh, Hebrew and Greek scholar Barthelemy, he, uh, says, no, it's nothing to do with prayer, for a hand has been raised against the throne of the Lord, and because the Amalekites have dared to raise their hands against God's throne, God will have war with them forever. The authorized has interpreted, as you see, in a different way. The Lord has sworn, you say, where did they get that from? Well, they took it a hand has been raised on the throne of the Lord, and that hand is the hand of God, and he has lifted up his hand in order to swear a divine oath. And so they've translated it, for the Lord hath sworn he will have war with Amalek. Who's right? Well, I'll ask you afterwards, you'll see. Uh, you'll see, but um, there you will see translators are obliged to interpret what they find in front of them. And of course, they will all admit, if you read the notes that they supply upon their translation, they will all admit that this is what they think it means, but the thing could be interpreted other ways. And you say, this is desperate, getting worse as he goes along. When will he stop? And we have our tea. You say, how can we know what it should be? Well, you're not altogether dependent on the experts, are you? Because there are good commentaries you can read by godly authors, who, when they come to passages like that, will discuss it with you, how they think it ought to be translated, and then let you make up your mind. And if you take the big Bible editions, the library editions, they will, when they come to places like that, tell you literally what the lang- original language says and why they opt for this, uh, interpretation, but another interpretation is possible, and they'll let you make up your mind. So that is very important, you see. It means that sometimes when a translator goes in for too much interpretation, then sometimes his readers violently disagree. The authorized of Romans eight nine says, you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit. The NIV has not been content just to translate it literally, so they've indulged in quite a great bit of interpretation. You are controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the spirit, and by any estimate, that is going in for interpretation in a very big way, isn't it? Instead of being content to translate what is there. In my humble estimation then, and I say it with due respect, eh, I think they would have been wiser not to go so far into interpretation, but to have contented themselves with the plainer version, such as the authorized gives. You are not in the flesh, but in the spirit. But again, in the bigger editions, they will discuss these matters with you in the text itself. Some translations, uh, uh, have again connotations that perhaps are undesirable. When good old Tyndale translated Ephesians chapter five and twenty five, he translated it this way, Christ loved the congregation. Why did he use that term? Well, to make it clear that that what Christ loved was not a building called the church in English, but people, the congregation of the redeemed. So instead of using church, which to many people in his day would have meant the building, he deliberately used the term that meant the redeemed people of God. Christ loved the congregation. The authorized version, perhaps unfortunately, went and changed it, and they had it Christ loved the church. Which would you prefer? Darby, of course, being Darby, what would you expect? He put Christ loved the assembly, of course. Yeah. They're all translating the same word. They all have their reasons for doing it. They are theological, but of course they carry implications, don't they, and connotation. And again, we need to be careful, and therefore it is important that for serious students we study the con- uh, the um, uh, context carefully to find out what, say, a term like the church actually means. If you read the New Testament well enough and thoroughly enough, you'll soon find out that the word church, even in the authorized, doesn't mean the building, it means the redeemed people. A final exhortation. I have quoted all these instances not to confuse you, but to remind you that the task of translating God's holy word is a very, very big task. There is a sense in which it is never done. Each generation needs perhaps almost to do it again for itself. It isn't a job to be taken on hand by people that are not experts. Let us thank God for that large army of men and women all down the long century that copied out the Bible by hand. How many of us have ever done it? We have Bibles in our hand because multitudes of men in monkish cells and under persecution, some of them, copied out the Bible laboriously, day after day, copied it out by hand. God be praised for them. What a debt we owe. What a debt we owe to men and women who gave themselves to learn the original languages when learning them was difficult, so that they might understand exactly as possible what God was originally saying. And God be thanked for all those men and women that have given themselves to translating God's word accurately as they can, in the terms that each generation could understand. And uh, thank God who those for those that have given themselves to study it in depth, that they might help the rest of us to understand and interpret or write what has been written. There are very bad translations done by heretics like the Jehovah Witnesses. They deserve to be denounced. But my dear brethren, if I may say it with all kindliness of heart, beware of people that denounce versions that are made by honorable, God-loving, and God-fearing people. It is common these days, I find, to come across tracts written denouncing the auth- the New International Version. That version is not a perfect version, and its chief editor has told me personally that he doesn't regard it as a perfect version. You read their study Bible, and you look at the notes, they explicitly say scripture teaches, and of course they believe, the, uh, inerrancy, the total inerrancy of the word of God as originally given. They believe in the deity of Christ absolutely. They say it explicitly in their study version. It is a sad thing when you find other believers writing like this, despite claiming to believe in the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, the NIV translators use the dynamic equivalence translation method, which by its very nature denies both inerrancy and the need for inerrancy. Now, just you listen to it. That is either written in ignorance because the version that they re- they they they favor is the authorized version we have just seen that the Authorized Version uses dynamic equivalent. But they take it upon themselves to say that because the NIV has used dynamic equivalent, they are denying inerrancy and the need for inerrancy. My dear brethren and sisters, that is a downright slander. If the NIV translators were ungodly men, they would sue them in the courts for libel and defamation of character. There's not a kind of thing that one believer should say of another believer. Let me point out to you one final thing. We'll get two cups of tea now, and two stars on your card for attending this impossibly long session. But here's a chart. This chart puts together a number of places in the New Testament where you could translate a phrase in one of two ways, and there are strong arguments for both ways. Whichever you choose, you could argue strongly for it. If you choose the one way of translating it, it will attribute deity to the Lord Jesus, of whom came Christ, who is God over all, blessed forevermore. What that says that Christ is God over all, blessed forevermore. Another translation could say, and argue for it, of whom came the Christ, God who is over all, be blessed forevermore. That would not attribute deity to Christ. And of course, the translators differ, do you see? And Professor Don Carson has tabulated these various parts of the new verses in the New Testament, and the versions that in these different cases attribute deity to the Lord Jesus, he's marked with a tick, and the versions that don't attribute deity to the Lord Jesus, he's marked with a cross. Now look, if you will, uh, let me put it up so you can see it. How many times the NIV attributes deity to the Lord Jesus? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven out of eight occasions. They give us their preferred translation, the translation that attributes deity to the Lord Jesus. They're not saying that other people are wrong necessarily, but that is their preferred translation. They allow that you could translate it differently that doesn't attribute deity to the Lord Jesus. Now look, if you care, to, um, the King James, that is the authorized version. How many times does its preferred translation attribute deity to the Lord Jesus? One, two, three, four. Significantly less than the NIV. Now it is open to, uh, uh, you to agree with the AV and say yes, but look, don't misunderstand it. When the AV declined there to use a translation that attributes deity to the Lord Jesus, the Authorized Version was not denying the deity of the Lord Jesus, of course not. Never have dreamed of doing such a thing. They just prefer the other translation, and you can argue strongly for it, the translation that doesn't at that point attribute deity to him. The point is simply that, given the decision, the NIV have attributed deity to the Lord Jesus significantly more times than the Authorized Version. It is not Christian behavior to write pamphlets that denounce the NIV as though it were absolutely heretical, and to praise the Authorized Version as though it were, in these respects, much more loyal to the Lord Jesus.