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Translation Frustration
When people say they've read "the Bible," what do they mean? Well generally what they DON'T mean is that they read source texts in their original languages. Most of us don't have the time or desire to learn how to read ancient Hebrew or Greek, so we're at the mercy of other people to figure out how to render the two thousand plus year old writings into our language. That leaves us with a problem: how do we know which translation to use? This week, Dr Dan is going to give the low-down on the many, many translations and version we have. We'll talk about why different versions popped up, and what the biases and goals of the various translators might have been. And we'll give specific examples of the differences between versions, exploring the massive difference a small word choice can have. For early access to an ad-free version of every episode of Data Over Dogma, exclusive content, and an opportunity to support our work, please consider becoming a monthly patron at:
Bonus Episode Recorded with this episode: read the full transcript $10 patrons · log in with PatreonTranscript — tap any word to jump the video there
Dan McClellan So Tyndale translated the New Testament into English 1525-26. This was still considered problematic.
Dan Beecher Bordering on heretical?
Dan McClellan Well, it resulted in him being burned at the stake.
Dan Beecher Okay. So yeah, not just bordering on.
Dan McClellan It was only a couple years after he was executed that they were like, "You know what? I think we're going to go with this English Bible thing."
Dan Beecher History is just littered with people who were killed for their work, and then later everybody was like, "No, this is the good stuff."
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher "Let's just stick with this."
Dan McClellan Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.
Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.
Dan McClellan And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat that pesky misinformation about the same, or at least the spread of that misinformation about the same. This is what happens when I go off script and just try to ad-lib- ... is I just screw it all up. But- Here's the thing.
Dan Beecher Yeah, it's easier to...
Dan McClellan I don't know.
Dan Beecher Is it easier to combat the spread of a concept rather than the concept itself? Yeah, probably.
Dan McClellan We try to do both, I think. We're going to do both.
Dan Beecher Yeah. We're in combat mode. We're in full tactical- ... misinformation gear.
Dan McClellan We are both wearing green.
Dan Beecher That's right. So we're blending in with the whatever.
Dan McClellan Yeah, a little bit. Although mine's bright green with yellow on it, where it says the Incredible Hulk.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Yeah. So how are things?
Dan Beecher Things are good, man. I wanted to dive in right off the bat to discussing the cruise/tour that we are going to be doing at the beginning of October.
Dan McClellan Yes.
Dan Beecher Because slots are filling up, but there is still space available, and we'd really like to fill all of the slots if we can.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher It's going to be great. It's a Mediterranean cruise with all of the luxurious, wonderful things that are contained in that, that people have come to expect.
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.
Dan Beecher Amazing food and just awesome experiences. You can't go wrong with the Mediterranean. It's going to be beautiful. We're leaving from Rome.
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.
Dan Beecher We're headed down to Naples. We're going all the way over to Turkey and Athens and gorgeous Greek islands where you can take pictures of the blue roofs with the- ... Greek buildings and everything.
Dan McClellan Yes.
Dan Beecher And maybe, Dan, you should talk a little bit about, and we don't have this all fully planned out yet, but what we do know is that for a lot of these places, we are going to take you on excursions that you cannot get anywhere else.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher So talk a little bit about that.
Dan McClellan We're working with Sacred Space Tours, which is the tour company that we're collaborating with. And they've got buses chartered for us, so in those locations where there are biblically relevant sites or museums or things like that, we're going to head out and take a look, including Naples. We're going to try to get as much in as we can of Ephesus. Athens is going to be a big one. We're going to see what we can do on Crete. And now places like Santorini, places like Mykonos, you're going to have to find something to keep you busy and entertained.
Dan Beecher Ugh. It's going to be torture.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher It's going to be torture. It will be rough, but- My understanding is there's nothing good there. But we'll make the best of it. We're going to have a- Yeah ... wonderful time. I think we're still working out the kinks on this, that we will also probably do a couple days in Rome, either before or after the tour, if you want to, as an add-on.
Dan McClellan Yeah. As an add-on. It'll be a couple of days in Rome so we can get to see more of the sights there, and I'm hoping to get into the catacombs, and see some of the artwork and things down there.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan So that'll be something that we're going to tack onto the end there.
Dan Beecher So trust us, this will be worth it- Yeah ... to come with us on this thing, and you get to hang out with us, so that's awesome, too. Dan is very pleasant. I know I'm a miserable cuss, but everybody's going to really enjoy hanging out with you, Dr.
Dan McClellan Dan.
Dan Beecher Yeah. So if you are at all interested, we've been having people send us emails, but let's be a little more direct about it.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher You can write in directly to Sacred Space Tours. How do they do that?
Dan McClellan So we've got my friend Trevan Hatch, who is the liaison for Sacred Space Tours, and so you can email him if you'd like, support@sacredspacetours.com. And you can even text him or give him a call if you'd like, to make sure you get in touch right away. His number with Sacred Space Tours is 1-844-787-2536, and let him know you are interested in the Data Over Dogma cruise/tour in October, and he will give you all the information that you need, including, if you're ready to pull the trigger on this, the form to submit a deposit. And that's, I think, what we're all aiming for, getting those in so that we can secure the space, because it is a little late in the game for us to be suddenly promoting a tour that's going to take place in just a few months.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan But we want to make sure that we secure all the space that we told them we are looking for.
Dan Beecher I promise you, if you're even considering this, just do it.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher We are going to make it worth your while. We are going to make it a really good time. You'll meet other people that are awesome. And this will be One for the memory books.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Memory books? Do we have memory books?
Dan McClellan I don't know.
Dan Beecher Anyway, you'll really enjoy it.
Dan McClellan For the record books, yeah.
Dan Beecher Yes, exactly.
Dan McClellan And then there are also a couple of days, cruising days.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan So if you want to lay out on one of the deck chairs and just soak up the sun for 14 hours, I think they let you do that.
Dan Beecher All right. Well, that's done. Everybody's going to sign up now. I know they are. That's good. And now we can move on with our show. And what are we talking about today, Dan?
Dan McClellan I thought it might be fun for us to take a look at some passages in the Bible and how their translation differs from translation to translation. Just get a sense for what kinds of patterns we can see in the way translations are approaching the Bible. I've got a few different sites pulled up that give us a bunch of different translation options. Many of the standards, your King James Version, your NIV, your ESV, your NASB, your NRSVUE, and others. And so I think it would be interesting just to get a sense for how much variation there can be- Yeah ... between different Bible translations and also why.
Dan Beecher So I'll try to- Yeah, we've touched on this a little bit. We've touched on the idea that the fact of the matter is that there is no such thing as just an unbiased, definitive look at translating these documents.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher So everybody's got their own reasons why they're choosing a certain phrasing or a certain interpretation of a thing- Yeah ... over another, and it can be very fascinating. It can also be incredibly frustrating.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Because I have been sort of dealing with this, working with this book for years and years. I used to do another show that I would do reports on whole passages from the Bible, and I would compare and contrast different translations and have no clue what the- Why they were different ... and what I'm supposed to actually think the story is or whatever.
Dan McClellan Yeah. That's an assumption I hear from a lot of folks. They're like, "Oh, I have all these different translations, so I just compare them all." And it's like, well, if you don't know the relationship of the translation to the source text, that doesn't do anything for you. I mean, that just- Right.
Dan Beecher I mean, it gives you a chance to pick and choose.
Dan McClellan You can- Yeah. And that's generally what they do ...
Dan Beecher pick one that you like.
Dan McClellan Yeah, but it's not like you add up A, B, and C, and that equals D, and D's the correct answer.
Dan Beecher It's- Right ...
Dan McClellan you can't triangulate the source text based on these translations unless you already know what's going on underneath the hood.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And so I want to do that a little bit. I want to talk about, there are a few different reasons that we'll see that people translate things the way they do. One is that they're in a specific tradition. Not necessarily a religious tradition, but a translation tradition.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan There are a lot of translations that are following after the KJV or something like that. And so there are- King James Version. The King James Version.
Dan Beecher I mean, you're using a lot of initialisms, and that's okay, but I do want to make sure that we make sure that everybody knows what they mean as we- Right ... as we progress.
Dan McClellan And there's some history behind that. Do you think it would be helpful to just briefly talk about the history of English Bible translation?
Dan Beecher Yeah. I mean, we've touched on it before, but let's have a refresher. I think it's a good idea.
Dan McClellan Okay. So, for the longest time, everybody was just using the Latin, and there were translations that were based on the Latin. The Latin Vulgate, translated by Jerome around 400, 405 CE, and this was kind of the official translation of the Roman Catholic Church. And a lot of the affiliate groups used it as well. And there were translations out there from the Latin. We have an English translation, the Wycliffe translation, that was made in the late 14th century CE based on the Latin, but we don't get translators trying to go back to the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament and the Hebrew manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible until we get to the Reformation. And Martin Luther's kind of the first to do this with German based on Erasmus' Textus Receptus, and then William Tyndale does it for English. So he translates the New Testament into English from the Greek.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan It's funny, for whatever reason, it had never sunk into me that the difference between the Wycliffe- Tyndale ...
Dan Beecher the one you just said, the Tyndale, is that Wycliffe came, it was a translation of a translation.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher It was the Greek via Latin into English, or the- Yeah ... Hebrew/Aramaic via Latin into English.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And so if you wanted to translate the New Testament until Erasmus put together his Greek New Testament, you were up a creek because you didn't have a source text unless you went to the libraries and you cobbled together a bunch of manuscripts and decided for yourself, "Oh, I'm going to use this manuscript for this verse and this one for the other one." Erasmus made it so you just had to go buy his book, and now you had the whole Greek New Testament. And so Tyndale was like, "Jackpot.
Dan Beecher What?"
Dan McClellan And translated the New Testament into English. 1525, '26 is when that came out. And when Tyndale did it, this was still considered- problematic.
Dan Beecher And Tyndale- Meaning, like bordering on heretical?
Dan McClellan Well, it resulted in him being burned at the stake.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan So, yeah.
Dan Beecher So- Not just bordering on.
Dan McClellan Not bordering on.
Dan Beecher Just all the way there.
Dan McClellan Yeah. Fully full wing into, "You're going to die now."
Dan Beecher Heresy, yeah.
Dan McClellan And a lot of it had, it wasn't just how dare you translate the Bible in English, it was because he was using a bunch of words that they had kind of said you can't. The ecclesia, they had always translated as church, and he was like, "This just means congregation." And they were like, "This undermines the institution."
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And priests. He's like, "I don't like the priesthood, and this really just means presbyter, elder." So that's what he's going to go with. And so I think there were a list of five words that they were really upset with him about, but he was also publishing a lot of hit pieces. The Practice of Prelates and other texts that were just railing on church leadership and particularly More, shoot, I forget his name. It's not Henry More, not the Cambridge Latimer's- Thomas More?
Dan Beecher Oh.
Dan McClellan Thomas More, yeah.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan He and Thomas More were going at it.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan They were not big fans of each other, and Thomas More is the one who ended up, not signing his death warrant, but he's the one who chased him down and got him thrown in prison, and he himself would be executed not too- In fact, wait, was he? I think Tyndale was in prison when More got executed.
Dan Beecher Oh.
Dan McClellan Yeah, because Tyndale was in prison for a while.
Dan Beecher Interesting.
Dan McClellan Anyway, it was only a couple years after he was executed that they were like, "You know what? I think we're going to go with this English Bible thing."
Dan Beecher History is just littered with people who were killed for their work, and then later everybody was like, "No, this is the good stuff."
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher "Let's just stick with this."
Dan McClellan So then immediately, a bunch of people just basically take Tyndale's stuff and reproduce it. And so you've got translation, the Matthews Bible, you've got the Coverdale Bible, you've got the Great Bible, you've got the Geneva Bible, you've got the Bishop's Bible, and then the King James Version is a very conservative revision of the Bishop's Bible. And so these are all one, it's one lineage. All these English translations are basically descended from each other, and even if they weren't, they really didn't want the King James Version to be like the Geneva Bible. They still used the Geneva Bible as a reference. They were still like, "Well, what did Geneva say?
Dan Beecher Oh, okay."
Dan McClellan And so there was influence, and so it's basically one just kind of, I don't use the word inbred or incest to denigrate, but this was all very incestual- Right ... translationally speaking.
Dan Beecher And- Well, it wasn't even a translation at that point. We weren't even translating anymore.
Dan McClellan Right, it was just revisions.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Yeah. And the King James Version has become, through historical accident, embedded in the foundations of not only the English language, particularly for Americans, but within the foundations of English Bible translation. And even we have Robert Alter, who published his own translation of the Hebrew Bible recently, published alongside of it, a book called "The Art of Bible Translation" where he talked about how you're all in the shadow of the King James Version, and so you've got to grapple with that. You've got to engage with the King James Version. And he also wrote another book called "The Pen of Iron" that was all about the influence of the King James Version.
Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.
Dan McClellan I'm not as big a fan of the KJV as him, but that's an example of how a lot of English Bible translations these days are working in the shadow of the KJV, and they enjoy the shade. They're not going to leave.
Dan Beecher Yeah. And so if you've got a- I mean, and that shadow just got a little longer when Donald Trump decided to release his own KJV.
Dan McClellan Yeah, because that's just going to extend the lease- Yeah ... on the KJV's dominance for- Right ... who knows how many more centuries.
Dan Beecher Somebody could make a fortune selling the Gideons on a new translation or on a new... Man, if you can talk those guys into buying your version- Yeah ... you're on Easy Street at that point.
Dan McClellan So a lot of the translations that we're going to see kind of follow after the King James Version, because if you're trying to pump out a translation and you got a publisher breathing down your neck, you're going to punt a lot.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan And usually punting means what did the King James Version do? Let's update the language a little bit, but other than that, we're going to follow what they did pretty closely.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan So that's one thing that can happen. Another question is what source texts are we relying on? Are we incorporating the Dead Sea Scrolls or not? Are we going to lean on the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation, or not? Another thing has to do with our general theory about the nature of the Bible, like the NIV, the New International Version, is pretty explicit up front that all the translators share this commitment to the inspiration and infallibility of the Bible, which means if they find problems, they're going to scratch them out, or they're going to- They're highly motivated to- Yes ...
Dan Beecher massage those problems.
Dan McClellan Yes. There's a lot of a massage going on here. When I was in massage therapy school, when we did our clinical internship, I would always say, "I'll do shiatsu." And that was always fancy. It was something that people loved doing, but I liked it because I didn't have to set up a table, and I got to be in my socks. So there are a lot of Bible translations, let's just say, that want to be in their socks, that don't want to have to put their shoes on.
Dan Beecher Oh, that is a delightful way of putting it. I'm very happy. Although something tells me that a lot of these massagings are not even shiatsu worthy.
Dan McClellan No.
Dan Beecher They are the seedy massage parlor in the bad part of town that keeps getting raided by the cops.
Dan McClellan Yeah. There's no Reiki, there's no energy work going on here. No hot stone, none of that Ayurveda therapeutic stuff.
Dan Beecher It is- But there might be a happy ending waiting for you.
Dan McClellan Oh, by the way, just apropos of absolutely nothing, call your massage therapist a massage therapist and not a masseuse.
Dan Beecher Oh, okay.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher That's- Noted. Especially not a male massage therapist.
Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, the other term is masseur, but- Right ... also don't call them that. Just call them massage therapist.
Dan Beecher Okay. Okay, fine.
Dan McClellan So there are a bunch of reasons that translations are going to differ, but I want to start with an easy one that we talked about in our very first episode of the podcast so many eons ago.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan Genesis 1:1, which is- Okay ... the very beginning.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And we have from the King James Bible, "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." Economical, very simple, very straightforward.
Dan Beecher Easy to understand.
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.
Dan Beecher It's not hard on the brain or anything.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Too bad it's wrong.
Dan McClellan Yeah. As we've talked about, I'm looking at biblehub.com where you can- Right ... pull up dozens of translations, and the first 10 are all very clearly almost identical. They're all basically descended from the King James Version, including the New King James Version and so on. And they all say the same thing, except for some of them may have heavens in plural because shamayim in Hebrew is plural. So New International Version, New Living Translation, English Standard Version, Berean Standard Bible. I don't think I know what that is. And then you've got the New American Standard Bible, which is kind of a Catholic-oriented translation. I call the- Oh, okay ...
Dan Beecher NASB.
Dan McClellan And then you've got the NASB 95, the NASB 77, and then this Legacy Standard Bible. Amplified Bible, I don't think I've looked into before, but it says, "In the beginning, God," parenthetically it says Elohim, "created," brackets, "by forming from nothing the heavens and the Earth." So that's really holding your hand through this.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan By the way, this is from nothing.
Dan Beecher Yeah. But we've got- Is that from nothing part of, is that translational, or is that just sort of a little like- No ... that's an editor's note?
Dan McClellan Yeah. That's an editor's note. That's telling you, "We would like you to interpret this this way."
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And what I don't see on here is the correct translation, which would be when God began to... Oh, we got additional translations. Let's see if that- NRSVUE, I think, has when God began.
Dan Beecher Right. They have when God began.
Dan McClellan Yeah. The Jewish Publication Society Tanakh, so the JPS Tanakh has when God began. Robert Alter's translation has when God began. There's another one called the First Testament, a translation by I believe Greenstein.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan Is that accurate? Greenstein or Goodspeed also says something very similar.
Dan Beecher Can I take you to my favorite translation of the Bible?
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Because it's not one and it's crazy.
Dan McClellan What's that? The Message is- Oh, gosh ...
Dan Beecher my favorite. Which, by the way, The Message for Gen 1:1 has, "First this," colon, "God created the heavens and the earth." No, "The heavens and earth-" Uh-huh "... all you see, all you don't see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness and inky blackness."
Dan McClellan There you go.
Dan Beecher The Message is great, you guys. I wouldn't use it if you want accuracy in any way. But for just sheer goofy fun entertainment, The Message is really amazing.
Dan McClellan Yeah, and a lot of people talk about this spectrum of Bible translation where it's thought for thought all the way to word for word.
Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.
Dan McClellan Where if you went extreme word for word, you're just reproducing the source text. But you've got like interlinears are over there, and then on the other end, you've got the thought for thought, which are paraphrases- Right ... or which are trying to process the source text and then spit it out in a way that would be more accessible, and I think The Message is definitely in that vein. But yeah.
Dan Beecher Oh.
Dan McClellan And the reality is that translation is a lot more complex than just a single spectrum like that.
Dan Beecher It's multidimensional. Right, because languages, they're not just words. Meaning doesn't just come from words, it comes from how you structure your sentences and what the syntax is and- Yeah.
Dan McClellan So this one here comes down to how we're interpreting the word bereshit, the first word in Hebrew, which scholars these days are in pretty widespread agreement this is in the construct. And if it is in the construct, then it means in the beginning of something rather than just an absolute in the beginning, this is what happened. And so the fact that so many translations stick with in the beginning is a testament to the influence of the traditional reading. And the King James Version didn't originate that reading. It goes back much further than that. But It is definitely not creation ex nihilo, creation out of nothing. That's for dang sure.
Dan Beecher All right.
Dan McClellan Another one I want to look at is Genesis 2:8.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And there's really one main translation that I'm going to be poking fun at here. Genesis 2:8, here's the King James Bible, "And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed."
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan Now, this is a part of a distinct creation account from Genesis 1. The NIV says-- And the order of creation is different.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Here, it's in a different order from Genesis 1. The NIV says, "Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed." And so we're using a pluperfect verb tense. Instead of just saying, "This is what he did," it's saying, "Now, this is what he had done before we get to- Right ... what we're talking about now."
Dan Beecher He's not doing it right now, or he didn't just do it. He did it a while ago, and- Right ... now we're catching up to that point, or now that's becoming relevant.
Dan McClellan And the purpose is to say, "No, this is not in a different order."
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Because we can translate this in the pluperfect and say, "Now, look, remember back in chapter 1 when he had done this? So I'm just kind of casting your memory back there so you recall that this happened." And so it's trying to suggest that Genesis 2 is not actually giving the creation account in a specific order, but just kind of casting back. And so this- But your contention would be that that is a mistranslation of- That is a mistranslation guided by the presupposition of univocality. And so in order to obscure the fact that there is discontinuity between these two accounts of the creation, they use the pluperfect to disrupt the consecutive order of creative acts that is taking place here.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And I think there was another one. Ah, the Douay-Rheims, which is a very early Catholic translation, which was based initially on the Vulgate.
Dan Beecher Oh, okay.
Dan McClellan And then later on was kind of revised in light of the King James Version. The Douay-Rheims says, "And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning, wherein he placed man whom he had formed."
Dan Beecher Hmm.
Dan McClellan So, that's another one that is playing the same, getting stuck on the same sticky wicket- Right ... of presupposing univocality.
Dan Beecher I'm pleased to report that Wycliffe did not fall for that trap and said, "Forsooth, the Lord God planted at the beginning the paradise of liking."
Dan McClellan Hmm. The paradise of liking.
Dan Beecher Nice. By the way, that's a great title for a book or something. If you want to write a book, "The Paradise of Liking" I think would be a good title.
Dan McClellan Oh, man. Wycliffe, what was he on? That is an interesting one.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Now, one that I always look at, just because I hope that one day I will see a different translation, is Genesis 20:13.
Dan Beecher Oh, really?
Dan McClellan And this is not one that blows anybody's hair back. But here's the King James Version, "And it came to pass, when God caused me to wander from my father's house, that I said unto her, This is thy kindness which thou shalt show unto me; at every place whither we shall come, say of me, He is my brother." So this is Abraham being like, "Hey, we need to lie to some folks to save my hide." And this is something that I think Jacob also does after Abraham. But the interesting part is that the verb, "When God caused me to wander," the verb is in the plural in Hebrew.
Dan Beecher Ah.
Dan McClellan It is unambiguously a plural verb, and the word for God, Elohim, is grammatically plural. And so in order to determine whether this is intended to refer to a singular deity or plural deities, you're supposed to look at the verbs and the pronouns. And so you could make a case that it would be more accurate to translate this, "And it came to pass when the gods caused me to wander."
Dan Beecher Oh, wow.
Dan McClellan Which some scholars think probably makes a little better sense if this tradition is coming from very early in the history of Israel.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And others think, "Eh, no, it's just some kind of harmonization." When you have participles, the participles, which is a verbal noun, the participles can match the ending of the plural noun, Elohim. And so for kind of phonemic reasons, there can be phonemic harmonization. We want the participle to rhyme with the noun. And so it's a little easier for me to accept that argument if there's a participle, but here's not a participle, it's just a straight-up verb, and it's plural.
Dan Beecher And so- I'm sure we all followed all of that. Everything that you just said.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher With the participles and the phonemes and whatever.
Dan McClellan Yeah. So, if you have the participle ending in im, and you have Elohim, verb im, then it rhymes.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And so because the way that these texts sounded was so important- Hmm ... to the Hebrew language- I think there's a better case to make that you can have people saying, "I'm just going to use a plural participle here, even though I'm talking about the single God, because it sounds better."
Dan Beecher Yeah. That kind of stuff is really fun. It definitely, I think, would blow a lot of people's minds if Genesis, what was it? 20 verse 13- Yeah ... was like, "And when the gods had me, caused me to wander." I think some people would-- We've talked about the fact that this is not a monotheistic book.
Dan McClellan Right.
Dan Beecher But, I think that may be one of the things that we're talking about, is that people are making choices to make sure to minimize the polytheism of the book and bring in as much monotheism, or make the monotheism highlighted and- Yeah ... sort of stretch across the entirety of the thing.
Dan McClellan And mask anything that complicates it.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And that's exactly what's going on here, is they're masking that.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan I found another example that might be a little clearer. You remember when we talked about the Necromancer of Endor?
Dan Beecher I love the witch. I'm going to call her the witch. I like the witch.
Dan McClellan And in verse 13, where it says, "I saw a divine being coming up out of the ground," according to the NRSV, but it's just Elohim, God.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan A god, gods. It says, "Elohim ra'iti olim." So, Elohim, I see rising up. So that rising up participle is plural, but Elohim olim rhymes. So, that could be an-- And then Saul responds, "What does he look like?"
Dan Beecher So- Okay ...
Dan McClellan it's like, did you not hear me use the plural?
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan But, so that's an example where maybe that's plural just for phonemic reasons.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan Interesting.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan So, the next one I want to look at, which I think is going to be a little more fun, is one that we've talked about somewhat recently, Deuteronomy 32:8.
Dan Beecher Oh, okay.
Dan McClellan Which is the fun one. So this is where we have the Song of Moses, and Moses is supposed to say, "Ask your fathers and they will tell you, the elders, and they will say to you." Then King James Version says, "When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel." Now, this is an example where it's a question of the source text. The Masoretic Text here has children of Israel. That's not really up for debate. The ancient Greek translation, the Septuagint, has angels of God.
Dan Beecher Hmm.
Dan McClellan And scholars have long known they like to translate the phrase, sons of God, as angels of God. So people stroked their beards and clucked their tongues and thought, maybe this originally said, according to the number of the bene Elohim- Mm ... the children of God. And then lo and behold, we found among the Dead Sea Scrolls 4Q Deuteronomy- J, which says precisely that, the sons of God. And so any translation that has been executed since the '60s has been aware that we have this reading out there, that there is a better reading. And some of them will translate it better, like the NRSVUE, which is the one that we default to, the official position of the Data Over Dogma podcast.
Dan Beecher Correct.
Dan McClellan Says, "He fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods." Which is just understanding children of God, bene Elohim, to be used as a way to refer to a member of a given category.
Dan Beecher So, like- Right ...
Dan McClellan sons of the prophets means prophet.
Dan Beecher Or son of man means a person.
Dan McClellan A human.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan You've got the daughters of Adam from Genesis 6, which just means women. And so that's how they're taking it. We have in the New English Translation, we have a very interesting take. "He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the heavenly assembly."
Dan Beecher Oh.
Dan McClellan So it's not just translating what it says, but it's saying, well, the bene Elohim, the children of God, were members of the Divine Council, the heavenly assembly, and so let's just render heavenly assembly. And so that's what we get.
Dan Beecher Interesting.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher But talk a little bit about, because one thing that you said that I think maybe some of our listeners might get hung up on is why. So we find one Dead Sea Scroll- Uh-huh ... that confirms this bene Elohim idea. Why is that the now dominant or now preferred rendering- Reading.
Dan McClellan Yeah ...
Dan Beecher reading, rather than, because that's one source, but we know that there's lots and lots of source texts, and they don't always, as these scrolls were written, copied, and disseminated, and whatever, differences emerged. Why is that going to be preferred over other traditions?
Dan McClellan So, that's a good point, because earlier does not necessarily mean more original. Because it's very complex how these texts can change as they're transmitted. The first part is the fact that there were no children of Israel at this time. So this- ... dividing up of the nations- That's kind of a problem.
Dan Beecher Sure.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher All right.
Dan McClellan So, we're probably supposed to understand this as a callback to the part in Genesis where it talks about Peleg, and it says the Earth was divided- in his day or something like that. So this is probably something that's calling back to Genesis 10 and the table of nations. Now, you do have a statement that there were 70 folks who came out of Egypt to return with the sons of Israel after following the exodus. And so that's one of the arguments for children of Israel, 70. But we have the 70 nations in Genesis 10, and once we consider the reading sons of God, well, one, that doesn't have the chronological problem that sons of Israel has. It is much earlier. We don't know when exactly children of Israel got worked into the manuscript, but all of the earliest manuscripts we have, all the manuscripts that we have prior to the Masoretic Text read something different. The Septuagint had sons of God. The Dead Sea Scrolls have sons of God. And this makes better sense because this would account for the tradition that we see developing later on of every nation having a guardian angel over it. And so if we're dividing up the nations according to the sons of God, then that makes a little better sense of that. Deuteronomy 4:19 also seems to be reflecting the same idea.
Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.
Dan McClellan Because that's where it says, "When you look up into the sky and you see the sun, the moon, the stars, and all the host of heaven, we don't want you to be driven to worship them because God distributed them to the nations."
Dan Beecher Hmm.
Dan McClellan And so this is an astralization of the gods, but it's treating the gods as each one being distributed to its own nation. So it accounts for the idea of patron deities over each of the nations of the earth. So, we have manuscript support. Chronologically, it makes better sense. It also has much more explanatory power, and it also fits into other passages that seem to refer to this tradition about each nation having a deity distributed to it.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And we also have another verse in Deuteronomy 32, Deuteronomy 32:43, which in a similar way, had a reference to gods that was smudged out, but we were clued in by the Septuagint, and then we found a Dead Sea Scroll manuscript that demonstrated the Septuagint was right, but we don't need to get into that one.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan But this is another one where it's theological. The motivation to avoid the reading that scholars overwhelmingly agree is more original, it's a theological concern. They don't want to say that. And so there are a number of translations, let me see if I can remember which translations there are. There are a handful that will avoid it. Surprisingly, the English Standard Version, which-- Have we talked about the ESV on the podcast?
Dan Beecher Not really, no. I don't think so.
Dan McClellan Okay. So this was a translation that was basically done because a bunch of evangelicals got together in Colorado Springs and said, "I don't like how the NIV is favoring women."
Dan Beecher And- Okay, yes. We did talk about this, right.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher That's great.
Dan McClellan And so they came up with the English Standard Version. In a lot of ways, it's a very, very accurate translation. And so here they say, "He fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God." Dead on. It is a perfectly literal translation. There is no shame there. They're not trying to hide anything.
Dan Beecher But we can- The shame comes later, I guess.
Dan McClellan Yeah. Okay, how about this? How about The Message?
Dan Beecher Oh.
Dan McClellan "He put each of the peoples within boundaries under the care of divine guardians."
Dan Beecher Oh, wow.
Dan McClellan So they're incorporating it, but they're incorporating the broader tradition of this idea of guardian angels over each nation- Yeah ... which is something that you see in later Greco-Roman Judaism. For instance, the Book of Daniel, where Michael the archangel comes to Daniel and he's like, "Sorry, I just came from battling the Prince of Persia." "And then now I've got to go battle the Prince of Greece." And this is supposed to reflect the guardian angel over each of these nations. And Michael- Right ... is the head because Israel is the head.
Dan Beecher So it stops being about- Gods ... patron gods, and becomes lesser divine- Right ... agents of some sort.
Dan McClellan So between the exile and the Greco-Roman period, you basically, in order to try to further exalt the God of Israel, all the second-tier deities and the craftsman deities and the servile deities, everybody gets squished down into the bottom tier, which is basically the servile tier.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And so everybody who used to be gods, now they're just angels. And technically, angels are considered gods, but it's like, eh, you're a god with a little G.
Dan Beecher Yeah. It's a demi-god.
Dan McClellan You're the JV.
Dan Beecher Yeah. It's a cute god.
Dan McClellan The JV squad. But you have translations like the New American Standard Bible, the NASB, which says, "According to the number of the sons of Israel." And then they'll just include a footnote that says, "Hmm, the Dead Sea Scrolls say sons of God." "The Septuagint says angels of God. We don't care, though." New English Translation has-- Oh, we already went over that one.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan But they've got copious notes there. Oh, which reminds me Let's look at another one from the NET specifically, because it annoys me, a translation.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And this is Exodus 22:8. And Exodus 21:6 is very similar, but I think the problem is more clearly outlined in Exodus 22:8. But first, let me share the King James Version, and then do you have the NRSV in front of you?
Dan Beecher I can.
Dan McClellan Okay. Pull it up and follow along.
Dan Beecher If you will. We're in Exodus 22, is that what you said?
Dan McClellan 22. Yeah, we're going to be in verse eight.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan Okay. Here's the King James Version. "If the thief be not found, then the master of the house shall be brought unto the judges- Oh ... to see whether he have put his hand unto his neighbor's goods."
Dan Beecher Okay. That is not what it says in the NRSVUE.
Dan McClellan What does it say in the NRSVUE?
Dan Beecher "If the thief is not caught, the owner of the house shall be brought before God to determine whether or not the owner had laid hands on the neighbor's goods."
Dan McClellan Hmm.
Dan Beecher Provocative.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher And also not easy to do. It seems like it's either already before God or huh?
Dan McClellan So, it's Elohim is the word in Hebrew. Now, here's the thing that complicates the way the NRSV translates it, because if you go down to verse nine, it says, "The one whom God condemns shall pay double to the other," according to the NRSV. However, if you look in the Hebrew, that verb for condemn in verse nine- Mm-hmm ... it's not singular. It's plural, and so it doesn't say God. It actually says gods.
Dan Beecher Okay, so when the verb is plural, then that is then retroactively- That indicates- ... applied to the subject. To the- The subject.
Dan McClellan If the subject is the word Elohim, because that can be singular or plural.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan Right. So really, Exodus 22:8 should say, "Then the owner of the house will be brought before the gods- Okay ... to see whether he has laid his hand on his neighbor's goods, and the case of the party shall come before the gods- Oh ... and the one whom the gods condemn shall pay double to the other." The New English- This, I was going to say- Go ahead ...
Dan Beecher this naughty little NRSV doesn't even have a note for that.
Dan McClellan Yeah. They're tricky.
Dan Beecher They're not even acknowledging that there's a possible issue here.
Dan McClellan No. Now, the New English Translation is following after the King James Version, rendering judges, and just to be blunt, the word Elohim never means judges in the Hebrew Bible.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan It means God, gods, or divine.
Dan Beecher Period.
Dan McClellan Okay. So, they have a note here that says, "The line says..." No, 22:8. "Here again, the word used is the gods, meaning the judges who made the assessments and decisions."
Dan Beecher Why would it mean that? Why would they use that word to mean that? That doesn't make any sense.
Dan McClellan Well, the note that I was looking for is actually, okay, it's in Exodus 21:6 where we have the same thing. "His master must bring him to the Elohim."
Dan Beecher Hmm.
Dan McClellan And they say here, "The word is ha'elohim. One scholar, Driver, says the word means to God, namely the nearest sanctuary, in order that the oath and the ritual may be made solemn." Although he does say that it would be done by human judges, which is nonsense. "Others have made a stronger case that it refers to judges who acted on behalf of God." Here's the problem. The NET then cites Cyrus Gordon and Anne Draffkorn. Cyrus's paper is called "Elohim and its Reputed Meaning of Rulers, Judges," and Draffkorn's article is called "Ilani Elohim." It cites these two in support of the notion that it refers to judges who act on behalf of God.
Dan Beecher Sure.
Dan McClellan Each of those articles argues it does not mean judges.
Dan Beecher It means- ...
Dan McClellan each of those articles argues strenuously this means gods.
Dan Beecher Wow.
Dan McClellan And so whoever is responsible for this New English Translation note either just was like, "Well, I'm just going to lie and just count on nobody looking these things up," or saw the article titles and was like, "Surely they agree with what we want the situation to be," and so just blithely put them down in support without having ever read them.
Dan Beecher And they- Listen, I am sympathetic- ...
Dan McClellan unambiguously- ...
Dan Beecher I am sympathetic to anyone who reads just a headline and feels like they understand the entirety of the argument. But like the head- I have been known to do that on occasion myself. I love this commercial.
Dan McClellan This lady's like, "So I read an article. Well, most of an article. Okay, the headline of an article."
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Yeah. It's like, yeah, I think that's more honest than a lot of us can be. But Cyrus Gordon's article is titled "Elohim in its Reputed Meaning of Rulers and Judges." You know he's going to argue that it doesn't mean that. So that is a theologically-driven translation.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan They want it to say gods. They're going to have it say judges, and we need to throw some citations on there. We need to pad that footnote so it looks like we have a case, even though they cited 100% of the articles that they cited to defend their reading flatly refute their reading.
Dan Beecher Wow. That is bold, I'll say that.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher If I were one of those people who wrote one of those papers, I would be probably a little upset about that.
Dan McClellan Hey, I think Cyrus Gordon is no longer with us and has not been for some time. I don't know about Anne Draffkorn. But yeah, that would be annoying. Even comments on my videos, they're like, "Dan said this," and it's like, I have never once said that in my entire life.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Yeah. Which is annoying.
Dan Beecher Feel free to quote us. Don't quote me. I'm pretty worthless to you. But feel free to quote Dan, but at least say what he said.
Dan McClellan Yeah. If you're going to refute him- Get it right ...
Dan Beecher make sure you say what he actually said.
Dan McClellan Yeah. I feel like we haven't spent much time in the New Testament.
Dan Beecher Let's get in there, man.
Dan McClellan Yeah. We're running out of real estate. So, an interesting one, kind of a simple one, is Mark 1:1. So, this is the first sentence of any gospel that we have.
Dan Beecher Mark's- Mm ...
Dan McClellan the earliest gospel. This is the first chapter, the very first verse.
Dan Beecher You're saying chronologically.
Dan McClellan Chronologically, yeah.
Dan Beecher Not as they appear in most Bibles, but chronologically speaking.
Dan McClellan Chronologically, yeah. Matthew comes first because that is more helpful to segueing from the prophet Malachi into, here's our coming Elijah, who is going to fulfill all this, and all that kind of stuff. But in Mark 1, here's the King James Version, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God."
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan So, pretty straightforward, pretty basic. And then we immediately get into, "As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send a messenger," blah, blah, blah, blah. Some translations don't- Yeah, that's- Go ahead.
Dan Beecher That is not what I've got.
Dan McClellan The thing that you- You're looking at the NRSVUE?
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Okay, hit me.
Dan Beecher I've got, "The beginning of the good news," good news, gospel, that's fine, "of Jesus Christ," period.
Dan McClellan Yep.
Dan Beecher You said something.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher You kept talking after the words Jesus Christ.
Dan McClellan The Son of God is something that's been most likely added. That is not in our earliest manuscripts.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan However, you could make the case that it's there.
Dan Beecher Mm.
Dan McClellan This is an instance where you have good manuscript support for it. It's not the earliest, it's not the strongest, but you can make a case for it. And so, some folks leave it in. The New English Translation, I think, they leave it in. Yeah, but there's a footnote that says, some of these lack the Son of God, and both Irenaeus and Epiphanius, so early Christian authors, additionally lack Jesus Christ.
Dan Beecher Oh.
Dan McClellan Yeah. While virtually all the rest of the witnesses have the words.
Dan Beecher Yeah. So, the footnote in the NRSV says, so the NRSV doesn't have the- Right ... Son of God part. And their footnote just says, "Other ancient authorities add Son of God."
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Interesting.
Dan McClellan And this is part of the complexity of translating. When you sit down to translate, you've got to pick a source text, and normally you just go for the nearest critical edition. But translators are not bound to the text critical choices that they make in those critical editions. And so, some translators will be like, "Well, I want to include this, and I think that we should put this in here because I think it fits." And so, they will put stuff back in. So, the New English Translation is like, "We like the Son of God. We're going to put it in. We're just going to add a note."
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And adding a note is kind of a way to cover your tracks. It's like, "I know the argument. I still want to do it anyway."
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Yeah, I think most scholars would say Son of God is probably not there. And one of the reasons is that when scribes transmit these texts, they tend to add to the text more frequently than they take away from the text.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan There's not really a good argument to make for how this could've fallen out, but we can come up with good reasons why it would've been added in.
Dan Beecher Right. So- Unless somebody just spilled their coffee and it covered over the Son of God part.
Dan McClellan And then amen. Which it does happen. You sometimes have coffee rings on old manuscripts and stuff like that. One of my favorites, there's an old Roman tile that somebody was obviously making the tile in their garage. There are cat footprints- Oh ... in the tile. Oh, I love that Somebody's cat was just like, "Doo-doo-doo," and ran across the tile as it was drying. Oh, it's the coolest thing in the world.
Dan Beecher That's awesome.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan Here's a good one.
Dan Beecher You might as well just use the tile.
Dan McClellan Oh, yeah. They did. It was turned over. It was upside down. That was the bottom of the tile.
Dan Beecher Oh, okay.
Dan McClellan So, it was still stuck on a roof somewhere.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan Look up Matthew 17:21.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan Well, the long pause is instrumental here- ... because you're not going to find it.
Dan Beecher Hey, wait a minute. Are you tricking me?
Dan McClellan I am tricking you.
Dan Beecher You're right. You are tricking me because, yeah, Matthew 17:21 ain't in there.
Dan McClellan You've got a digital version, right?
Dan Beecher Yes.
Dan McClellan Of the NRSV?
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And if you look in a hard copy, it just goes 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24.
Dan Beecher Yep.
Dan McClellan Verse 21 is not in there, although there should be a footnote probably at the end of verse 20 or the beginning.
Dan Beecher There is.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Yep.
Dan McClellan And what does the footnote say?
Dan Beecher Other ancient authorities add 17:21. And then it lists what that says.
Dan McClellan Yeah. So, King James Version, "Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting."
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And so, in the canonical order of the New Testament, this is the first example of this happening, although, as we've talked about before, this happens about 16 times in a bunch of Bibles. This is one of the passages that is just removed from modern translations because we know that it was not a part of the original version of this text.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Because we have a manuscript where it's not there at all, no sign whatsoever of it. And then we have another manuscript where it's not in the text, but somebody scribbled it in the margins and put a little arrow saying, "Right here." And then we have a later manuscript where it's just right in the body of the text. And so somebody has just slipped it in there.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan And as you look around at different translations, you'll see that some of them include it, some of them don't. And this text was first omitted in an 1881 edition of the New Testament.
Dan Beecher So- Oh, wow. That's pretty early in the game, it feels like.
Dan McClellan Yeah. So, once the King James Version kind of took its place as the preeminent English translation of the Bible, nobody messed with it. There were new editions, there were new reprints, and all that kind of stuff, but once we got past Benjamin Blaney's 1769 authorized version, nobody wanted to mess with the King James Version. But we did have a bunch of scholars who were like, "We've been finding all these New Testament manuscripts that go back 1,000 years earlier than what Erasmus had available to him when he created his Textus Receptus. We can put together a better New Testament." And so there were a bunch of people who set forth in the 18th and particularly the 19th century to do that, to build a better New Testament. And Westcott and Hort are the two scholars who came up with the first, what we now call, critical text, which is kind of the new and improved version of the Textus Receptus based on hundreds of new manuscripts. And in 1881, they took the King James Version, and they revised it according to this new text. And this was kind of ballsy because it really upset a lot of people, and a lot of people told them they had no business doing this. But, the revised version, the RV, was published, the New Testament in 1881, and then the full Old Testament and New Testament together in 1885.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan And they left this out and a bunch of other passages as well. And so since then, you still have some translations of the Bible that will put those texts back in there. Not because there's a good case to make that they're original, they're not, but because of tradition. Because no one shall add a word to it or take away from it.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And they believe that that violates that, even though they're defending the corrupted version- Yeah ... that has had stuff added to it.
Dan Beecher Yeah. Well, yeah, exactly. Someone else added to it, which is a violation of that precept, but now it's in there, so I got to honor it or whatever.
Dan McClellan Yeah. And a lot of on social media, I see videos all the time from people who are like, "I just discovered that they took out a verse from the Bible."
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And they go through and they're like, "Look in your Bible, everybody. Make sure that you have verse 21 in Matthew 17." And they're just breathless and shocked, and it's like, it's been 143 years since this was done.
Dan Beecher Also, it's not a particularly earth-shattering verse.
Dan McClellan No.
Dan Beecher The verse that has been removed that is so scandalous doesn't change the theology at all, doesn't change anybody's practice of their religion. There's- It's just, it mentions fasting and prayer.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Gosh, I hope they mention that in other places in the Bible.
Dan McClellan And they do because this was taken from another book.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan This was taken from Mark 9. And it's altered a little bit, but people are like, "They're trying to remove fasting. They're trying to make it so we can't fast anymore." It's like, no, it still says this in Mark 9 where Jesus says, "This kind doesn't come out except by much fasting."
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan But we're getting close here, but I want to do one more that I think is interesting, if that's okay with you.
Dan Beecher Cool.
Dan McClellan Okay.
Dan Beecher Yeah, love it.
Dan McClellan John 1:18. We'll skip over the John 1:1 controversy. We already discussed that a little bit. You know what we're going to do?
Dan Beecher Oh, we've already discussed that?
Dan McClellan Yeah, John 1:1 we've already discussed.
Dan Beecher Oh, okay. That's the- Oh, the Word- The Word ... and the Word was with God- Right ... and the Word was God. Yeah- Right ... we've done that one.
Dan McClellan We've done that. So John 1:18. I'll go ahead and read what the King James Version says. Follow along. I honestly don't remember if it's different in the NRSVUE.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him."
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan Is that more or less what you have in the NRSV?
Dan Beecher Yeah. The wording feels a little bit different.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher Should I just read it?
Dan McClellan Yeah, go ahead. "No one has ever seen God.
Dan Beecher It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known."
Dan McClellan So huge difference.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Because it says, "The Son is himself God."
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan Which is actually, there are two different readings here, and it sounds like the NRSV is just keeping both of them.
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan Yeah. Because you either have the monogenes huios, which would be the only or the unique Son, or the earliest manuscript we have actually says monogenes theos. The only or the unique God, which is- Okay ... a unique phrase that doesn't occur anywhere else in the Bible. Monogenes huios, the only or the unique Son occurs like a dozen times in John.
Dan Beecher Huh.
Dan McClellan This other phrase does never occur. But if you want Jesus to be God, then it's very important that you have- Yeah ... that you stick with the other reading. So, here's the New English translation. "No one has ever seen God. The only one, himself God, who is in closest fellowship with the Father, has made God known."
Dan Beecher Okay.
Dan McClellan So we're getting real interpretive. Things are getting weird- Yeah ...
Dan Beecher here.
Dan McClellan Yeah. So we have the earliest reading which says, "The only God." Most manuscripts have, "Only Son." There is an argument that, well, this is the earliest one. We have the best support for this. There's also the principle of lectio difficilior, the more difficult reading is likely the earlier reading- Mm ... because changes tend to smooth difficulties out rather than add them in.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And so because it is weird, it's more difficult. But at the same time, it's also theologically an incredibly helpful verse. So I would argue that lectio difficilior gets a little muddy when we consider a verse that has to do with the Trinity. So- Right.
Dan Beecher There you go.
Dan McClellan Wow.
Dan Beecher Yeah. That one feels like it changes a lot depending on which one you go with.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher And I'm just- I can see when someone is making choices in terms of what they're going to put into their version, their translation, their whatever. There are moments like that where the weight of the world is on your shoulders. If you're thinking about theological sort of consequences of- Yeah ... just simple word choices or simple idea choices, but you've got multiple source texts that say kind of different things or very different things or whatever. It's just not a simple, easy process.
Dan McClellan And I think what I'd like people to take away from this is that there are a lot of judgment calls that go on, not just one or two, but on texts like this, there are multiple different judgment calls that are taking place under the hood of this translation. And a lot of- Yeah ... people want to base a lot of convictions and arguments and things like that on a translation that they may prefer without knowing how much the translators behind that are responsible for what they're reading. And we even saw with the NET that they might prefer a reading, and they might clarify that there's debate here, and then they might totally mislead you- Yeah ... on the research behind that debate. Or, as we saw with the NRSV, they might not even let you know that there is debate underlying this on what this can mean.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan And so I would like for people to realize that the translations they hold in their hands, they're not perfect. They are the encapsulation of thousands and thousands of judgment calls.
Dan Beecher Right.
Dan McClellan Some of those stronger than others, but none of them is free from the judgment of imperfect, fallible human beings who are frequently motivated by- Right ... theological concerns and things like that. And also for selling their books.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan It's going to be difficult to move a lot of Bibles if you're saying stuff that's just going to tick off the people who buy Bibles. So- I don't know.
Dan Beecher You might do pretty well. They might buy it just so they can be mad about it. I recommend it personally. Yeah, well, I- Get the controversy going.
Dan McClellan Yeah. I'm working on my own translation right now. I haven't touched it in a few months just because I haven't had the time, but I'm almost done with Genesis.
Dan Beecher Oh, wow.
Dan McClellan And I might talk to a publisher about releasing Genesis, the DMV.
Dan Beecher The Dan McClellan version. The Dan McClellan version. I'm going to start the New Controversial Version, the NCV. The NCV. And it's just I'm just going to find all the controversies, and I'm just going to go with whatever one is going to- The most controversial?
Dan McClellan Yeah ...
Dan Beecher piss people off the most. And you know what?
Dan McClellan I think the odds of getting that right would probably be higher than chance.
Dan Beecher So- That's probably true. That's probably true.
Dan McClellan I think it would be true, yeah.
Dan Beecher Yeah.
Dan McClellan All right. But at the same time, if you do that, there are going to be times when it's like, "Pretty sure this is wrong. This is definitely right over here." Or you could say, "It's 50/50. It could be one, it could be the other." And you don't want to load down your translation with all kinds of alternatives. There are some translations that will put in brackets alternative translations just so- Right ... you have them all, and those tend not to do very well at all.
Dan Beecher But- Well, this is what I was thinking. As we are looking at all of these different verses, and I'm clicking on footnotes left and right and trying to figure out what-- Look, the Bible's already hard enough to read.
Dan McClellan Yeah.
Dan Beecher It's already very thick. It's weird language. It's ancient. There's plenty of stumbling blocks just trying to read the damn thing.
Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.
Dan Beecher Adding to that, like, "Oh, I got to check in with-" 15 footnotes in this chapter alone. It's just too much.
Dan McClellan Yeah. And that's the one other thing that I would say about Bible translations is what's the best Bible translation? Whichever one is going to do what you are reading the Bible in order to do, because there are some folks who want to get hip deep in the complexities, and they want the notes, and they want to be able to say, "What does this verse over here say?" and flip to it and, "Ah, good. There's a detailed footnote that's telling me." There are folks who want that. There are other folks who just want to be able to sit down and read and get lost in the narrative or in the poetry. And there are people who translate the Bible that way, where the poetry is in poetic typesetting, where they don't even have chapter and verse numbers.
Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.
Dan McClellan Where it's divided up according to sense unit, and it's all in paragraphs, or you might just have the verses listed in the margins. They don't interrupt the flow of the text, and you don't have any footnotes. And some Bible translations are intended for missionary purposes. Some Bible translations are intended to facilitate administrative concerns. Some Bible translations are intended to combat competing religious groups. You can translate the Bible in so many different ways to do so many different things, and if your translation does precisely what you want it to do, then that's the best translation for you. And when it comes to most original, there's no such thing. I get that question a lot, "Which is the closest to the Hebrew?" It's like that's not really a thing.
Dan Beecher Good luck.
Dan McClellan You can just go get the Hebrew if you want that. Because the closer you get to the Hebrew and English, the less and less you are going to understand what it's saying because the less and less it is actual English.
Dan Beecher So- Wow.
Dan McClellan All right ... it's a moving target. It's messy.
Dan Beecher Yeah, it's a messy thing. Gosh, there were so many things I wanted to get into, and I think that we're going to get into a few of them in our afterparty.
Dan McClellan Awesome.
Dan Beecher So anyone who wants to can follow us over to Patreon. If you're already a member at the $10 a month or more level, you can hear our afterparty. I'm going to start us off by talking about theology just as a concept because I want to talk about theology. We had somebody write into us, and just say, "Hey, can we talk a little bit about what it means to have theology and why this isn't a theological podcast?" Anyway, we're going to get into theology and a bunch of other stuff in a much more less formal way over in the Patreon bonus episode. So if you want to, you can go to patreon.com/dataoverdogma and sign up there, and then you'll get early and ad-free versions of every episode of the show, plus the bonus content if you sign up at the right level. So that's exciting. Otherwise, thank you for listening so much. And you can reach us by writing into contact@dataoverdogmapod.com, and we'll talk to you again next week.
Dan McClellan Bye everybody.
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