One last look at Bible translations and Witherington's book

Here’s a final look at Ben Witherington’s book The Living Word of God. Let’s finish up on what he had to say about Bible translations.

He had some good general rules when looking for a useful translation of the Bible. First, he says if the translation has to have a lot of notes to explain just the meaning of the words and phrases used, then it’s either too literal or too much of a paraphrase. He also tells the reader to get a Bible that best conveys the meaning of the original inspired text to the particular target audience you have in mind. A third point is to realize a team translation usually will be better than an individual translation.

Witherington may get in trouble when he comments on the weaknesses of the King James Bible translation. There are those who claim to be "King James only" people--they believe this is the true, inspired word of God. I never understood why so many cling to this one dated version of the Bible. I know it’s beautifully written, but the meaning sure gets lost. Witherington says this translation from the early 1600s depended too heavily on outdated manuscripts. We now have far better and earlier manuscripts of both the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible than they did four hundred years ago. Someone once said he only used the King James Bible when he was dealing with a 400-year old person. The author says the New King James version does overcome a lot of the archaic language difficulties of the KJV, but it still does not take advantage of the better and earlier manuscripts.

So, what are our best choices? He says Today’s New International Edition, the Jerusalem Bible, or the New Revised Standard Version. I'm planning to read the English Standard Version since it received a book of the year award from World magazine. Then there’s the updated New American Standard Bible—I was never a fan of the older one since I thought it was an awkward translation. But maybe the update is better.

Any thoughts? Your favorites?

Which Bible translation?

Ben Witherington has a great chapter title in his book The Living Word of God when he turns to the issue of Bible translations: “How to Pick a Translation Without Losing Your Religion.” He does a good job discussing why there are so many translations, the diversity of each translation, and the battle over gender-inclusive language.

First, he says we have a lot of translations for a very important reason. We have discovered so many manuscripts of various parts of the Bible that new translations allow us to get ever closer to the original text of both the Old and New Testaments. To give us an idea of the differences over time, he mentions the King James translators had only one Greek text, and it wasn’t all that old. Now we have over five thousand copies of parts or the whole of the New Testament in Greek—what a wealth of sources!

In addition, we have many translations because we are lucky enough to live where English is spoken. We have a rich and vibrant language that changes quickly. For example, Witherington quotes Acts 26:14 from the King James Bible, which says, “It hurts you to kick against the pricks.” For good reason, that has changed today. The N.I.V., for example, now reads, “It is hard for you to kick against the goad.” No wonder so many people struggle with the old translation--it's like reading Shakespeare.

He then goes over the amazing variety available. Different Bibles exist for different audiences. There are those translations that are very loose (The Message, The Living Bible), others that are more idiomatic (New International Version, Jerusalem Bible, New King James), and still others that attempt more literal translations (New American Standard, NET Bible). He points out there is no such thing as an absolute literal translation because English is so different from Greek and Hebrew.

I would point out that Witherington wrote his book before the English Standard Version came to market. It falls closer to being a more literal translation with many admirers, including R. C. Sproul, John Mark Reynolds, and Ravi Zacharias. It has done well with the public, and I’ve heard it may become the default Bible for most evangelicals some day.

Witherington has more to say about Bible translations—I’ll cover that next time.

The real story of how we got the New Testament

Ben Witherington, author of The Living Word of God, has a section in which he explains how the New Testament books were formed into the canon (books accepted as authoritative). It's important to know this story because many people today have mistaken ideas of how this all happened. Thanks to books like The Da Vinci Code, many readers assume a powerful church set up a council and picked which books they considered legitimate. However, it was not a matter of politics or powerful men sitting down in the fourth century A.D. to decide these issues. No one ruled out other books that had been previously considered legitimate. The truth is quite different.

The New Testament canon came about due to a process that actually started in the New Testament era. Take a look at 2 Peter 3: 16, where Peter describes Paul's writings as part of true scripture. The formation of the accepted New Testament writings was already happening in the primitive Christian community.

Some, including the author of The Da Vinci Code, will argue that Gnostic texts competed with traditional writings for inclusion in the canon. But Witherington says nobody argued for the inclusion of any of the Gnostic texts. They were seen as heresy in their own day as well as long afterward. As he notes, "Not even the earliest of the Gnostic texts, the Gospel of Thomas, was ever on a canon list or seriously considered for inclusion as a sacred text for Christians."

Most of the New Testament became accepted as sacred with no debate surrounding the various works. The ones accepted immediately were Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul's letters (except Hebrews, an anonymous letter).

Which works were debated? Hebrew was because it was anonymous. James and Jude were because they seemed so Jewish. Revelation was because of its prophecy.

What were the standards used to decide if a book belonged in the canon? Again, let Witherington describe this: "It needed to be an early witness, a first-century witness, one that went back directly or indirectly to the original eyewitnesses, apostles, and their co-workers or an early prophet like John of Patmos." So accepted books needed a combination of historical and theological factors to become part of the canon. Early church fathers said accepted books needed to have some sort of connection to an apostle and should involve orthodox teaching.

There was no single church gathering that created the current list of twenty-seven books in the New Testament. The process of sifting and choosing which books should belong in the Christian scriptures was going on throughout the second through the fourth centuries. A man named Marcion came to Rome around 144 A.D. He told the church there he had a list of acceptable books for a canon, but his list was extremely short. It included only Luke's gospel and a few of Paul's letters. The church rejected Marcion, claiming that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John should all be considered scripture.

By the end of the second century there was a list which looks a lot like what we have today. Only James, Hebrews, 1 and 2 Peter, and 3 John are missing. What's interesting is that eventually all geographical areas where Christianity was popular (the Eastern empire, Africa, the Western empire) independently concluded that these twenty-seven books should be recognized as the Christian scriptures. That's remarkable when you think about it: "The various parts of the church, without political or ecclesiastical coercion, and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, all came to the same conclusion about the twenty-seven books of the New Testament.”

What can we say to wrap this up? Here's the key fact -- it was not a matter of the church conducting a big meeting, drawing up a list of books to form the canon, and imposing this list on its members. Instead, the church simply recognized the list of books that had been forming since the time of Peter and Paul. Over the centuries Christians had found these books valuable for worship and instruction. As one person says in Witherington’s book, "The canon thus represents the collective experience of the Christian community during its formative centuries." So there was no conspiracy, no imposition of books, no hiding or destroying competing gospels, no huddled gathering of old men.

Some rules for examining biblical "errors"

In his book The Living Word of God , Ben Witherington wraps up the issue of errors in the New Testament. He has six points that are important to keep in mind when we hear complaints from critics who claim they have found errors in these documents.

First, it's not considered an error when an author intends to give a general report or the gist of something rather than a precise report. His generalizing is not falsifying the story.

Second, it's not considered an error if an author of ancient literature arranged, edited, or paraphrased what someone said. For example Matthew uses the term "kingdom of heaven" rather than the phrase "kingdom of God" used by Mark in the same passage. We should not impose a modern standard of precision which these ancient authors were not required to follow according to the writing customs of their day.

Third, it's not considered an error to present events out of chronological order. For example, John 2 puts the cleansing of the temple there for theological, not chronological reasons.

Fourth, it's not considered an error of the original author if a translator makes a mistake when rendering the original into another language.

Fifth, it's not considered an error when a New Testament author discusses the Old Testament text and appears to misrepresent it. In fact, they are often just paraphrasing the text rather than being concerned about a precise translation.

Sixth, we need to understand what an error would look like. It would violate the principle of noncontradiction, which says that A and not-A cannot both be true at the same time in the same way. For example, it would be an error if one of the gospels said Jesus was born in Nazareth, and another said he was born in Bethlehem. They might both be wrong, but they can't both be right.

When we hear critics talk about errors in the Bible, we should remember something that Ben Witherington said: "I have yet to find a single example of a clear violation of the principal of noncontradiction anywhere in the New Testament."

Did they get it right??

Ben Witherington, in The Living Word of God, does more than just look at different types of literature that make up the New Testament. The next section of his book discusses the historical accuracy of a few disputed passages.

He starts with the differences of the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke. Some people say it appears that Bethlehem is the hometown of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew while Luke seems to say it is Nazareth. He notes that both accounts stress the Jesus was born in Bethlehem even though both authors realize Jesus was called "Jesus of Nazareth" and that his family lived there after his birth. He points out how much of both gospels tell the same story, especially the fact that Jesus came into this world through a miracle of a virgin birth. Matthew’s gospel does not give us an account of Jesus’ life before his birth; it does not tell the reader where the family lived before his birth. One other difference concerns the flight into Egypt, which Matthew mentions but Luke does not. This does not mean the flight did not happen. Different authors chose different elements to stress.

Witherington tackles Luke 2: 1-4, which some believe contains a problem. Those who doubt the accuracy of Luke say that the famous census of Quirinius took place at a later time than the gospel indicates and that the census described in Luke 2: 1-4 is highly improbable (families having to go to their ancestral hometowns to register). He starts his answer by indicating that Luke obviously knew when the famous census took place – check out Acts 5:37. In addition, the Emperor Augustus set out to get tax revenues from all his provinces, this would mean a census would be necessary. Luke 2: 1 might well mean that Augustus decreed that all the rest of the Empire be enrolled, some of the work already having been done. Another point has to do with the Greek language of Luke 2: 2. It could mean, "This was the first census which happened during when Quirinius was ruler of Syria," or it might read, "This enrollment was before when Quirinius was ruler of Syria." Finally, there is evidence from Egypt that people were forced to go to their ancestral homes for registration.

Then there are the questions that surround the slaughter of the innocents reported in Matthew. The author of this gospel describes a paranoid King Herod, who attempts to end any potential threat to his kingdom by killing all the babies in Bethlehem. How can it be, the skeptics ask, that a horrible event like this would not be written up in other historical accounts? But we need to realize that Bethlehem was a very small town in the time of Jesus, so no more than a handful of infants in that town would have been two years or younger. Plus we know from other sources that King Herod was fully capable of such nastiness since he killed several of his own wives and offspring.

Of course, critics have attacked many other parts of the Bible. But Witherington has demonstrated in the above examples that initial problems may simply be the case of misunderstandings or ignorance. There are plenty of good books devoted to tackling these issues of apparent biblical difficulties, so don't accept the statement of a skeptic without researching it carefully.

So you think you know Revelation?

Besides the four gospels, a book of history (Acts) and a number of letters, the New Testament contains one book of mostly apocalyptic prophecy—Revelation. It’s a lot like the Old Testament books of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah, but with some elements of a letter. No other book has confused so many people. Ben Witherington, in The Living Word of God, addresses the literary qualities and conventions of this puzzling book to show how badly treated it has been over the ages. His claim is that Revelation “has been stripped of its historical context and rhetorical setting.”

The author starts by distinguishing the kind of prophecy that exists in Revelation. It is a visionary prophecy much like Zechariah, Daniel, and Ezekiel. It may have elements of predicting the future, but that is not the main point. Instead, John uses a rhetoric which is clearly metaphorical and symbolic. For example, he mentions a person whose number is 666. This individual appears a lot like Nero, who was persecuting Christians in John’s day, but he is not named in the book. The key to the book is this use of coded language that made sense to people of his time, not to us today unless we are willing to put in a lot of study.

Witherington is upset that people claim Revelation is all about today's world. He says that "we must contend with the ridiculous ideas that this book was written especially for late-20th-and early-21st-century Christians, and no one could possibly have understood the book before now, since it's all coming to pass right now." Instead, chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation clearly say that this book was written for first-century Christians in western Asia Minor. John believes that "the sort of things he is writing about are already happening and will continue to happen right up to the point when Jesus returns." So, Revelation is relevant for all the ages since its inception.

Witherington is especially exasperated with those who look to Revelation for confirmation of the theory called "the rapture." He says the book does not speak of a pretribulation rapture of the faithful. Instead, it focuses on suffering and martyrdom of the believers. Witherington claims this idea of "the rapture" did not really exist in Christian history before the early 1800s. It is a recent idea that has become huge in evangelical circles, but the author calls it unbiblical. He asks the reader to consider 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18, where the return of Christ is compared to the actions of a king who comes to a city. A greeting committee comes out of the city to meet the dignitary (dead and living Christians rise to meet Jesus in the air); all then proceed back into the city (the Earth). They don't leave the city and depart to the king's domain (the view the rapture would require as an analogy). Witherington says this picture would have been clear to people in Paul's time when he wrote Thessalonians. He's pretty blunt in his assessment of this popular rapture business: "there is no such rapture theology anywhere in the New Testament, or in the Old Testament for that matter. The consistent witness of the New Testament is that Christians will continue to be martyrs throughout every church age."

The author sums it all up by saying we should not use Revelation for specific detailed prophecies of our times. Instead, the book gives us general warnings about the kind of events that will happen, which are common to every age of human history. His approach is useful to help us focus on living well rather than being tossed about with the latest end -times speculations.

Do I agree with his statements? Well, maybe. I read Hank Hanegraaff's The Apocaplypse Code that echoes the same skepticism toward the rapture. I just wish pastors and writers would be honest enough to preface their comments on Revelation by saying, "You know, there are a lot of ways of taking this book. i'm presenting one, but you should read up on the others and make up your own mind."

Letters from 2,000 years ago

This blog is another in a series on Ben Witherington's book called The Living Word of God, which examines the New Testament. Beside the four gospels covered in two previous blogs, Witherington talks about another portion of the New Testament--the letters that make up so much of it. It's obvious that they are written to specific audiences for specific purposes at a specific time using specific conventions popular during this time. We can gain much from them (and avoid misunderstandings) if we know more about these conventions.

Paul's letters are definitely oral documents meant to be read aloud in Greek to their intended audience. What does that mean for us today? We need to think about the kind of rhetorical devices we will encounter in them -- rhythm, parallelism, rhetorical questions, balanced sentences and phrases. You can see this in 1 Corinthians 13 if you read it aloud.

We need to also understand that these letters are attempts to persuade us. Paul, for example, uses all the tricks in his bag -- he tries to convince us, convict us, and even convert us to his points of view. Some may feel they are being manipulated, but he was simply conforming to the conventions of his own day. A good example of this is a lesser-known letter of Paul's called Philemon. In this letter he tries to convince a slave owner to free a slave who has run away from him. Read it sometime and notice the emotional appeals, the use of puns, the kind of pressure Paul puts on the slave owner.

Something else we need to consider when we read a letter is the fact that it is one long discourse. We tend to zoom in on a verse or a small passage rather than seeing the entire argument. Modern chapter and verse indications make it more difficult for us to see the big picture. It's often a mistake to isolate one chapter from the next when they both may be part of the same point. Look at Romans chapter 8 where the first word is "Therefore." We need to see what Paul covered in chapter 7 so we can understand why it is foundational to what he wants to express in the following chapter.

We must also distinguish between the purposes of these letters. Some attempt to solve a problem (Philemon and 1 Corinthians are examples). Others are there to report on progress, like Philippians, where Paul basically tells the people to keep going. Some letters are sermons meant to circulate through various churches, making them more generic in tone (Ephesians) while still others focus on specific problems in a specific church (Colossians and Galatians).

Probably the most difficult thing about these letters is determining what applies to us today. There's no doubt that much of the content dealt with specific situations in a specific culture two thousand years ago. For example, there are comments addressed to women telling them to have long hair. It would be useful to know that female worshippers of Dionysus often dressed like men and cut their hair very short. It appears that in this passage Paul simply wants the women of the early church to look different than pagan worshipers. We should be careful if we attempt to isolate a verse and apply it automatically to our world today.

We would have far fewer misconceptions if we treated the letters of the New Testament in a different way, acknowledging the style in which they were written.

Another look at the gospels

In the last blog covering The Living Word of God by Ben Witherington, I discussed the differences between modern biographies and ancient ones so that today’s readers might be more prepared for what they read in the New Testament gospel accounts of the life of Jesus. There are big differences in length, what is covered, and the amount of editorializing done by the author. Here is some more information about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that attempts to help us understand the mindset of those who wrote about Jesus.

Ancient biographies, of which the New Testament gospels are a part, had as their main goal “an adequate and accurate unveiling of the character of the person in question,” according to Witherington. That’s why there are many stories about Jesus which may have had little historical consequence but revealed his character. For example, think of the story of the wedding feast at Cana. Even though the story involved nothing of a historical nature, it did show his abilities and his relationship to his mother. Ancient biographies, in attempting to show us the character of the person, were highly selective and were not always written according to exact chronological order. For example, early parts of Matthew show Jesus doing nothing but talking or teaching, but the author is simply grouping the teaching material in one spot. When we look at Matthew, Mark, and Luke regarding the temptation of Jesus, we see a different order to the three temptations, not because the authors couldn’t get it straight but because they had a different purpose in relating this event.

Perhaps the best way to see the gospels is to think of them as interpretive portraits rather than snapshots. When we look at a painting of an individual, we see that the artist has been selective in what is shown to us so that we may gain some sort of insight into the person being portrayed. It’s not fair to hold the gospel writers to modern standards of newspaper reporting or modern biographical and historical conventions. Our question must be if the four gospels portray a good and true likeness of the historical Jesus. I think the answer to that is a definite “yes.”

Who wrote the New Testament books associated with "John"?

It can be confusing keeping track of the name John in the New Testament—John the Baptist, John son of Zebedee (one of the 12 disciples of Jesus), John Mark (author of the gospel named after him), and even the author of Revelation(if he is different from the disciple John). I just finished reading What Have They Done with Jesus?, and the author, Ben Witherington, spends a chapter discussing his conclusions regarding authorship of several New Testament books connected with “John.”

He points out that only one book in the New Testament mentions the name John as being associated with it – Revelation. Both the gospel and 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John are anonymous; the headings “according to John” were added much later, probably in the second century as guesses. Witherington says the John of Revelation is never called the apostle or identified with John the son of Zebedee. If it was written by an apostle, the author would have identified himself as such when his credentials would have added to his message. Witherington claims most scholars have concluded that the language and style of Revelation are very different from the gospel and 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John, which all seem to be from some other person. He believes these latter four documents may have been penned by the Beloved Disciple.

Why does Witherington believe John son of Zebedee is not the author of these? According to him, the fourth gospel has none of the stories in the other three gospels which involve events that John would have been an eyewitness to (the raising of Jairus’ daughter, theTransfiguration, and the request for special seats in the kingdom ). But this gospel does claim that its author was an eyewitness of other events during Jesus’ ministry, and it records many unique traditions about what Jesus did in Jerusalem.

Witherington then focuses on the Beloved Disciple. He is apparently first mentioned directly in John 13:23, reclining next to Jesus at a meal. The author says a previous meal, mentioned in John 12:2, seems to be a strong parallel to this second meal. If we look at John11:3, we see Lazarus mentioned as someone whom Jesus loved. He then links these three references as connected, meaning that Lazarus, a Judean disciple, is the Beloved Disciple. He defends this conclusion by saying Lazarus did have a close relationship with Jesus, he was associated with Jesus’ ministry in the south (Judea), not in Galilee, the scene of so many stories that appeared in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In addition, John 18:15 says the narrator of the gospel had direct access to the house of Caiaphas the high priest. How could a fisherman from Galilee have such access? Then there is a reference to the fact that all the twelve disciples deserted Jesus and were not present at the crucifixion. However the Beloved Disciple is clearly there at the death scene. Finally, the story of the raising of Lazarus is the longest continuous narrative in the entire gospel, giving it an emphasis that might have come from the fact that it is a first-person story.

Is this overwhelming evidence? Probably not for many, but it is intriguing and challenging. I plan to read more about it, and share more interesting thoughts from Witherington’s book in a later blog.