New Testament

Five Decisions Every Bible Translator Must Make

Knowing the hard decisions Bible translators face inspires gratitude for our Bibles and encourages us to read them.

A Bible translation is a major undertaking. A good one can take more than ten years to finish even when a full team is involved. Besides the translators, there is often a team of editors, proofreaders, publishers, printers, marketers, and more. Along the way, a translation committee has thousands of decisions to make, many of which go beyond the most obvious one of deciding how to translate any given word or phrase. Here are five decisions that every translator has to decide—whether their readers know it or not.

1. Who’s the audience?

The first decision is arguably the most important because it will determine many other decisions along the way. The first way to define a translation’s audience is, of course, based on what’s called the target language. A translation into German will have a German-speaking audience; a French translation will have French speakers, etc. Though target language is the most obvious form of this question, there is much more to it. Since some language groups like English are so vast and have so many translations already, translation teams often aim their work at a narrower set of readers.

American Bible readers are sometimes surprised to learn that major English translations usually result in an American edition and a separate British edition that has British spelling and, in some cases, different word choices. The ESV, for example, has both an Anglicized version and an American version. There is now even a Catholic edition that includes the Apocrypha.

In other cases, the choice is not about geography or theology, but reading level. The original NIV was designed to be especially readable, and so was designed for a seventh-grade reading level. But even that audience could be narrowed. That’s why it was revised in a special edition published in 1996 called the New International Reader’s Version or NIrV. It was aimed at a third-grade reading level with the hope of reaching children and readers whose first language isn’t English. This was accomplished by using smaller words and shorter sentences whenever possible.

Psalm 23:2 was changed from the NIV’s “He makes me lie down in green pastures” to “He lets me lie down in fields of green grass.” The Lord’s prayer became “Our Father in heaven, may your name be honored. May your kingdom come. May what you want to happen be done on earth as it is done in heaven” (Matt. 6:9–10). These small translation choices add up, but they are all the result of a much larger decision about who the audience is. It’s a choice every translator needs to make.

2. Will it be a fresh translation or a revision?

The example of the NIrV illustrates another question that translators have to answer and that is whether their work will be a new translation from the original languages or will instead use the originals to revise an existing translation. The original NIV, for example, was a fresh translation. It was not based on any prior English Bible. The NIrV, as we just saw, started with the NIV and then revised it. It was revised again in 2014.

English Bible readers are often surprised to learn that it’s this second approach that is by far the more common one historically. Completely new translations are a relative rarity. The reason is obvious to translators but probably not to most readers. It’s simple: translating the entire Bible is a massive undertaking. Starting from scratch increases the work exponentially. It’s much faster to start from something and change it than to work with nothing. Besides that, revising a well-known translation often gives the new one a much-needed boost in respect and authority.

The translators of the most famous English Bible—the King James—knew this well. That’s why in the original preface, they make clear that their work is a revision of previous English Bibles. Their expressed goal was not to “make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one,” but only “to make a good one better, or out of many good ones, one principal good one.” That tradition of revision continues right up to the present.

A special insert in the *Chicago Tribune* on May 22, 1881 printed the entire New Testament of the Revised Version. It took 92 compositors working 12 hours to produce all 118,000 words from a telegram from New York City.

In 1885, the King James itself was finally revised for the first time since 1611 in a major translation.¹ The result was published to great fanfare as the Revised Version. This was then further revised by a team of scholars in North America and published as the American Standard Version in 1901. The Revised Version was again revised in 1952 as the Revised Standard Version and that, in turn, became the New Revised Standard Version of 1990. Even now, an update to the NRSV is set for release in 2022. A separate translation team went back to the Revised Standard Version in 2001, producing the English Standard Version.

Even this doesn’t tell the full story of revisions in the KJV lineage. Objections to translation choices in the RSV (like “young girl” instead of “virgin” in Isaiah 7:14) led to the revision of the ASV known as the New American Standard Bible published in 1971. The NASB itself received a major update in 1995 and now exists in two further revisions known as the NASB 2020 and the Legacy Standard Bible. So, the cycle continues with revision upon revision, each one claiming to improve on its predecessors. Only rarely does an English translation team start from scratch.

3. What text will it translate?

Mark 1:41 in Codex Bezae (5th c.), showing the reading with Jesus becoming indignant. British Library

Another question that follows closely on the last one is which Hebrew and Greek texts the translators will work from. Because our manuscripts of the Bible have differences and because some of these differences affect translation, translators must sometimes decide what text to translate. Does Jesus become “indignant” before healing a man in Mark 1:41 as the NIV 2011 has it, or does he have “compassion” as virtually all other English Bibles have? In this case, the NIV has (unwisely, in my opinion) chosen to follow the text found in a single Greek manuscript from the fifth century known as Codex Bezae. (The NIV does footnote the alternative reading.)

In Genesis 4:8, the English Standard Version, following the standard Hebrew text, says that “Cain spoke to Abel his brother” before killing him in the field but does not tell us what he said. But the Christian Standard Bible, follows the evidence of several ancient translations, including the Septuagint, so that Cain says to his brother, “Let’s go out to the field.”

In both Mark 1:41 and Genesis 4:8, the differences are not matters of translation philosophy but of text. In places where textual differences affect translation, translators must decide which text they think is the original and then translate that. Sometimes the choices are difficult, and these are places where Bibles will often alert the reader with a footnote. These decisions illustrate why the finely tuned skill of textual scholars is so important.

4. How will it handle culturally specific terms?

A fourth question that translators must wrestle with is how to handle terms that are specific to the time and culture of the Bible. Some of the most common ones are terms for weights and units of measurement. No English speaker knows what an ephah of flour is without help or how much a denarius could buy. And how long is a cubit or a span or a stadion? These are all terms found in the original languages, but translations handle them differently. In some cases, a translation may include a table of weights, measures, and monetary units at the back. The NIV and ESV have one after Revelation, for example. A translation may also explain these terms in footnotes. The ESV footnotes often tell the reader that a denarius is about a day’s wage in the first century.

Another solution is to try to convert these terms into their closest modern equivalent. Paraphrases often take this route. The Living Bible, for example, starts the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18:23 with a debtor who owes his master, not 10 thousand talents, but 10 million dollars. Later, he reveals his unforgiving heart by trying to collect on $2,000 instead of 100 denarii. The New Living Translation, the successor to the Living Bible, is less specific with “millions of dollars” and then later “thousands of dollars.” Both do a great job conveying the vast difference in amounts, but they must do so by sacrificing something from the original culture in the process.

And this is just the tip of the cultural iceberg. Beyond such ancient units of measurement, translators must deal with terms like “Leviathan,” “kinsman-redeemer,” “legion,” “centurion,” not to mention difficult terms for diseases, animals, plants, peoples, and places. Sometimes, translators are at a loss because the precise meaning of the original term is lost to us. At other times, they need to avoid anachronism as with biblical terms for skin ailments that do not actually refer to what we know as “leprosy” or Hansen’s disease. Perhaps future discoveries will clarify, but translators must work with what they have. So, they do the best they can. Their solution is often determined largely by the first question we mentioned: who is the audience?

5. How (much) will the translation explain itself?

Finally, many of these questions give rise to this last one which is how and how much the translators will try to explain their decisions to the reader. Most often, this happens through footnotes, but we have already seen other ways that translations can explain their work such as the table of weights and measures. There is also the introduction—but who reads that? (You should!)

Translators also have at their disposal features like headings, book introductions, maps, concordances, cross references, appendices and, of course, sometimes study notes. Such aids to the reader can be quite helpful and are found as far back as Bible translations go. It’s little wonder that the first English Bibles, produced by John Wycliffe and his followers in the 14th century, have them too.

The Wycliffe Bible oriented its readers with prologues, here showing the one for Mark (left) in Egerton MS 618 (c. 1390–1397), ff. 21v–22r. British Library.

The modern Bible that goes the furthest to explain itself is certainly the New English Translation or NET Bible. It was novel at the time, not only because it was provided freely online, but because the translators received mountains of online feedback from its first readers. Today, the NET Bible has over 60,000 translators’ notes, explaining virtually every decision made. The result is a Bible that “explains itself,” pulling the curtain back so to speak. Because of this, it has become something of a favorite among an unexpected audience: other Bible translators.

Appreciating Translators

These are just five decisions translators must make. There are also many decisions that translators don’t have to make because of the long history of the Bible in English. Things like the names and order of the biblical books as well as their division into chapters and verses are well established by tradition.

But that still leaves plenty of work to do besides the most important one which is actually putting Hebrew and Greek into another language. In some cases, one decision affects the others (such as audience) and at other times, decisions cause tension. If you revise a beloved translation too much, for example, you may lose your intended audience.

Our judgment of which translation is “best” should always take into account who the audience is.

Knowing this leaves us with two important lessons. The first is that our judgment of which translation is “best” should always take into account who the audience is. So many translation decisions are affected by this decision that any fair assessment of a new translation must begin by understanding that. Sometimes, your dislike for a given translation may reflect more the fact that you aren’t the intended audience than it does any failure on the translators’ part.

Second, the multitude of decisions translators face should give us a deep appreciation for good translations—and we have many in English. What we’ve covered here are just some of those that have to be made. We haven’t touched on matters like idioms, word order, word plays and other figures of speech, and more. But considering just these five decisions should make us very thankful for the Bibles we have and encourage us to do what every good translator wants us to do with the Bible and that’s to read it.

The ESV is a revision of the RSV not the RV as an earlier version of this article stated. It also wrongly called the New Living Translation the New Living Bible and the NET Bible the New English Bible.

Notes

1
Dates given in this section are the date when the entire Bible was first published. In many cases, the publication of the New Testament preceded the Old by several years.

The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife Fiasco

Lessons from the headline-grabbing forgery that duped Harvard’s oldest endowed professor and enthralled the media

Christian Askeland

Dan Brown famously spun his Da Vinci Code yarn in which Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor, demonstrated that Jesus Christ actually married Mary Magdalene. In a tale stranger than fiction, Brown’s dream came true through the now-infamous Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, which ironically was promoted through a Harvard professor. Inscribed in Coptic, the ancient Egyptian language written with the Greek alphabet, this papyrus fragment became the most recent in a series of spectacular fakes designed to shock faithful Christians and churn the mainstream media with fantastic headlines. This is the story of the attempted ruse and what we can learn from it.

The Story Breaks

In 2012, I attended the International Coptic Congress in Rome, Italy, a normally staid event tragically marred on this occasion by media sensation and disinformation about what came to be called the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife fragment. Public relations staff at Harvard University had coordinated a news blitz at our conference of two hundred scholars without first consulting the conference organizers. No scholar at the conference could produce a viable comparison for the fragment’s ugly writing in a known, authentic manuscript. Nobody wanted to defend its authenticity, and most people ridiculed the thing openly. The Vatican hosted several of our events, and the major theme of the congress suddenly became this obvious forgery of a Coptic fragment in which Jesus alludes to his wife. In English, the fragment reads:

… My mother she gave to me L[ife] …
… The disciples said to Jesus …
… denies. Mary is [not] worthy of it …
… Jesus said to them “My wife” …
… she will not be able to be a disciple to me and …
… Let a man the which bad let no T[?] …
… I myself am with her concerning …
… an image …

The *Gospel of Jesus’ Wife* papyrus was written in a very crude Coptic script. Photo from Wikipedia

Because the forger did not employ a modern equivalent to ancient cedar oil, the ink lacked viscosity, running to-and-fro like a failed pastel painting from your childhood. Unlike real papyrus-inscribed text, which is made with reed pens, this writing resembled that of a paint brush. The character forms did not parallel ancient literary styles like one would find in a biblical manuscript or ancient documentary styles like a business document or private correspondence. The papyrus, which could easily have been purchased from eBay, seemed ancient, but the text had all the appearances of a cheap fake.

But why let facts get in the way of a good story!

None of the reporters seemed to care about our concerns, except to the extent that they had been prepped for a shocked response from religious conservatives. The expectation was that this discovery would potentially overthrow patriarchal views on celibacy and on women-in-ministry, and would further demonstrate that the orthodox tradition suppressed a distinctly feminist Christianity.

The expectation was that this discovery would … further demonstrate that the orthodox tradition suppressed a distinctly feminist Christianity.

Of the two hundred scholars at the conference, perhaps fifty specialized directly or indirectly in manuscripts and ancient writing. The reporters had not really come to hear our opinions, though, since their articles were already written, based solely on feedback from select sources. The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Smithsonian broke the story, highlighting the Harvard credentials of the lead scholar and the supposed vetting by various other experts. Not by accident, the announcement occurred a stone’s throw away from Vatican City, seemingly with the support of the gathered scholars.

Problems Emerge for Jesus’ Wife

In reality, two world class specialists (Bentley Layton and Stephen Emmel) had already identified this papyrus as a probable forgery, formally rejecting an article submitted to the Harvard Theological Review weeks before the Rome conference. The journal editors simply ignored the peer reviewers’ opinions and pushed forward. Within days of the Rome announcement, however, the blogosphere caught on fire with specialized experts from Europe and North America tearing the forgery into metaphorical shreds.

Although the forger had not yet been identified, Andrew Bernhard, an independent researcher who had formerly studied at Oxford, created the “Patchwork Hypothesis,” demonstrating that the forgery had created the Gospel of Jesus’ text by using a 2002 PDF of the Coptic Gospel of Thomas he found online. In only a few weeks, the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife debacle seemed to have imploded, and authenticity no longer seemed defensible.

Headlines from the initial announcement sensationalized the idea that Jesus had a wife.

For many, Christmas and Easter involve remembering Christ’s Advent and his resurrection. For the secular media, these seasons too often represent an occasion to float absurd theories about Jesus. The Harvard Theological Review partnered once again with the Smithsonian, The New York Times and The Boston Globe to resurrect Jesus’ wife fragment from the dead.

How, you might ask, could they do such a thing, when the papyrus had so conclusively been proven a forgery? In the context of a dedicated issue of the Harvard Theological Review as well as a professional webpage, Harvard PR executed a two-fold strategy. First, the publications completely and totally ignored the Patchwork Hypothesis just as they had previously ignored the peer reviewers. Second, the scholars used their various networks to produce a variety of scientific results which in retrospect were misconstrued to demonstrate authenticity. Two weeks before Easter, the world would see a Smithsonian documentary demonstrating that science had validated the scholarly opinions from Harvard.

Although carbon dating did place the papyrus roughly between 600–800 AD, skeptics had never argued that the papyrus material was anything other than ancient. Ultra-high resolution showed that the character Alpha which represented the my in “my wife …” was not altered, yet no scholar had ever suggested as much. Raman spectroscopy demonstrated chemical similarity between the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife ink and the ink on a Gospel of John fragment from the same collection. It showed the presence of soot (or graphite) in both inks, a feature expected in the case of a modern forgery.

Somehow, several pictures of this Gospel of John fragment, later known as the Harvard Lycopolitan John, appeared on the Harvard website, and, because of these pictures, Jesus’ Wife was once again proven a forgery.

Cracking the Related Case

Because I wrote my doctoral dissertation at the University of Cambridge on the Coptic versions of John’s Gospel, I’ve had a longstanding interest in this accompanying John fragment. Harvard did not respond to requests for an image of the Coptic John fragment which had been mentioned in the original presentation. The fragment would have been useful to a colleague of mine who was constructing a critical edition of the Sahidic Coptic gospel of John.

When the pictures appeared on the website, naturally my interest was piqued. The vowels were all wrong, immediately alerting me to the Lycopolitan dialect of the Coptic. Normally, one expects the Sahidic dialect in Coptic papyri, and only two papyri preserve John’s Gospel in Sahidic. The Qau Codex contains most of John’s Gospel and is easily accessible online, especially if one googles “earliest Coptic manuscript.”

An image of the Lycopolitan John papyrus fragment — The Lycopolitan John fragment showed even clearer signs of forgery. Image source

This new forgery, the Harvard Lycopolitan John, had been directly copied from the internet PDF of the Qau Codex, duplicating every line break and erring conspicuously at the turn of a digital page. Where the editor of the Qau codex had restored text with impossible suggestions, the forger reproduced these same impossibilities. The Harvard Lycopolitan John preserved the same ink and the same handwriting as the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.

None of this had occurred to the scholars affiliated with the Harvard publication, nor had they considered that Lycopolitan had disappeared no later than the sixth century. Lycopolitan should not appear on a piece of papyrus harvested in between 600–800 AD. If this second papyrus was a fake and used the same ink and scribe, then most papyri must be fakes. Other scholars rightly referred to this new discovery as the “smoking gun.” In 2016, Ariel Sabar identified the forger in an explosive piece for The Atlantic. His subsequent book tells the whole sordid tale in gripping detail.

Lessons Learned

According to satirical comedian Stephen Colbert, “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” Conservatives, the feeling sometimes goes, rely on pseudo-science and are skeptical of climate change, evolutionary theory, and big government’s role in solving society’s problems. Liberals, however, are thought to act as servants of reason and the envoys of human progress who advance their mission for the common good, even the good of those conservatives who tragically cannot accept reality. This is, at least, how some present the matter.

The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife story is a tragic tale of confirmation bias, this time on the liberal side.

Colbert’s notion arose as a joke at the 2006 Correspondent’s roast of President Bush, but today it has too often metastasized into overt policy at secular colleges in North America which are designed to exclude conservatives by painting them as beyond the pale. The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife story is a tragic tale of confirmation bias, this time on the liberal side. Unfortunately, it seems to be part of the larger echo chamber of liberal apologetics at secular private and public colleges that too often marginalize religious and social conservatives.

Did Nicaea Really Create the Bible?

Debunking the popular myth that a Roman emperor and a fourth-century church council decided the canon

John D. Meade

Ideas have consequences. One idea that has yielded dangerous consequences is the notion that the Council of Nicaea (AD 325), under the authority of Roman emperor Constantine, established the Christian biblical canon.

Did the Bible originate from a few elite bishops selecting which books to include? Should we credit a Roman emperor with creating the Bible? No. This falsehood has been used to cast suspicion on the origins of the canon, which undermines the Bible’s authority.

Dan Brown’s 2003 bestseller, The Da Vinci Code, planted this idea in our culture, and many now think Constantine or Nicaea established the Bible. But Brown didn’t invent this story. He only perpetuated it through his fiction. (Same goes for popular spy novelist Daniel Silva’s latest book, The Order. He admits in an author’s note: “Christians who believe in biblical inerrancy will no doubt take issue with my description of who the evangelists were and how their Gospels came to be written.”)

There is no historical basis for the idea that Nicaea established the canon and created the Bible.

Nicaea and the Canon in History

There is no historical basis for the idea that Nicaea established the canon and created the Bible. The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity and other early evidence show that Christians disputed the boundaries of the biblical canon before and after Nicaea. For example, even lists from pro-Nicaean fathers such as Cyril of Jerusalem (ca. AD 350) and Athanasius of Alexandria (ca. AD 367) don’t agree on the inclusion of Revelation. None of the early records from the council, nor eyewitness attendees (Eusebius or Athanasius, for example), mentions any conciliar decision that established the canon.

In the preface to his Latin translation of Judith, Jerome wrote:

But since the Nicene Council is considered (legitur lit. “is read”) to have counted this book among the number of sacred Scriptures, I have acquiesced to your request (or should I say demand!).

Could Jerome be referring to a formal decision to include Judith in the canon? That’s unlikely.

The earliest adopters of Nicene orthodoxy—from Athanasius to Gregory of Nazianzus to Hilary of Poitiers to Jerome himself—don’t include Judith in their canon lists. If a decision was made at Nicaea on the canonicity of Judith, the earliest adopters would’ve listed it among the canonical books. But they don’t. Rather, Jerome is probably describing discussions in which some fathers may have referred to Judith as scriptural. In any case, these discussions didn’t end in a formal conciliar decision on the canon’s boundaries. It seems Jerome’s statement, though, was later misunderstood to say that Nicaea decided on the canon, which leads us to the rest of the story.

Nicaea and the Canon in Legend

The source of this idea appears in a late-ninth-century Greek manuscript called the Synodicon Vetus, which purports to summarize the decisions of Greek councils up to that time (see pages 2–4 here). Andreas Darmasius brought this manuscript from Morea in the 16th century. John Pappus edited and published it in 1601 in Strasburg. Here’s the relevant section:

The council made manifest the canonical and apocryphal books in the following manner: placing them by the side of the divine table in the house of God, they prayed, entreating the Lord that the divinely inspired books might be found upon the table, and the spurious ones underneath; and it so happened.

According to this source, the church has its canon because of a miracle that occurred at Nicaea in which the Lord caused the canonical books to stay on the table and the apocryphal or spurious ones to be found underneath.

From Pappus’s edition of the Synodicon Vetus, this quotation circulated and was cited (sometimes as coming from Pappus himself, not the Greek manuscript he edited!), and eventually found its way into the work of prominent thinkers such as Voltaire (1694–1778). In volume 3 of his Philosophical Dictionary (English translation here) under “Councils” (sec. I), he writes:

It was by an expedient nearly similar, that the fathers of the same council distinguished the authentic from the apocryphal books of Scripture. Having placed them altogether upon the altar, the apocryphal books fell to the ground of themselves.

A little later in section III, Voltaire adds:

We have already said, that in the supplement to the Council of Nice it is related that the fathers, being much perplexed to find out which were the authentic and which the apocryphal books of the Old and the New Testament, laid them all upon an altar, and the books which they were to reject fell to the ground. What a pity that so fine an ordeal has been lost!

Voltaire earlier mentions that Constantine convened the council. At Nicaea, then, the fathers distinguished the canonical from the apocryphal books by prayer and a miracle. The publication of Pappus’s 1601 edition of Synodicon Vetus—and the subsequent citing of the miracle at Nicaea, especially by Voltaire in his Dictionary—appears to be the reason Dan Brown could narrate the events so colorfully and why many others continue to perpetuate this legend.

Matter of Authority

The church no more gave us [the] canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity.

As our culture becomes increasingly secular, many will continue to cast doubt on the Bible’s origins and especially on early Christianity’s role in the canon’s formation. Although the history of the canon is a bit messy at junctures, there is no evidence it was established by a few Christian bishops and churches convened at Nicaea in 325.

Christians need to prepare their minds for action in this age and confidently assert that the biblical canon is the work of God, recognized by churches over many years’ time. In the vivid words of J. I. Packer, “The church no more gave us [the] canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity.”

This article was originally published at The Gospel Coalition.

The New Testament Use of Jewish Pseudepigrapha

Why the New Testament authors sometimes drew on ancient literary works written under false names

Daniel M. Gurtner

New Testament authors naturally draw heavily on the Old Testament in their writings. They also show familiarity with other writings, such as the Greek poet Aratus of Soli, whose Phaenomena from the third century BC is quoted by Paul in Acts 17:28. Paul was also able to converse with the Epicureans and Stoics of Athens and was likely familiar with writings from those philosophies as well (Acts 17:18).

The New Testament writers also drew on works known as the “pseudepigrapha.” These are writings that are often attributed to ancient figures, typically from the Old Testament, but not actually written by them. These were likely known by the New Testament authors, but their use in the New Testament is both sparse and debated. While one may find numerous points of parallel ideas, perhaps indicative of a shared Palestinian Jewish contexts, there are few quotations or clear allusions. Here we will overview the most prominent ones.

Pseudepigrapha in the Book of Jude

The clearest use of the Jewish Pseudepigrapha by New Testament writers is found in Jude, a book widely recognized for its familiarity with the literature of Palestinian Judaism and the only book of the NT to quote explicitly from the pseudepigrapha (vv. 14–15). But Jude also alludes to several passages in his brief letter. For example, Jude 5–7 warns of “angels who did not keep their own domain but abandoned their proper abode” (v. 6a) which God has “kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day” (v. 6b).

Book cover — For a thorough introduction to the Jewish Pseudepigrapha, see Dr. Gurtner’s recent book.

This reflects a tradition which speaks of the descent of the “sons of God” (Gen. 6:1–4), but more immediately refers to a notion outside the Bible that describes angels transgressing their proper boundaries. This is found in one of the oldest writings of the pseudepigrapha, the Book of Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36), where God commands the angel Raphael to bind up for judgment one of the rebellious fallen angels, called Watchers, known as Azazʾel:

… the Lord said to Raphael, “Bind Azazʾel hand and foot (and) throw him into the darkness!” And he made a hole in the desert which was in Dudaʾel and cast him there; he threw on top of him rugged and sharp rocks. And he covered his face in order that he may not see light; and in order that he may be sent into the fire on the great day of judgment.” (1 Enoch 10:4–6)

In 1 Enoch Azazʾel’s fate will be shared by the other fallen Watchers held in a prison until final judgment (1 Enoch 18:14–16; 21:3, 10). These fallen angels, or Watchers, were, according to 1 Enoch, responsible for introducing evil into the world (1 Enoch 6–19). Nothing is said in 1 Enoch about the fall of Adam (Rom. 5). And Raphael’s role, according to the passage to which Jude alludes, is to bind up one of the leading rebels and hold him for God’s judgment.

In Jude the strange story serves as an illustration: if these angelic figures will not escape God’s judgment, neither will the false teachers who have crept into the church (Jude 4). No doubt in Jude’s context the purpose is to encourage the readers that the real threat their enemies pose to the church will not go unpunished by God’s righteous judgment (v. 10).

Shortly thereafter, Jude lashes out at his opponents for reviling “angelic majesties” (Jude 8 NASB) or, more properly “slander the glorious ones,” which are surely angels. Regardless of what kind of slander he has in mind, Jude cites a curious tradition regarding “Michael the archangel” (Jude 9) who did not dare revile even the devil but said “The Lord rebuke you” (Jude 9 NASB). This means that even Michael did not have the audacity to rebuke the devil, like the false teachers slander angels. Instead, Michael leaves such judgment in the (proper) hands of God. Though we may have no idea where this notion of Michael conversing with the devil comes from, apparently it was sufficiently familiar to Jude’s reader that Jude could use it as an illustration.

Illustration by Josh Koch. Image of Enoch from the 1728 Figures de la Bible
The Pseudepigrapha of Second Temple Judaism
A consideration of Jewish Pseudepigrapha raises the question whether the New Testament contains books written under a false name.
Daniel M. Gurtner

This account most likely derives from the Testament of Moses, which purports to be a farewell exhortation given to Joshua by Moses before the transfer of leadership of the people of Israel. The ending of the book has been lost, and it is generally assumed that Moses’ death was narrated at some point in the earlier text. Nevertheless, the tradition was sufficiently familiar to Jude’s readers to illustrate the point about the audacity of the false teachers.

Jude also makes an explicit quotation from 1 Enoch, again in a context in which he continues his denunciation of the false teachers, even claiming that Enoch prophesied about them:

Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy onesto judge everyone, and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” (Jude 1:14–15 NIV)

The quotation is taken from 1 Enoch 1:9, which is the very beginning of the Book of Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36). In this book, Enoch, who appears only briefly in the pages of Genesis (Gen. 5:19–24), receives a vision from God (1 Enoch 1:1–2). This vision announces that God will bring judgment upon the wicked, whose fate is stated in verse 9, that quoted by Jude:

Behold, he comes with the myriads of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all, and to destroy all the wicked, and to convict all flesh for all the wicked deeds that they have done, and the proud and hard words that wicked sinners spoke against him (1 Enoch 1:9)

Jude seems to make a few adjustments to the 1 Enoch text, but there is no doubt he is quoting from 1 Enoch 1:9. Again the context of Jude makes clear that he sees the illustration from 1 Enoch as pertinent for his understanding of God’s judgment that will befall the false teachers in his own setting. It is worth observing that Jude regards Enoch’s utterance as prophecy (Jude 14). But this does not imply Jude regarded 1 Enoch as having canonical status. Prophecy in apocalyptic literature in Second Temple Judaism was often a key component to the revelatory experience of the visionary as divine mediators, without necessarily implying that the document in which it was found had authority for its respective communities.

Jude is among works spoken against by some precisely because of its use of 1 Enoch.

Jude presumes his readers are sufficiently familiar with the traditions referenced to make sense to his readers. Perhaps a more complicated matter pertains to the way in which Jude was received in the early church because of its use of these sources. Jude is among works spoken against by some precisely because of its use of 1 Enoch (Jerome, Lives of Illustrious Men 4) yet, according to Jerome (AD 347–c. 420) is reckoned among the Holy Scriptures (Lives of Illustrious Men 4). Clement of Alexandria (c. AD 200) in his Stromata (again according to Eusebius, HE VI.xiii.6) Jude is among the “disputed Scriptures.”

Tertullian believed that Jude regarded 1 Enoch so highly that the church should afford it canonical authority (On the Dress of Women 3.3). Though Jude was excluded from the Syriac New Testament (Peshitta) until the sixth century, it was listed as Scripture in the Muratorian canon and Athanasius’s Festal Letter of AD 367. The general consensus, then, is that Jude was widely, though not universally, regarded as authoritative scripture and that its usage of pseudepigraphical sources was among the points of contention.

Pseudepigrapha and the Book of James

The book of James makes use of a tradition regarding the biblical Job, but it is debated whether he depends upon the psuedepigraphical source or whether he shares close points of correspondence by virtue of their shared milieu. James, in writing about the patient endurance exhibited by Job, says:

As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance (hypomonēn) and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy (James 5:11 NIV)

There are points of similarity between this illustration of Job and the account found in the Testament of Job, which is itself an embellishment of the biblical book of Job. As a Testament, it presents Job imparting wisdom to his progeny prior to his impending death with particular emphasis on the virtue of patient endurance. Most of the work (T. Job 1:4–45:4) is Job’s first-person account of the cause and consequences of his hardships and concludes with Job’s death, the ascent of his soul, and burial (T. Job 51–53).

What’s particularly interesting is how Job’s legendary endurance and patience are emphasized throughout. The key verse which is sometimes identified as a source for James is T. Job 1:5: “I am your father Job, fully engaged in endurance (hypomonē). But you are a chosen and honored race from the seed of Jacob, the father of your mother.” Most scholars attribute the Testament of Job to an Egyptian Jew writing at the turn of the era primarily based on its affinities with other Jewish writings from that date. Regardless, it seems evident that James’s distinctive image of Job matches the portrait in the Testament of Job as a model for patient endurance (T. Job 1:3; 4:6; 5:1; 26:6; 27:10) and presumes his knowledge of extracanonical traditions, whether he is referencing a literary form of the Testament of Job as we know it or not.

Conclusion

Our overview of these two New Testament texts that mention traditions found in the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha shows that at least some authors were familiar with these writings. For their own purposes, these authors made use of them with presumably some notion that they were in some way familiar to their respective readers. A host of other discussions on lesser points could be proposed.

That New Testament authors are familiar with and at times make use of these traditions need mean no more than they were useful for their purpose.

That New Testament authors are familiar with and at times make use of these traditions need mean no more than they were useful for their purposes, and readers of the New Testament are quite familiar with these authors’ tendency to do so. Jesus himself makes use of nature, agricultural experiences, and home life in His parables. Paul is even known to use an inscription found on an altar that reads, “To an unknown god” (Acts 17:23) as a starting point for his proclamation of the gospel in Athens.

In this vein, New Testament authors’ use of pseudepigraphical material need not mean they regarded it as authoritative or as scripture. Rather, it reflects authors who were attuned to the literary contexts in which they and their readers functioned.

This article is also available in Polish.

The Letter and the Spirit

The evangelical scholar has no need to fear or to exclude the Holy Spirit when practicing textual criticism.

Maurice A. Robinson

But when that one should come—the Spirit of Truth—he will guide you into all the truth. John 16:13

In the 19th and early 20th centuries most New Testament textual scholars freely acknowledged divine involvement when discussing not only the inspiration of the Greek New Testament but a divine providence that had preserved the biblical text throughout the centuries of manual transmission.¹

The Neglect of the Holy Spirit

More recently, however, such divine oversight has become a missing factor in the discipline of New Testament textual criticism: most current handbooks make no mention of God, inspiration, preservation, or the role of the Holy Spirit—even among works from professed evangelical believers. Metzger and most other contemporary textual critics make no mention in their textual studies of divine inspiration, the providential activity of God, or the role of the Holy Spirit in preserving the biblical text.

As David Parker notes, theological affirmation has become disconnected from the “science and art” of New Testament textual criticism: “Any theological a priori, which says this or that about the New Testament . . . is an arbitrary attempt to impose dogma on reality”²—even while theological handbooks freely discuss such matters.

Theological affirmation has become disconnected from the “science and art” of textual criticism.

Yet for the evangelical, John Skilton wrote in 1946 that “God’s Word has been preserved throughout the ages in an essentially and remarkably pure form”—a statement that parallels F. J. A. Hort’s comment in 1882 that “Variations are but secondary incidents of a fundamentally single and identical text.”³ Contemporary works nevertheless tend not to apply theological concepts directly to the matter of New Testament textual criticism, even if such tacitly undergird the text-critical field itself.

But why should any real separation necessarily exist between the respective concepts? Perhaps it is as James Borland suggests: “Young evangelical exegetes do not want to seem out of step with the assured results of modern textual criticism which accept questionable postulates.”⁴ One therefore has to wonder why there should be an apparent capitulation to a secular approach when endeavoring to determine the proper form and content of the New Testament text. In effect, a general “neutrality” tends to predominate among most contemporary textual critics, evangelical or otherwise.

Although theological misappropriations often appear in comments on New Testament textual criticism—particularly among the movements that effectively avoid scholarly interaction by restricting authenticity to a particular form of the text found in early printed Greek or English editions—this merely shows that the theological envelope must not be pushed too far. Even when the Holy Spirit is acknowledged in regard to textual preservation, the level of influence and the degree of precision that preservation entails remain matters for discussion. As even the former evangelical Bart Ehrman has noted, “The evidence must lead to the doctrine, not vice versa.”⁵

The Spirit’s Place

The simple recognition of what God has permitted to take place by the more natural means of transmission remains far superior to expecting or proclaiming a perpetual miracle throughout transmissional history. As F. H. A. Scrivener noted, “We may confidently pronounce beforehand, that such a fact could not have been reasonably anticipated, and is not at all agreeable to the general tenour of God’s dealings with us,” and that for Scripture we should “recognize the more fully its general integrity in the midst of partial variation.”⁶

While we should therefore recognize and grant guidance by “the Spirit of truth” in relation to “all the truth,” the fact remains that the precise wording of the New Testament text frequently diverges. Even in the quotation from John 16:13 cited at the head of this essay, the final clause of that segment (“he will guide you into all the truth”) has seven differing phrasings among the Greek manuscripts and two additional phrasings exclusive to the Old Latin and Vulgate, even while each variant provides an almost identical declaration. Combining the data from multiple editions, one finds the following among Greek and Old Latin/Vulgate manuscripts:⁷

ὁδηγήσει ὑμᾶς εἰς πᾶσαν τὴν ἀλήθειαν	E. G. H. K. Γ. Δ. Π. Ψ. 068. 0141. 0233. f¹³. 28 157. 180. 205. 597. 700. 892s. 1006. 1009. 1010. 1079. 1195. 1216. 1230. 1241. 1242. 1243. 1292. 1342. 1344. 1365. 1424. 1505. 1506. 1546. 1646. 2148. 2174. Byz. Lect. L-844. L-2211. f. q. r¹
ὁδηγήσει ὑμᾶς ἐν τῇ ἀληθείᾳ πάσῃ	ℵ¹. L. W. 1. 33. 565. 1071. 1582. al. b. [NA/UBS]
ὁδηγήσει ὑμᾶς εἰς τὴν ἀλήθειαν πᾶσαν	A. B. 054. pc. e. vg^st. Or
ὁδηγήσει ὑμᾶς ἐν τῇ ἀληθείᾳ	ℵ*
ὁδηγήσει ὑμᾶς ἐν τῇ ἀληθείᾳ πᾶσιν	579
ὁδηγήσει ὑμᾶς ἐν πάσῃ τῇ ἀληθείᾳ	Θ. ff²
ἐκεῖνος ὑμᾶς ὁδηγήσει ἐν τῇ ἀληθείᾳ πάσῃ	D. d
ἐκεῖνος ὑμᾶς ὁδηγήσει εἰς πᾶσαν τὴν ἀλήθειαν	a
διηγήσεται ὑμῖν τὴν ἀληθείαν πᾶσαν	aur. c. (l). vg^{cl, ww}

Such a variety of reading in one short phrase informs us about both the role of the Holy Spirit in relation to textual preservation and the nature and task of New Testament textual criticism in general. Obviously, the preservational role of the Holy Spirit is neither absolute nor specifically miraculous, but occupies a passive and apparently minimalist role rather than an active or observable divine interference within the transmissional process.

Illustration by Peter Gurry. Images from Wikimedia Commons
Providence and Preservation
The different methods and modes of divine providence help us better understand God’s role in the Bible’s preservation.
Richard Brash

Avoiding Extremes

A proper evangelical position regarding the purpose and role of the Holy Spirit in relation to the providential preservation of the New Testament text therefore must stand firmly between two extremes:

At one extreme is an abandonment of scientific textual criticism, placing one’s trust instead in either questionable early printed editions that freeze and isolate the text in various “received” forms, or in the presumed text that underlies a particular (KJV) English translation.
At an opposing extreme is a capitulation to modern or postmodern secularism, emphasizing a prevailing doubt and uncertainty regarding the basic integrity and reliability of the text of Scripture, thus effectively excluding God and the Holy Spirit from any role whatever in relation to New Testament textual criticism.

By overemphasizing the role of the Holy Spirit, textual criticism as a discipline ceases to function for any actual purpose. By minimizing or eliminating his role, the text-critical field becomes indistinguishable from that underlying any other ancient work of antiquity. Either extreme creates a theological inconcinnity for the evangelical that fails to comport with acceptance of divine involvement in regard to the initial inspiration and preservation of the biblical text along with its establishment as canon so as to be an authoritative and God-breathed (θεόπνευστος) standard for church doctrine and practice.⁸

Giving Providence its Proper Place

A more excellent way should exist for the evangelical scholar that avoids both extremes: while divine inspiration by the Holy Spirit and the resultant, inerrancy, infallibility, and canonical status of the New Testament books should be affirmed, the evangelical scholar should also acknowledge the providential work of the Holy Spirit regarding the transmission and preservation of the text through human agency of various theological or even non-theological viewpoints. As David Dockery has noted: “At every point in the transmission, translation, preservation, and canonicity of the Bible we [evangelicals] see God’s providential hand at work.”⁹

At every point in the transmission, translation, preservation, and canonicity of the Bible we see God’s providential hand at work.

One therefore should accept theologically that the Holy Spirit continues to work in the background, with the ultimate goal of preserving his inspired and authoritative New Testament text in a form that guarantees its general reliability, even while various human scholars attempt to establish a more precise form of that text by eliminating, correcting, and repairing the errors and intentional variations that developed over the centuries.

As John H. Skilton pertinently stated long ago,

We must look for such grounds for the acceptance or rejection of variant readings as God has provided and seek to glorify him by arriving at the truth in the manner which he has made available to us . . . . We may receive benefits from the working of the Holy Spirit in us, but we ought not to expect that the necessity for consecrated scientific investigation will be removed.¹⁰

Ultimately, the role of the Holy Spirit in New Testament textual criticism remains that promised in John 16:13—the Spirit is there to “lead” and “guide” (ὁδήγειν) the evangelical believer in a manner consistent with the Spirit’s guidance and leadership in all other areas of Christian faith and practice.¹¹ Such involvement by the Holy Spirit permeates and undergirds the labors of the evangelical Christian scholar, even when the various text-critical theories and practices might appear identical to those of various non-evangelical or even non-Christian scholars. As Skilton further explains,

The conservative scholar, [with his] . . . . reverence for the Scripture and his labors on the text will be used by God in the preservation and transmission of his Word . . . . In God’s providence men may glorify him by textual studies and may aid in the preservation of his Word in a form of exceptional purity.¹²

The evangelical scholar thus should seek wisdom from the Holy Spirit while making judgments on textual variants based on the available external and internal data. The evangelical thereby honors the Holy Spirit who not only has inspired the Holy Scriptures, but continues to guide the textual researcher “into all truth.”¹³

Evidence of Providence

Given that the Greek New Testament tends to maintain an approximately 94% identity of reading among all editions, regardless of theory, text-type, or favored manuscripts, such a strong textual base should cause the evangelical scholar seriously to consider the role of the Holy Spirit in regard to the establishment and preservation of his inspired text. Even among the circa 6% of variation that remains, the evangelical can affirm a general Spirit-based oversight, given that most variant readings either do not affect the meaning and interpretation of the text, or are readily resolved by reasonable principles of evaluation.

As Greg Bahnsen suggests, “By His providential control God . . . . provides for the essential accuracy of the Bible’s copying.”¹⁴ Such “providential control” requires no direct or miraculous intervention, but only capacities granted to well-prepared human agents, who themselves (knowingly or unknowingly) labor under the providential care and generally invisible influence of the Holy Spirit himself.

In particular, the primary establishment of the text does not depend upon one’s view of inerrancy or providential preservation, nor should text-critical decisions reflect an a priori choice on the basis of theological considerations that merely attempt to sidestep difficult interpretative problems. The actual data and legitimate text-critical principles cannot be bypassed or nullified for particular theological or pro-inerrantist gain, but remain applicable to the determination of the most likely New Testament autograph reading at any point. As the present writer noted on the ETC blog, inerrancy is not the “overriding master for establishing the text, but rather a hermeneutical servant when dealing with the interpretation of the text as previously established.”

Inerrancy is not the overriding master for establishing the text, but rather a hermeneutical servant.

Such a scenario for the evangelical merely recognizes the Bible and the New Testament in particular as primarily theological works that were canonically recognized as authoritative and intended for the doctrinal and practical instruction and guidance of those who have comprised God’s Church through the centuries. It is therefore quite reasonable that evangelicals should reflect upon the providential role of the Holy Spirit as they evaluate the existing manuscript, versional, and patristic data while endeavoring to establish the NT text in its most accurate form. For the evangelical, the benevolent providential guidance of the Holy Spirit in New Testament text-critical research overshadows the establishment of the NT text, in a manner not requiring direct miraculous intervention.

Cautions

Even so, a few cautions remain for the evangelical textual critic. These include the following:

An avoidance of dogmatic assertions that particular debatable readings must be precisely those that God has inspired.
Not granting an unnecessary capitulation to various subjective elements, whether evangelical or otherwise;

The evangelical scholar should cautiously oppose such potentially attractive alternatives and thereby avoid text-critical doublethink when dealing with textual alteration. Theology should derive from the text as established; one cannot simply shape the text to fit one’s theological presuppositions. Although theology remains a factor when interpreting the data within a particular presuppositional framework, if a person’s theological views distort an honorable and fair assessment of the evidence, the results will have been forced to fit the theology, regardless of data to the contrary. As Dan Wallace’s former student, Bill Brown, has observed: “Nothing ruins consistent textual criticism like a theological a priori.”

Since no textual critic—evangelical or otherwise—possesses the Urim and Thummim so as to make an absolute determination in regard to a plethora of variant units, the evangelical scholar should consider the resolution of textual variation as a matter based on constant prayer, having a confidence that the Holy Spirit will continue his underlying providential guidance, leading the believing textual critic to a goal transcending what might be weighed under various secular methodological approaches. As Brittany Melton pertinently stated in an Old Testament context: “Divine providential guidance can be perceived only in retrospect.”¹⁵

Conclusion

The evangelical practitioner of New Testament textual criticism has no need either to fear or exclude the Holy Spirit.

The evangelical practitioner of New Testament textual criticism has no need either to fear or exclude the Holy Spirit when engaging in the practice of the discipline.¹⁶ Although one should avoid the “theological argument” approach when attempting to establish the New Testament text, at the same time one must not abandon the evangelical theological perspective. The evangelical textual critic can thus affirm in one domain with David Sorenson that

God in his providence has allowed the preservation of his inspired words by human means in a manner such that the text thereby preserved remains wholly sufficient and authoritative regarding all matters necessary for salvation, doctrine, instruction, reproof, application, and a prophetic perspective, along with commands requisite for conduct and morality as such relates to his Church, comprised of those believing in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.¹⁷

And equally, though coming from a different perspective, the evangelical textual critic can affirm with Kenneth W. Clark:

The Bible is for us the word of God, our chief guide for the salvation of humanity . . . . We who are Christians perceive in it, above all other writings, man’s only hope of life. It is with this book that the textual critic deals. This is the book whose true text he seeks, and whose transmission from generation to generation he studies to understand.¹⁸

And so may it be.

The text of manuscript 579 reads πᾶσιν not πάσῃ at John 16:13. An earlier version of this article mistakenly listed it with both.

Notes

1
This article was originally presented in fuller form at the ETS 70th Annual Meeting, November 15–17, 2018 in Denver, Colorado.
2
D. C. Parker, “Textual Criticism and Theology,” ExT 118 (2007): 588.
3
John H. Skilton, “The Transmission of the Scriptures,” in Ned B. Stonehouse and Paul Wooley, eds., The Infallible Word: A Symposium by the Members of the Faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary, 2nd ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1967), 164; B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek, vol. 2: Introduction and Appendix (London: Macmillan, 1882), 564–565.
4
James A. Borland, “The Preservation of the New Testament Text: A Common-Sense Approach,” The Master’s Seminary Journal 10 (1999): 48.
5
Bart D. Ehrman, “New Testament Textual Criticism: Quest for Methodology” (MDiv Thesis, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1981), 48.
6
F. H. A. Scrivener, A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, 2 vols.; 4th ed. rev. by Edward Miller (London: George Bell and Sons, 1894), 1:2–3, 7.
7
Data is taken from SQE¹⁵, UBS^3–5 and NA^26–28. UBS^4–5 erroneously cites Θ for two different readings (the error not reproduced here).
8
As Michael Kruger has observed, “If God intended his people to have his Word, then it is reasonable to think that he providentially oversaw the entire process so that his Word was faithfully delivered.” Michael J. Kruger, “Do We Have a Trustworthy Text? Inerrancy and Canonicity, Preservation, and Textual Criticism,” in John MacArthur, ed., The Inerrant Word: Biblical, Historical, Theological, and Pastoral Perspectives (Wheaton: Crossway, 2016), 315.
9
David S. Dockery, The Doctrine of the Bible (Nashville: Convention Press, 1991), 100; emphasis added.
10
Skilton, “Transmission,” 170–171.
11
As J. L. Dagg noted, “We are able, in every case, to determine the correct reading, so far as is necessary for the establishment of our faith, or the direction of our practice in every important particular.” J. L. Dagg, A Manual of Theology (Harrisonburg VA: Gano, 1982 rep. ed. [1857]), 24–25.
12
Skilton, “Transmission,” 169, 194–195.
13
As Merrill Parvis noted: “The New Testament is the Church’s Book . . . . In the last analysis it is the tradition of the Church and not the vagaries of our own scholarship which must determine the contents of that Book.” Merrill M. Parvis, “The Goals of New Testament Textual Studies,” Studia Evangelica VI (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1973), 403.
14
Greg L. Bahnsen, “The Inerrancy of the Autographa,” in Norman Geisler, ed., Inerrancy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979), n.p. (electronic edition).
15
Brittany N, Melton, Where is God in the Megilloth? A Dialogue on the Ambiguity of Divine Presence and Absence, Oudtestamentische Studiën/Old Testament Studies 73 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 146.
16
Cf. Daniel B. Wallace and M. James Sawyer, eds., Who’s Afraid of the Holy Spirit? An Investigation into the Ministry of the Spirit of God Today (Dallas: Biblical Studies Press, 2005).
17
David H. Sorenson, Touch Not the Unclean Thing: The Text Issue and Separation (Duluth: Northstar Baptist Ministries, 2001). Note that Sorenson stands clearly within the TR/KJV-only camp.
18
Kenneth W. Clark, “The Manuscripts of the Greek New Testament,” in Merrill M. Parvis and Allen P. Wikgren, eds., New Testament Manuscript Studies: The Materials and the Making of a Critical Apparatus (Chicago: University Press, 1950), 1. Clark notably represents a far more liberal theological perspective.

Borrowing from the KJV Bank and Trust

Why we must steward and protect the trust people have in prominent Bible translations.

Mark Ward

I want all good evangelical English Bible translations to be trusted and used by all good English-speaking evangelicals. And I think you should want this, too. It makes sense, then, to look to the most popular English Bible of all time for lessons in how a translation might win and keep Bible readers’ trust. That is, of course, the King James Version.

The KJV is the one ring to rule them all. There is no escaping its influence—on church history, on Bible translation, on the English language itself. But Rings of Power often get shrouded in hagiographic mist over time. According to a recent poll, 103% of English-speaking Christians believe that the KJV was created on the sixth day and brought over to America on the Mayflower on the seventh.

A huge number of English-speaking Christians still use and trust the King James.

Okay, that isn’t true. But this is: the most recent reliable poll found that 55% of American Bible readers are still reading the KJV. A huge number of English-speaking Christians still use and trust the King James.

And yet, there was when the King James was not. It had to be made by humans, just like today’s translations. There were no angel choirs singing in the sky at its birth (and the Pilgrims carried the Geneva Bible, not the KJV). The KJV had to achieve its status.

There are therefore a number of useful lessons we can learn about public trust in Bible translations from the human history of the excellent King James Version.

1. Plan for cavils and parles.

First, those who love good English Bible translations today—the ESV, CSB, NIV, NET, NLT, LEB, NKJV, and others—should take heart: even the venerable KJV once faced vituperative opposition.

It’s odd, actually, to read the KJV preface, “The Translators to the Reader,” because it opens in what might seem to us to be an unnecessarily defensive crouch. Its author, Myles Smith, is certain people will attack his and his fellow translators’ work. There isn’t much space to read between Smith’s rather dense lines, but I see there a resigned, elite-academic sigh. Smith has no idea he has helped forge the one ring. By sentence two, he is offering this biting prediction:

Cavil, if it do not find a hole, will make one.¹

The KJV translators foresaw the inane criticisms (“cavils”) they were about to face, and yet I can’t exactly point to them as examples of how to respond with grace—I don’t hear in Smith much noblesse oblige. He calls out his critics’ “absurdity,” “wickedness,” “envy,” and “malignity.” And listen to this cynical complaint:

He that meddleth with men’s religion in any part meddleth with their custom, nay, with their freehold [money-producing land]; and though they find no content in that which they have, yet they cannot abide to hear of altering [it]. (xix)

But I actually take some consolation from the mere fact that Smith felt he had to defend the KJV. The malicious treatment that current English Bible translators often get today is not an invention of the social media era. Apparently, it can be overcome.

The KJV translators do offer this constructive tip:

Being brought together to a parle [conference] face to face, we sooner compose our differences than by writings, which are endless. (xvii)

New Bible translations, if they are to be trusted, have to be ready to suffer slings and arrows from outraged Bible readers. And they have to win some of those people over with parles.

2. The KJV is the Septuagint of today.

A second lesson we can learn from the KJV translators comes from the insightful comments they make about one of the only Bible translations in history that is more famous than the KJV. This is the Septuagint, the pre-Christian Greek translation of the (Hebrew) Old Testament.

The lesson might go something like this: the trust people have in a prominent Bible translation must be carefully stewarded and protected.

The KJV translators were not overly enamored with the accuracy and quality of the Septuagint:

It is certain that that translation was not so sound and so perfect but that it needed in many places correction. (xxii)

They noted that the coming of the New Testament was a perfect time for God to fix the Septuagint’s problems. Whenever Jesus and the apostles quoted it, they could have adjusted it. But they often didn’t.

It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to them to take that which they found (the same being for the greatest part true and sufficient), rather than by making a new, in that new world and green age of the Church, to expose themselves to many exceptions and cavillations, as though they made a translation to serve their own turn. (xxii)

The KJV is the Septuagint of today. In general, the safest path to widespread trust is through it. The KJV established a tradition (begun by William Tyndale) of basically literal and beautifully literary translation choices, a tradition that has proven its utility over time.

In general, the safest path to widespread trust is through it.

While I happen to think that the New International Version is a fine work by fine scholars, and while I use the NIV frequently, it hasn’t hewed as closely to the KJV tradition as a few of the other major modern evangelical English Bible translations. I don’t think there is any kind of biblical requirement that we stick with precedent here; if Christians in your context trust the New International Version, then you have a new and useful tradition worth holding on to. But when it came time for a choice in my own congregation, I found that I was a member of the if-it-ain’t-broke school of Bible translation selection. We now use an English translation that is a more direct heir of the KJV—it was simply an easier sell in my circumstances to borrow from the KJV Bank & Trust.

3. Make the KJV translators thank you.

That, in fact, is very like what the KJV translators did in their day. Hence a third lesson: the KJV translators successfully replaced the work of their forebears without disdaining it.

I said earlier that Myles Smith wasn’t exactly gentle with his imagined critics. But he was nothing but gracious toward those who went before him in the work of English Bible translation.

As nothing is begun and perfected at the same time, and the latter thoughts are thought to be the wiser: so, if we building upon their foundation that went before us, and being helped by their labours, do endeavour to make that better which they left so good, no man, we are sure, hath cause to mislike us; they, we persuade ourselves, if they were alive, would thank us. (xxvii)

There are defenders of exclusive use of the King James Version who take even the gentlest question (Hasn’t English changed enough by now to make portions of the KJV unnecessarily difficult for today’s readers to understand?) as an affront. But it seems to me that if indeed it is time for the English-speaking church to replace the KJV in pulpits and other institutional contexts, pastors and others who must make this change would do well to speak well of the KJV—to refuse to let those defenders lay sole claim to its legacy.

The KJV translators were not KJV-Only. It is actually those who wish to see the venerable King James revised who are most honoring the KJV tradition. The KJV itself wasn’t a fresh translation; it was a revision of the Bishop’s Bible, first released in 1568. The edition of the KJV that is now in the most common use was produced in 1769 (not 1611).

The KJV translators were revisers, and they were sensitive to the charge that revising a translation meant rejecting or even disrespecting that earlier work. They loaded up the metaphors to explain their revision work to non-specialists:

It took the work of both Gideon and of the men Ephraim to destroy Midian in Judges 8: both were called for. Likewise, translation and revision are both necessary. (xxvii)
Joash struck the ground three times in 2 Kings 13; he should have struck it more. (xxvii)
“Books of profane learning” such as Aristotle’s Ethics get translated and then revised—even multiple times. (xxvii)
Gold doesn’t stop being gold because it needs at times to be “rubbed and polished.” (xxvii)

They did not disdain the work of their forebears. We should not disdain theirs even as we the church begin to use KJV revisions and replacements.

Conclusion

Some aspects of the KJV’s rise to prominence are unrepeatable, especially 1) the tiny size of the English-speaking world at the time and 2) the fact that pretty well all of it was subject to the king who commissioned the translation. That will never happen again. I am convinced that there will never again be one ring to rule them all.

Instead we’ve got something not quite so stirring, though you can still try using a movie-trailer announcer voice to say it: multiple rings with complementary and overlapping powers.

It’s a bad idea, then, to take a Bible translation that people trust such as the KJV and cast it into Mount Doom. There is room for many rings. And we can have and use them if we learn some lessons about trust from the wise KJV translators.

Notes

1
David Norton, ed., The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible with the Apocrypha: King James Version, Revised edition, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), xxvii–xxviii. Page numbers for future quotations of the preface will be given in parentheses.

Topics

Levels

New Testament

1. Who’s the audience?

2. Will it be a fresh translation or a revision?

3. What text will it translate?

4. How will it handle culturally specific terms?

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5. How (much) will the translation explain itself?

Appreciating Translators

Notes

The Story Breaks

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Problems Emerge for Jesus’ Wife

Cracking the Related Case

Lessons Learned

Nicaea and the Canon in History

Nicaea and the Canon in Legend

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Matter of Authority

Pseudepigrapha in the Book of Jude

Related

Pseudepigrapha and the Book of James

Conclusion

The Neglect of the Holy Spirit

The Spirit’s Place

Related

Avoiding Extremes

Giving Providence its Proper Place

Evidence of Providence

Cautions

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Conclusion

Notes

1. Plan for cavils and parles.

2. The KJV is the Septuagint of today.

3. Make the KJV translators thank you.

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Conclusion

Notes

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