Biblical Inerrancy And Other Fun Stuff
Here’s a fun take on Biblical inerrancy by an Episcopalian/Anglican priest:
And here’s a segment from the Colbert Report from a guy who might be the living proof of what the Rev above might be warning about:
| The Colbert Report | Mon -- Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Bart Ehrman | ||||
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The author above had a conversion experience as a high school student and later attended Moody Bible Institute, Wheaton, and Princeton Theological Seminary. Inerrancy was pretty big in his belief system until he got convinced from reading the early texts and biblical manuscripts that an inerrant approach to the Bible presented major problems. So there went his faith.
Of course, saying that the Bible isn’t inerrant isn’t the same as saying that what the Bible says isn’t true. It gets a bit more technical. I like this model presented by another Anglican priest, Bosco Peters (in fact, it was where I got most of this post from -- except for the latter video which I first came across via Sivin):
One model is the Bible as the memory of God’s people. My memory is very tied in with my identity -- the Bible is tied in with the identity of God’s people. Memory is not a film of the events of my life -- it is the essence of those events as interpreted by me and how they are significant to me. Memory collects similarities together. Memory distorts and rearranges in order to make sense of my life and interpret the events to myself. In the library of the Bible, with its variety of genres, of literary styles, God interprets events and makes sense of them for us. We are generally agile at recognising what literary style we are dealing with -- but occasionally we do get it wrong, even with contemporary material -- misjudging an ironic piece and reading it straight, or not recognising something is actually an advertisement and judging it to be an article. With ancient texts we are far less agile at recognising the literary style. We need to have the humility to acknowledge we may be incorrect in judging whether a text is history or allegory, fable, parable, or poetry. The Bible may be moving in a general direction, and we may misjudge its trajectory. Reverence for scripture need not be opposed to humility about our understanding and interpretation of it.
If you want a more academic perspective of this debate, here’s a series of videos of a lecture delivered at the Murray State University in 2007 by an Anglican priest, David Simmons:
Siuyin
How about the idea that language translations can give rise to manifold interpretations? To contextualize this a bit more concretely, when documented accounts by observers who aren’t “the persons as subjects of these accounts” render complexifications (but not necessarily inaccuracies) in how something is presented, translating them from the original language of both the actors involved and the scribes into another language, only complexifies even further the presentations of events and so on to the point where this extent of complexification may lend to an inaccurate reading of information/circumstances, depending upon how things are translated. We can rightly conclude that to a certain degree, the text has been altered to reflect a deviation of emphasis relative to what is happening, how it happens and how the reader is to receive the information conveyed. Modern day ethnographers are often faced with the challenge of getting their portrayals “right”. These are portrayals of how a particular culture or society IS – both intra-relationally and inter-relationally, and by “right” I am talking about how close the perspective given in the ethnographic literature comes to the actual perspective as acknowledged by the actors themselves. But the Bible itself is kind of different yet again from many mainstream ethnographic accounts of “the complex ways by which people construct relationships with their world and the “other worlds” around them” (Minnegal, 2006) since most of the texts are written by people who were either an active part of the cultural reality presented (as in the Gospels of Matthew and John) or were intimately acquainted with it (i.e. Mark and Luke relative to their version of events). The Bible is perhaps most renowned for both it’s self-ethnography (that is, accounts of experiences as told through the eyes of those who experienced them) and reflexive ethnographic mould (that is, a narrative as conveyed by someone who had a very close and sympathetic relationship to the actors in the story being told). However, the crunch comes when the authenticity of narrative experience as told through the eyes of the writer becomes blurred because certain words in the text are translated vaguely or from a totally different cultural paradigm to the one which is the subject of the text – hence the depth of true meaning becomes lost unless of course we endeavour to recover it through obeying the God-given dictates of our conscience. A good couple of examples to highlight what I mean when it comes to the ambiguity manifested through different translations of the Bible into European languages are the following:
Luke 14:26 – in one translation, the passage reads “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father, mother, wife, and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.”
In another, more accurate translation, the same passage reads “If you want to be my follower you must love me more than your own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters – yes more than your own life. Otherwise you cannot be my disciple.”
The distinction is now clear why the latter translation is more accurate than the former due to the fact that a greater devotion to the desires of God than to those of the people around us, especially where the respective desires are in conflict, does not mean God expects us to hate the others around us, and this is more evident from the latter translation but the former conveys an incorrect message altogether.
On a slightly different but nonetheless related tangent, I went to a seminar recently which took an in-depth view on Joseph’s story and how this can thematically be reflected in our lives. Whilst there was much in this presentation that shed new light upon life’s challenges, it also inadvertently highlighted the complexities associated with how a particular linguistic rendering of Biblical text can influence a person’s subsequent entire outlook on, for example, Joseph’s character. Let me give you an illustration from Genesis 37:2b-c:
One translation reads “When Jacob’s son Jospeh was seventeen years old, he took care of the sheep with his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah. But he was always telling his father all sorts of bad things about his brothers.”
Another, more comprehensive translation says “When Joseph was seventeen years old, he often tended his father’s flocks with his half brothers, the sons of his father’s wives Bilhah and Zilpah. But Joseph reported to his father some of the bad things his brothers were doing.”
I personally grew up in my spiritual outlook heavily influenced by the latter translation – which actually sheds more light on the matter concerning not only how but more importantly why Joseph related to his fatherand his brothers the way he did. The former translation is very scanty in this regard because it tells of “how” Joseph related but not “why”. Here comes the danger point. For someone to know just how something occurred and not understand why is crucial in shaping how they will perceive the actors in a story like that of Joseph. The lecturer from the seminar I went to unfortunately clung to the view that Joseph was “spoilt brat” based solely upon what the abridged translation had to offer. I must give him due credit for his humourous appreciation of “spoilt brats” though! However, his view of Joseph at seventeen was one of a boy who just went to his daddy and made up bad stories about his brothers to gain his father’s favour! How shocked I was at this lecturer’s presumptuous outlook on Joseph’s character at that point – only because I knew that the message given over by the abridged translation was not the whole picture – as you can see from the more comprehensive version of events, it was “the bad things his brothers were doing” which signaled to Joseph something was wrong and THAT had to be changed. There was a moral duty on his part as a member of Jacob’s house to take some mutual responsibility in helping resolve disputes when they arose – we can deduce this to be the “why” behind his actions of informing daddy about brothers’ unethical behaviour. Regarding other matters of this seminar’s portrayal of Joseph’s story – particularly the accounts of his life in Egypt and how significant this is relative to seeing God as the One who heals broken relationships, it was very well done.
So there you have it! Translation is tricky.
May 15th, 2009 at 8:30 pm