“You Yourselves bear me witness that I said ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before Him’.” (John 3:28)

Of course John’s comment is in light of his ministry. For he says that he was to announce the Christ because he is not the Christ: his role was to prepare the way. John sees that his own life isn’t purposeless but is actually tied up in the work of God by the presentation of the Lamb of God.

He was sent to preach repentance and when he saw the Lamb of God he pointed him out, openly acknowledging that this is the provision that God had made. (John 1:19-34)

To John’s mind, this probably meant something else. He probably thought as Jesus as the Lamb ruler who would forcefully take away the sins of the World. After all, it was only a short time later that he would be imprisoned, still waiting for the Christ to reboot this entire world, and wondering why it hadn’t happened yet.

In Matthew 11, John, seeing that Herod is still in power (and he’s still in jail) sends a message to Jesus via disciples: “Are you the Christ that we’re waiting for?” He spent his life pointing out this person, he could’ve sworn that this was the very thing he was called to do, but things had turned out so differently and dire: could he have been wrong?

Christ responds neither yes nor no but pointing out the work of God. The Lame walk. The blind see. The Gospel is being preached.

The next historical note we have about John is that he’s beheaded at a party for a cruel mother and her daughter. (Matthew 14:1-12; Mark 6:14-29; Luke 9:7-9).

You see, Christ explains, John wasn’t merely some spectacle in soft clothes out in the wild—some oddity to ogle. This John was God’s prophet: the very Elijah who was supposed to come (if they would have had him) before the end of the age: the one who prepared the way of the coming of the Lord Himself. This John, in prison who eventually died of beheading, was the greatest of the prophets (Matt 11:11a).

Without a miracle. Without a sign. With a backwater ministry in the Jewish outback. John functioned where he was supposed to function doing what all the prophets before him did, but better. Point to Christ.

Every single prophet in the Old Testament pointed forward to Christ via the power of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes fuzzily. Sometimes explicitly. But always predicated upon God’s revelation and looking forward to God’s distant promises. John alone, out of all the prophets, announced Him within days, inaugurated him via baptism, and witnessed the descending Holy Spirit upon Him. None of the prophets were given that position (Heb 11:39).

But John didn’t see everything. He was still an Old Testament prophet. He didn’t see  the crowds cheering around the one who comes in the name of the Lord (Mark 11:9; John 12). To him wasn’t given the horror of seeing the Messiah rejected and pinned to a tree (John 19). He would never witness the wonder of the risen Messiah (John 20). To him wasn’t given the chance of listening to the risen Lord for several days before he was taken up into heaven (Acts 1). To him wasn’t given the chance of participating in the prophesying in tongues which was a witness of the Holy Spirit being poured out in the last days (Acts 2).

None of those things were given to him; God didn’t grant John that role.

And he knew that at this point.

Technorati Tags: gospel, israel, john in prison, john the baptist

Technorati Tags: being, distinctions, essence, nature, philosophy friday, tweet blog

The textual observation is in regards to Hebrews 5:7

In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety. (NASB)

Personally I think piety (even knowing the definition) is a strange word to use but the NASB has a habit of doing that. The NIV does a better job of getting the idea across by translating it as reverent submission.

The Greek term there (eulabeias) is later translated by the NASB in Heb 12:28 as awe.

What’s interesting is when you look at the KJV family. The KJV translates Heb 5:7 as “because he feared” while Heb 12:28 as “godly fear”. This clues us English readers about the problem with translating words only with their literal meaning.

What does the word eulabeia actually mean? Maybe it is only the good fear like reverence?

Well, that collides with its usage when we see the word being used to mean actually fearing (Acts 23:10) something like moved in Heb 11:7 (although the NASB translates it there as reverence) and in the Septuagint (admittedly, an older Greek) 1 Sam 18:29 the word could mean something like being astounded.

So now you have a word (eulabeia) which could mean reverence and it could mean actual fear. Hrm. Maybe we can differentiate it by looking at one of the other words for fear: phobos?

The Bible is choc-full of references with this word but the problem of literal meaning comes up once again. In Matthew 14:26; Rom 13:3; and 1 John 4:18 it means terror or fear but sometimes it could mean reverence, respect, or honor (1 Pet 1:17; 1 Peter 3:2; Rom 13:7; 2 Corinthians 5:11).

Indeed phobos, in some cases seems to mean that terror-sort-of-fear but in (strangely enough) a positive sense (1 Cor. 2:3; 2 Cor. 7:15; Eph. 6:5; Phil. 2:12).

This is all to conclude that textually, you can’t decide on a position merely because of the words being used. The words can mean something differently in different contexts and within those contexts is where you find the proper breeding ground for this or that position. Mind you, this isn’t to say you can embrace whatever you want. Just because the words have a range of meaning doesn’t imply that you can pick or choose from whatever you want within that range.

In this case a simplistic answer of “No.” or “Yes.” To the question “Did Jesus fear” doesn’t do justice to the words themselves, but it also doesn’t do justice to the text since it doesn’t adress all the complexities involved within the text.

It winds up being primarily a philosophical question (as I pointed out in that other post) based on the implications of the theology of the hypostatic union—which is exceedingly Biblical.

Louw, J. P., & Nida, E. A. (1996). Vol. 2: Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament

Lust, J., Eynikel, E., & Hauspie, K. (2003). A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint

Newman, B. M. (1993). A Concise Greek-English dictionary of the New Testament

Thomas, R. L. (1998). New American Standard Hebrew-Aramaic and Greek dictionaries : Updated edition.

Zodhiates, S. (2000). The complete word study dictionary : New Testament

Technorati Tags: afraid, eulabeia, fear, halloween, philosophy, phobos

I’ve seen this in plenty of discussions in an area where there’s vast disagreement: “yes, that’s important but it’s not the main point”. What the person is wanting to do is point out that although the details of whatever is the subject are present, they are not as important—or perhaps even subsumed—underneath the main purpose of whatever X subject is. Or, more succinctly, they want people to stop getting lost in the details but focus on the overall picture.

So if we were examining what this hammer is for, we might wind up with two sides (though you can easily envision more): generally speaking, one side explaining the parts of the hammer and the other side explaining the essence of the hammer.

“Yes,” says the Essence “those details are important but they aren’t what a hammer is for!” Basically, they’re looking at the purpose of hammer to define its hammerness.  Though, it might just be that the idea of “hammer” that we have isn’t because there is some essential thing about hammers (like for banging nails into beams)—it may just be that the things that cause a hammer to be a hammer are just as important to the intentions of needing a hammer.

On the other hand, an individual saying what necessitates a hammer is such and such parts also falls short. After all, can’t you use a hammer to dig up weds? Doesn’t that mean that the pieces of a hammer are just as important as its purpose and actual usage? Hammers exists not only because of the parts (handle, head) but because of what it is to do (bang into things) and because it is used as such (someone, somewhere hammers things).

But what if a person rejected the details in favor of the purpose: what makes a hammer a hammer is purely the intentionality. In that case you lose any distinction from hammers and bats. They are surely different objects but they can both be used for the same things, even if poorly. And then we shouldn’t really add an idea of maximal intentionality because you can always conceive of a better, less-flawed, better striking hammer.

What this all winds up meaning is that the details to what makes a hammer a hammer are just as important as the purpose of the hammer behind the hammer. Maybe it’s all obvious when studying insects like ladybugs or clownfish, but you have to wonder if it changes when you look at other things—like text.

The modern mind might say yes, it does change (though the postmodern mind will expand on that). It doesn’t matter so much what the text says as long as we understand the purpose of the text (or the intent of the author). So if we know that the purpose of this letter is to attract that girl, then the way the writer describes things are important but are defrayed by the intentionality.

But is that right? You arrive at the purpose by means of the details of the text and in conjunction with the intentionality of the author. Postmodernism would point out that the text is void of author intentionality (they’re not often labeled Love Letter) and now is coupled with reader-intentionality but even with the different lenses, the details of the text are connected to intent.

In the end, what one should conclude—after some philosophical wrestling—is that purpose, or intentionality, doesn’t preclude the points used to arrive there; if anything the points combine as a means and the very fabric of intent but can’t really exist apart from it. This is much more than symbiotic: it is necessary.

Technorati Tags: details, intentions, means, philosophy fridays, postmodern, purpose

The other day, my buddy Keith Keyser sent me a link to an article by James Hamilton Jr., an associate professor at Southern Baptist Seminary whereby Hamilton lays down what he sees are the logical ends of adhering to dynamic equivalence theory (going forward I’ll refer to it as functional equivalence) when it comes to Bible Translations. In the end, he says, the translator has decided to translate what he thinks the author means over against the words the author uses. His main examples were grounded on the “glory” language of the Gospel according to John and the importance of retaining that sort of thing. His closing thoughts are that if one doesn’t know the original languages then one should stick to a formal equivalence translation.

I’m torn because I’m a bilingual Hispanic American.

Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean that I don’t understand English. I do. The thing is, because I understand both languages, I understand the fundamental problems in adhering to solely a formal equivalent translating theory. But before I get to that I need to explain the problem strictly within the confines of the English language.

Another buddy of mine, Dan, was doing a word study on the term “light” and noted how the word is used in English. Dan realized that he couldn’t really pin down the meaning of the word light.  It can literally mean an electromagnetic radiation that travels in a vacuum at the speed of 300,000km per second and it can literally mean not-heavy. It can just as easily mean something that informs (shed some light on the problem), public knowledge (bringing something to light), or an igniting flame (hey bud, you got a light?)

Dan stumbled across the first obstacle of translation which I’d expand on by saying that the word “light” has no singular literal meaning.

How do you translate light into Spanish? You can’t just translate it luz because you don’t really know which meaning of “light” you’re applying. This is invariably a problem with Google Translator. Type in a single word, and it’ll give you a meaning. Change the sentence and watch the words change. What you need is a context. So if the sentence the word “light” resides in is “turn on the light” then you can translate it to luz. But if the context is “Wow, this baby is very light” you can’t translate it to luz. You would either use the word ligero or the phrase de poco peso (which means of little weight).

But even then, you have to be careful. The receptor language (the language that is receiving the words that are being communicated, in this case Spanish is receiving the translation of the English words) might have a semantic range on words that can cause very strange meanings. For example, in the right context luz means to give birth. So you can have the phrase “Give light” be translated to Dar luz and the phrase “Give birth” be translated “Dar a luz”.

This is another major problem that plagues a formal equivalent translation. Indeed, you don’t even know when words change. So a word in the original language might perfectly translate to “gay” in 1611 but today it causes snickers and you have to use the word “happy” or “cheerful”.

Problems multiply exponentially when you employ idioms or euphemisms.  I remember my father translating for an American English speaker who used the words “That’s totally cool”. My father couldn’t translate it to the literal words because it wouldn’t convey the same meaning at all: something like “that is thoroughly frigid.” So my father used an Hispanic idiom that conveys the same idea but literally has problems if it was coming back to English: “onda max” which literally means “deep wave or depth””.

And forget other idioms like “who let the cat out of the bag” or “he that pisses against the wall.” (the literal translation of a  phrase in 1 Kings 16:11 but which not even the NASB—an exceedingly literal translation—nor the Darby version, translates literally!)

What you quickly discover that if you’re doing any translation, you’re trying to convey what the text means in the original language and you can’t even consistently do that solely with a formal equivalent theory. Of course, a person can then swing completely the other way and decide that because what’s maximally important is the meaning, then the original words don’t matter—and that would be a mistake. Not only because the original words are inspired, but because you’ve stepped into a minefield of trying to clear up specific ambiguities.

For example, going back to our light problem, let’s say you have a guru who purposefully speaks about light shining in darkness, the effects of light to the darkness and how his message is light and that we who don’t come to terms with the message are blind and in the dark. If you translated what the guru was saying by means of explaining what he is saying, you’ve lost the ambiguity the guru was putting forward as well as the very colorful metaphor. What translators tend to do in this case, is keep the words (the form) while trying to convey what the words are doing (the function).

But then, the ambiguity goes even further when you realize that Greek and Spanish, unlike English, can insert gender into nouns and specify the action source within a verb. So while in English we use the word “I” or “You” or “They” for the object of a verb (I say; you say; they say), Spanish just conjugates the verb (to say: decir) with the right form (I say: digo; You say: dice; They say: dicen). English allows you to know that the subject is male or female (he or she) until it’s either personal or more than one: then you don’t have a clue. So if it’s a group of women speaking, you’ll say “they say” but in Spanish we’d add ellas which indicates group of women.

In Koine Greek (the Greek of the New Testament), you can conjugate the verb (lego: I say; legeis: you say; legousin: they say) but you have no clue about the sex unless you have other words (like nouns) which have the gender inserted. In Spanish we sometimes add an –a in the back of the noun to indicate feminine and an –o to indicate masculine but that in no way indicates the object is either feminine or masculine. Los vecinos at the puerta are masculine neighbors at the feminine door but you might just discover that it’s a mixed gender group and your door is totally sexless: a few more sentences and we’ll slam right into the gender neutral language of the TNIV and the NIV 2011!

So what do we do with all this?

Well, I definitely don’t think this means we should be chucking our formal equivalent versions and all purchasing an NIV 2011. Nor do I think that we should follow Hamilton in sticking only with a formal equivalent Bible. I think we should be trying to learn the original languages (they’re so rich after all) but I also think that we live in a very productive day and age with a fine amount of scholarship behind various translations.

The best, I think, is to employ multiple versions and consistently use them all in your studies. If I were to offer a recommendation, I’d say: NASB (formal), ESV (formal with better English) HCSB (mediating with delicious English), NET (mediating with delicious notes), NIV (functional), NLT (functional) and MSG (purely functiona and that links to the audio versionl). I’d make one of the first three my main Bible (mine is the NASB) and I’d check across the others. The MSG wouldn’t be so much for checking, but for seeing how meaning can be conveyed. I’d recommend Gordon Fee’s How To Choose A Translation but with the caveat that he unnecessarily comes down hard on formal equivalent versions.

Oh, and when is a door not a door? When it’s ajar. Yup, I didn’t mention puns, poetry, or plays on words either!

Technorati Tags: bible versions, translation