2011 anniversaries: out with the old

This entry into the blogosphere is neither nostalgic nor spiritual.  It is not particularly well-conceived.  These words may not even provoke thought.

I merely want to recognize the passing of the year 2011 with a couple of “huh –who?” or “attaboy” utterances about music and musicians, and then I’ll finish with an “OK, thanks, but at this point, I’m done w’ ya.”

First, heading back 300 years … the year 1711 brought to us no one particularly notable in music history … ever heard of William Boyce and Ignaz Holzbauer?  Didn’t think so.  ‘Nuff said.

1811 was a bit more significant in giving birth to the inimitable, if flagrantly megalomaniacal, Franz Liszt.  Liszt was quite a composer, an even more prolific transcriber and arranger … and, by all reports, an ostentatious “rock star” of a solo piano performer.  Not my cup of tea, but he does deserve recognition, historically speaking.  Liszt actually merited the epithet “artist” — unlike 94% of the pop stars who reappropriate the label today.  Another dude by the name of Ferdinand Hiller, who was the dedicatee of Schumann’s terrific piano concerto and of a couple of Chopin’s works, was also a product of 1811.

Around the birth years of my grandparents, 1911 gave us Gian Carlo Menotti (of the plenteous supply of homosexually-acting, talented composers of the last couple of centuries); and Alan Hovhaness, an interesting and also talented, if quirked-out, composer.  More significant in my personal, vocational life was the creation, in 1911, of Holst’s Second Suite in F for Military Band.  A landmark work, along with its predecessor of 1909, and a work that has provided much pleasure.  Thanks, Gustav.

And now, back a few hundred years.  The passing of 2011 moves us to mark the 400-year-old publishing of the Authorized Version of the Bible, commonly known as the King James Version, in 1611.  That this version was authorized by a human should give us pause re:  its conception; that it was authorized by a king should arouse bona fide suspicion.

It’s my distinct impression — being a closet, relatively unschooled scriptorian that I am — that the KJV was, for approximately 350 years, the only verifiably circulated, “complete” Bible.  (Biblical canon is a much more complicated question than that, but for sake of this abbreviated blog, I’ll leave it at that.)  That was more or less fine for 1611-1950, and I am grateful that more and more people had Bibles available during those days.  Clearly, the KJV was a blessing in its time.

However, at this juncture, we must pay our respects and allow the KJV to pass with a dignity that matches the richness of some of its language.  For poetically or aesthetically oriented purposes, or for sake of academic study of the literature of the 16th and 17th centuries, it is fine to use the KJV.  For the sake of understanding God’s messages in our day, it is no longer fine to give credence to the KJV.  We now have infinitely better scholarship to bring us more communicative, more accurate versions of what was originally scribed.  Today’s versions are not all worthy, but just about any one of them has a better chance, in 2011, of communicating something God wanted said than the KJV has.  Those old soldiers of the scriptures, the giving-away Gideons, need to learn this truth, and so do the rest of us.

Thank you, KJV, for shewing thyself unto humans who have sought the Almighty for lo, these scores of years.  Prithee, though, as 2011 flees, may thine arcane gists and thine obsolete phrasings take flight on wings of reason and spirit.  Thy stilted language no longer serves the purposes of the Kingdom of God.  We beseech thee, in good faith:  takest thou thy leave, with alacrity!

Good riddance, KJV.  May another, more worthy than thou, haste to take thy place.

Transliteration & translation

We could all look forward to the 500^th anniversary of the publication of William Tyndale’s Bible in 1525, but in the meantime, we’re confronted with the 400^th anniversary of the King James Bible.  My first Bible was a KJV—most kids got one when growing up in my decades—but I have repented (i.e., reversed course).

Acknowledging the not-insignificant contributions to English-speaking culture and religion of the KJV, I’d like bemoan three transliterations it foisted upon us:  “baptize” and “bishop” and “apostle.”  These words were creations—Anglicizations, as it were, of Greek words—having the effect of hiding the original meanings.

Previously, a Genevan translator named Olivetan, working around the time of Tyndale, made unpopular decisions to translate “apostle” as “messenger” and “bishop” as “overseer,” as well they should have been translated.  Transliteration, onthe other hand, is pretty much a cop-out—obscuring the meaning and perpetuating darkness.  Real translation sometimes requires courage.

William Tyndale “was in the habit of discussing with the clergy who came to the house where he was a tutor, and showing them how widely they erred from the teachings of scripture.  This raised persecution which obliged him to leave the country, but he had seen that the great need of the people was to become acquainted with the Bible, and he promised that ‘if God spared his life, ere many years he would cause the boys that drove the plough to know more of the Scriptures’ than the divines who kept it from them.”  (E.H. Broadbent, The Pilgrim Church, p. 235)

There in England, as Tyndale’s work was being circulated, the Bishop of London commanded that “within thirty days … under pain of excommunication and incurring the suspicion of heresy, they do bring in and really deliver to our Vicar-General all and singular such books as contain the translation of the New Testament in the English tongue.”

GET THAT?  The Bishop of London was actually doing all he could to keep the Bible out of his own people’s language.

Vive l’esprit de William Tyndale.  That is all I have to say about that.

Yet another reason

Our son Jedd asked two “what’s that?” questions within seven seconds last Sunday.  He wanted to know what a shoe horn was and what the shoe trees were.  (Incidentally, two distinct objects go by the label “shoe tree.”  I was dealing with this type.)

Have you ever thought about explaining words with obscure or double meanings to a toddler?  I mean, he knows what a tree is, and what a horn is.  What on earth could these odd objects have to do with trees and horns?  I suddenly felt more inadequate than usual.

This little interaction highlights once again — for me, anyway — that in church, we need to avoid the KJV, especially when dealing with the uninitiated or lesser-experienced, and especially when the scene calls for understanding and meaning.  While I can try to explain “shoe horn” to Jedd, there’s simply no time to explain “concupiscence” or “similitude”  or “upbraideth” to a new, adult believer.  Why stumble over, and grin about, “hath” this and “doth” that?  Would you really know what the following passage from Romans 12 means if it weren’t for more modern versions?  “Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits.”  There are better things to do with our Christian time.

Once in a while, the majesty of KJV poetry is in order.  But most of the time, please, use a more modern version of the scriptures.

Why do they do it like that?

Years ago, a respected friend-preacher (I know … there aren’t many of those, yet the individual referent lays fine claim to both those epithets, in my little piece of the world!) probed a church. . . .

If I visitor were here among us, in our church assembly, what would he or she notice?  What would he or she want to know?

He went on to speak of various aspects of what we do, and what we look like, when we’re together as a church body.  This probing has remained with me, and every so often in an a cappella church setting I’ll hear one of the preacher’s follow-up queries in my head, with inflection and everything:  “Why do they sing like that?”

To the rest of the religious world, Churches of Christ can be seen as oddities, and part of the reason is the unusual sounds they make during assemblies.  For every 100 CofC groups, 91 of them make particularly bad, odd sounds, and most of the rest of them make merely odd sounds.  “Why do they sing like that?”  Well, despite what some might tell you, it’s mostly because of tradition.  Sincerely held and convicted tradition, in some cases, but tradition nonetheless.

Recently, I brought that old sermonary probing to mind and wondered myself a twin wondering, after hearing scripture read in obtuse, outmoded, obsolete, and sometimes ostentatious language (that of the 1611 so-called “King James” version).  Why do they read it like that?

Why on earth would one choose to read (or allow an unsuspecting newbie to read) in such a difficult language when the goal is to understand God’s message?  Friends really shouldn’t t let friends study out of the KJV, as long there is another option.

In an adult Bible class that included a 50ish woman who was barely literate, the teacher was reading lines aloud for her, and she was repeating them, apparently strengthening her reading skills.  That part was fine and good.  The fact that she was struggling in the King James language was NOT fine and good.  [Preface:  the coming introductory phrase is meant altogether soberly, and not at all flippantly ... ]  For God’s sake, get her a Bible she can come closer to understanding.

(Aside:  upon re-reading this before posting, I think I’ve decided to send a simpler-English Bible her way.  Maybe the NCV or the ERV or the Simple English Bible or the English Version for the Deaf.  Those possibilities pop right to mind–all better for her than the KJV.  Even the NIV was once said to have an 8th-grade reading level.  Not even all English lit professors with PhDs could aptly translate 1611 English while reading aloud!)

~  ~  ~

This is just me, but my gut tells me that if a visitor is in our midst, something is wrong if all she or he wants to ask is questions like “Why do they do it like that?  Why do they sing like that?  Why do they read that kind of Bible?  What’s up with that?”  Shouldn’t honored guests be having rather deeper thoughts like “Man.  Really seemed like God is with them.”  Or maybe a simple “What did he mean by that?  I’ll have to look it up when I get home. . . .”

Logikan latreian as worship (Romans 12)

Moving ahead from here, let’s think next about the translation of a key phrase in Romans 12:1.  Whatever the living sacrifice is or does, Paul says it becomes something.

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God [because of all that God has done for you], that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” (NKJV)

The NKJV translation chosen by Cottrill in his post renders the Greek logikan latreian as “reasonable service.”  Now, words are just words—concepts are more important—but words are still worth pursuing, and I question “reasonable.”  The way I read it, “reasonable” is a downgrade of “logical.”  In other words, “logical,” a more literal translation, would have constituted a more firm rendering.  However, either “reasonable service” or “logical service” clearly improves on the more commonly heard “spiritual worship”:  the term “spiritual” is as vague today as it is ubiquitous, and to use it in this passage is at best wispy, and at worst misleading.

By “wispy” I mean to imply that the idea that everything is worship unhelpfully ethereal (ethereally unhelpful?); in the use of “misleading,” I’m suggesting that this idea may lead us away from Paul’s inspired intent.  The idea that the presentation of the Christian’s body is the sum total of “spiritual worship” weakens both the philosophy and the reality of Christian worship.

Here are a few varying translations of the expression at the end of Romans 12:1, with my commentary on the right.

NET, KJV, NKJV:  … which is your reasonable service	“Reasonable” is close enough to “logical” to be a reasonable approximation!
ESV:  … which is your spiritual worship	To the 21C mind, “spiritual” can suggest something Eastern and transcendental.  Worse, the New Covenant word-concept “spiritual” is absent from this text.
NIV:  This is your spiritual act of worship	The rendering “spiritual act” compels me, I’ll admit, but see above comment on the word “spiritual.”  The NIV does better than the NASB with this phrase, implying the very sort of morphing from physical to spiritual that I infer from Paul.  I think he was suggesting that the Christian’s life-service (sacrifice) becomes, in a way, “worship.”  Also see comment on the BBE version below.
NLT:  This is truly the way to worship him	The NLT translators often play fast and loose with texts in order to make things sound contemporary.  This is no exception.  This translation is no translation at all; in my opinion, it’s an ill-begotten, ill-fated, dynamic non-equivalent!
BBE:  … which is the worship it is right for you to give him	The Bible in Basic English is a translation I’m not familiar with, so I looked up a few passages.  it seems to do a pretty good job, in general, but this rendering, not unlike that of the NLT, is too loose for a Bible that purports to be a translation.  It’s more of a commentating paraphrase.  I don’t disagree with the import here, although I would add quotes around the word “worship,” but it’s nowhere near translation status:  “it is right for you to give him” doesn’t appear in the text at all.
NASB:  … which is your spiritual service of worship	Although I’m typically a champion of the NASB in terms of its literal renderings and careful translations, I think the Lockman Foundation missed the mark on two and one-half fronts here.  Again, “spiritual” is not in this text at all.  “Service” is, but “service of worship” would at a glance imply the presence of two words, and the single word is latreian. While “service” is a reasonable single-word translation of the Greek, it is not altogether sufficient to convey the concept, which may be why the NASB translators felt the need to take a further step in English.  Unfortunately, they chose an institutionalized church-ese expression ne’er found or implied in the NC scriptures:  “service of worship.”  Brethren and cistern, there is no such Biblical animal as a “service of worship.”  Translating to match the institutional status quo makes the NASB guys no better than ol’ King James’s men.

Next:  back to the beginning—looking at the idea of whole-life worship and sacrifice

Versions

I saw a commercial last night. I rarely pay attention to commercials, but I noticed this one. It was offering a free Bible … a “Holy Bible” (what an out-of-touch phrase … sometimes I wonder what we Christians are thinking, using our in-house jargon at the moment at which we’re supposedly trying to be friendly to outsiders).

Nevermind, for a moment, that it was the Mormons–a group that from its very birth relinquished any hope of sane religion–that were offering this free Bible. Nevermind that the Book they were offering contains substance that their other sacred writings contradict. And nevermind that the only reason to offer the Bible instead of the Book of Mormon or Doctrine and Covenants would be to appear normal to the TV-viewing audience.

Back to our story … why on earth would anyone offer a King James Version Bible to readers in the 21st century? I mean, the only people who read the KJV are 1) people like me who like the grandeur of Old Testament poetry in 17th-century vernacular once in a while, and 2) fundamentalists who lay no more claim to sanity when it comes to the translation of scripture than do the Mormons when it comes to religion overall.  Ridiculous assertions such as the KJV’s being good enough for the apostle Paul, so it must be good enough for us have actually been uttered.

We all need to remember that every translation and version has inconsistencies, flaws, and weirdnesses.  No English (or French, or Spanish, or Czech, or Swahili …) Bible can lay claim to inerrancy.  After all, they are translations and versions that are, in all cases, several steps removed from the originals.  And the manuscript discoveries in the last 400 years have shed much light on the texts, so any serious translation work in, say, the 1880s or the 1940s will quite naturally result in a better product than the work of the early 1600s.  Not to mention the natural evolution of language that occurs in 5 or 10 years, much less 400!

Personally, I’m not all that up on versions and re-translations of the past few years, but here are a few opinions for discussion.

• I continue to favor the NASB for technical reading and serious study of finer points.
• I read and use the NIV for most public applications, but that’s because most of the time, we “publics” don’t go deep enough. In other words, the NIV has enough misleading or careless translations that I wouldn’t always trust it by itself for serious study. Further, I’ve seen far too many Bible classes chase rabbits down NIV trails, with no idea that they are building their cases on NIV language, as opposed to building them either on original wordings or on God’s thoughts.
• I’m not attracted at all to the NLT. Seems to be more careless than the NIV, and yet it rears its head fairly often.
• I like The Message and Phillips paraphrases for making scripture jump out at you.
• I wasn’t offended by the little I’ve read in The Word on the Street, a sort of “hip” ghetto-ish version, but I haven’t yet had the courage to use it publicly in a serious way.
• I hear that the NRSV is favored by scholars at my Christian institution of higher learning, and I have a copy, but I haven’t been particularly moved by it in one direction or another.

By the way, I’ve had a few Mormon friends and associates, and, to a person, they have been good, kind, decent people. As with other religious systems gone awry, it’s the power-system that constitutes the problem, not the victimized, if ignorant, people in the pews.