ETS Day 2 by Bill Mounce

ETS is now over and many of the people have move on to Boston to attend IBR (Institute of Biblical Research) and SBL (Society of Biblical Literature), which is the largest of the three organizations.

SBL is the least friendly of the organizations toward evangelicals and therefore perhaps our greatest opportunity for engagement in a non-evangelical theological culture.

Daniel Wallace gave an amazing plenary lecture of issues relating to the Greek text of the New Testament. Dan is a leading textual critic and is president of CSNTM (The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts). He started by discussing postmodern intrusions into NT textual criticism, and moved to how people are collaborating on text critical issues (e.g.,

www.codex-sinaiticus.net/en/) . Perhaps most interesting was Dan’s discussion of the work that remains and the role that evangelicals must play.

CSNTM is committed to the photographing, cataloging, and analysis of unknown Greek manuscripts. (The Greek Orthodox church has given Dan unprecedented access to many of their ancient libraries.) CSNTM is an example of how evangelicals must become involved in this work. The church needs to hear from us about textual issues and not just from scholars of other theological positions.

Dan’s conclusion is that it is better for the church to live with a little uncertainty about the text than with a false certainty based on incorrect text critical assumptions. I would really encourage you to browse www.csntm.org and to support them financially. (Disclosure: I have no direct connection with CSNTM other than Dan is a life-long friend.)

The second plenary meeting was C.E. Hill’s discussion of the New Testament canon. He showed how the concept of canon was tied directly with the church’s sense of the authority of divine revelation and emphasized that the church did not have the right to select certain books but rather to recognize those writings that were self-authenticating. After all, he concluded, Jesus’ sheep hear his voice.

It was great to see the first volume of the new Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament come out, written on James by Craig Blomberg and Mariam Kamell. I am part of the board that helped design the series and will do some of the editing. The series is written for people with one to two years of Greek (and perhaps have even forgotten much of what they learned). It is built around sentence flows; each biblical book is laid out in a graphical way that shows the relationship among the ideas, the flow of the author’s thought. It is breaking new ground.

But hands down the paper that engendered (pun intended) the greatest response was Mark Strauss’ paper entitled, "Why the English Standard Version Should Not Become the Standard English Version: How to Make a Good Translation Much Better." Let’s start with disclaimers:

Mark was not part of the original TNIV team but has been used by Zondervan as one of their most eloquent spokesmen and is now a member of the CBT (Committee for Bible Translation). I am the New Testament Chair of the ESV, and Mark and I have been good friends for many years, and are both on the board for the Zondervan commentary series mentioned above.

While the content of the paper was helpful, I am afraid that it only increased the gap between the two "sides" of the debate. There has been a lot of hurt and damage done toward people on both sides of this debate (e.g., someone shot a bullet through a TNIV and mailed it to the publisher), and I got the feeling that Mark was getting tired of being attacked. I would be tired if I were in his shoes. He kept saying that the ESV has "missed" or "not considered" certain translational issues. While I am sure they were not intentional, these are emotionally charged words that do not help in the debate. They are in essence ad hominem arguments focusing on our competence (or perceived lack thereof) and not on the facts. He was not in the translation meetings and does not know if we in fact did miss or did not consider these issues. Time and time again Mark said that if we made a change, then we would have gotten it "right." This, of course, is not a helpful way to argue because it implies there is only one "right" way to translate a verse. His solution appeared to be that we should adopt a more dynamic view of translation, and then we would have gotten it right. The solution to this debate is to recognize that there are different translation philosophies, different goals and means by which to reach those goals, and the goal of the translator is to be consistent in achieving those goals. In all but one of his examples, our translation was the one required by our translation philosophy.

Mark invited us not to argue with him after the paper but to engage in the debate next ETS, so I am going to break my decades of silence at ETS and will read a paper about why we did get it right for our audience. The inside story of the ESV and specifically our translation guidelines have never been told. And when done, I will invite Mark to write this blog next year.

Much of ETS is about connecting with old friends and making new contacts. I was glad to be able to meet with John Coe, the director of the Institute for Spiritual Formation at Talbot Seminary. I am learning that there is an entire field of study related to how we grow up in Christ, a field sadly ignored by much of Protestant thought. How can students think they are trained in how to lead Christian community if they doesn’t know the process by which God transforms them into the likeness of his son?

Accordance 8 and the latest version of BibleWorks were also officially released. It was a good conference and I am looking forward to next year’s in New Orleans.

--Bill Mounce

Comments

[Mike]

"His solution appeared to be that we should adopt a more dynamic view of translation, and then we would have gotten it right."

Is this necessarily the case? I'm not sure. Many of the suggestions made by Strauss are represented in the NRSV, which is not a Functional translation. I think that the ESV team should examine many of the changes and see what ones can be accepted (or adjusted) in a way that doesn't violate the ESV's formal philosophy.

No translation is perfect any more than the translators are.

[Richie]

Bill, your comments were right on the mark concerning Mark Strauss's statements and his own use of language in his paper. There were many interesting suggestions and comparisons throughout his paper; however, few of these had to do with whether or not the translation was actually "right" or "correct" - instead, they had to do with "better" or "worse" translations based on translation philosophy and English language usage. In addition, the paper was intentionally and, perhaps, unintentionally, inflammatory throughout. Even the title of his paper was deliberately inflammatory and the same tone of superiority continued all the way through the paper.

When will professed Christian scholars grow up into Christ and start arguing on the basis of facts without injecting personal "digs" and the loaded inflammatory language that is such a hallmark of non-Christian secular writing? Time after time I've read about how ESV supporters are so critical of the TNIV and yet time after time I continue to read TNIV supporters speak with an air of superiority towards ESV supporters. That this takes place from both sides is undeniable - but, I ask, when will Christian scholars start writing with the proper respect for each other that is inherent to our common life in Christ? May I suggest the works of F.F. Bruce and G.E. Ladd as first class examples of how this can be done.

[Paul Johnston]

Bill:
As you blog on the ESV, could you address why the NRSV is not used by Evangelicals. In my mind, the ESV was a duplication of effort, since it is close the NRSV, the NRSV has more global acceptance and is more readible.
Thanks,
Paul

[Wayne Leman]

Bill, I disagree that "In all but one of his examples, our translation was the one required by our translation philosophy."

Many of the examples Mark gave had to do with obsolete or archaic language used in the RSV (retained from the ASV) and retained in the ESV. It is possible, as the NASB (another revision of the ASV) has shown, to follow the ESV translation philosophy but use current English word order and words which would render the Hebraic, Aramaic, and Greek literally, rather than dynamically.

Rod Decker (with no ties to either the TNIV or ESV) and other scholars who have evaluated the ESV have said the same things about the ESV.

I agree with you that Mark could have used less emotionally laden language. But I think that it would be good for the ESV revision team to listen objectively to what Mark (and others) has said and examine it a verse-by-verse basis to see if the ESV can become an even better translation by tweaking the word orders and other syntactic oddities. The ESV team has already done some of this, as you know. May the Lord give you all strength and wisdom to continue "to make a good translation even better."

Every Bible translation can be improved. How well I know! It's the business I'm in.

[Wayne Leman]

Bill, as you probably know, much of the history of the history and its endorsements and promotion is also full of emotionally laden language. It is natural for people who have certain personality types and believe strongly in what they are doing to use strong emotional language. My namesake (first name) on the ESV team is a prime example.

[Wayne Leman]

"history of the history" was a mental typo for "history of the ESV"

[m slater]

I appreciate and use the ESV, but I think that the idea we are ever going to have one translation that is ‘best’ misses the depth of the original languages and the complexities of translation. In addition to the ESV I also utilize the NRSV and TNIV quite often, and I think all three have their place. None are perfect, all can be improved, but even if improved the ‘best’ translation will always vary by verse, by book, by what your intentions in reading the passage are, by level of literacy, and by personal opinions about translation issues on which knowledgeable people disagree.
Favoring a translation if it fits you best is fine, but we shouldn’t assume that our favorite translation is ‘the one’ (unless you prefer the original Greek and Hebrew I guess, though there is still some room for disagreement there as well).

[John]

Just a thought, but I'm really tired of the "archaic language" arguments; an archaism, properly, is language retained to meet a need that contemporary language cannot; and much of what I see called "archaic" among commentators is often just literary, not oral; people are forgetting that English does distinguish the two; furthermore what's often frowned upon by some groups is completely current and customary among others. Should we translated high-register English as used in upper class New York City? Or how about Houston? Or Southern England? Midwestern U.S. English? Or that of California?

Sheesh!

Mr. Mounce, I found that paper to be...more than unhelpful, but unwarranted; maybe an accidentally helpful point here or there, but seriously, complaining about "knew her not" or other Biblicalisms? Christians used to cherish these, and now we have bedwetters upset that the Bible is a foreign, ancient, document that doesn't conform to their own expectations or thought patters; no offense, but I often think the ESV can in places be overly accomodating, and sometimes more "charismatic-reformed-evangelical" than accurate here and there, but by no means do I think it's this aweful junk we hear so many unliterary, high-minded, critics decrying it as.

Thanks for all the good efforts put forward in that translation. : )

[Bill Mounce]

Wow. Lots of responses. Darrell Bock wrote a good followup on his blog as well (www.bible.org/bock). He makes good points about there not being a "right" translation, something we understand.

Let me refer to a few of your comments.

1. I can absolutely guarantee all of you that Mark Strauss is a world class scholar and a world class person. Let's give him and the rest of the TNIV translators the respect each one deserves.

2. Let me assure you that the ESV committee will look at all of Mark's examples. It will be my job to evaluate the NT ones. I was referring to the examples he covered orally, not all the ones in his paper since I did not get a copy. (I have one now.)

3. The failure of the NRSV to capture an audience among evangelicals is interesting. The gender language accounts for some of that. The history of the RSV and the positions of the National Council of Church would also contribute I would think. But in reality I am not sure why.

4. Don't ya just love language! It is so subtle, inexact, flexible and flowing, gaining from context while still allowing individual words to punch us when we least expect it. I love it.

[Jeremy Pierce]

One reason a lot of evangelicals are wary of the NRSV is that it seems to favor the LXX over the MT whenever there's a significant difference between the two. Take a look at the early chapters of I Samuel to get a sense of how different it is from the RSV. It preserves the MT in the footnotes, but it really doesn't take a very conservative approach to OT textual criticism, and a lot of evangelicals who realize that are pretty resistant to it.

[Roger Pearse]

Dan Wallace is doing more for biblical scholarship by collecting photographs of all the NT manuscripts than any man has done for centuries. We don't need endless rubbishy papers on the same old stuff, while the raw materials remain inaccessible. This work at CSNTM must be of permanent value to everyone.

I was interested in one comment:

"Dan’s conclusion is that it is better for the church to live with a little uncertainty about the text than with a false certainty based on incorrect text critical assumptions."

Dan is absolutely right. The fact is that modern printed bibles can have typos. Ancient hand-copied ones could more easily get mistakes in them (which could get corrected rather more easily too!) These are just facts. We live in an imperfect world.

But the ancients knew all this. They lived in the age of manuscripts. They wrote complaints about sloppy scribal practices, as we know from Cicero. Yet it didn't stop them from realising that the NT was inspired by God; that the eternal had entered into an imperfect world.

How do those two incompatible things work together? We don't know. The scriptures don't tell us, and the fathers don't either. But their experience - and ours - is that they do.

It's a mistake to feel that we have to try to define how the interface between eternity and the world in the scriptures works. The data isn't there to explain it, and only God knows for sure. We do know that people who going around talking about "mistakes" in the scriptures somehow end up with a gospel which merely reflects their cultural predispositions, and is not centred on God or blessed by God.

We can't invent truth. On some things we should just say "don't know."

Not that we should allow the specious argument that says that the bible can't be inspired because a printer can make a typo. Those who make such a theological argument are asserting that God can't perfectly inspire a text in an imperfect world. The evidence, after 2,000 years of church history, is to the contrary.