Loading...In my previous post I mentioned how I started a full-time research position for the New Revised Standard Version in 1987-88. I had several roles to play in that position. Probably the most difficult involved trying to make sure that there was a consistency in the translation, from one biblical book, passage, and verse to another.
How does one determine if a translation is internally consistent? It’s not easy. I had to work through the entire translation, and whenever I came across a key term in the Hebrew or Greek that had been rendered into English in one way in one passage, I had to check whether it was rendered similarly in other passages where the same word occurred.
I should stress
Get access to Dr. Ehrman's library of 4,000+ articles plus five new articles per week about the New Testament and early Christianity. It costs as little as $2.99/mth and every cent goes to charity!
Unlock 4,000+ Articles Like This!
Isn’t “computer” in your example a noun, not a pronoun? And we often use this tool: “Which one? That one.”
Yup, but I was referring to the relative pronoun optoin of “which” or “that” referring back to the noun…
You guys could have made history by developing a good non-gender-specific personal pronoun. “It” doesn’t sound very polite when you are referring to a person, but using “he” or “she” unnecessarily assumes a specific gender. Do you know anyone, either in the field of religion or academics in general who has tried to introduce such a term? Speaking of that/which: a man tells his friend he went to see that new doctor. “Which doctor?” “No, a regular one.”
Ha!
What are your thoughts on the translation of Luke 17:21? My NRSV copy translates it as “the kingdom of God is among you” but KJV uses “the kingdom of God is within you.” Which do you think is more accurate?
The word most commonly means “within” but that doesn’t seem possible in the context (since Jesus is almost certainly not telling his enemies the Pharisees that THEY have the kingdom inside of themselves), and so “among you” makes the better sense, in my view.
I agree. “Among you” makes more sense to me as well. And I find that present tense of the kingdom of God very compelling. I know there’s an ongoing debate among biblical scholars about Jesus’ chronology of the kingdom of God – is it now, among us, or at the end times – but its hard to ignore a comment like this and the spirit of his parables that begin “the kingdom of God is like.” Perhaps you can dedicate a post to this discussion?
The bigger issue is whether Jesus actually said these words. They are found only in Luke and they fit very well with Luke’s own perspective on things, that the Kingdom wsa not to come right away near the time of Jesus himself (in setting out this perspective, Luke differed from both Matthew and Mark)
Thomas 113 is a remarkable parallel, with “spread out upon the earth” in line with “among you.”
Yup, it’s the kind of saying that makes sense in Thomas, though not, in my view, on teh lips of the apocalyptic Jesus.
In Luke 17:21 a the common explanation that I get for the transition being “among” “midst” or “inside the group of people” that they contend, is the plural “YOU” in this verse is a preposition. Do you find that as a valid method of translating the text into english?
I don’t think they could say that “you” is a preposition, do they? It’s a personal pronoun (in the genitive plural, in this case), not a preposition.
I miss wrote, sorry. In Luke 17:21 a common explanation that I get for this transition as being “among” / “midst” instead of “inside of you” is, that the “YOU” ὑμῶν (Pharisees) is plural and so the kingdom of god, somehow becomes “within (inside) the group” (Jesus and the Pharisees) “it’s within their (Pharisees) midst” and also referring to the preposition ἐντὸς. Do you find that as a valid method of translating this verse into english? Thank You.
Yes, this is what “among” would mean, as opposed to “within” or “inside,” though “you” could be a larger group than just the Pharisees.
Did the use of plurals exist in writing during the time of the composition of Luke? (40-100 AD) If so have you found that the writers of the gospels (Luke) understood how to use them properly?
Yes, Greek always had the plural and Greek writers all knew the difference between a singular and a plural.
This is perhaps getting a bit too far into the weeds, but with regard to the Hebrew bible did the committee (or you) see that the authors’ understanding of words and phrases changed significantly over time?
The earliest parts were written around 1000 BCE and the latest around 200 BCE. Lots of history happened in that time and one can imagine that what something was understood as earlier might not have been the same later.
Yes, they had to take that into account, but it’s a very tricky business, since we don’t have other Hebrew texts outside the Bible from any of those times to see (on other demonstrable grounds) how the language changed. (Unlike with, say, ancient Greek or Latin; or modern English)
Speaking of grammar rules, I just discovered the ‘hoopla’ going on about someone from your neck of the woods. Chris Bledsoe. He’s been on the History Channel, Discovery and others. He claims to have been visited by angels in the form of ‘orbs’. He’s also been receiving information from a spirit ‘lady’ similar to Our Lady of Fatima or Our Lady of Guadalupe. He just published a book called ‘UFO of God’. Quite interesting story but the question I have is about the fact that he states that the Holy Spirit is feminine. He mentions that in certain translations or interpretations that this can be validated. I’ve never heard of this before. I’d be interested in hearing of anything that you might have come across about this idea. It’s actually kind of intriguing, the missing feminine aspect of God….
I guess that says a lot about the “History” Channel. No, I haven’t heard of him. There’s nothing in the New Testament to make the H.S. is a feminine being. The gendered articles used are normally neuter and sometimes masculine.
The Jewish-Christian Gospel of the Hebrews portrayed the Holy Spirit as the divine mother of Jesus.
One of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_the_Hebrews
Weird question, but were there any translators on the RSV who also worked on the NRSV? It seems doubtful given that the RSV crew seems to have been old already in the 1930s and 40s, but you never know I guess… also, do you know if the notes from the RSV team were consulted much / at all?
Only my mentor, Bruce Metzger. I don’t believe any notes from the original RSV were preserved (or at least htat I remember). The correspondence ot the committee once the translation was published was, and lots of it was not … nice.
Do you think something like “God’s paradise” or “heaven on earth” would be good substitutes for “Kingdom of God/Heaven.” Not a better translation but a better description of the idea so that it’s meaning is apparent to 21st century people?
I always stumble over “Kingdom” since it’s so foreign to current ideas of what good government is.
And “of God/Heaven” doesn’t capture the really essential idea of something that will take place in this world on earth.
“Paradise” hearkens back to Eden—definitely something on earth—and God’s connection to that ideal world. But it is also frequently taken as a synonym for a supernatural heaven. So that’s a problem.
Or maybe “God’s society”? But that conjures up Christian nationalism. Or “a heavenly way of living”?
After going through all this I’ve decided I prefer “heaven on earth.” It clearly includes both the divine and this world. And heaven is often thought of as a perfect, supernatural place for souls to live—which the phrase as a whole modifies to being a perfect place on earth for embodied human beings to live.
It’s a good question. But I think at the time, “kingdom” was what really was meant: an entity with a divinely appointed benificent monarch. (Many ancient thinkers — including famously Plato — thought that benificent monarchy was the best governing structure one could have, and that democracy was one of the worst. And of course that was the tradition throughout most of the hisotry of Israel, monarchy/kingdom).
Standing alone, do the parts of the gospels that come from the Q “Source” (not necessarily a written source) paint a significantly different portrait of the historical Jesus than the apocalyptic prophet presented in your books which utilize the oldest strata of all the synoptic gospels?
For example, is there less emphasis on a future kingdom of God and more on the present reality of God’s kingdom? Or more emphasis on Jesus as a “wisdom” teacher of a way of living than on him as the herald of God’s kingdom?
I haven’t read much from Jesus Seminar people but at least some of them seem to strongly emphasize Q as the earliest understanding of Jesus and one that is clearly distinct from not only the gospels as written but-though maybe to a lesser degree-from the mainstream historical-critical scholarly understanding of the historical Jesus.
The problem the Jesus Seminar had was that Q has numerous apocalyptic sayings in it. They solved the problem by claiming that Q went through multiple editions so that the form used by Matthew and Luke was the final edition to which apocalytic sayings had been secondarily added. The ORIGINAL version of Q which reported more of Jesus’ actual words didn’t have any apocalyptic materials in it. Some of us (OK, lots of us) consider that “special pleading.” It’s hard enough to show that a surviving source (say Luke) underwent multiple editions; the evidence is REALLY tricky. But how do you establish multiple editions for a HYPOTHETICAL source, one you don’t even have? Saying that, yes, Q is apocalyptic but, hey, it wasn’t originally that way, sure seems, well, convenient!
I had no idea until now that “that” is both a relative and demonstrative pronoun, which has me kicking myself.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. Most university students don’t know what a relative and a demonstrative are. Grammar ain’t a big part of high school education these days….
Lately you have demonstrated admiration for the poetics of the Gospel of Mark. Does the story of Bartimaeus belong to the Old Testament Call Narratives?
In your translation work of the New Testament did you see the Temple Themes in Mark 10:46-52? As you know, that could be seen as: Making a threefold petition to God, and God making a threefold petition to the called; ritually overcoming evil in the fallen world; the disclosure of the name of God for admission to His presence; trusted messengers call for the initiate to stand or arise; the temple petitioner prepares to receive new clothing; the petitioner mentions lifting their eyes to the temple or the Lord; various body parts are anointed (in other traditions of this healing); the veil is rent and the temple petitioner is invited to the presences of the Lord?
1. It has a couple of interesting similarities, but it’s very different in key ways (including who initiates the contact and for what reason, and what the calling entails). 2. I’m not sure Temple themes stand out as prominent in the passage.
Bart, you have said that Jesus is not referred to as God until the Gospel of John, but already in Mark when the high priest asks Jesus, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One,” Jesus responds, “I am…..” Sounds to me like he is claiming to be God’s son here. What say you?
Yes, he is the Son of God. In the Bible, so is the King of Israel, especially Solomon (2 Sam 7:11-14) — but that’s quite different from being “God” in the sense of being a pre-existent divine being sovereign over the universe. In Judaism being “the son of God” meant (a human) having a specially close relationship with God and being the one through whom God mediates his will. If you’re interested in pursuing this issue, you may want to take a look at my book How Jesus Became God.
Thank you. I have actually already read that book.
Hopefully we will still hear your thoughts on the NRSVue!
I haven’t studied it yet, but I do know some changes I don’t like. (Translation DOULOS as “servant” instead of “slave” e.g.)
Dr. Ehrman, you said a few posts back you would give us your evaluation of the NRSV update. What’s your verdict? Pluses and minuses? Is it really an overall improvement over the older version? Should people switch to the update? What are your thoughts?
I haven’t studied it yet so I don’t really know. From what I’ve seen, it’s not an extensive revision so much as a very big number of tweaks that probably most people won’t much notice. But I may be wrong. They certainly were not doing a new translation or seriously undertaking a rewriting from scratch. There are some things I know already I don’t like, e.g.,the use of “servant” for the Greek term doulos, which really does mean “slave.” But that decision was not made by the committee (which comprised very fine scholars), but by the National Council of Churches committee (not filled with scholars) who were overseeing the process.
“Most people do not understand the difference between the relative pronouns “which” and “that.” My PhD students get it wrong all the time. So do most people. In established English usage, the relative “which” is *nonrestrictive* and the relative “that” is *restrictive*”
Q: Is that a real distinction that the English language makes and native English speakers intuitively feel? Or is it an artificial distinction that has been imposed by grammarians of a previous era?
(As comparison, my native language has prescribed rules as well, of course, but some of these are more or less imposed by puristic grammarians of the 19th century who prefered one alternative over the other, while both alternatives were in common use in the Sprachraum for 1000 years.)
It’s the way English has traditionally worked. Grammar is not “prescriptive” in the sense that someone comes along and decides how words get used; it’s descriptive of how words are used. Same with dictionaries: they don’t tell you what words are supposed to mean; they describe what words do mean. IN traditional English there was a very useful nuanced difference between “which” and “that”. People can ignore that if they want, but if they do it’s too bad because if they are synonyms the language loses a significant nuance that can be important for interpreting what an author or speaker is trying to say.
So what will the transition title be? NRSVBE version. (bart ehrman)😀
Do you remember the rationale of translating “eved” as “slave” in Exodus 21 vs. something like “indentured servant”? Given that the differences between a Hebrew and a foreign slave laws were so significant.
The word means either hing, based on context. In Exodus 21 the person is purchased / sold as property (even if manumitted later), not indentured.