Variations in the Bible

When I was a youth, our church leaders encouraged us to memorize scripture, likely in accord with the prayer of the Psalmist: “Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against Thee” (Psalm 119:11 KJV). They even ran contests for memorizing scripture with rewards at the end. At that point in my youth, I only knew one translation, the King James Version, written in 16^th century English. It was not until my later teenage years that I even became aware of multiple translations. I discovered that even if the translators are working from the same critical Greek text, all translations are somewhat different.

I suppose one can be comforted that the translations generally sound the same. If one reads closely, however, the differences subtly suggest different meanings to the reader. For example:

In the Revised Standard Version, Ps 119:11reads: “I have laid up thy word in my heart that I might not sin against thee.” In an American Translation, it reads: “I have stored thy message in my heart, that I may not sin against thee.” In the English Standard Version, it reads: “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” In the New American Bible, it reads: “Within my heart I treasure your promise, that I may not sin against you.” In the English translation of the Septuagint, it reads: “I have hidden thine oracles in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.”

To point out one subtle difference: “treasuring your promise,” “storing thy message,” and “hiding thine oracles” in one’s heart do not sound like one is memorizing the words of the Bible.

On the other hand, if one always reads the New Testament using two different translations, one is sometimes surprised because the translations occasionally contradict one another! It is not that a slightly different meaning is being suggested, it is a clear contradiction. For example, in 2 Thess 2:13 in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) the translation reads: “…because God chose you as the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit…” whereas the Revised English Bible (REB) reads: “From the beginning of time God chose you to find salvation in the Spirit who consecrates you….” This disagreement is not a case of different translators translating the same Greek text differently. This is a situation where the ancient Greek manuscripts of Second Thessalonians disagree between themselves by using different words. Some Greek manuscripts read απαρχην (first fruits) while others read απ απρχης (from the beginning). The critical Greek text used by most scholars (Nestle-Aland 28^th edition) reads “first fruits” in the text and gives as an alternate reading “from the beginning” in the apparatus.¹ The translators of the REB preferred the alternate reading.

            Sometimes the contradiction is more extensive. For example, the Revised English Bible skips from Matt 16:2 to 16:4. Verses 2-3 are missing in the REB. The text reads: (verse 2): “He answered them: (verse 4) ‘It is a wicked and godless generation that asks for a sign and the only sign that will be given it is the sign of Jonah…’” The NRSV on the other hand includes verses 2-3. (Verse 2) “He answered them. ‘When it is evening you say, “It will be fair weather for the sky is red. (Verse 3) And in the morning, “It will be stormy today for the sky is red and threatening.” ‘You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.’” Most scholars regard verses 2-3 as a later insertion into the Greek text from a source similar to Luke 12:54-56, or from the parallel Lukan passage itself.² The Nestle-Aland critical Greek text includes verses 2-3 in the text but place it in square brackets indicating: “that textual critics today are not completely convinced of the authenticity of the enclosed words.”³ Hence the translators of the REB disagree with the Nestle-Aland critical text, and the NRSV agrees but omits the verses entirely. This disagreement between modern scholars raises the question, who is correct? Is Matt 16:2-3 a part of the Bible or not? These verses are after all in some Greek manuscripts.

            I stumbled across the latter two discrepancies in the preaching services of the church following along in the Greek text with the minister who was reading his text for the day in English. No mention was made of the problems that existed in the text. Should ministers inform their congregations of these kinds of difficulties existing in the biblical text?

            These discrepancies leave a “wanna-be-true-to-the-core-but-not-really-succeeding” Baptist pondering the situation. It appears that the Bible we read today does not spring unaided from the mind of God, but, in the final analysis, the versions of the Bible that eventually reach the hands of the reading public are products from the desk of the text critic and the translator.

How do you see it?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹The apparatus consists of notes at the bottom of the page of Greek text. It was a committee decision to make the text read “first fruits.” For the rationale see Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2^nd ed.; 2000), 568.

²Metzger, Textual Commentary, 33.

³Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece, page 9*.

Orphan Sayings and Stories in the New Testament

Certain stories about Jesus and certain sayings of Jesus may be found in your edition of the New Testament but the text critics tell us they do not belong there. Robert Miller has pulled these sayings and stories from the gospels and collected them at the back of his edition of The Complete Gospels.¹ One of the more famous of these stories that do not belong in the New Testament is the story of the woman taken in adultery that has traditionally appeared in English language translations at John 7:53-8:11. Here is how the passage is introduced by Miller:

[It is] a story found at various places in the manuscript tradition. In several manuscripts it is found after John 7:52. Many modern editions of the New Testament include it here, assigning it the versification John 7:53-8:11. Another important group of manuscripts include it after Luke 21:38. In the Georgian tradition it was sometimes located after John 7:44, and in another group it is found after John 21:25.²

The story seems to have been unknown in the manuscript tradition before the 5th century (Codex Bezae, which dates 5th or possibly 6th century). To put this date in perspective the reader should understand that the bulk of our extant New Testament manuscripts date from the 3rd century and later. Very few of the extant New Testament manuscripts are dated in the second century and none are dated in the first century.

            Bruce Metzger thinks that John 7:53-8:11“has all the earmarks of historical veracity,” but fails to describe what those “earmarks” are.³ He also adds that the style and vocabulary of 7:53-8:11 “differ noticeably from the rest of the fourth Gospel…and that it interrupts the sequence of 7:52 and 8:12 ff.” He concludes that “the evidence for the non-Johannine origin of the pericope of the adulteress is overwhelming.”⁴

With respect to the “veracity” of the narrative, there is at least one irregularity that argues against the genuineness of the story. The lady in question had been caught in the act of adultery. Why did the scribes and Pharisees not bring before Jesus the man with whom she was caught? The Torah condemnation of adultery applied equally to both men and women (Exod 20:14; Lev 20:10; Deut 22:22). It seems unlikely to me that the scribes and Pharisees would have failed to bring before Jesus both parties that had violated Torah.

            If one decides that the story is a genuine piece of oral tradition coming from the time of Jesus, what should be done with it? It apparently does not belong in the New Testament since it does not come from the pen of any of the gospel writers. Miller’s solution describing it as an orphan story and listing it at the back of his book with other such material seems to concede that point. There is no common practice for treating this passage by English translators. Generally, it is translated following John 7:52, as though it belonged there. Some translators, however, do indicate that the location is spurious by a note at the bottom of the page and/or by marking it with brackets or parentheses. At least one (The American Bible. An American Translation, translated by the New Testament scholar Edgar J. Goodspeed) simply eliminates the story with no explanation.

            There is another problem this passage presents to a church group that treats the Bible as divinely inspired literature. If it was not written by any of the writers of the New Testament, why should it be considered inspired by God? The theory that the New Testament texts are themselves inspired derives, I assume, from the idea that God inspired its writers and, therefore, the products of their literary labors must also be considered divinely inspired. John 7:53-8:11, however, at this stage of scholarship must be considered an orphan text, since it has not been identified as the brainchild of any New Testament writer.

What is your take, as a reader of the New Testament, on the story of the woman taken in adultery?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Robert J. Miller, ed., The Complete Gospels. The Scholars Version (Salem OR: Polebridge Press, 2010), 457-62.

²Miller, Complete Gospels, 460. Old Georgian was the literary language of the Georgian monarchies known from the 5th century in the region of the Causasus.

³Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2nd ed.; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2000), 187-89 (188).

⁴Metzger, Commentary, 187.

Church Discipline

How should “erring” brothers and sisters¹ be treated in a Christian community of faith that uses the Bible as a guide for life? Jesus followers and early Christians² were scarcely consistent on this issue. I stumbled across the problem of church discipline in Baptist Bible Study one recent Sunday morning. We were discussing Titus chapter three (one of the Pastoral letters—First and Second Timothy being the other two) when the problem surfaced:

As for a man who is factious³ after admonishing him once or twice have nothing more to do with him (Titus 3:10 RSV; compare 2 Tim 2:23-26; 2 Thess 3:14-15).

This statement seems to evoke the practice of shunning. As far as I know shunning is not something that is practiced today in those mainstream Protestant churches that emerged out of the reformation. Some religious groups, however, do practice shunning as a form of religious community discipline.⁴ As I understand the practice of shunning, the excommunicated/shunned person may still live in the community but no one will have anything to do with him or her. This advice by the author of Titus (called the “Pastor”) seems to be an informal process, rather than an official act of the community, however.

            The passage that is best known is Matt 18:15-17, but recommends a different and more formal practice in dealing with erring brothers and sisters:

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector (RSV; see also 1 Tim 6:19-20).

This form of official discipline also seems to end in shunning. In ancient Judaism a proper member of the community would not associate with Gentiles or tax collectors.

            Paul, on the other hand, is somewhat more callous in 1 Cor 5:1-5. Here are his final statements on the situation in the passage: “Let him who has done this be removed from among you” (1 Cor 5:2, RSV; i.e., put him/her out of the community), he writes to the church. And adds further: “you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Cor 5:5, RSV; see also 1 Tim 1:20, and similarly in Galatians 1:6-9). He does sound more compassionate in Galatians 6:1: “Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness” (RSV; and similarly in James 5:19-20), but, alas, it is not how he treated the brother in 1 Cor 5:1-5 (quoted above).

            Suppose you were the one considered by others in the community to have erred in some way; how are you supposed to act? The principle stated in Matt 5:23-26 offers some guidance:

So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift (Matt 5:23-24, RSV).

If you are the erring brother or sister the principle reflected in this passage puts the responsibility for reconciliation on you rather than your accuser.

            The word “discipline” in English is generally used with an emphasis on control or punishment. Meanings of the word include “to punish or penalize for the sake of discipline”; “to train or develop by instruction and exercise”; “to bring (a group) under control”; “to impose order upon.” Hence, a “disciplinarian,” is “one who disciplines or imposes order.”

The basic goal of these passages in the New Testament related to discipline in the community of faith can be summed up as being for the purposes of punishment and group control—even though Paul states that it is for therapeutic purposes (1 Cor 5:5). One would have hoped that the practices of the community would have better characterized it as a center of healing and reconciliation, much as Paul envisioned in Gal 3:28:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus (RSV; compare 1 Cor 12:13; Col 3:11).

The church as a center of reconciliation and healing remains an ideal to be pursued but it is scarcely a goal that can ever be achieved.

            At its base church discipline in the early gatherings of faith was an attempt at controlling the thinking of members of the community (Phil 4:2-3; 1 Tim 6:20-21; 2 Tim 3:8-9; 2 Tim 4:14-15; Heb 13:17), and it appears that it was no more successful then than it is now.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹Those who disagree with the accepted views of the community may not think they are guilty of error, however.

²They are not the same thing.

³The Greek word translated by “factious,” (airetikos), according to the lexicon, relates to causing divisions, and is the adjective related to airesis “party, school, faction, or heresy.”

⁴For example, the Mennonites and the Amish.

Love God or Fear God—which is it?

The Bible is scarcely consistent, even in some of its most basic dicta. There is of course a good reason for that, which is unfortunately lost on the most devout believers in revealed religion, who regard the Bible as originating in the mind of God. The Bible's texts are written at different times in various cultural locations by human authors, who quite naturally have different views. For example in one of its most basic pronouncements, as to how believers should relate to God, biblical texts have a range of responses.  The basic guidance is that believers should "fear the Lord." Paul, for example, condemned people, whom he regarded as being under the power of sin, because "There is no fear of God before their eyes" (Romans 3:18; Psalm 35:1 LXX). "The fear of the Lord" is the classic expression for being a pious servant of Yahweh in Israelite religion (Deuteronomy 6:2; Exodus 20:20; Job 28:28; Proverbs 1:7; 3:7; compare Acts 10:34-35; 1 Peter 2:17; Revelation 14:7), and appropriately enough pious non-Israelites, who worshipped in synagogues, were called "God Fearers" (Acts 10:2, 22; 13:16).

 

            Jesus tells a story (Luke 18:2-5) about a judge hearing a case in which the plaintiff is a widow lady who badgers the judge to rule in her favor. The judge, however, prides himself on his integrity as a judge who calls cases on their merits. He says of himself "though I neither fear God nor regard man" (18:4)—and the narrator actually introduces him that way, as a judge who doesn't fear God or show deference in his judgments (18:2). "Fearing God" would signal the traditional religious deference a pious person would render to God; "regarding man" would reflect deference one would pay to influential and powerful persons in the community. In neither assertion does love play a role.

 

            Nevertheless alongside this typical expression for piety in Israel (fear of the Lord) are found injunctions to love God (Deut 10:12; 6:2; 6:5). In Sirach these two responses (fearing and loving) are paralleled as two sides of the same emotion (Sirach 2:15-16). The two emotions strike me, however, as inconsistent responses, and the author of 1 John had a similar response: "there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love." (1 John 4:18; compare 4:13-17). A relationship based on fear would produce anxiety, which contains the seeds of uncertainty, doubt, and mistrust. It is hardly a wholesome relationship (Hebrews 12:18-21; Matthew 28:4; Mark 16:8).

 

            A relationship based on fear prompts obedience because of what the dominant controlling party can impose on the lesser party, such as the relationship between a slave and the slave's owner (Ephesians 6:5). Occasionally a modern translator will render the Greek word fear (φόβος; "phobos") as awe, which doesn't help, since awe communicates dread or terror (Mark 4:41; Romans 11:20). Sometimes awe as a translation does not do justice to the Greek text; for example in Mark 4:41 the Greek is "feared greatly."

 

            The lexicographers, who survey how words are used in the New Testament and by writers elsewhere in antiquity, tell us that the verbal forms of fear (φοβέω, "phobeo") carry the idea of "reverence" or "respect for." Nevertheless reverence, honor, deference, veneration, and the like still contain the idea of fearful obeisance and awe.  At least it is something very different from what I understand as love: "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Corinthians 13:6); "Love is patient and kind" (1 Corinthians 13:4). "Love does not insist on its own way" (1 Corinthians 13:5). "Faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love" (1 Corinthians 13:13). Little of love seems reflected in the dominant way God is understood in Hebrew Bible.

 

            Perhaps the problem, however, is not God's character, about which we actually know very little. We only know what others have told us—and that includes the testimonies of the authors of the biblical texts.  The problem is the manifold ways that we humans view God. In a sense God is always subject to what we think about God. And we frequently must choose between contradictory views, as in this case: do we love God or fear God? How is it possible truly to love someone before whom you must always be terribly afraid?

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

How did Moses come by the Torah (Law)?

Most everyone knows the Biblical tradition portraying Moses as the great “lawgiver” of the Israelite people.  In Exodus and Deuteronomy he is described as receiving the Torah directly from God.  He tells the Israelite people: “When I went up to the mountain to receive the tables of stone . . . And the Lord gave me two tables of stone written with the finger of God” (Deuteronomy 9:9-10; and for the second giving of the tablets to Moses see Deuteronomy 10:1-5; remember, Moses broke the first set).  Imagine my surprise a few weeks ago to learn that the apostle Paul did not agree that God had given the law directly to Moses.  According to Paul (Galatians 3:19) and other New Testament writers (Acts 7:38, 53; Hebrews 2:2) the law was “ordered through angels”!  This tradition was also shared by Josephus, a first century Jewish writer in a statement attributed to Herod (Antiquities of the Jews 15.5.3): “We have learned the noblest of our doctrines and the holiest of our laws from the messengers [angels] sent by God.”

       This tradition of an indirect passing of the Law to Moses is unknown in the Hebrew Bible, although angels are part of the coterie of God in the Septuagint version of Deuteronomy 33:2, where God comes with his “holy ones” and “on his right hand were his angels with him.” In one of the Apostolic Fathers, Shepherd of Hermas (Similitude 8.3.3), the Archangel Michael was said to have “put the law into the hearts of those who believe.”  Angels were long thought to act as mediators between God and human beings (see, for example, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: TLevi 5:5-6; TDan 6:1-2; Philo, On Dreams, 1. 141-142; Jubilees, 1.27-2.1; 32:21-22).  Cerinthus, an early Christian heretic according to Epiphanius (Panarion 28.1,2),claimed “that the Law and prophets have been given by angels though the law-giver is one of the angels who made the world,”and these angels did an evil act by creating the world.  Barnabas (9:4), another of the Apostolic Fathers, reports that an evil angel misled the Israelite people into thinking that circumcision was an actual fleshly act.

       Obviously we have here an interesting contradiction between the Old Testament and the New Testament: did Moses actually receive the Law directly from God or was it “ordered through angels”? Both assertions cannot be correct at the same time!  The situation is much more complicated, however.  These claims about the Law are traditions validating the authority of the Torah.  A tradition is a “handing down” orally of a belief from generation to generation.  Traditions are living “things,”and as such they change, evolve, and mutate.  Because they exist in memory and surface in oral communication, no sequential history of the evolution of an ancient tradition survives.  Each generation inevitably modifies what they receive, because it is not written in stone (if you will permit me to put it that way). If there ever had been a point of origin and an original form of the tradition, it would have long since vanished into the fog of the past.  With time, written stories do emerge explaining the origin of this or that particular belief. These various written forms of the tradition often represent diverse contradictory versions of the tradition.  These versions represent what individuals or groups believed about them at a given moment in time.  The oral tradition, however, goes on evolving into still later multiple forms, as interpreted by those who receive it and pass it on to other auditors.

       Neither of these two attempts to explain how the Torah came to Moses (i.e., directly from God or ordered through angels) is a historically verifiable datum about the origin of theTorah; they are rather ancient traditional beliefs, and as such do not provide a historical description of origins. Rather each is a then current religious belief representing what people thought at the time.

       Many, if not most, statements about origins in the Bible work the same way—for example, early Christians validated the divinity of Jesus by narratives of a physical birth (Matthew 1:18-25; Luke 1:26-55; 2:1-20), the infusion or mutation of the preexistent heavenly Christ into flesh (John 1:1-14), and a baptismal Theophany (Mark 1:9-11) – an interesting contradiction between New Testament writers.

       Which of these two contradictory traditions about the Torah, if either, makes more sense to you?  Or to put it another way: with whom do you agree: “Moses” (directly from God), Paul (ordered through angels), or Hedrick (traditions, not history)?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

Is the Bible Really the Word of God?

This essay is now published in the Springfield News-Leader!

The short answer is: if you believe it is, then so it is!  But the early followers of Jesus did not share this holy view of the Bible—were it otherwise the Bible would not contain contradictions and errors, which it does.

 

Mr. Paul Summers, in a News-Leader column (1/4/14) made a case for homosexuality being sinful based on two main propositions: 1. "The Bible is the very word of God," and 2. "There is no contradiction in the Scriptures because God cannot lie."  Mr. Summers is wrong on both counts.  The truth of the matter is that his argument is based on his belief about God and the Bible.  The Christian Bible (meaning it includes Hebrew Scriptures and a collection of Christian texts) has many instances in which it disagrees with itself, as many conservative scholars well know.  Otherwise they would not argue that the original autographs of the Bible do not contain contradictions and errors.  The problem with this argument is that no original autographs exist!  Most New Testament texts are third century and later (two small fragments each of John and Matthew exist from the second century), and the bulk of the Hebrew Bible manuscripts date from the ninth and tenth centuries Common Era.  Hence the "original manuscripts argument" is specious at best, for it claims nothing about the manuscripts that have survived from antiquity, which do contain contradictions and errors, and from which we derive the versions of the Bible that serve the church today.

 

            It is also the case (unless you believe differently) that the Bible is a human word about God (and other things), since human beings authored the original texts and other human beings later copied them, freely making changes as it seemed best to individual scribes.  The Bible becomes God's word for many by means of the belief that God inspired its original authors (probably not the later scribes, since under the "original autographs theory" scribes introduced the contradictions and errors).  There is no evidence to validate the inspiration of these writings, however, except the belief that such is the case.  And in any case a number of theories exist about how inspiration may have occurred.

 

            I have no objection to Mr. Summers believing both of his principal propositions—many people do.  What I object to is his attempt to sell his personal beliefs about the Bible to the public as fact; hence he misleads the public in suggesting his belief is based on historical data when there is no data to demonstrate either proposition.  Indeed the evidence at least partly suggests a different explanation.

 

            The Bible is God's word only if you believe it is!  It is better understood, however, as a human search for God.  It should finally be noted that what authorizes Mr. Summers' argument about homosexuality is not God, but rather his own personal belief about the Bible.

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University