Hanging Chads in Politics and the Bible in Religious Faith

Hanging chads evoke the presidential election of 2000 (Bush v. Gore). A hanging chad is a partially punched election ballot still connected to the main ballot by a thread (so to speak). The election moved along smoothly until someone had the bright idea of checking for partially punched ballots and then election officials argued over several thousand ballots that would decide the election in Florida. It was the first time (so far as I know) that non-punched ballots decided an election—or were they deliberately punched?—ay, there’s the rub.¹

            In the history of religions there are no hanging chads. In the Bible, however, there are loose “threads.” If one picks at them often enough with one’s mind, they may shake confidence in the Bible and in one’s faith. For example, on the Greek Island of Karpathos late one evening after the dishes had been cleared from the table the conversation turned to “what I did.” It was a family gathering of Greeks plus two Americans. Two of the family members were physicians from Athens. As an example of what I did as an Academic, I gave an impromptu summary of the contradictions between the gospels. One of the physicians, a pediatrician, became visibly upset at my comments. She explained that she would not concern herself with such things. Her faith was a settled matter, and such questions were off the table for her.

It has been my experience that the vast majority of folk by middle age are quite comfortable with their religious beliefs. They tend to put them on the shelf and pull them off only in times of crisis trusting that their religious beliefs can be relied on to carry them through the difficulties they face. Occasionally, however, the Bible itself becomes a threat to one’s religious beliefs when one runs across a passage that seems to undermine what they have been taught and believed for so many years.

Here is one threatening “fly” in the ointment (so to speak) of Baptist theology: Baptists believe that salvation comes “by faith in Christ.” In Baptist faith one only needs to believe that Jesus died for one’s sins—nothing else is necessary. Certain other Christian denominations,² however, believe as a tenant of their faith that Christian baptism is necessary for one’s salvation. In short, they believe in “baptismal regeneration.” Here are certain biblical verses that some denominations believe point to this teaching. In Baptist thinking, however, they are simply “loose threads” that are easily explained: Mark 16:16,³ John 3:5, Acts 2:38, Romans 6:3, Gal 3:27, Ephesians 5:25-27, Titus 3:5, 1 Peter 3:18-21.

Mark 16:16: “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.” (New King James translation)

Acts 2:38: “Repent, and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (RSV)

Romans 6:3-4: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (RSV)

The Bible itself can become part of what tends to undermine the faith that one believes the Bible proclaims; particularly if one starts pulling at its loose threads.⁴ What loose threads have you noticed in the Bible?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹From a line in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “To die—to sleep. To sleep—perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub.” “Rub” carries the meaning of difficulty, obstacle, or objection.

²For example, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, Anglicanism, Methodism (infant baptism). 

³Another one of those niggling threads! Modern text critics insist that Mark 16:9-20 was not part of the original Gospel of Mark but was added later. Modern translations do not include the passage Mark 16:9-20. Is it part of the Bible or not?

⁴See for example Hedrick, Wry Guy Blog: “Can all Bible Translations be Trusted,” September 10, 2018. http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=loose+threads

Can All Bible Translations be Trusted?

Perhaps; it depends on what goes on in the translation process before the translation is published. Let's take one example.

One Sunday morning in Baptist Bible study our study group encountered a problem with the translation of 2nd Samuel 22:27. When the instructor read the passage in the NIV translation, it was:

To the pure you [i.e., the LORD] show yourself pure, but to the crooked you show yourself shrewd.

I objected that my translation, in the RSV, read differently:

With the pure thou dost show thyself pure and with the crooked thou dost show thyself perverse.

Surely there is some mistake here! Shrewd and perverse are about as far apart in content as words can be. There are several dictionary meanings of shrewd, but the one we generally think of is the following: shrewd is "marked by clever discerning awareness and hard-headed acumen." Perverse carries the idea of the following: "obstinate in opposing what is right, reasonable, or accepted." So why are the two translations so different and opposed to one another?

In the Hebrew text of the passage the first italicized word in the translations of 1 Sam 22:27 above is 'qsh and the root of the second italicized word is thought to be a corrupted verbal form of ptl. What actually appears in the Hebrew text for this second word, however, is described by the Hebrew Lexicon¹ as an impossible Hebrew verbal form, and the lexicon adopts the parallel reading in Psalm 18:27 to replace the corrupted verbal form in 1 Sam 22:27, whose root is ptl.²

For the first word crooked (an adjective) the Hebrew lexicon provides a translation of "twisted or perverted." Oddly the Kittel edition of the Hebrew Bible leaves the corrupted form of the second word (a verb) in the text rather than emending it, and in a footnote gives the supposed correct reading (a form of ptl) taken from Psalm 18:27.³ The Hebrew Lexicon translates ptl as "to twist" and offers this translation for 2nd Sam 22:27: "with the twisted thou dost deal tortuously." Proverbs 8:8 uses both words: "All the words of my mouth [says the LORD] are righteous; there is nothing twisted (ptl ) or crooked ('qsh) in them."

The earliest translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, translates the verse this way: "and with the crooked you are perverse" (strebloũ/ streblōthēsē).

Here are a few of some other modern translations to demonstrate how differently the two words have been translated into English:

Translation                          1st word 'qsh            2nd word ptl

New American Bible:          1. crooked         2. you are astute

An American Translation:  1. crooked         2. you act craftily

Moffatt:                                  1. treacherous  2. you prove treacherous

New World Translation:     1. crooked        2. you act silly

New English Bible:              1. perverse       2. you show self tortuous

KJV:                                        1. froward       2. you show self unsavory
                                                 (perverse)  

Douay:                                   1. perverse      2. you will be perverted

Masoretic Text:                     1. crooked       2. you show self subtle

Living Bible:⁴                        1. evil               2. you destroy the evil

New Living Translation:⁵   1. wicked        2. you show self hostile

American Standard:            1. perverse      2. you show self froward
                                                                                      (perverse)

Today's English Version:   1. wicked         2. you are hostile

            The problem of corrupted verbal forms in biblical texts is one of those niggling difficulties in the Bible of which most people are unaware. It is an annoying little thread that if pulled at persistently enough, along with the Bible's many other loose threads, tends to unravel any personal authority that the Bible may have once held. The particular little thread of 2nd Sam 22:27 is one of those things that may reasonably be described as one of the aspects of the Bible's "infrastructure."⁶ Infrastructure issues deal with such things as the ancient languages in which the biblical texts were originally written, the theory and practice of translation, early fragmentary papyrus and vellum manuscripts on which biblical texts were first written, scribal practices and proclivities of a particular scribal hand, the linguistic instability of ancient texts in transmission, textual criticism issues surrounding the identification of the earliest reliable form of a text and how that text might relate to the original author's copy. It is little wonder that most readers are not familiar with such issues, since they require specialized knowledge. The resolution of infrastructure problems is one of the things that must be resolved before Bible translations are published. The personal cost of being able to work competently with infrastructure issues is high indeed, in terms of numbers of years of study required and experience.

Translators of the Bible are only human. The quality of their product is defined and/or limited by their years of training, technical knowledge, and practiced skill. Throughout the process, however, the translation is subtly influenced by the intensity of a translator's personal religious allegiances and the objectivity with which they work. Can we trust Bible translators? Perhaps; but if you do you should always verify—that is, if you cannot read Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, always read the biblical text in several different translations. That practice may cast light on the reliability of your preferred translation.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹Brown, Driver, and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon (reprint with corrections, 1968), 786, 836.

²Second Samuel 22:2-51 is also preserved in Psalm 18.

³R. Kittel, Biblia Hebraica, 495.

⁴The Living Bible is not a translation but a paraphrase that was made from the American Standard Version of 1901 by Kenneth N. Taylor, an American publisher and author.

⁵This translation began as a revision of the Living Bible but became instead another translation from the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.

⁶That is to say "the underlying foundation or basic framework" of the Bible.