I’ve been having a small problem with my beloved Kindle’s battery. It’s supposed to last about 3 weeks, if you keep the WiFi use down, but mine has been lasting about 2 weeks. So I called them a couple weeks ago, and they ran me through some procedures to re-set it. That didn’t do the job, so I spoke to Customer Service on Sunday, and they told me they’d send me a new Kindle. I got it today.
I call that pretty good service. All I have to do now is pack the old Kindle up in the mailer box, and send it back to them for cannibalization.
It’s still under warranty. If the warranty had run out, I’d have to pay a modest fee for the replacement, far less than buying a new one.
I remain a Kindle fan.
Everybody’s talking about the Florida Primary today. I only remember one primary from my years of residence in Florida. I was still a Democrat back then, struggling with the increasingly obvious fact that my party hated both me and the horse I rode in on. I puzzled over who to support for president, and decided that the one who seemed most socially conservative was… Al Gore.
Because his wife Tipper had recently made news, campaigning against violent rap music.
It was another time. Another world.
There’s a major controversy going on in the world of Bible translating. Several translation organizations, including Wycliffe, have come under fire for producing “Muslim-friendly” translations:
Included in the controversial development is the removal of any references to God as “Father,” to Jesus as the “Son” or “the Son of God.” One example of such a change can be seen in an Arabic version of the Gospel of Matthew produced and promoted by Frontiers and SIL. It changes Matthew 28:19 from this:
“baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”
to this:
“cleanse them by water in the name of Allah, his Messiah and his Holy Spirit.”
Oddly enough (or perhaps not so oddly), among the chief opponents are Christians in the Middle East:
The indigenous believers see the introduction of these American-made translations with which they so strongly disagree as a form of American cultural imperialism or colonialism.
According to Turkish pastor Fikret Böcek, such new translations are, “an all-American idea with absolutely no respect for the sacredness of Scripture, or even of the growing Turkish church.”
According to the testimony of one leader from a church in Bangladesh, one of the most problematic aspects of this development is that it gives fuel to the often-heard Muslim claim that Christians are liars who change their Bibles to deceive Muslims. Once a Bible translation is well established within any country, the introduction of such radically different translations reinforces the Muslim charge and undermines trust in the Christian community.
You’ll be surprised to hear this but I have some (cautious) sympathy for the translators. I had a conversation once with a guy who was doing mission work in the Middle East, and his group was actively working to build what the article calls the “Insider Movement.” The Insiders live as Muslims, continue to say the prayers, do the washings, and attend Mosque. They are secret Christians and gather in secret, because to be an open convert in their culture means certain death.
In some ways, that’s like the early Christian church. On the other hand, the early Christians maintained a separation, too. I can’t judge the work of the man I spoke with.
But I’m pretty sure changing the meaning of the Bible in a translation is a very bad idea.
Tip: Mike Gray at The American Spectator.
Translators have been using culturally relevant metaphors for years. I remember reading a missionary biography back in the 70’s that struggled to translate the idea of building a house on the rock to a primitive culture that built their houses in sand where they had the means to drive pilings deep. They had no tools with which to attach a house to rock and so, in their experience, the floods always swept away the house on the rock while the house on the sand stood firm. So the translators reversed the metaphor for that tribe. Others bemoaned the difficulty of explaining “white as snow” to those in tropical climates who had never seen snow. Those translators took the liberty of substituting a white object from that culture into their translation. Since Wycliffe has been approving these sort of adjustments for over 50 years, changing references to The Son and The Father is only a natural derivation.
We have similar issues here in America. As a pastor, I am frequently asked to explain all the different English Bible translations. However, most people don’t even realize they are translations. The speak of them as “versions.” Of course, since I find textual criticism and translation theory fascinating, I go into way too much detail about the various approaches to translation from paraphrase to dynamic equivalence and the challenge of creating a truly literal translation in the light of varying grammatical rules, word order and often inadequate equivalent definitions and connotations. Most of my people have learned the hard way not to ask me about that.
I understand that. But changing basic doctrinal truths seems a step too far.
When I wrote my earlier post, my kids were calling me to join them in a game of Clue. Therefore I neglected to add my usual overabundance of caveats. My goal was to offer a reasonable explanation of how such changes could have come about, not to defend the rightness or wrongness of them. I agree that changing doctrinal truths is going too far. The question is, where do you draw the line? Some posit that using any English translation other then the 1611 KJV constitutes entering the slippery slope of Biblical inaccuracy. On the other end of the spectrum is the politically correct rewriting of gender and familial references.
Personally, I tend to lean towards the more literal translations, preferring the ESV’s theory of Essentially Literal.
Some posit that using any English translation other then the 1611 KJV constitutes entering the slippery slope of Biblical inaccuracy.
But it’s quite the reverse. Using the 1611 KJV now, over four hundred years later, means that the pretend language hasn’t changed. For example, “thou shalt not kill” may have been an accurate translation in 1611. But in modern English it is “don’t murder”.
Sadly, it’s generally impossible to persuade the KJV-only people on that point. They believe (if I understand them correctly) that God guided and protected the KJV translators in a way analogous to the inspiration of the scribes, prophets, evangelists, and apostles of the rest of Scripture. So their translation, every word deserves (almost) equal reverence. Most of them have never looked at the actual text of the original edition, which is rather different from what we publish now.
So they believe English speakers are the chosen people, and therefore the KJV is more accurate than, for example, the translation to Norwegian?
I don’t know what they believe about other languages. I think they might grudgingly accept a fresh translation of the Textus Receptus, if no influence from later manuscript discoveries was allowed, but they would see no reason to do that.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t think at all about other languages. They have a narrow-mindedness that would make a blindspot like that fit in.
Some of you are painting KJV only people with a brush that is too broad. There may be some fringe KJV who believe KJV is inspired, but the serious supporters don’t believe that. The issue is the underlying Greek Text that supports the version which in the KJV is the Textus Receptus or Received Text. Virtually all other versions are based on the Alexandrian Text that was found in the 19th century and some believe is the oldest manuscript. Older does not necessarily mean more accurate, but that is one basis that Westcott and Hort used in preparing their 1881 version which is mostly used in today’s versions. In fact, there is evidence of much tampering with the Alexandrian text which makes its value as pure scripture somewhat suspect. See John Burgon Society for the detail history of the KJV bible.