Bible translation

And speaking of Jesus' words in Luke 14:35 quoted below, while looking them up I happened to notice the Greek word 'kopria' which means "dung" or "manure" has been altered by the New Living Translation to "fertilizer." What soft man came up with this travesty?

Here is the same verse, first from the translation I use for study and preaching, the New American Standard Bible, Updated (1995) Edition, and second from the New Living Translation:

New American Standard Bible, Updated (1995) Edition:

It is useless either for the soil or for the manure pile; it is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

New Living Translation:

Flavorless salt is good neither for the soil nor for fertilizer. It is thrown away. Anyone who is willing to hear should listen and understand!

This is just one among many reasons why Christians must be discerning in their choice of Bible translations, and obviously I recommend what I use--the New American Standard Bible, Updated (1995) Edition. Although at times the English is not quite English, its very stodginess is its best quality. You know you're getting it straight.

And what better place to show it than the translation of the Greek word for "manure?"

PS: Yes, the ESV gets it right and is a good translation, but for reasons I will not go into here, my own Bible remains the NASB95.

In response to my post, No, Virginia, the Bible is not politically correct..., Joel Martin comments:

I'm completely unsurprised by this. The Neutered International Version has always been a vehicle for an Evangelical, zeitgeistian agenda. It's an attempt to eliminate the glaring theological problems of Evangelical Protestantism by erasing them from Scripture. The rationale is obvious: if Evangelicalism doesn't match the Bible, make the Bible match Evangelicalism. So why are we surprised to find it once again retranslated to further an unBiblical agenda?

This line (from your post, No, Virginia...) struck me: "At the time, the NIV was the Bible translation standard of the Bible-believing, English-speaking world, so it was the efforts to modernize this particular translation that were our focus."

Making the NIV the standard for the "Bible-believing, English-speaking world" is right up there with making the New World (JW) "translation" the standard. The NWT eliminates the Trinity and other un-JW-like doctrines by retranslating, and hoping the reader won't ever check the Greek. The NIV does the same with concepts from Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox and other Traditional churches, to make it appear that the popular Evangelical Protestantism is really the Christianity of the Bible. It's written in order to make Catholicism, et. al. irrelevant. This way, those Christians can be dismissed as not "Bible-believing." After all, if it's in the NIV, it's in the Bible. Which is why the first line was a trigger for me. There are more Bible-believers who use the NAB (the standard English Catholic translation) than the NIV. But the NIV mentality makes it easier to draw a boundary between us and the "real" Bible-believers, because we don't believe in the "real" NIV Bible.

Okay, being a Papist, I'm more sensitive about the NIV than most. But the NIV's popularity has the effect of stifling inquiry into what the Bible means. It prevents the reader from asking troublesome questions about teachings like Sola Scriptura, the primacy of Peter, sacramental theology, and the like. Most Protestants don't agree with me on these questions; so be it. But we should all be afraid of a Bible translation surreptitiously reworded to interpret itself according to an agenda. Once that became acceptable, it was a short step to gender-inclusiveness and other false interpretations. Here we go down the slippery slope.

First, I largely concur with your estimation of the merits of the NIV itself--and not simply the NIVI and its progeny. Until I got involved in this battle I was not aware of the NIV's inaccuracies. As time went on, though, I found that I could no longer use the NIV because my eyes were opened to the exact thing you mention: namely, that the sex-neutering of the NIVI is only the logical extension of a translation philosophy (dynamic equivalence) that had already gone far down the road of corrupting any number of texts in the NIV itself.

As to whether the NIV is specifically anti-Roman Catholic, I have no doubt there are places where it is, although I question your mention of the Protestant/Roman Catholic division over sola scriptura and the primacy of Peter as examples of such.

On the other hand, I know the NIV is biased concerning the Sacraments, and not in an anti-Roman Catholic direction, either. I'm a presbyterian holding to infant baptism and some time back there was an interesting article...

(Note from Tim Bayly: Here's a piece written by Dr. Andrew Dionne, a former member of our congregation who now serves as assistant pastor to my brother, David, at Christ the Word in Toledo, Ohio. Andrew has followed the battle over gender-neutral Bible translations for years and edits a web site that is a ministry of Church of the Good Shepherd called keptthefaith.org. You'll find the site a rich source of information on this matter. Check it out and make a contribution.)

It has long been my hunch that the International Bible Society and her Committee on Bible Translation (the organizations responsible for the translation of the popular New International Version) had plans to produce a neutered version of Scripture from the very beginning of the NIV. This enterprise was revealed when the IBS and CBT (along with their bed-fellow Zondervan) published the New International Version Inclusive Language Edition in early 1997. Evangelical leaders were encouraged shortly thereafter when IBS repented and, in a May 27, 1997 press release, promised to "forego all plans to develop a revised edition of the NIV."

'bowdlerize': syn. abbreviate, abridge, bleach, blot out, blue-pencil, cancel, censor, clean, clean out, clean up, cleanse, clear out, cross out, cut, delete, delouse, depurate, deterge, dry-clean, dust, dust off, edit, edit out, erase, expunge, expurgate, freshen, kill, lustrate, omit, purge, purify, reform, rescind, rub out, scavenge, spruce, steam-clean, strike, strike off, strike out, sweep out, sweeten, tidy, void, whiten, wipe, wipe off, wipe out, and wipe up.

In our local paper, The Herald-Times, a young woman named Arlyn Keith is a Community Columnist. From her picture Ms. Keith seems to be in her mid-twenties and her piece appearing on yesterday's op-ed page is titled, "Rock'n'roll rejects the Bible."

Keith is responding to what she considers the non-news that Jan Wenner's Rolling Stone magazine has refused to run an ad for Today's New International Version, the new Bible put together under the patronage of Rupert Murdoch's News Corps' subsidiary, Zondervan Publishing Company.

Keith yawns as she wonders why Zondervan ever thought readers of Rolling Stone would be their market segment? Acknowledging that this chic Bible has compromised the original text, the better to reach her generation, Keith writes:

I knew that Christian leaders were concerned about the disinterest my generation and those younger than us seem to have with religion, but I just did not ever expect the mountain to come to Mohammed and plead for attention. This latest edition of the Bible aptly named Today's New International Version even features, according to USA Today, a method of translation which is meant to appeal to the 18-34 age group wherein gender terminology in reference to humans is neutral. The "truth" has been made user-friendly and packaged in a politically-correct manner. I am not an avid church-goer myself and am still struggling with my views, but it does seem that some values have been compromised in the process.

Out of the mouths of babes...

After years of hard work trying to convince my family members (owners of Tyndale House Publishers and its own gender-neutered Bible, The New Living Translation), Zondervan's executives (who are presently issuing this latest gender-neutered version called Today's New International Version), and the corporate leaders of the International Bible Society (holder of the copyright on all versions of The New International Version including Today's New International Version) of the false doctrine that is the heart of this work, I despair over their intransigence. And yes, one does begin to wonder what the application of "the love of money (being) the root of all evil" is to this Bible-selling business; or, for that matter, to Wycliffe Bible Translators, mega-churches, missions agencies, seminaries, and my own church's building program?

How lightly we consider our own motives in the light of Scripture's warning, "All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, But the LORD weighs the motives" (Proverbs 16:2 NASB95).

No matter how often we explain to them that the secular feminists are correct in their judgment that the Bible is "hopelessly patriarchal," hope springs eternal and these false prophets try once again to clean up God's Word so a modicum of its offense is removed and evangelism moves apace into the twenty-first century.

Over the past couple of years, Christ the Word's Rev. Dr. Andrew Dionne has created a web site called KepttheFaith exposing the assault upon God and His Word these men are carrying out. Church of the Good Shepherd has funded the site and my brother, David, and I have fought this battle arm-in-arm. Go to the site and read and pray. Secularists and seekers such as Keith can treat this matter lightly, easily seeing the charade. But Tyndale House, Zondervan, the International Bible Society, and all the reverend doctors paid to do the bowdlerizing take this matter very seriously seeing their reputations are on the line.

They're right. Were one of them a member of Church of the Good Shepherd, the elders would declare him to be in violation of his membership vow to honor and obey the inerrant Word of God, and call him to repent.

Chesterton nailed it almost a century ago:

It is remarked, "We need a restatement of religion"; and though it has been said thirty-thousand times, it is quite true.

It is also true that those who say it often mean the very opposite of what they say. As I have remarked elsewhere, they very often intend not to restate anything, but to state something else, introducing as many of the old words as possible.

(G. K. Chesterton, The Thing, p. 190, "Some of Our Errors".)

Michael Marlowe called our attention to one of the thousands of attacks upon God's Truth Zondervan and the International Bible Society unleashed yesterday in the text of their latest product, Today's New International Version. Marlowe writes:

In the edition of the complete TNIV Bible (2005) a new "egalitarian" interpretation of 1 Tim 2:11-12 appears for the first time in a Bible version. The text reads, "A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man," but in the margin we are told that the verses may be rendered "A wife should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach a man in a domineering way," or "exercise authority over her husband," etc.

The reason for including these odd interpretations in the margin is, of course, to cast doubt upon the passage's prohibition of women teaching men in the church. The idea is that perhaps the instruction has only to do with wives (!) or that a woman may be permitted to teach men if she does not do it in "a domineering way."

Our good readers may want to read Marlowe's review of Today's New International Version (TNIV).

If you're intentionally changing the text of the Word of God and breaking your promise not to do so, covering your tracks is small potatoes.

Back on May 27, 1997, a meeting was held in the board room at Focus on the Family's headquarters in Colorado Springs. At the invitation of James Dobson, two opposing groups sat down at a table to hammer out our differences. It took most of the day, but when it was over we had agreed on a set of guidelines for the translation of sex-marked terms in Scripture such as 'man,' 'woman,' 'brother,' 'sister,' 'he,' 'she,' and so on.

The first version of these guidelines was largely completed that day and, before leaving Focus on the Family, those in attendance had agreed to sign them. Shortly later, the Guidelines were released over the signatures of the following men present that day:

* Ken Barker, Secretary, Committee on Bible Translation; Exec. Com. of Committee on Bible Translation
* Timothy Bayly, Senior Pastor, Church of the Good Shepherd, Bloomington, IN; Exec. Dir., CBMW
* Joel Belz, Publisher, God's World Publications
* James Dobson, President, Focus on the Family
* Lars Dunberg, President, International Bible Society
* Wayne Grudem, President, CBMW; Professor, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
* Charles Jarvis, Executive Vice President, Focus on the Family
* John Piper, Senior Pastor, Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, MN; Member, CBMW;
* Vern S. Poythress, Professor, Westminster Theological Seminary
* Bruce E. Ryskamp, President and CEO, Zondervan Publishing House
* R. C. Sproul, Chairman, Ligonier Ministries
* Ron Youngblood, Member, Committee on Bible Translation; Professor, Bethel Theological Seminary West

Over the course of the next several months, some small changes were made to the Colorado Spring Guidelines, and by the time this second version was circulated, a couple of the original signatories declined to support the amended version.

The original Colorado Springs meeting would never have happened had World magazine not broken a cover story detailing Zondervan's plans to release a neutered update to their market-leading evangelical Bible standard, the New International Version. World broke the story on March 29, 1997 in a piece written by Susan Olasky titled, "The Stealth Bible." And as the title indicates, Zondervan has been sneaky from the very beginning--sneakiness has been the modus operandi of those producing and selling this Bible.

When I first saw the galleys of the New Living Translation at my in-laws home in Weaton, back in the mid 90s, I was sickened to see that adelphoi (which over the centuries has always been translated "brothers") was changed to "Christian friends" throughout the New Testament Epistles. This was my introduction to Evangelicals neutering the text of Scripture and it came long before I had any association with "World," Focus on the Family, or CBMW in opposing the NIVI--the TNIV's predecessor.

This false translation of 'adelphoi' in the NLT caused serious exchanges with my father-in-law, Ken Taylor, and my brother-in-law, Mark Taylor---respectively Chairman of the Board and CEO of the NLT's copyright holder and publishing company, Tyndale House Publshers. In our discussions, I explained that my opposition to their action went beyond the matter of the loss of the sex marking of adelphoi. Of even greater concern to me was the loss of the family context and identity at the heart of the Church...

One reader of this blog named Wayne takes my brother, David, and me to task for our denunciation of neutered paraphrases of Scripture. He writes:

You are correct, God's fatherhood makes sense within many systematic theologies. But the implications you draw for the translation of adelphoi largely come from Federal Theology, rather than simply the meaning of adelphoi at the time that the New Testament was written. There is an important difference here between gladly accepting the fatherhood of God and its spiritual implications for our lives and the hypothesis that masculine "nuances" ...of adelphoi, huioi, and other grammatically masculine terms are theologically significant.

To which I respond:

Come now, Wayne: you can't seriously be prepared to maintain that what the honest feminists refer to as the "hopeless patriarchalism of the Bible" is, in fact, just one among many theological constructs certain Christian subcultures read into the ancient sacred text. You can't honestly be implying that the thousands of Church officers opposing neutered paraphrases of Scripture are merely following their own personal "hypothesis that masculine nuances... of adelphoi, huioi, and other grammatically masculine terms are theologically significant."

The word used in the Hebrew Old Testament for the race descended from Adam is 'adam'--not 'eve,' not 'evadam,' and not 'adameve.' Is this a theologically insignificant masculine nuance?

No, it is the Spirit of God speaking through the Word of God teaching the People of God that God the Father has ordered His creation in such a way that man is the representative and leader of woman, 'ish' of 'ishshah.'

This is the reason those who love God's Word are demanding that the essential masculinity this name 'adam' communicates in Hebrew not be removed from English Bibles. For centuries, the English word 'man' was used to translate 'adam' when it referred to the race. It may not have been the best, but at least it carried into English some aspect of the male sexuality the Hebrew word denotes.

To sniff that 'adam' and the thousands of other words like it in Scripture only carry a "nuance" of masculinity is laughable.

The following exchange between Seth and Craig, followed by my own response, is from World's TNIV blog where much good material opposing neutered Bibles is being posted. This site is edited for World by the Rev. Dr. Andrew Dionnne, who also serves as an assistant pastor at my brother, David's, church and edits our own congregation's web site opposing neutered Bibles, KepttheFaith.

SETH WROTE: "I know that many people may not think that changing 'man' to 'people' or 'human beings' is that big of a deal, but I believe that it is. One of the most obvious (at least I think it's obvious) is that it removes the position of man as the head of the house and family. I believe that when God breathed the words of the Bible he knew exactly why he wanted 'man' to be specifically inserted into the text..."

AND CRAIG RESPONDED: "Have you read the TNIV? Let me quote a few passages: 'But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God...' (1Cor. 11:3); and 'A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet' (1Tim. 2:11,12).

There's not much more I can add to the words of the TNIV itself..."

TIM BAYLY COMMENTS: Seth is correct and Craig missed his point. Seth is not saying something so simplistic as...

One defender of the TNIV writes:"My teenage daughters are especially disturbed by this. The use of masculine pronouns to refer to practically everyone in the Bible grinds on them over time. My 16-year-old has told me that she grew up believing that the Bible was for boys. It bothers me that this trivial language issue is being made a stumbling block for young women who are made to feel like second-class Christians when they read the Bible. And it bothers me that it doesn't bother everybody."
To which Michael Marlowe responds:"Now, you say, 'It bothers me that this trivial language issue is being made a stumbling block for young women who are made to feel like second-class Christians when they read the Bible.' But what do you mean by 'second-class Christians'? And have you faced the fact that the Bible does indeed use the kind of 'offensive' language that the feminists hate? It is not just a figment of translations that we are talking about here -- it is a feature of the original text. And who taught your daughters to be offended at language which a generation ago aroused no offense.... What else are your daughters being taught to be offended at? Eventualy, we have to recognize that this idea of making the Bible inoffensive is a rather dangerous idea. It will not end with pronouns. This is only the beginning of endless accommodations to those who are 'offended' by things in the Bible..."

And Tim Bayly responds:When the first efforts were made to stop the neutering of Scripture back in the late nineties, Leighton Ford went public with a statement to the effect that he supported the neutering of Scripture because he wanted his granddaughters to be able to read the Bible and know it included them. My own daughters were quite disgusted by how patronizing of women his statement was and one of them, Michal, actually took the time to write Ford and take him to task for his statement.

Women who want to get it do get it. Women who don't want to get it don't. And mothers and fathers (and grandfathers) have much to do with whether their daughters and granddaughters get it. Really, it's quite easy to teach daughters what God's purpose is in calling them "sons," "brothers," and "adam." And teaching them these things innoculates them against...

Note to the Reader: Commenting on the fact that the Hebrew word 'adam' is used throughout the Old Testment to refer to the human race, one poster of comments who served with Wycliffe Bible Translators for many years writes: "The removal of the male semantic meaning component of ...words like 'adam' is impossible, because there was never a male semantic meaning component in this word in the first place. This is made very clear in Genesis 1:27: from the very beginning 'adam' (humanity, not the individual) was male and female."

I've been waiting a long time for a supporter of neutered Bibles to make such a clear statement denying what I (and I trust the vast majority of Bible-believing Christians) see as self-evident: that the Holy Spirit inspired the human race to be called 'adam' partly in order to make it clear to us that the man-as-man, Adam, was our representative in the Fall.

The Apostle Paul prohibits the exercise of authority over men by women by saying "I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, for Adam was created first, then Eve." (1 Timothy 2:12a, NAS95) With this simple statement Paul explicitly affirms what is implicit throughout God's Word, that the order of creation establishes patriarchy as God's pattern for leadership in human relationships. Addressing the matter of propriety in prayer, the Apostle Paul again emphasizes this order: "For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man; for indeed man was not created for the woman's sake, but woman for the man's sake" (1 Corinthians 11:8,9, NAS95).

Imagine a new believer, thoroughly confused by the sexual anarchy of today's culture, discovering the truth inherent in passages such as 1Corinthians 11:3-16, 14:34-35, Ephesians 5:22-33, 1Timothy 2:9-15, and 1Peter 3:1-7. What a deep sense of relief to discover that the order of creation establishes timeless principles for the relationships between men and women. But while the facts of Eve's creation are instructive for establishing proper roles for men and women, Genesis goes on to reveal another important biographical note about Adam and Eve. Like the facts surrounding God's creation of Eve, the significance of this biographical detail is revealed more fully by the New Testament...

In debates over the proper translation of Scripture, the avoidance of discussions of motive is impossible, even were it desirable. Consider:

For years, men have written, called, and visited my father-in-law, Ken Taylor, telling him how blessed they've been by his paraphrase, the Living Bible. Usually they've commended not just the Bible but also Dad's motives in producing it. How many times the story has been told of Dad's desire to read to his children during evening family devotions a Bible they could understand.

Other times the commendation focuses on Dad's populism--the perfect icon being the sculpture of the workman eating lunch with one hand, holding his Living Bible with the other, that sits in Tyndale House Publishers' foyer--and the desire Dad had to see "every plowboy" able to feed on God's Word. Those opposing the Living Bible were elitists, King James only fanatics, naysayers, academic snobs, Luddites, and so on. They needed to get a life.

Update the Bibles under discussion and little has changed.

Publishers and translators of Today's New International Version (TNIV), New International Version Inclusive Language Edition (NIVI), and New Living Translation (NLT) make much of their own motives, almost without exception claiming one motive pre-eminent over all--their sincere desire to see unbelievers come to know the Lord through their modernized Bibles.

The opponents of these Bibles also speak quite freely of their own motives, particularly their desire to see the Church protected from the false doctrines the TNIV/NIVI/NLT promote.

TNIV/NIVI/NLT proponents and opponents both frequently discuss their opponents' motives...

About twelve years ago, my wife and I were privileged to have Phil and Helen Jensen as guests in our home while Phil preached in the church I served. Since then, we have kept somewhat current with the vital ministry that surrounds St. Matthias within the Anglican communion in Sydney, Australia. For evangelistic materials that demonstrate boldness along with a deep understanding of our culture, but also many other fine publications with evangelical and reformed commitments, I'd direct our good readers to the Sydney Anglicans. Their ministries, institutions, and publications are well worth our attention and I've wished their publications, at least, would be more directly imported into the States.

For more information on these Sydney Anglicans, here's an excellent summary of their history, along with dozens of links.

It's not accidental that, appointed Dean of St. Andrews Cathedral by his brother Peter (Archbishop of Sydney), Phil Jensen has about as many enemies as Doug Wilson. Since making his acquaintance, I've often described Phil as "a fire-breathing iconoclast." Phil's wife, Helen, is an epistolary whirlwind devoted to the church and to her husband--a perfect helpmate.

Here, here, and here are a few other samples of Jensen's prophetic gift. (In the last link, note the similarity with Wilson concerning Scripture's teaching on slavery.) For a fine summary of the vision driving the Brothers Jensen as they lead Sydney Anglicanism, see Peter Jensen's Archbishop's Address given to Sydney Synod 2003.

Like Wilson, not everything Phil Jensen writes and argues is in line with my understanding of Scripture, but how I love his boldness for the Lord and His Word. There's good reason Dick Lucas brought him to London to oppose the movement to ordain women there. As Dick told me, he needed the blood and guts approach of his beloved Aussies.

It's natural, I suppose, for Aussies to have a soft spot in their heart for Canadians, so Don Carson has always been one of the Sydney Anglicans' luminaries. So it came as a pitcher of cold water thrown in their faces to have Carson take aim at them for their expression of concern over the new Bible versions that have been neutered (my word), and their endorsement of those versions' main competitor, the English Standard Version.

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. Psalm 116:15

Although I can't find a link to it on World's main news blog, a worthy work exposing sex-neutered Bible translations is carried on under World's auspices by Rev. Andrew Dionne. Stealth Bible: TNIV is sponsored by World and it contains a wealth of material that is essential reading for those who honor the Word of God. Check out this piece by Vern Poythress, for instance.

Publicize this resource within your school, family, and congregation. These bowdlerized texts (Today's New International Version, New Living Translation, New Revised Standard Version, etc.) are poison to biblical faith and faithful shepherds will work to expose them.

Interesting to note that the English Standard Version Bible (ESV), whose Translation Committee Chairman J.I. Packer once had a negative thing or two to say in Knowing God about pictures of Jesus (look inside at chapter four), now has a children's picture version of the ESV out. I'm sure it continues in the noble tradition of Truth. Unchanged.

Here, dear reader, we thus may be certain stands the unchanged truth of Jesus' image.

Crossway will no doubt assure us pecuniary motives played no role in this version's release--and that they obtained the approval of their "translators." But in the end, either a number of men who once had principles in this area capitulated or a number of objections were ignored by the publisher.

Until the Christian world has a literal translation of the Bible unchained to the commercial motivations of a profit-driven publishing house, God's Word remains chattel in man's hands.

Here's an old story that makes more sense to me than all the King James Only fanatics and Tridentine Mass advocates put together:

One day, as I was crossing a meadow, I met with an old man, a Roman Catholic, and entering into conversation with him on his religion, I said to him, "Why do your priests say their prayers in Latin?"

The poor man replied with considerable warmth, "Why, to be sure, the devil don't understand the Latin tongue."

Well, I thought, here is a mystery explained in a few words. Here is an importance attached to the Latin tongue that I never before knew. Here the devil is beat outright. Who would not study the Latin tongue?

It took me a month to find it, but Pastor Andrew Dionne has written an excellent post titled " 6,461,054,577 New Translations Needed" documenting Zondervan's latest marketing ploys with the New International Version and Today's New International Version.

Across the years many have written about the connection of the English Standard Version to the gender-neutral Bible controversy as well as to those of us principally involved in that controversy, and it's my conviction that any one or two persons must not be the only voices leaving a written history either of that controversy or of the connection of that controversy to the new Bible translations that have since been issued. Here then is the history of the origin of the ESV written by a participant, and therefore an eyewitness.

The origin of the proposal taken to Crossway to create a new Bible from the RSV
During late Spring 1997, Wayne Grudem and I personally and frequently discussed the necessity of a new Bible translation being created in direct response to the gender-neutral work of the International Bible Society, Zondervan, and their Committee on Bible Translation. Our discussions were both by phone and in person--we worked together for the three years I was executive director of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (1996-2000)...

We carried our discussion into a broader forum, namely the larger group of leaders who were brought together and began phone and E-mail dialog in preparation for our meeting called and hosted by James Dobson in Colorado Springs on May 27, 1997 at Focus on the Family's headquarters. During that preparatory dialog, this new translation was the subject of discussion within our group both by phone and E-mail.

Indicative of our discussions was one E-mail written by Wayne in which he responded to an E-mail asking, "Do you really think another version is possible? It is an enormously expensive and consuming ambition." Wayne responded that the new translation was a "possibility" using one of three possible foundations. It could be a "redo of the old RSV," it could be a "redo... of the NRSV," or it could be a completely "new translation."

Then the evening prior to the May 27th meeting at Focus on the Family, Wayne and I met with the other anti-gender-neutral participants at our hotel and planned our strategy.

A couple years ago, I officiated at a wedding ceremony held in a Presbyterian Church (USA) church in Quincy, Massachusetts. The groom and bride both were, at the time, a part of our congregation. The bride's father, David Mehegan, was book editor of the The Boston Globe. During the festivities, I was able to spend some time talking with Mr. Mehegan and I asked him to send me a few of his pieces, including his review of the translation of the Torah done by Everett Fox.

In his review, Mr. Mehegan quoted Arthur Samuelson, editorial director at Schocken Books, saying, "Most (Bible) translations serve a political agenda: They are meant to end a discussion."

From a series of essays in the New York Times Book Review examining Fox's new Torah, Mehegan quoted Robert Alter, a scholar of comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley: "I am deeply convinced that every good translation must express a simultaneous love affair with the language of the original and the language into which the translation is made."

Jack Miles, a former Jesuit and director of the Humanities Center at the Claremont Graduate School, in Claremont, California, and the author of 1994's best-selling God: A Biography, ...says, "The more Bible translation becomes like the translation of, say, Dante, with a new effort every so often, the less likely it is that any translation's cadence will become, as language, a common possession. The stories will remain a cultural common holding: Adam and Eve, Noah, the Crucifixion. But the language will not be."

-from "One Man's Bible," by David Mehegan, The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, March 10, 1996.

Taylor had a soccer game, today, out at Monroe County's Karst Farm Park. After his game was over, we were walking back to the car and passed a game between two girls teams. The girls were twelve or thirteen years old and one girl was taking the ball upfield but was quickly being overtaken by a defender coming up from behind.

Despite these young girls having moms and dads who work at the university and are as liberal as can be, you know what the team yelled at the girl dribbling upfield?

Yup. "Man on!"

But we're happy to report the ref stopped the game immediately and handed out copies of the New Living Translation and Today's New International Version. When every player had one, the ref told them to make sure they read their Bibles every day before bed so they'd get in the habit of speaking to each other without using sexist constructions. It's nice seeing the Bible making a niche for itself in teaching proper usage with our young people. You sure couldn't use the New American Standard Version that way! If they all read the NASB, in twenty years they'd still be yelling "Man on!" I mean, how bad is THAT?

"I find myself suspecting very strongly that this was the most important thing that I have done for the Kingdom and that the product of our labors is perhaps the biggest milestone in Bible translation in the past fifty years or more."

J. I. Packer on his involvement with the English Standard Version Bible

Do you suppose Dr. Bruce Metzger realizes how much he did fifty years ago to afford J. I. Packer his life's signal accomplishment?

(Tim) The second group of men have now matriculated in our pastors college and, as part of the heart religion emphasis during the first of three years' study, I'm leading a seminar on Luther's commentary on Galatians. I have an old copy of the commentary published in 1953 by London's James Clarke & Co. which I've used preaching through Galatians the past couple of years. But I went ahead and bought a second copy of the commentary since the most widely available and cheapest printing today is a paperback edition sold by Wheaton's Crossway Publishers. It's one volume in their Crossway Classic Commentaries series and we had assigned it as the edition of Luther's commentary the men were to read for the seminar. It made sense for me to be on the same page with the men. Literally.

Still, I wasn't entirely happy with the situation. Concerning evangelical publishers and their theological trustworthiness, I have a naturally suspicious mind. "Surely no need to worry about Crossway, though," I thought. "They publish many good authors and, although Alister McGrath is one of the series' editors, Jim Packer is the other and he wouldn't allow them to bowdlerize Luther." In his essay, "Sola Fide: The Reformed Doctrine of Justification," Packer cites the same edition of Luther on Galatians I use, translated by Philip S. Watson and published by James Clarke & Co. He's drunk at the same well so he'll not allow anyone to ruin Luther.

And yet I had a nagging thought at the back of my mind that we'd made a mistake by going with Crossway's edition... 

(Tim: originally posted October 27, 2007, with an ADDENDUM added March 17, 2011.) While moving into our new church offices, I found a new piece of correspondence documenting the origin of the ESV in the Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy. Why bang this drum again? Because the denial of any connection with controversy at the heart of the ESV's marketing campaign is so typical of the inability of evangelicals to understand that faith is battle, and men who hide the battle for fear it will scandalize the sheep actually harm the sheep. Imagine reformers of past centuries trying to hide the conflict from those they were defending: Think of Calvin holding cloistered meetings with Cardinal Sadolet that the men of Geneva knew nothing about; or Luther publicly denying that his use of the word 'alone' in translating Romans 3:28 was in any way connected with the battle against Rome for justification by faith alone; or the Apostle Paul announcing in his epistle to the Galatians that Peter's particular failure of table fellowship had no significant bearing on his issuing this present letter--that this letter had been in the works for years prior to that public confrontation...