What to do when things go wrong

Ever hear of the prosperity gospel?

The idea is that if you pray to God and remain faithful, God will give you a bunch of stuff and you'll be happy.  The problem is this assumes that God is some sort of cosmic-miracle-vending-machine: Prayers go in, miracles go out.

The confusion comes from the OT understanding that having wealth was a sign of God's approval and favor.  It all makes sense: King David had a grip of money, same as Solomon, Abraham, and Job.  Psalms constantly speak of being crushed and left with nothing, and looking forward to gaining riches back; if only the speaker remains faithful.  However, the disciples clearly understood that the OT was "the shadow of the reality that is now found in Christ".

The stories and ethics espoused in the OT lay the foundation for Christianity. The prosperity gospel has maliciously or unitentionally usurped the riches=faith ethos from the OT. People who understand the scriptures understand that prophecies sometimes came in events which were symbolic of what would foretell the future; the OT happened in the past, and physical riches were symbolic of the heavenly riches you would inherit.

More importantly, if physical wealth were a sign of God's approval, then why did Paul (the dude who pretty much wrote half the NT) work as a tent-maker, even though as a Pharisee (and a church leader) he didn't need to work a single day of his life?  Why did God, in the form of Jesus, die with only a strip of cloth around his waist, and had to work for several years as a builder for the Romans?  Why were all but one of the apostles martyred?

If we are to follow Paul's example, as he follows Christ, then being Christian means you're going to be poor, and you're going to have to work.

What's more is that heroes of the faith didn't trust in God because they knew they would get physical gain out of it.  Take Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego:

"Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied to him, 'King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves in this matter.  If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty's hand.  But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.'"

~Daniel 3:16-18

"Even if he does not, we want you to know that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up."

They knew that God may not save them.  They refused anyway. 

Now let's look at Eli from 1 Samuel:

[God speaking to Samuel] "At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family -- from beginning to end.  For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about; his sons blasphemed God, and he failed to restrain them.  Therefore I swore to the house of Eli, 'The guild of Eli's house will never be atoned for by sacrifice or offering'..." 1 Samuel 3:12-14

Eli's response?

"He is the LORD; let him do what is good in his eyes." 1 Samuel 3:18

Imagine being an old man and all of your family will be killed for their unrighteousness.  Eli chooses to accept the punishment, and remain faithful.  What's more, he knows that no matter what acts of faith he does from then on won't remove the loss he will experience, yet Eli accepts the punishment and even agrees with God that it is "good in his eyes".

For me, being a Christian is not what I can get out of it, it's always been about following truth.  This perspective has its flaws and blindspots, but we can't follow God because it benefits us; we have to follow God because he is God and we are not.

What about you?  Are you in this to have a better life?  Are you trying to get something out of it?

Thanks for reading.  See you next week. :)

A Brief History of the NIV Bible

Last week I said that I'll go over how the NIV was constructed.

So here we are.

A couple weeks ago I said that the NASB tends to render a more literal translation over the NIV, which sits at the center of the literal v. metaphorical scale of Bible translations.  That wasn't exactly accurate.

The NASB tends to translate things on a word-by-word basis, switching word order so that the phrases will make syntactic sense.  The MSG, tends to translate on a phrase-by-phrase basis, with an emphasis on readability over scholastic accuracy. Is this bad? No, I don't think so.

If you look at the history of the Bible, you'll notice that God never wanted people to be unaware of His power and grace.  Think about all the times the various patriarchs set up altars to God, and then the writer would remark "and it is still there to this day".  Now think about how many times the leaders of Israel made public announcements about God's plans and laws.  Now think about how Jesus went straight to a temple (the common meeting house of the Jews), and read from the scroll that spoke a prophecy about him, in front of the whole assembly.  Again and again you'll see how God wants his character and nature to be publically known, and even one of Jesus's last commandments was to go out to the entire world and teach people how to become disciples (Matthew 28:18-20).  Making a version of a Bible that was accesible to the common people wouldn't be unusual then.

This is why Martin Luther's Gutenburg Bible became so wildly popular: the Bible was no longer reserved for study by the clergy, but written in the language the people spoke and understood.  Shortly after, the Geneva and King James Bible followed suit, and the common people now had access to it.

It was with this mind that a few Bible scholars came together in the 1970's and decided to render a translation into modern English.  Since then, the Committe for Bible Translation has done a few updates to keep pace with the changing English language. 

Don't believe that the NIV needed to update itself into modern English?  Fifty years ago, the word "gay" used to mean "happy", but now (mostly) means "homosexual".  The first NIV came out forty years ago, so yeah, the English language changes and English Bibles need to keep pace with it.

Even in the 2011 version, the NIV changed the term "man", referring to the whole of humanity, to "humankind", because in popular language "humankind" is in far more prevelant use over "man".  These distinctions remain slight, but it is staying relevent and not stubbornly holding on to tradition.

Lastly, the NIV didn't solely rely on scholars, but retained a plethora of translators and commentators of various degrees of experience and beliefs to encompass the most complete and whole understanding of God's Word.  This was done to expand the scope of the NIV's translation, and try to render a translation that transcended factional beliefs, and it worked (for the most part).

When you get a copy of your Bible, be sure to read the section that describes the process and intent behind that particular translation.  The best way, of course, is to look stuff up in the original Greek and Hebrew, and try to fuzz all of it out, but I tend to be of the scholastic bent when it comes to studying my own Bible.

Honestly, this series took a lot out of me, and I'll be happy to start up a new series.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a lovely day!

Is your Bible missing scriptures?

As I mentioned in a previous post, some people are under the delusion that the Bible mystically appears in bookstores and aren't compiled and translated from a plethora of ancient manuscripts.  As I also mentioned at the start of this series, reading and writing in some of these dead languages was very difficult because some of them didn't have the language conventions that we are familar with, like spaces between words, punctuation marks, and upper and lower case letters.  So when we talk about the copies of copies of copies done by hand, errors happen.

If you haven't noticed already, I personally have an abiding affection when it comes to studying God's word.  I like learning the history and context of the events and symbols the Biblical authors write about.  So when I say that errors happen, I can't help but cringe just thinking about it.  But errors do happen 

The good news is that the modern Bible scholars figured this stuff out and have removed these errors. That's why modern translations of the Bible don't have verses like John 5:4, Acts 8:37, 1 John 5:7, and Mark 16:9-20; they weren't meant to be in the original text.

Before I go into why these verses are no longer in the newer translations of the Bible, can you find what these four passages of scripture have in common?  You don't have to look any of the passages up either; the clue to what they have in common is in their names.

Figured it out?  All of these deleted verses were from the NT.  Typically, the OT authors were VERY studious copying scriptures down; if it had more than a handful of errors, it would be relegated to "student study" use.  If the copies had anymore errors than that, they were burned.  The errors you'll find in the OT will be more along the lines of alternate spellings (which isn't an error really, I mean, think about the different ways to spell "Tsar", umm... "Tzar"? "Csar"?... You get the point), or numbers (like accidently adding a zero or switching the order of two numbers).  So why the deleted verses from from the NT?

Imagine hand-copying a novel in order to perserve it for future generations (because after twenty years, even the sturdious of books will wear out from constant use).  Now this hand-copying happens a few times until... well, how would you (a learned scholar), explain what a crinosole, or shellac, or a brazier is?  The obvious answer would be to add some explanatory notes.  Unfortunately, while we have modern means to add these notes in essays and dissertations (1), they didn't have this convention in ancient times.  A few generations later, someone comes along to make a new copy, and they add the notes to the manuscript, not realizing that they were not part of the original texts.

We get by this problem by adding this explanatory info at the botton of the page in our Bibles.  That's why in the 2011 NIV, Exodus 36:9 says "twenty-eight cubits long and four cubits wide", and marks at the bottom of the page that it was "about 42 feet long and 6 feet wide".

A second reason why extra passages entered into the textual lineage of the ancient manuscripts was because of oral tradition.  For the initial part of the early Church, people didn't think to write this stuff down, so the main way to pass the gospel around was by word of mouth.  Taking a familiar cue from how the Jews memorized long passages of scripture (like Psalm 119), the early Christians created oral traditions (like 1 Cor 15:3-8) to pass along their teaching (that's why in 1 Cor 15:5 says "to the Twelve" and not "to the apostles"; the term "apostle" hadn't been applied to "the Twelve" yet).

So if your spiritual cultivation included oral traditions, wouldn't it seem weird when while you are copying a gospel or epistle you find an instance where a teaching or event should have been, but clearly weren't added? To you, you'd think that you were "correcting" the error.

How do modern scholars tell the difference between additions and the original?  Well, we (mostly) owe that to the source documents the scholars translating the KJV used.  The original translators based their rendition from several codexes based off of the Masoretic texts (two out of the handful of texts that were available to them at the time).  Today, we have manuscripts that are much older than the Masoretic texts, and the older manuscripts simply don't have these added scriptures. 

The second reason why we know that some of the stuff was added in later is the same reason why you can read two different essays on the same topic and know that it was written by two different authors: it just sounds... different.  The way a person thinks reflects the way they express themselves, and when you read certain passages of scriptures (like Jeremiah), you can tell even through a translation that someone else picked up where the last author left off. 

Linguists and Biblical scholars have devoted their lives in the respectives fields, and have developed tools to pinpoint passages that may have been written by someone else.  Based on this information, they can make very educated guesses as to when someone added something, and when something was in the original texts.

Whew... this series is a bit dry.  I hope I'm not boring you!

Next week we'll take an in-depth look at the NIV translation, and how it was constructed.

See you there.

1: they're called footnotes :)

What evil corporations don't want you to read: the unpublished books of the Bible

Not exactly.

I think many people have a hard-wired reaction towards believing in danger and deceit over reason and trust, so that's why books labelled similarly to this blog post provoke interest (a cheap trick, I know, but I got you to read it, didn't I?)  This is a separate topic, and one that may be addressed later, but for now, let's see what these authors are touting about when they say "these are the scriptures that you are missing out on and should follow".

These "lost books of the Bible" typically fall into two categories: books that have doubtful authenticity (called apocrypha pronounced "ah-pa-creh-fah"), and the Gnostic writings (pronounced "nos-tik").  Let's start with the apocrypha.

If you start doing some research about the Bible, or come from a Catholic background, you'll eventually hear about books like 1 and 2 Maccabees, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Wisdom (Wisdom of Solomon), Baruch, Tobit, and Judith.  I'll shy away from why I think these writings were considered divinely inspired by at the Council of Trent (in year 1546), but I will say that there are several factors as to why I don't believe they are pertinent to spiritual cultivation.

The first is that none of the early Jewish scholars or historians regarded them as divinely inspired.  Josephus (37-100 CE) was a famous Jewish historian,  and he directly said that there were only 22 books of the Jewish canon.  Taking into account that Protestants divided (among other things) singular Hebrew books, like Kings, Samuel, Chronicles and the Minor Prophets, into more than one book, we come up with the same number of books that Josephus spoke about: 22.  Adding apocryphal books to the OT would... raise a few eyebrows among the Jewish community, to say the least.

Next is that the books tend to be hit-or-miss when it comes to historical accuracy. While the Bible has been noted to be so historically accurate that it outstrips the Egyptian and Mesopotamian histories, 2 Maccabees goes as far as apologizing for not getting all of its details right.  This is in sharp contrast to  the Bible's constant assertion to its accuracy, and that it is the direct word of God. Don't believe me? Read Amos and count how many times it says "This is what the LORD says".

Personally, I think the biggest proof that the apocrypha are not "lost books of the Bible" is because none of the NT writers, Jesus, or the early christians ever quoted from them.  When addressing the Pharisees, Jesus mentions the Jewish Canon of Scripture the Pharisees studied, saying “From the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah" (Lk. 11:51, cf. Mt. 23:35), which conforms to the order Jewish scholars studied their scriptures, and that order didn't include the apocrypha.  So to Jesus and his early followers, none of them regarded the apocrypha as coming from God.

The second major collection of writings described as "lost books of the Bible" are the Gnostic writings.  The first thing you need to know about the Gnostic writings is that it was based on this Greek idea that anything spiritual was pure, and that anything physical was corrupted and sinful.  Add a sprinkle of Christian elements added to it, and POOF! You have Gnosticism. 

Unfortunately, Gnosticism faces a serious problem when dealing with the fact that Jesus physically existed on Earth.  If everything physical was sinful, and Jesus was physical, how could he be without sin?

The Gnostics got out of this conundrum by claiming that Jesus didn't physically appear on the Earth, but that he came "in Spirit".  In order to legitimize their claim, they wrote their own gospels and said that they were the inspired and revealed word of God.  The early Christians were quick to point out that these "Hidden-Until-Now" gospels weren't written by any early Christians, much less the apostles, and that most of the information contradicted the already established teachings.  One example is that the "Gospel of Thomas" contains passages which are meant to be kept secret, which doesn't makes sense because there are numerous passages in both the Old and New Testament encouraging people to make sure everyone knows about God.

Aside from that, the Gnostic "gospels" runs in direct contradiction to what we know about the real gospels.  At the very least, how could Thomas Didymus put his hands in Jesus's wounds unless Thomas could physically put his hands inside a physical body?  I could bring up several other instances in which denying Jesus's physical appearance on the Earth runs grossly contra to the biblical narrative, but let me just say that several early Christian writers knew that Gnosticism was a false teaching (some theories say that Jude was written in direct response to this), and universally rejected it.

In the end, modern Bibles aren't missing anything, and for your day-to-day, practical use, you aren't missing out on "hidden" or "lost" teachings by not reading the apocrypha or Gnostic writings.

Next week we'll talk about why your Bible makes a lengthy note about John 7:53-8:11, and other scriptures.

Sources used:

https://carm.org/why-apocrypha-not-in-bible

http://www.bible.ca/catholic-apocrypha.htm

http://www.gotquestions.org/apocrypha-deuterocanonical.html

http://www.gotquestions.org/gospel-of-Judas.html

Which is the most accurate translation of the Bible?

This is a bit of tricky question.  Which is the most accurate translation?

Purists scoff at The Message Bible, and (in my experience) exclusively read from the New American Standard, or some criticize the New International Version as too "politically correct", while others go around reading the New King James Version or English Standard Bible perfectly content. 

So which translation is superior?  Well, that depends on what you're looking for.

As I mentioned from an earlier post, translating (much less translating from a bunch of dead languages) is a hard thing to do.  Translators are constantly battling literal over metaphorical meanings, and what ends up happening is that some versions reflect the translators' decisions.  Generally, this scale of literal vs metaphorical goes like this:

NASB>HCSB>NIV>NLT>MSG

In order to highlight the differences between the translations, let's take a look at John 3:16 and see how the different versions render it:

New American Standard Bible
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

Holman Christian Standard Bible
For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.

New International Version
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

New Living Translation
For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

The Message Bible
This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.

Pretty much the same, right?  Now, check this passage:

New American Standard Bible
Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.

Holman Christian Standard Bible
The people here were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, since they welcomed the message with eagerness and examined the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

New International Version
Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

New Living Translation
And the people of Berea were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, and they listened eagerly to Paul's message. They searched the Scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth.

The Message Bible
They were treated a lot better there than in Thessalonica. The Jews received Paul’s message with enthusiasm and met with him daily, examining the Scriptures to see if they supported what he said.

So, NLT and NASB say "Noble", HCSB and NLT say "open-minded", and MSG says something along the lines of "they were treated better, so they must be cool, right?"

It is in these moments that I turn to the original Greek and figure out why all of these Ph.D's disagree on the translation.  Apprently, the word used literally means "Born of high rank" (eugenes) or someone whose character is noble.  Since I'm pretty sure that Luke wasn't commenting on the socio-economic status of the Bereans, we can assume that he was describing their character.  What made their character so noble? They listened to Paul, kept an open mind, but tempered their enthusiasm with checking what he said against what the scriptures said.

So which rendering do you prefer? Noble? Open-minded?  Generous?  I'm in favor of "open-minded", because the literal meaning doesn't always convey the subtleties of the figurative meaning.

Now I have a bigger question for you: which translation is flat-out wrong? 

I don't think any of them are; some might emphasize certain elements above others, but they pretty much retain the same message: the Bereans treated Paul well, actually listened to him, and made sure that what he was saying wasn't just rabble-rousing, but true to what the Scriptures also said.

Next week we'll talk about the so-called "lost books/passages" of the Bible.  See you there.

Ruth Chapter 2

As promised yesterday, I’ll be continuing the series on how awesome and AMAZING Ruth is.

To Recap: Ruth was married to one of Naomi’s sons.  Naomi’s husband and her sons died, so Ruth didn’t have a reason to stick by her ex-mother-in-law, but she did. Naomi decides to return to see if a relative will take care of them, and moves closer to him.

Naomi, a widow, is probably pretty old by now, so Ruth takes it upon herself to provide for her.  Note that as a widow in ancient Israel the best you could hope for is to become a beggar, or take up some… erm… ahhh… disreputable nightly pursuits, involving entertaining a man’s more… ummm… carnal… uhhh…

Fine, widows often became beggars or prostitutes. I said it.  Happy? 

Anyway, Naomi is probably too old to work, so it is on Ruth’s shoulder’s to provide for BOTH OF THEM.  Naomi informs her that they have a relative, by the name of Boaz, and tells her to see if they can take the gleanings from Boaz’s field.

(Gleanings, by the way, are the leftovers from a harvest.  God made a law that a landowner was not to make a servant go over a field a second time after the first harvesting of a field, and not to harvest all the way to the edges.  This leftover was specifically set aside for foreigners and the poor; people who needed help providing for themselves.  Cool huh?)

What’s great is that Boaz notices a woman he doesn’t recognize, following behind his workers, taking up the gleanings.  He asks his overseer who she is, and the overseer has glowing remarks about her:

“She is the Moabite who came back from Moab with Naomi.  She said ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.’  She came into the field and has remained here from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter.” [Ruth 2:6-7]

So Ruth didn’t waltz right in and start taking from the field, even though the gleaning was set aside specifically for people like her.  Second, the overseer noticed that she’s been working pretty much all day.  Later on in this chapter, we see that even after Ruth was invited to dinner, she went back to work the moment she was finished.  Imagine working hard all day, grabbing some dinner, then going back to work.  This means that Ruth was 1) Humble and 2) WORKED HARD.  Very admirable attributes.

Boaz is obviously impressed, and instructs Ruth not to work a field belonging to anyone else, allowed her access to the water drawn up by his men, and to not worry about any of his men mistreating her because he specifically ordered them not to lay a hand on her.

Now I want to take the focus off of Ruth for a bit, and talk about Boaz and God.  First, we see that God’s laws to take care of the less fortunate are at work: Ruth and Naomi were hard up on their luck, yet they were still being taken care of because of the laws regarding gleanings.  Second, Boaz takes up responsibility to become Ruth and Naomi’s guardian.  Becoming a guardian for your relatives was also another system mandated by God.  Third, Boaz was a righteous dude because he followed God’s laws when it came to taking care of the less fortunate; not only did he obey them, but he had compassion on Ruth and Naomi’s plight.  He was motivated to give instead of clinging to greed.

Now for those of you who aren’t familiar with ancient culture in the middle east, there was a reason why Boaz didn’t want Ruth to work in any field, and it was the same reason why women today don’t feel comfortable walking to their car alone at night.  Boaz knew that Ruth was vulnerable, not only because she was a foreigner, but also because she was a woman and may not be able to protect herself from a licentious man.  He specifically placed her under his protection, and took steps to minimize the chances of her becoming endangered.  That’s awesome.

To review: Ruth had an AMAZING work ethic, Boaz had compassion on Ruth and Naomi and did some old-school gangsta-gentleman stuff, and God’s decrees often had injunctions specific to taking care of the less fortunate.

There were other things that happened in this chapter that I’d love to talk about, but unfortunately I don’t have the space to address them in this blog post.

We’ll be looking at Ruth chapter 3 next week.  See you there. 

[Photo cred: http://blog.eteacherhebrew.com/israel-history/the-scroll-of-ruth-מְגִלַּת-רוּת/]