Blue Cord

For those of you who are in the field of academics, I thought I would draw your attention to a series being done in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Rex Sayers (a pseudonym) discusses his life as a untenured professor of religion in small colleges and his attempts to move up to more selective colleges. The first essay in the series is his “My Life on the D List.” It is a healthy reminder that even the most qualified scholars don’t always make it to the major leagues.

I think Christianity Today has the best title for an article announcing the discovery of Herod’s tomb. It reads: King Herod Still Dead. I wonder if it is a deliberate allusion to the Chevy Chase news report on SNL that announced, “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead!”

Hat tip: Christ Brady at Targuman.

Since I am unfamiliar with the TNIV, I thought I would check out some links to it in light of the discussion that has gone on here in the past couple of days. I found the following statement that was released by a group of evangelicals:

In light of troubling translation inaccuracies - primarily (but not exclusively) in relation to gender language - that introduce distortions of the meanings that were conveyed better by the original NIV, we cannot endorse the TNIV translation as sufficiently accurate to commend to the church.¹

Among the signers of this statement are Albert Mohler, Paige Patterson, and John Piper. Others who oppose the translation are James Dobdon, Jerry Falwell, Dennis Rainey, Pat Robertson, Charles Colson, and Janet Parshall. All do so on the basis of its gender inclusive language, and some state that gender inclusive language is a threat to society and the church.

I have to say that when these particular people condemn something, it counts as a rousing endorsement in my book. It is also very telling that those on the list who are opposing the TNIV are either theologians (Mohler, Piper), evangelists (Falwell, Robertson), or have no formal training in biblical studies or theology (Colson, Parshall). Not a one of the “church leaders” who are listed as opposing the TNIV is a biblical scholar.

This raises the interesting problem of them opposing a translation of the Bible on theological grounds. In other words, the TNIV disagrees with their theology, so they cannot accept it. This is odd, because as evangelicals these people claim that their theology comes from the Bible instead of their theology influencing the Bible. They seem to have it backwards.

I may have to get me a TNIV.

1. Taken from the website of The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. [back]

As I mentioned in a post last night, the tomb of Herod the Great has been found at the Herodium.  As is the case with many discoveries these days, the announcement was made to the press fairly quickly.  What this means, however, is that the excavators have done no more than an initial evaluation of find.  The real work of analysis will be done in the new few months and years.

This, of course, does not stop the press from making sensationalistic claims.  Haaretz, for instance, said “The discovery solves one of Israel’s greatest archaeological mysteries.”  Really?  We already knew Herod was buried at the Herodium.  The only mystery here was where the tomb was located.  I can think of any number of archaeological mysteries that overshadow this one.

For the non-specialists who read this blog, I wanted to take a second to comment on the importance of this find.

It needs to be pointed out that the mere fact of the discovery tells us . . . (drum-roll, please) . . . nothing.  There was no question that Herod was a historical person.  He is mentioned in far too many sources for this to be an issue.  And like most historical people, he died.  And like most dead people, he was buried.  The fact that we now know the exact location tells us nothing new about Herod as a person.

This is not to say that the discovery is without significance.  But as is usually the case in such finds, the real importance of the find will be of little interest to non-specialists.  It will give us additional information on elite burials from the Roman period.  It will give us additional information on artistic forms and the techniques used to build his sarcophagus.  It will give us additional information about funerary practices.  Most of this is exciting to weird people like me, but is really boring to most people.   The only thing that would make this exciting to non-specialists would be if the find suggested something new about Herod or contradicts something we thought we knew.  That is a possibility, but hardly likely.

Still, there is something exciting about the find.  As humans, we like to be able to touch the past.  Finds like these, even when they don’t provide any new information, give us something solid we can associate with people we know from texts.  I personally am not immune from the need to touch history.  I still remember the excitement of touching the word “Israel” on the Merneptah Victory Stele in the Cairo Museum.¹

Even though the find of Herod’s tomb will tell us little that is exciting to the general population, it is still important on a psychological level.  But the real significance will come only come out a long time after the popular interest has waned.

1. Yes, I touched it, which is an archaeological “no, no”.  But if you have ever seen the Merneptah Victory Stele in person, you will have noticed how shiny the word “Israel” is.  This is due to the fact that everyone touches it.  We all want to feel that connection with ancient Israel. [back]

It seems that the question of translational theory and how we label those theories is any important one to many people, given how many comments I have gotten on my two post on the Analysis of the ESV and More on the ESV.

Wayne Lehman, one of the bloggers at TNIV Truth, has responded with an excellent post on translational theory and where different translations fit. I wanted to discuss several points he raises.

First, I think those of us who have been discussing this all agree on the relative positions of the translations. The disagreement is over how to label these texts and the approach their translators followed.

Second, I would assume that everyone recognizes that translational theories exist along a spectrum. Lehman certainly does, as indicated by his statement “The NIV is clearly not as literal a translation as the ESV or NASB, but it is not really a DE translation.” Even when we label something as a formal equivalence translation, we need to define it even more closely. ASV and NRSV are both formal equivalence translations, but are obviously quite different.

Third, I should point that the graph I posted only indicates how close the translations are in their wording. The graph does not indicate the translational theory behind the texts. Two versions may take very different approaches to translation and yet come out with similar working.

With those things in mind, I wanted to address Lehman’s statement that the NIV is more of a formal equivalence translation. While I would place in more of a dynamicequivalence model, I think we are only disagreeing over terminology. The NIV advocated itself as a “sentence by sentence” translation when it came out, which to me indicates a dynamic equivalence. Lehman may be defining the categories somewhat differently. There is certainly no single “official” definition of the categories.

In fact, when I taught my Biblical Interpretation class the last time, I used slightly different terminology for the categories:

• Very Formal: KJV, NKJV, ASV
• Formal: RSV, NRSV, NAB, ESV, NASB
• Functional: NIV, TNIV, NLT, NJB
• Free: LB, The Message, GNB

These categories are taken from Elements of Biblical Exegesis by Michael J. Gorman. I had adoped this book for the class in replacement of How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, with which I was not satisfied. As Gorman points out:

Linguists now prefer the terms formal equivalence and functional equivalence to literal and dynamic equivalence for defining the spectrum. Formal-equivalence translations emphasize the similarity in the linguistic forms (such as vocabulary and grammatical structures) between the source language and the target language. Functional-equivalence translations, on the other hand, stress the similarity in linguistic function (meaning) between the two languages.¹

Before ending this post, I should point out that Lehman was talking a good deal about TNIV, while I have hardly mentioned it. I have never read TNIV and do not own a copy, so I don’t feel free to comment on it. When I have categorized it in my posts, I have done so based on what others have said about it. That is why I have primarily discussed the location of the NIV instead.

1. Gorman 43. [back]