Musings on the ESV

Posted by Nathanael Szobody on

by Paul Szobody

As my father used to retort to me about eating another piece of pie, so I sometimes say to myself about another English translation of the Bible : “You [America !] need another one like you need another hole in your head !” Why another? (After all, I work in Chad where less than a dozen tribes have ANY complete Bibles translated into their tongue !).

The answer was quite clear : the captivating NIV had embraced a whole new philosophy of translation, borrowed from Eugene Nida (of the United Bible Society) and other like-minded anthropological types: that of

Nathanael Szobody

https://paradoxicalmusings.com/author/admin/

Husband, father, and working for Christ's kingdom in Chad.

Comments ( 6 )

  1. Nathanael
    So given the criteria:

    something that flows like a cold glass of water to the heart of our modern thirsty world, faithful to the ancient text, and faithful to the use of language today, even when the Word refers to all of humanity, men and women


    what would be your favorite translation?
  2. Dad
    As to my preferred English translation, I don't feel qualified to say, for I work almost 95% in French now, even in my personal reading, and I don't feel I have a good enough grasp on the English texts. Also, as always, though I didn't mention it in the essay, so much depends on the purpose and use at a given place and time as to which translation fits. I just obtained the New Jerusalem Bible off Ebay for $4, and I've been reading Isaiah to Mom out of it at bedtime. But I read a children's takeoff of the same translation to the young boys at bedtime (a gift from a French person who couldn't understand the English!), and I read the NIV to the girls at bedtime. I don't think we take into account the purpose issue when taking about preferred translation. But for my purposes in a pastoral context, there would be two criteria: it would have to be a good enough literary taste to capture the respect, taste and imagination for public, interpretive reading, and be not so dynamic though that serious exegesis couldn't be done without always saying, "but in the Greek
  3. bszob
    clearly, there needs to be a word limit on your comment posts.
  4. Nathanael
    I still wonder though. It seems to me that you still lose something in the way of christology.

    Eve ate the fruit, but we all sinned through Adam. Women have authority, but are represented by their husbands. The church is one with Christ as his bride, and God forgives her on behalf of him.

    It seems that inclusive language produces a discontinuum theologically when it comes down to every day application. If humanity can no longer be refered to as a masculine singular (or plural) then to say that we have all sinned through the first man and yet are saved through the second man seems to lose much of its meaning.

    Or perhaps the other way around: To no longer refer to mankind in the masculine is to lose the created order of masculine representation/protection that makes the theology of first and second Adam that much more meaningful.
  5. Dad
    I don't see the problem; the point is that if the referant is Adam, or Christ, as first man, or last, then one sticks with the masculin pronoun. That's the referant! But references to all humanity don't dilute other male headship concepts, they are preserved in their own referants. Already in the biblical writers' vocab itself there is the tendancy to inclusive language when speaking of redemption: "all flesh" both in Isaiah, Gospels and Acts... "sons and daughters shall prophecy", "all nations" (or 'people groups', etc. The goal is not to lose anything of Biblical concepts, only to make them clear to a modern ear who no longer hears "man" or "he" in the same way, and thus to gain understanding, not lose it.

    Don't forget though the other biblical tradition: Though we are dead "in Adam", sin entered by Eve; Eve is "the mother of all living" who passes on sin; perhaps the levitical post-natal purity regulations were a reminder of this; 'Adam'--in this case--can be understood possibly as representing the couple (I forget the English term for this figure of speech); perhaps he is singled out since he carries the seed. But there is no procreation without the female contribution to the offspring's personhood. Christ is the "seed of the woman", who perhaps is Israel and Mary at the same time(Rev 12).

    In Christian theology, yes, the church is even our mother, of whom the willing, listening,obediant Mary is the perfect image: she is the second Eve (the language of Irenaeus of Lyons). Certainly the images and linguistics of sin and redemption are not only tied to male headship concepts.
  6. Nathanael
    hmmm

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