New Warhorn Media post by Tim Bayly:
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Hi Tim,
Very good post, and very helpful. One of the things that I wonder is, if we are missing the reality of oneness between husbands and wives. We live in such a hyper-individualistic society, that it never dawns on us, that when the text says “brothers,” that generations before us never found a problem with this since the women understood they were one flesh with their husbands. Not sure this is a valid position, but it seems like something we should consider.
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Agree entirely. Another aspect of this is that my wife can’t cancel my insurance coverage.
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It’s when your wife increases your life insurance coverage that you need to worry. 
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I read recently that the publisher is getting ready to undertake a neutering of the NASB. If that happens, I’m giving serious consideration to switching to KJV whenever my NASB wears out.
The Textus Receptus isn’t the best thing going anymore, and the KJV guys made their bad calls in translations too, but since we are less suceptible to sprinkling infants in 2019–our Presbyterian friends notwithstanding—and less susceptible to episcopal forms of government—our Anglican friends notwithstanding—I’m not very worked up about their bad translation calls.
Any thoughts on NKJV? I’ve not done much research on its textual accuracy.
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I’m not following the point about insurance.
HIPPA, I think. And similar laws.
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I think he’s getting at the fact that today’s culture refuses to recognize the oneness of husband and wife. My wife shouldn’t need a power of attorney: she is me.
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Just that Mary Lee can never do anything for me on the phone. Banking. Insurance. Credit cards. Nothing.
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Look on the bright side. @michal.crum can’t do those things for her husband or herself. Lol.
It always boggles my mind that they refuse to let me do something for my wife just because I sound like a man over the phone.
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Nothing! I try to take the financial grunt work off of my dear husband’s plate but our financial institutions won’t give me the time of day.
Now that I think about it, since I am ONE FLESH with my dear husband, and he is a CITIZEN of SanityVille, how is it that I am NOT a citizen? Just sayin’.
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Bureaucracies are all the same. Ours is no different.
By the way, has anyone here simply insisted that you are your spouse without any qualm of conscience based on this reasoning? I think I have a couple of times.
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My qualms of conscience come when I find myself going back and forth between considering my wife and me one or two depending on which treatment is to our immediate advantage.
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I have a friend whose husband just went ahead legally arranged for her to have power of attorney for him.
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What we need is an independent, not-for-profit organization that can create a new Bible translation in the public domain. I’ve often considered the idea of a Bible that truly takes advantage of the web by allowing dynamic replacement of words and phrases depending on what the reader wants. E.g., some idioms are hard to understand directly; it would be good to have them rendered faithfully in English for those who do understand them, but then you could tick an “idioms” box that replaces them with English equivalents (suitably highlighted, of course), or a more dynamic translation if no equivalent exists. And you could have a “tetragrammaton” checkbox that would render Yahweh as “the LORD” if that’s what you’re into (some people are traditionalists…I dunno). You could even go crazy and have a number of options for names, including real transliteration (e.g., Yesha’yahu instead of Isaiah…as if the latter were even remotely like the actual name in Hebrew), translation (e.g., Yahweh Is Salvation instead of Isaiah), and traditional rendering.
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There is a lot to be said for having an ability to see what’s behind a particular verse in terms of original languages, etc when studying scripture. This is where tools like Logos or other things used by pastors shine.
OTOH, there is a lot to be said for a congregation using one translation to approach God’s word together. This will require compromises, but that’s what translation committees get paid for.
The benefit of dynamic text changes is that you can do a lot here. For instance, you can easily create an interface that isn’t horribly confusing like Logos, which allows you to enable a reader mode which hides everything except the actual text. You can easily create a “worship mode” which shows the layman-friendly translation decisions, and hides everything except chapter and verse numbers. Etc. Personally I don’t get the desire to have a single version for worship, as it seems to encourage an uninquisitive and uninformed attitude to the biblical text; I’ve heard it said that people in the pew will be unsettled by hearing Scripture read in a different version to their own Bible. That strikes me as bizarre; surely that would reflect a real ignorance of the sorts of textual issues that any Christian at least ought to be aware of, if not fluent in. But, you know, if there’s a good reason for an “official” version in the church, that can be done. And print versions can be made to reflect it. You could even set up a print-on-demand service…
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The more you know language, the more you realize these tools themselves are the problem. Men who are engineers get a hold of lexicons and take a year of Greek or Hebrew and think they can plumb the depths of what the word actually “means.” But the scholars have written the tools and the scholars themselves are corrupt. Garbage in Bauer and garbage out. Until our pastors know how to read and think and argue (and it’s hard to teach engineers these things after they’re fully formed; also techies), the apparatus just inflates their egos and makes them dangerous. Vern Poythress wrote a piece over a decade ago showing how the lexicons are being corrupted.
As in the first centuries, so still today, Scripture interpreting Scripture is the best tool for hermeneutics and exegesis, but compare our writing today with past generations of fathers in the faith and it’s abundantly clear we today do not know the whole counsel of God. So we use the tools, atomize the text, fixate on words, and become…
Complementarians, for instance, who have proven themselves incapable of developing a theology of sexuality and personhood. Instead, they argue and argue and argue about the meaning of authentein and kephale.
The problem today is men don’t read, and certainly not the Bible. Logos will never help such men understand the Word and words of God, but that’s what they are paying for. I never stop wondering at the money spent on the apparatus and how childlike the understanding of Scripture is among those who dole out the dollars. Compare anything written today to anything at all written by the Puritans or Calvin or Gregory the Great (Pastoral Care, for instance) or Bucer and you’ll see my point.
Love,
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Sometimes I wonder what the text / the word in the original is. But as I read what you wrote, I have to agree. Many fathers in the faith didn’t know any greek or hebrew.
I remember a sermon by a messianic Jew who told us (in Germany) “Read only the Luther translation, don’t go for the other translations. Otherwise you don’t get the imagery”.
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