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A New/Old Bible for Protestants
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A New/Old Bible for Protestants
The AP is reporting that a new initiative to produce a revised edition of the “New International Version” of the Bible (NIV) is underway. For religionand culture in the United States this is news for several reasons.
The NIV has served as the standard, accepted version of the Bible among a broad range of Evangelical Protestants for several decades and is familiar to—and in some cases used by—a significant number of mainline Protestants as well. Its influence, both conscious and unconscious, on the faithful and on the public at large (in influencing the way the way people talk and think and engage what “the Bible says”) is huge.
The blessing and curse of Protestantism throughout the centuries has been the revolutionary impulse, summed up in Martin Luther’s Latin phrase, “Sola Scriptura,” which means “only scripture.” Roman Catholics (from whom the first generation of Protestants split), and for that matter Orthodox Christians, and for that matter Protestants as well (we just don’t admit it, generally) build their teachings and practices on the wisdom (or lack thereof) and tradition which have been handed down from generation to generation. The proud hallmark of the Protestants, and for the Evangelical and non-denominational churches virtually their only widely agreed-upon written source and resource, is the Bible.
As a result, the Bible is the Protestant battlefield. I am borrowing here from a line of ancient wisdom codified most succinctly in Lao-Tsu’s, The Art of War. It is generally translated, “he who chooses the battlefield wins the war.” The point is, when a Protestant says, “my Bible says…,” he/she means it because different Bibles, based on different translations, say different things. So what Bible you use, and how the translation committee behind the Bible handles certain passages, counts. Which brings us back to the importance and implication of the recent AP headline, “Top-selling Bible in North America to be revised.”
Years ago, I was in a high level meeting in which an executive associated with one of the widely used Bible translations asked me point-blank how I would translate Isaiah 7:14. That is the famous verse which states, “A virgin shall bear a son” or, given the Hebrew Bible text behind the English, “a young woman shall bear a son.” Indeed, it’s actually the ancient Greek translation of ancient Hebrew which has, in part, led to the rendering, “virgin,” but that’s another, longer story. I mused that that was a tough one and that I’d be tempted to translate “young woman,” and then include a footnote citing “virgin” as an alternative, with a brief explanation regarding the influence of the ancient Greek version on the composition of the New Testament (and hence of Christian understanding ever since). The executive then responded something to effect of, “you just cost me millions of readers and millions of dollars; I can’t afford to go forward with the project anymore.” Needless to say, whenever one sets out to translate the Bible the pressure is on!
Especially for Christians, who believe in the-Word-made-flesh, the challenge of translating holy writ into contemporary language for contemporary readers is unquestionably a worthy and vital one…which doesn’t make it easy!
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