DISCLAIMER: The material in these three messages come from others who are better scholars than I! Contact me if I can credit anything in this series to its original source.
Sermon Notes
Only One Translation?
Deuteronomy 4:1–14; John 8:12–26; 2 Timothy 3:14–17
(Third in the series Our Still Point with God: The Reliability of the Bible)
Introduction: In the 1988 film Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman’s character is based on a real-life autistic man named Kim Peek. Peek has total recall of more than 9,000 books. When he attended a performance of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, he stood up near the end and loudly ordered, “You’ve got to stop it, stop it, stop it!” The actor had skipped the second to the last verse of the play. Caught in his mistake, the actor apologized, saying, “The verses are so much alike, I didn’t think it would matter.”
Peek responded, “It mattered to William Shakespeare, and it should matter to you.”
Let’s face it right up front: there have been notorious mistakes in the Bible.
• The “Judas Bible” (1611): Judas (rather than Jesus) came with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, even though the previous chapter reported that Judas had already hanged himself.
• In The “Basketball Bible” “Hoops” were used instead of “hooks” in the construction of the Tabernacle.
• The “Sinners Bible” had Jesus say in John 5:14 “sin on more” instead of “sin no more.”
• The “Vinegar Bible” (1717) earned this sour name because the chapter title for Luke 20 was printed as “The Parable of the Vinegar” instead of the “Parable of the Vineyard.”
• In a 1792 printing, it was Philip rather than Peter who denied his Lord three times in Luke 22:34.
• The “Murderer’s Bible” (1795) declared, “Let the children first be killed” instead of “Let the children first be filled.”
• An 1807 Oxford edition of the Bible had Hebrews 9:14 say, “Purge your conscience from good works” instead of “Purge your conscience from dead works.”
• A 1964 printing of the KJV said that women were to “adorn themselves in modern apparel” instead of “modest apparel” in 1 Timothy 2:9.
• The 1653 edition—known commonly as the “Unrighteous Bible”—said “the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God” in 1 Corinthians 6:9.
• But the big booboo prize goes to the 1631 edition, the infamous “Wicked Bible,” which rewrote the seventh of the Ten Commandments as “Thou shalt commit adultery.”
Until the advent of modern printing, errors in the text of the Bible (or any other book, for that matter) were rather commonplace. In some instances, the scribe would even acknowledge blunders, whether they were omissions or variant spellings, with humorous annotations.
In one manuscript, for instance, a scribe left out two or three sentences. Realizing his error, and unable to insert the sentences once the page was completed, the copyist wrote the omitted sentences at the bottom of the page. He then drew a box around the sentences, added handles on the box and sketched two small elves pulling ropes attached to the handles, complete with blocks and pulleys, attempting to lift the box up the page. In the margin where the sentences were missing, a squirrel pointed his finger in the direction of the absent text.
Proposition: If the words of Scripture mattered to Jesus, they should matter to us.
1. God wants to communicate with us in our language, Deuteronomy 4:1–14
It is clear that God took great effort to connect with this special community. Rather than uttering indecipherable noises or symbols, God chose to create words that were part of everyday communication, even inscribing these instructions into a permanent record, as in the Ten Commandments.
This helps us to appreciate the manner in which God chose to form the first parts of what would become the Bible. In the world of ancient Israel, the Hittites had standardized and widely distributed a written contract form that became normative between kings and their subject nations. Today this document template is known as the Hittite “Suzerain-Vassal covenant.” Usually it consisted of six parts:
• A preamble which declared the identity of the royal authority initiating this covenant
• A historical prologue that described the reasons for this covenant
• Stipulations that sorted out the demands of the covenant on both parties
• Curses and blessings that told the consequences of breaking or keeping this covenant
• A list of witnesses who confirmed the enactment of this treaty
• A document clause which told of the ratification, copies, and renewal ceremonies of the covenant
The text of Exodus 20–24 is formed exactly in the character of a Hittite Suzerain-Vassal covenant document. It has
(1) a preamble (20:1–2);
(2) a historical prologue (20:2);
(3) stipulations (20:3–23:19);
(4) curses and blessings (23:20–33);
(5) a list of witnesses (24:1–3, 9–18); and
(6) a document clause (24:4–8).
In other words, when we try to understand what kind of literature the Bible is, and how it was formed among the written documents that litter human history, we find that the Bible originated as a covenant that shaped a unique relationship between God and Israel.
The important point, as Moses says in Deuteronomy 4, is that God initiated the covenant, and therefore sought from the beginning to effectively communicate in a truthful and authoritative manner to the people he had chosen. The Bible is not an arbitrary collection of cute, nice, or even wise writings that simply amassed themselves together in some dusty corner of a Jewish rabbi’s personal library; it is a set of literary creations built on the foundation of God speaking words of covenant relationship to Israel through Moses.
2. God is truthful, John 8:12–26
When Jesus was challenged by those around him to declare more fully his identity, he simply said that he was from God and that God was faithful. In the lengthy dialogue of John 8, Jesus asserted that our human tendency is to twist facts, fudge on truth, and even tell outright lies. But God, Jesus reminded us, is always truthful, reliable, and “light” over the darkness of deception. In fact, truth derives its character from God.
Jesus also tied God directly to Old Testament Scripture in this passage. It is the reliable truthfulness of God which spoke through the “Law and the Prophets,” and thus provided the background and testimony as to who Jesus is. This helps us draw out the long line of continuity in Scripture. Jesus comes now in New Testament times as the fulfillment of the Old Covenant promises and expectations.
This is a primary element of biblical faith. God is truthful, and the Bible is an extension of God’s reliability. Furthermore, Jesus both witnesses to that truth and embodies it. He is, as he claimed to his disciples at the Last Supper, the New Covenant, which fulfills the Old Covenant that shaped Israel’s existence from the time of Mount Sinai forward.
3. The Bible is uniquely authoritative, 2 Timothy 3:14–17
We do not have access to the original documents penned by Moses, David, Isaiah, John, Paul, Luke, and so on. All of these have been destroyed, probably to prevent us from worshiping or esteeming them too highly as magical religious artifacts (see Numbers 21:4–9 and 2 Kings 18:1–4). What we have are handwritten copies of handwritten copies several generations removed from the original documents. This means that there are variations and some small mistakes in the differing manuscript traditions.
These discrepancies are behind some of the puzzles we continue to live with in biblical interpretation. For instance, was the potter’s field purchased by Judas before his death (Acts 1:15–19) or by the priests after his death (Matthew 27:3–10)? Or again, was Sisera killed while he was sleeping on the ground (Judges 4:21) or did he fall to the ground and die when he was struck with a hammer (Judges 5:26–27)?
Textual problems like these do not detract from the clear message of salvation in the Bible. But they do remind us that we have no access to the original writings. Yet, this ought not to diminish our confidence in Scripture and its divine authority, for the God who first communicated truth through deeds and words in the languages of ancient societies is the same God who supports and sustains the development of human history in a way that breathes with genuineness.
Read 2 Timothy 3:14–17. When Paul, as an elder statesman of the Christian church, wrote these letters of encouragement and instruction to young pastor Timothy, he reaffirmed the reliability of Scripture and its central importance in understanding God and the things of faith. God is trustworthy, and so, too, is all that emerges from God in the documents of the community of faith.
But the manuscripts have to be translated so that we can read the truth of God in our own settings. In this way there is again a small margin of variation between different versions of the Bible. Each set of translators seeks to be faithful to the text, but no exact equivalency can be made between the words of one language and those of another.
Yet the minor differences among the Bible translations actually give more credence to their trustworthiness than undermine it. No other collection of literature, produced over such a long period of time, copied so extensively, and translated so prolifically has the amazing clarity of text and message no matter which copy is read.
This is why many Bible scholars prefer to talk about reliability and authority more than inerrancy. If we look only for possible mistakes in either the text or its transmission, the debate is never ending. But when we see the great consistency of message and theology in the Bible, its authority and inspiration become evident.
Conclusion: Some people today remove parts of the Bible they personally disagree with. If we do that, what is left?
Together, let’s speak the words of Psalm 119:9–16:
How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word.
I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands.
I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
Praise be to you, O Lord, teach me your decrees.
With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth.
I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches.
I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways.
I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.
