~ by the Pastor and guest writers ~
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The Bible Then and Now (June 19, 2003) My earliest recollection of learning to read has to do with the Bible. My mother taught me to read and the primer was the King James Bible. She had no idea at the time how formative these reading lessons would be in my faith development. To this day I love to keep God’s Word as my constant companion and in the words of Martin Luther, “to meditate thereupon earnestly.” Below is an excerpt from a sermon by my good friend Reverend Gary Charles, Senior Pastor of the Old Presbyterian Meeting House in Alexandria, Virginia. I hope you will heed his words and be instructed: “’Son, what do you think you’re doing?’ my grandmother asked, incredulously. ‘I’m making notes about my reading assignment,’ I replied, innocently. ‘Son, don’t ever let me see you writing in the Holy Book again.’ As for me, I’d love to walk into a room to find my children, your children, or anyone’s children writing in every white space of their Bibles. I’d love to see people so captivated by the biblical story, so moved by its language, so puzzled by its sayings that they had to make notes and dog ear the pages. I’d love to walk into homes to find well worn Bibles sitting on reading tables. While I appreciate my grandmother’s concern that we respect the Bible, the greatest respect we could pay the Bible would be to read it, to study it, to take notes in it, and to pass it on to those we love. But what Bible? I always have to smile when I hear someone declare, ‘I believe in what the Bible says.’ To which, I can’t resist responding, ‘Which one?’ Not only is the Bible not one book, but a collection of books; there is a dispute between Catholics and Protestants and the Orthodox about which books belong, 66 or more. The Bible is not only a collection of books; it is a collection of thousands of manuscripts, often in fragments, written mostly in Hebrew and Greek. So, every time you and I read the story of Jesus in the Bible, we are reading a story often three times removed, with the original characters speaking mostly Aramaic, the original writers translating the story of Jesus into Greek and then the early church translating the story into Latin and only years later into English. Once the Bible is in the English, we then need to ask: what translation? For just as people change, so does their language. In the 1950s, there was a firestorm when biblical scholars produced the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. They argued that it was more faithful to the original and oldest manuscripts than the beloved King James Version. They also suggested that people no longer speak or hear the English language in the meter of Elizabethan poetry and so if the Bible was to remain in the living language of the people, a new translation was needed. Having been raised to love both translations, I would hate to study Paul’s epistles in the Kings James Version; I far prefer the prosaic language of the Revised Standard Version. But when it comes to the poetry of the Bible, especially the poetry of the most familiar Psalms, I still love the majestic language of the King James.” Why is it important to have new translations? Let me offer three reasons. First, these new translations update outdated language of prior translations. Second, new translations reflect ancient manuscripts discovered in recent years that offer us a clearer reading of the biblical story. Third, they make clear where the original Hebrew and Greek intend to include all humans and where they refer to only the male or female gender. The biblical story does not change, but our language does and just as prior translations have helped us learn and tell the story of our faith, I trust that the newer translations will do the same and will assist us in reading the old, old story in new and challenging ways.
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