Unfortunately, Dr. Carson begins his talk by saying he won’t be discussing this christological title in connection with Bible translation as he just came from doing so. One always stands to benefit, however, from Carson’s careful exegesis and that’s what you’ll find in this lecture (I hope–still listening!).

HT: Credo blog

Of particular interest is the third point, which reads,

“The translation of Scripture should faithfully reflect the Word of God in the original human languages. It must be listened to in its time-conditioned, at times even inelegant, mode of human expression without “correction” or “improvement” in service of modern sensitivities.”

Very much an approach that seeks to bring the reader to the text rather than the text to the reader, flowing from the preceding point,

The first principle with respect to biblical texts is that of fidelity, maximum possible fidelity to the words of the text.

Here’s a question: what presuppositions lie behind prescribing “maximum possible fidelity to the words of the text” if it is “at times even inelegant”?

Issues, Etc. – Bible Translations for Muslims – Dr. Andrew Steinmann, 5/7/2012

God is not male, God in the divine essence does not have a gendered identity, and yet God is the Father of Jesus and by extension the Father of all his adopted children as well. How so?

Witherington answers his own question:

…the relationship between Jesus and the Father is one of direct kinship. Jesus and the Father are one…

This doesn’t mean that the Son was literally begotten by the Father, only that they had a unique, distinctive, even exclusive family relationship to one another. The language of Father and Son implies intimacy, deep kinship, sharing of a nature (in this case a divine nature) and the like. It is relational language, not gender language.

Thus the attempt to treat the “Father” language used of God as either a bad manifestation of a male-dominated patriarchal culture or a clue to the actual masculinity of God is wrong on both counts. It also ignores an important fact. The reason Jesus did not call God “Mother” is not just because God is never prayed to or directly addressed that way in the Bible, but also because Jesus had an actual human mother.

And a note on language:

When we see male or female nouns or pronouns, we assume they must imply or entail gender. This is false.

Some contents of the latest issue of Anvil are now available online (after a pain-free registration process), with essays on translating the Bible, with special reference to the 400th anniversary of the King James’ Version.

N.T. Wright
The Monarchs and the Message: Reflections on Bible Translation from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-First Century
In this article, Tom Wright, whose own translation of the New Testament was published in 2011, highlights the importance of translation within Christian faith as the message of the universal kingship of the Jewish messiah is communicated to the nations. Exploring the translations of the Reformation era, he sets Tyndale’s translation and the King James Version in their contrasting political contexts before explaining the significance of the word ‘Christ’ and the issues it raises today both for translators wishing to be faithful to the New Testament message and Christians seeking to live out Jesus’ radical definition of ‘lordship’. He concludes, drawing on his own experience, with reflections upon some of the other challenges facing translators today – such as the inevitability of distortion and the tensions that can arise between accuracy of word and tone or flavour – as they seek to convey the Bible’s message to contemporary readers and rulers.

Graham Tomlin
The King James Version and Luther’s Bible Translation
Graham Tomlin here examines perhaps two of the most influential Reformation texts: Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible (1534) and the King James Version (1611). He shows how their different emphases reflect different strands in tension within the Reformation as well as their different historical contexts. For Luther, translation should be idiomatic and so accessible, theological and the work of a faithful translator who has been humbled by God’s grace. His is a translation of immanence and incarnation into his culture. In contrast, the KJV is not concerned to propound a particular theological standpoint but seeks simplicity and the integrity of precise translation of the original languages. It thus preserves the Scripture’s strangeness and trusts the reader with the text’s uncertainties.

Lamin Sanneh
Bible Translation and Human Dignity
In this article, Lamin Sanneh explores the revolutionary impact, in various contexts, of translating Scripture into people’s mother tongue. He shows this significant religious, social and cultural event is an expression of Christianity as a translated religion which empowers those who receive the translation and affirms their human dignity. These findings are illustrated from history and more recent mission experience in Kenya, West Africa and Zululand and a sketch is offered of the spread of Bible translation and the social and cultural renewal that has followed.

Partly what led me to this analogy is the lecture by Karl Barth in which he answers the question What is in the Bible? with the declaration that “there is a new world in the Bible, the world of God” (this and quotes hereafter are from “The New World of the Bible” in The Word of God and Theology, trans. Amy Marga, 2011).

“The Bible leads us out of the stale atmosphere of humanity and into the open doors of a new world, the world of God.”

Is God merely the God of the new world and not our own? No, “he is the heavenly Father on earth and on earth really the heavenly Father! The One who does not want to split life into ‘this side’ and ‘that side.’ The One who does not want to leave it up to death to set us free from sin and suffering…The One who let eternity break into time here and now and who truly let it break in to time — for what kind of eternity would it be if it first came ‘afterwards?’ He is the One who does not have just any old idea in his head but who constructs a new world” (emphasis mine).

Thus, “what happens in the Bible is already the glorious inception of the beginning of the new world!” Let us enter therein! Let us “risk it in faith to take what grace offers us!”

The Christian enters this new world by faith and journeys by faith. “We read the Bible properly not when we read it with a false humility, reserve, or other alleged sobriety but when we read it in faith, as those who travel along on the way which they are led.” Happily, the Bible brings the traveler along: ”There is a stream in the Bible that carries us away once we have entrusted ourselves to it; it carries us from ourselves to the seas!”

Attention must be given lest we believe that the traveler is the main character of the story. Barth is quick to point out that the Bible’s “chief interest is not our capability to function in our ordinary old world, hard-working, honest, and helpful, but in the establishment and growth of a new world, the world in which God rules, and in which his morality rules.” This is where and by whom the new world emerges.

As a result, the ministry of Bible translation seeks to participate in God’s in-breaking by bringing his word in the language people understand best.

Translations that cast the Bible in up-to-the-minute American English are definitely cutting into the constituency of the King James Version because they are easier to read and seem more “accessible.” My own sense is that such translations lack any literary grace and distort the feeling and the meaning of the Bible. Though we are distanced from the 1611 version now because of its archaic language, its beauty is undiminished, and I think it will always have readers as a great literary achievement that altered the course of the English language.

Interesting comments from a man who himself translates Scripture. Read the full (short) interview, “Robert Alter shares insight about the King James Bible.”

Robert Alter shares insight about the King James Bible – Cultural Compass

Moore College professor George Athas writes:

A friend of mine who pastors a congregation told me of a young man in his church who was heading off to study at a theological college. This young man approached my friend for advice on making a choice: should he study Greek when he got to college, or should he study Hebrew? My friend’s response was legendary: “Well,” he said, “when you finish college and get up into your pulpit, do you want to be wearing only your shirt, or only your pants?” Since not many of us should presume to be teachers, we should do our best to make sure that our teachers are as well equipped as possible. Hebrew is just one of the tools of the trade.

And again:

Our teachers in our churches, our theologians and Christian scholars, our Bible translators and missionaries, will inspire more confidence when they’ve done the hard yards of understanding the biblical texts — the authoritative Word of God — in the original languages. It’s not a guarantee to good teaching or sound theology, but it certainly is a good step in the right direction. It’s the responsible act of going back to the sources.

May God grant us perseverance in biblical language study.

Here’s an excerpt:

Anwar Hussain, the head of the Bangladesh Bible Society, has been at the forefront of efforts in his country the last few years to repel Bible translations from various groups that change divine familial terms. Hussain grew up Muslim, and when he professed Christ as a young man, his family cut ties with him. Edward Ayub, another Christian of Muslim background, is the moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Bangladesh and—alongside Hussain—has vigorously opposed the translations. “I want to die for the Bible,” not a misleading translation, Ayub said. “The harm they are doing now for the church will be long-lasting.”

Read the article in full.

Oh and let me just add that there will always be a battle for “accurate Bible translation” wherever Bible translation is done: wrestling with the original texts and wrestling with the target language.

WORLD Magazine _ Translation battle _ Emily Belz _ Feb 25, 12

What does it mean to be “Son of God”?

N.T. Wright concludes his masterful tome The Resurrection of the Son of God with a section entitled “The Meanings of the Son of God” where he outlines the “world of meaning which was generated for the early Christians by the resurrection of Jesus.”¹

I find it helpful to remember the three subtitles, or worlds of meaning, under which Wright works as (1) messiah, (2) master, (3) and Emmanuel.

1. Messiahship

“To claim the risen Jesus as ‘son of god’ in the sense of ‘Messiah’ was the most deeply Jewish thing the Christians could do, and hence the most deeply suspect in the eyes of those Jews who did not share their convictions.”²

“The first level of a ‘son of god’ understanding of Jesus’ resurrection can therefore be summarized as follows. Jesus is Israel’s Messiah. In him, the creator’s covenant plan, to deal with the sin and death that has so radically infected his world, has reached its long-awaited and decisive fulfilment.”³

2. World Lordship (or Master)

“We must not confuse derivation with confrontation. The roots of the title as it appears in the New Testament are the firmly Jewish ones noted in the previous sub-section. But there can be no question that the title would have been heard by many in the greco-roman world, from very early on, as a challenge to Caesar.”⁴

“Jesus [as] ‘son of god’ within this wider circle of meaning constituted a refusal to retreat, a determination to stop Christian discipleship turning into a private cult, a sect, a mystery religion. It launched a claim on the world… It grew from an essentially positive view of the world, of creation. It refused to relinquish the world to the principalities and powers, but claimed even them for allegiance to the Messiah who was now the lord, the kyrios.”⁵

“This, then, is the second level of meaning. The resurrection constitutes Jesus as the world’s true sovereign, the ‘son of god’ who claims absolute allegiance from everyone and everything within creation. He is the start of the creator’s new world: its pilot project, indeed its pilot.” ⁶

3. The Question of God (or Emmanuel)

“…early Christians [had] the breathtaking belief that Jesus was ‘son of god’, the unique ‘Son’ of this God as opposed to any other. They meant by this not simply that he was Israel’s Messiah, though that remained foundational; nor simply that he was the reality of which Caesar and all other such tyrants were the parodies, though that remained a vital implication. They meant it in the sense that he was the personal embodiment and revelation of the one true god.”⁷

“The third sense of ‘son of God’, then, does not leave the first two behind, but integrates them within a larger picture of who the one true God, Israel’s God, actually is.”⁸

Implications for Missiology

Wright’s threefold definition of Jesus as “Son of God” highlights the missiological consideration that within each culture that encounters the gospel announcement of Jesus as the Son of God there will without fail be aspects of that culture that run counter to at least one level of meaning of Jesus as “Son of God.” As a result, each culture must change in some way: my culture as much as your culture as much as that culture over there in a distant land. The gospel challenges inherited culture wherever it is found.

For cultures of Abrahamic background, Jesus as Son of God challenges established notions of who or what ultimately reveals God and in whom God’s promises come to a head. For cultures that deny sin, the Son of God as Messiah in his great act of redemption signals the reality of sin and God’s own offering of a remedy. For cultures that exalt autonomy of any sort, the lordship of Jesus as Son of God redraws the Creator-creation distinction. Jesus Christ is Lord. For cultures in which God is a stranger or for cultures that blur the Creator-creation distinction, the personal embodiment of the Son of God reveals God for who he actually is.

Thus, we see that no person and no culture is free from the all-encompassing person of Jesus as Son of God. Change as a result of encountering the gospel is not imperialism, it’s what it means for Jesus to be Son of God.