Taking Advantage of a Great Grace

For all of the problems we face in our early 21st century world, we live in a time of tremendous graces from God. Travel, for example, has become far easier. I was thinking about this as my wife and I were flying from London back home to the Detroit area a few years ago. There were points in that trip when the cloud cover broke and you could clearly see the Atlantic Ocean below us. I was thinking about those who, centuries earlier, would make this same journey by sailing ship and, once back in the States, by stagecoach or train. A journey by sea and land that would have taken upwards of eight weeks was taking us only eight hours. We live in a time of great grace medically. Cataracts of the eye, which resulted in near or total blindness for many in past generations, and affecting individuals such as Martin Luther, can be now treated with an outpatient surgical procedure, a procedure which, only a generation ago, required intense, in-patient surgery and a long recovery time.

Living in a time of grace applies also for those who are seeking resources to go deeper in the Christian faith. The abundance of Christian literature, in analog (i.e. hardcopy print) or in digital form has never been greater. Videos are prolific. Audios, in the form of sermons, teachings and podcasts are abundant. This state of things was spoken of by Doctor John MacArthur during the funeral service of Dr. R.C. Sproul in December 2017. Dr. MacArthur, speaking of our present moment observed: "This is the greatest explosion of the truth in history."  He added: "There has never been a time in the history of the world where sound doctrine is so available in a split second, anywhere on the planet." We now live in a time when one can download classics of Christian reading, such as Pilgrim's Progress, the writings of the early Church Fathers, the Imitation of Christ and classics of bygone centuries such as Isaac Ambrose's 17th century classic "Looking Unto Jesus" in a matter of seconds. For those wanting the print versions, rapid ordering through online means, has never been easier.

Nowhere does living in a time of grace appear more strongly than when it comes to the Bible. For those of us in the English-speaking world, never before has Scripture been so readibly available, readable and accessible. Millions carry the Bible with them on smartphones and tablets. Print Bibles also exist in great abundance.

I would like to suggest a practice available to us as a result of this "explosion of truth", specifically in regard to our Bible reading. I first heard this suggestion during my seminary days. The professor in our Hermeneutics class (that's actually, a fancy-sounding way of referring to Biblical Interpretation) recommended a way for us to grow in our understanding of Scripture. Professor Stone challenged us to read different English translations of Scripture to become better acquainted with the nuances of how the Bible has been translated into English. The King James version, with its English from the time of the first Queen Elizabeth, is still a valuable translation in the era of the second Queen Elizabeth. The translation can be quite literal and can acquaint us with ways that Bible-era individuals communicated ideas.

My personal preferences are the English Standard Version and the New American Standard. Both are in contemporary English and translated rather literally. Reading these two translations can demonstrate a difference in the emphasis of translators. This can be seen in the translation of Jude 1:5. The New American Standard says that the Lord saved His people out of Egypt. The English Standard Version renders the verse as saying that Jesus saved the people out of Egypt.

In my devotional reading, I toggle between the English Standard Version and the New American Standard daily (as well as toggling between a print version and a tablet so as to keep my analog and digital reading skills honed).

May I challenge you that if you haven't read through the entirety of the Bible that you'll commit to do this (Take 12 minutes per day and you'll read through the Bible in one year). Once you've read through one version, read through another. It's a grace we've been given in our time and place.

Lastly, may I ask that you pray for and support efforts to translate the Bible into languages for which no translation currently exists. According to the website for The Seed Company (Wycliffe Bible Translators):

Over a billion people worldwide don’t have the full Bible in the language they know best. Nearly 1,700 languages don’t have any Scripture at all. In our lifetime, the Bible will become available to all for church planting, evangelism and discipleship efforts led by the local Church. 

The Seed Company is looking to complete the remaining translations so that all peoples will have a Bible translation in the language they know available to them by the year 2025.

Please pray for this great task and  consider supporting them. https://theseedcompany.org/

In this time of great grace, those of us in the English-speaking world can now read multiple English translations of the Bible. We can also assist in bringing those who don't have a Bible yet in their language, to have one within a decade from now.

The Benefit of Reading Multiple Bible Versions

During my seminary days back in the 1990s, one of the classes I was required to take was Biblical Hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is a word we usually don't use in everyday conversation. Perhaps the class title should have been what the original class name really means...Biblical Interpretation.

The professor who taught the class was a man named Haskell Stone. He had been a Christian for many decades. I'm thankful for not only his academic knowledge of guidelines for correctly interpreting the Bible but also what he could teach us in the class based on his experience as a believer in Christ.

The one piece of counsel he gave us that has stuck with me over these years has been that we should systematically, over time, read through different translations of the Bible. Professor Stone remarked that the slight differences in the way in which a translation renders certain words and phrases could give us a broader understanding of what the Bible means in a given passage. I have taken up the challenge. Over the years, I have read through the Bible in the King James Version, New International Version and the New American Standard Bible translation. During this year, I have been reading through the English Standard Version.

Following through on Professor Stone's advice to us has really been a blessing. There are variations in these four translations which in many passages provide a depth of meaning of which I would not be aware had I not read that passage in a different translation. These variations can happen for a number of reasons.

One of those reasons happens to be the method in which a translation was made. Of the four translations which I have read, the King James version is probably the most literal translation (i.e. word for word) among the four. The New American Standard and the English Standard Version are also translated more literally, but in contemporary English and not the English of 400 years ago. The New International Version is translated as a "dynamic equivalence" work. This means that a priority is given to translating the Bible in an "idea for idea" method.

Sometimes, there are variations in the way that one biblical manuscript will read from another. These "textual variants" can occur for a number of reasons (which I may explore in this blog at another time). The overwhelming number of variations occurred due to a difference in spelling or simply repeating a word when visually copying a manuscript by hand. However, some variations reflect what a scribe may have thought a word meant rather than the word itself. One example can be found in Jude 1:5. In most of the translations I have read, there is a reference to the Lord saving a people out of Egypt. However, in reading the English Standard Version, the manuscripts from which it was translated used the word "Jesus" and not "Lord". That really grabbed my attention. Really early in church history, some scribe correctly understood that while God saved His people out of Egypt, since Jesus is God, Jesus saved His people out of Egypt.

In reading the Bible, one big help can be reading a translation with cross-references and a list of the textual variants all in one place. In 1 Peter 2:24, we read: "and He Himself (Christ) bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness." The versions of the New American Standard have those cross-references and alternate readings. In some manuscripts, the word "cross" is replaced with "wood." When I discovered this, the meaning of this verse took on a deeper signifance for me. Jesus was placed upon the wood of the cross. However, to read this passage as Jesus was laid on the wood, the imagery of the burnt offerings referred to in the Old Testament really comes out. Jesus being laid on the wood reminds us that of all the Old Testament burnt sacrifices which needed to be done over and over again, Jesus performed one sacrifice perfectly (once for all according to the book of Hebrews).

There are many other examples which I can raise. First, let me encourage you to read the Bible, in its entireity from Genesis to Revelation. Once you have read through the entireity of a translation of the Bible, please consider doing another full reading in another translation. You will be presented with a deeper sense of what God is telling you in the text. It is worth the effort.