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Hot Topics: Is the Bible Reliable, Part 1 · The Bible in 3D

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Greetings. Welcome to the Bible in three d. This is your host, Andrew. We are doing a mini series, looks like five episodes on the reliability of the Bible. The Bible was written, in Hebrew, the Old Testament, except for Daniel chapters two through seven which are written in Aramaic and there's a reason for that.
• 0:32
  And the New Testament was written in Greek, the common Greek. Now one would think that the time of Jesus, the Roman Empire, that things would be written in Latin. And I'm sure that Latin, the Roman Catholic church wants you to believe that, but it was actually written in Greek. Thanks to Alexander the Great, who conquered most of the known world, Greek culture and language was spread everywhere and even in the Roman Empire, it's certainly in the early stages of the Roman Empire, the language in the marketplace was Greek. Think of the disciples of Jesus who were fishermen.
• 1:15
  They had to sell fish to towns on the East Side Of The Galilee and they were all Greek, so Greek was everywhere. And that is why the New Testament was written in Greek. But translating Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic into English is actually difficult. It is not like translating from French or German or Spanish into English. It's a much harder task, and I will talk about some of those issues in our next episode.
• 1:50
  So the point simply is translating the Bible in the original languages into English is a challenge, and we have many translations of the Bible in English today, and we have artificially put them into three categories, and those categories are called formal equivalence, functional equivalence, and dynamic equivalence. Don't have to worry. You don't have to memorize that. The easy thing to understand is the issue of how literal a translation do you want. The more literal translation from the original languages into English is great, but they're always harder to read.
• 2:43
  At the other end of the spectrum we have translations that are easy to read but they're not always precise with the original language and sometimes those more easy to read we have things that were added or things that were subtracted. That is what we're gonna look at, and we're gonna start with that challenge. The question I have for you is what translation of the Bible you have and what do you want. We're gonna start now with the most the more literal translations of the Bible and the technical term is called formal equivalence. The translators try to translate word for word from say Greek into English.
• 3:36
  Now Greek can do things that English cannot, so sometimes just trying to explain what the Greek says they have moods and tenses and things that we don't have in English. And Hebrew Hebrew is difficult because there are no vowels, there are no punctuations, there are a few prepositions, it doesn't read left to right, it reads right to left. All those things are a challenge, but that's what the translators do. The formal equivalence tries to be as exacting as they can, but the downside of that is, yes, it's formal equivalent, it's it's a more exacting translation, but that exacting translation is often harder to read or often harder to understand. There are several Bible translations that are formal equivalents and the King James is probably the most literal of all of the Bible translations.
• 4:47
  Now it has other problems which I'll discuss here at the end, but there's the King James, there's the New King James, the NASB, New American Standard Bible, and the ESV, English Standard Version, tries to be formal equivalence as well. Again, the harder it is to read, you know, that that's the more formally equivalent you have in language. Now on the other end of the extreme, so there there are three different artificial groups we put Bibles into. Okay. The hardest, okay, the King James, New King James, and then on the other end we have what are called paraphrases.
• 5:34
  And in many ways they're not even translations. Somebody sat down, they weren't really a translator, they're more of an editor, and they took another English translation and they and here's my technical theological term, they dumbed it down. So they took another English translation, could be King James, could be something else, and they tried to put it into modern English as in something that this generation could understand. So they would use axioms, aphorisms, and things that are very common today and and they would say, okay, this is what it says in the Greek or another English translation. Let's now put it in words for a modern generation.
• 6:29
  The formal equivalence King James was written in sixteenth century Elizabethan English. Very hard to read because it uses words and phrases that we don't use anymore and you almost have to learn another language to be able to read it. So the King James could have something like, willst thou, Which means in modern English, will you? Me thinks or I think. The New King James was introduced to take that exact same translation and simply turn the archaic English words into modern English words, but that is different than what what we this call dynamic equivalence.
• 7:24
  These are the paraphrases. They don't try to put it into more modern words. They they try to put it into forms that people in this generation will understand. The problem with the paraphrases is that they are written for a particular generation and they're written with aphorisms and axioms and slang which a particular generation understands. Now by the time that generations grandchildren grow up they're not going to be able to read the paraphrase very easily.
• 8:09
  And I give the example of have you ever heard the nineteen twenties the flapper language? And there's recordings out there and they they use, you know, it's over a 100 years old, they use language like the cat's meow or, you know, things like yes, we have no bananas and you're like, okay, I understand that's English but I don't know what it means. And and that's a challenge of a paraphrase. It uses those types of phrases which are understandable today, but a hundred years from now the grandchildren, great grandchildren will go, okay, pops, what are you talking about? Yet, it's easy to understand.
• 8:54
  The other problem with so again, formal equivalence, King James, New King James, NASB, they're on one side and the opposite, the end of the other extreme, is readability. But in readability, oftentimes the substance, the content is sacrificed. So these, and I can't even call them translators, they're more editors. These editors who come up with these paraphrased Bibles and the one I'm gonna talk about is the message. There are many other paraphrases.
• 9:36
  The message is probably the most easy to understand and the most out there kind of a Bible because these editors put in things that are not there and they often take out things that are there. Now in in seminary they have a couple words for this and one is exegesis, the other is eisegesis. So if you go to a conservative seminary they will say when you read the Bible and you prepare a message, sermon, whatever, you you know you must use exegesis. You must take out of the text what is in there. That's exegesis.
• 10:23
  On the other side of the coin is eisegesis, and this is, and you know this happens, you have pastors who put into the text what they want to be there. It's not there, but they put it in and they find it, and that's called eisegesis. In many ways, not always, but many of the paraphrases, they put in things or take things out because they don't like it. Now my understanding, I'm just gonna pick on the message, I know a lot of people who like it, but the guy who wrote it, I believe he's a Presbyterian pastor and he was having trouble communicating with younger people who were woke and DEI and all these kind of things. And so he took out of the Old Testament anything that showed that God was judgmental.
• 11:21
  Being judgmental is the cardinal sin in this generation. Don't you judge me. Don't you judge me. Don't are you judging me? Don't you judge me.
• 11:33
  God is does judge sin and he does punishment punish it in the Old Testament and so the message tries to soft soften that language so that God does not look judgmental because that's the cardinal sin of this, you know, current generation. In the same way in the New Testament, this guy who did the paraphrase called the message, he didn't like the spiritual world. So for instance, in Ephesians chapter six, we talk about, you know, our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual beings in high places. In other words, demons, fallen angels, okay? And he doesn't like that and he, I guess, didn't think that his audience liked it and so, you know, he changes the words so that instead of having, you know, reality personalities, you know, we just have principles.
• 12:34
  The principles of evil as opposed to no, there actually are evil beings out there and that's what our battle is against. Alright. Again, easy to read. Why would why would you go with a paraphrase? If you have no Bible experience at all, you didn't go to Wawana, you've never been to church, you've never read a Bible, and you decide, oh, I want to read the Bible, and you sit down and read the King James, your head will explode because it's in a type of archaic English that you don't understand and it's very literal, which is sometimes hard to understand.
• 13:14
  So the paraphrase is a good way. It's like an on ramp. You can do the paraphrase, And as you learn more and more, it's like training wheels. And at some point, maybe you just need to move up to a better translation. So is there a happy medium?
• 13:37
  Yeah. Well, I don't know if it's a happy, but yes, there is an in between, between very literal but hard to read and very easy to read but not always accurate, and that is called the functional equivalent. Okay. One more time. The King James, NASB, New King James, those are formal equivalent, Hard to read, but they try to be very faithful, be formally equivalent word for word as much as they can.
• 14:14
  The other and extreme is the dynamic equivalent, is, yeah, we're kinda trying to do the best we can, we wanna give you the basic ideas. Well, is an in between and this is called the functional equivalent translations and there are many of them out there and I will tell you that when we first got saved, the group that we were with, they were using the new international version, which is in between and this is what they call the functional equivalent. I have to tell this little rabbit trail here. The NASB, the New American Standard Bible is older than the NIV and they try to be again very formally equivalent in translation. But what they found was people in other countries would not buy this Bible because it had the word American in it.
• 15:20
  So they did not want to buy a quote unquote American Bible. When the NIV New International Version came along, okay, chose a title to try to appeal to everybody. But it wasn't as formally equivalent, it was dysfunctional equivalent. What does that mean? So they started in '19 I think 1965, they started translating and they completed the work in 1978.
• 15:51
  We showed up at this little church in the middle of the Mojave Desert Bible Church in '87, nine years after it was completed. And the church had transitioned from the King James to this NIV. And the people who were translating the NIV, their mission was to come up with a Bible that was as formally equivalent as they could but it had to be readable, and so their guiding light was that a high school graduate would be able to read and understand the Bible. Now, a high school graduate could read the King James but you had to learn a new language or an old language, you had to learn Elizabethan English. Their hope was to create a bible that was readable, it was accurate as could be, but readable for a person with a high school education.
• 17:00
  Now in '65 into the nineteen seventies, people who graduated from high school, they could read and write. So we ended up at this church in the High Desert, it was a Bible church, and back in those days there were some people there, today there's gazillion people there, but back then not so many, not a lot of things up in the High Desert 40 ago. And these all these people in this little church were involved in the construction trades. So they were, you know, carpenters, roofers, you know, plumbers, tile guys, people who did cement. Okay, great guys, super people.
• 17:47
  But they didn't go to college. They they did not they were not people who read a lot of things. They were not geeks. Okay. I'm a geek.
• 17:58
  They weren't geeks. They were just, you know, Joe and Jane six pack. But they'd gone through high school, they could read and write, and so the NIV was just really designed for that demographic. Now, today, I understand, I've read several articles that the public schools in Baltimore, Maryland, ninety percent of the graduates are illiterate and cannot pass the literacy test. So I don't know today whether most high school graduates can read something like a functionally equivalent Bible, like an NIV.
• 18:40
  I hope they can. This was a great Bible and, you know, people had a high school education where they were literate, this was great Bible. This is the Bible that I had with me through seminary. It is a great Bible. So I'm talking to you about reliability of Bibles and I'm saying there is essentially, and put these into three artificial groups, but you have some choices.
• 19:12
  You can get a very formal word for word kind of translation. It's called formal equivalence like the King James, the New King James or NASB. Now we would say the ESV is is a formal equivalence and NASB people would go, no. No. You're you're not formal enough.
• 19:35
  Okay. So that's a interesting argument. I think that you need to be aware of this and is let's go back just for a second to the paraphrases, the dynamic equivalence like the message. Again, who should read that? If you have no experience at all, this is an easy on ramp.
• 20:05
  I do urge you though, as you become more familiar with the Bible, to consider upping your game to going something like a functionally equivalent translation like an NIV. Okay, and folks, if you've gone to college, and you've had a lot of education, you need to buck up. You need to go to the formal equivalence translations. And if nothing else the ESV. So we lived in the High Desert for thirteen years, we used the NIV, I used it through seminary, we moved down below, went to Redlands, California, oh my gosh, we moved to an upper middle class church.
• 20:54
  Everybody there had a college education and the common saying, it probably wasn't true but everybody said it was, was that everybody in the church, the adults, were either teachers or doctors. We had a medical school nearby, we had over a 100 doctors that were in the church, we had, I don't know, a couple dozen, you know, attorneys and CPAs and on and on and on. All kinds of PhDs, mean we had the C. S. Lewis Foundation, they all had PhDs and they were all there.
• 21:25
  Okay. They were the ESV and once we got there and then we adopted that, it was like wow. And that's my translation. Today I love it. But I gotta tell you, I love the NIV.
• 21:44
  It has a special place in my heart. Yeah, it's a functionally equivalent, but for twenty some years I copied notes from, you know, sermons and bible, all these kind of things, bible studies, Sunday school, whatever, and they're all in this book. So I have this book which is over forty years that's 40 old. And the back is broken, the pages are a mess, but I will never give it up because it has all my notes in it and it's just, you know, precious. That's what it is.
• 22:30
  Let me stop here. The Bible is reliable. Whatever edition of the Bible translation that you have in English is good. Whatever translation you have, you can lead somebody to Christ. They're all good.
• 22:49
  The question simply is where are you? How much effort do you want to put into studying? And know that you can be confident that the Bible is reliable and wherever you are, there is a translation that will come to you and help you grow. When I was a little boy, my mother used to buy she couldn't do it every week, she couldn't afford it, but she would go to the grocery store, it wasn't a supermarket. And, you know, they had all these books and stuff up at the cash register.
• 23:33
  There weren't readers in those days, somebody had actually typed in the price of everything. But she bought these, it was a series, I don't know how many were in this series, but it was a children's series on the Bible and no, I didn't learn any doctrine and no, I didn't get saved out of it, but I learned the history especially of the Old Testament, a little bit of the New Testament. And that greatly helped me as growing up as a child before I got saved. A paraphrase is good. If that's where you are, God bless you.
• 24:16
  If you're just a person who, you know, rich guy, average lady, You want a good bible but you don't want to get blown away. Hey, something like the NIV, functionally equivalent bible, is wonderful and I endorse it a thousand percent. And folks, if you are a person of study, you like to read, you wanna up your game, you know, try the formal equivalence and yes, NASB is good. I actually think those people are almost cult like. Okay.
• 25:01
  And you know and I like the ESB. All of which to say whatever version you have, it is reliable, just realize the pluses and minuses in in your particular bible. With that said, gracious lord, thank you for this time. Bless us as we go through this episode in the next four to know that the bible is reliable. We thank you and praise you in Jesus name.
• 25:31
  Amen.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the bible in three d. We're so grateful for listeners like you. Your encouragement helps us create and share more transformative content that strengthens communities worldwide. If this episode inspired you, consider supporting our nonprofit mission with a donation at cogworksmedia.org. Also, be sure to check out our other podcast, biblical reflections, for more faith insights.
• 26:03
  God bless.