Me and my NASB
For the first time, I have become intensely irritated with the editors of the New American Standard Bible.
Here's why.
They follow modern pious-American rules of capitalization, in which all pronouns whose antecedent is a member of the Trinity are capitalized. This bugs me for a number of reasons. First, while I appreciate the intent, it's completely artificial and arbitrary. The rule only makes sense in a system that uses capitals (which no one did till modern times) and has only been adopted fairly recently: King James et al. saw no need to do it in 1611. It reminds me a bit of people who attempt to pray in "thees" and "thines": I get what they're trying to do, but question the manner in which they try to do it.
Second, it makes for really annoying reading in passages scattered with pronouns. Then He said to Him, "Sit Thou at My right hand." Or something like that.
Finally, and most seriously, it freezes the meaning of passages. I was reading in Isaiah today, in a passage in which an I-speaker, a servant of God, is conversing with the Lord. The editors decided that this speaker is Christ and, as a result, capitalized every pronoun referencing him. Part of this I don't mind--of course the speaker "is" Christ in some sense of the word. Shoot, almost everything in the OT is. Some verse in the NT claims that everything in the Old was given as a type or allegory. And that's just fine.
But the typological/figurative/metaphorical/prophetic meaning should never erase the literal, not if you can help it. Sure, the speaker in Isaiah is foreshadowing Christ and is a prefiguration of Christ. But he's not Christ simply so called: he has meaning in his own time, and in himself. The capitalization of the pronouns denies this: this character is Christ, and what is said of him cannot be predicated of anyone else. It flattens the meaning, and denies the multiple levels of significance it can carry. And this makes me irritated. Because simple, flattened texts are so much less interesting (and far less aesthetically appealing) than those that operate on multiple levels. And it also makes it seem that Christ is portrayed clearly and openly in the OT in a way that he's not.* He's a treasure hidden in the field--finding him there requires some digging.
And so, I'm irritated at my NASB.
*These simple readings cause a whole host of problems, most having to do with ugly anti-Semitic triumphalism. You get it, for instance, in the Left Behind books. The OT clearly says that Jesus would be born in Nazareth, of a virgin, of the line of David, have his hands and feet pierced, etc. Anybody to whom this was not immediately apparent, and who wasn't looking for such a Messiah, was obviously either wicked or stupid. The Jews did not see this; the Jews must be wicked or stupid. Except the OT is much more elusive and allusive than that. All the passages above, I believe, reference Christ, but this is clear only in retrospect. And even so, it requires some work.
posted by Anonymous @ 1:39 PM
9 Comments:
Part of the problem seems to be a constant desire to see the Bible in divine terms. Prophecy can only have meaning in terms of its foretelling something. Typology only makes sense from the future. Symbolism is worthless after you know what it's symbolizing.
I think the emphasis on issues such as inerrancy have caused such a God-centered focus on Biblical interpretation that any sort of real historical interpretation (any human-ness in the Bible) is just a waste of time.
Devotional reading is another perfect example of this. What is God saying to me? I really don't care what it meant to anyone else. The Bible is for me. Obviously, this is a harsh caricature, but there is some truth to it.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that recent interpretation has looked to eliminate mystery, eliminate the small subtle ways that the Bible is held together. It isn't a grand magisterial work that can only makes sense if you were born post-1611. It's a human work, jumbled, ambiguous, confused, and sometimes hurt as it tries to make sense of the very real and solid divine work in creation.
Last night is a great example of this style of interpretation. One of the leaders at the Bluffton North Bible study and I talked about Revelation a bit afterward. Essentially, he was concerned that a preterist understanding of Revelation would do more harm than good.
His concern didn't arise because he had spent years studying Revelation and had come to a solid position. He really didn't have peculiarly strong views on the topic. However, he simply couldn't see any real value in the preterist interpretation. If the prophecy was all in the past, what good does that do for us now? By and large, this man would not be alone. We 'get' Christ's teachings, and we 'get' the idea of using prophecy to help us out. But what good is history if it's not demonstrating some moral concept? This concern needs to be answered.
Hmm, interesting. When can we get back to making fun of each other? My head hurts.
Fair points, all.
I'm reminded of this tidbit of wisdom from Fr. Brown (quoting from memory):
"It's not enough to read your Bible. You have to read everyone else's, too."
BTW, Nick, Tony Esolen has a wonderful new post up on the Touchstone blog. Tell me what you think.
I guess another reason it upsets me is that I cherish the illusion that a modern Bible version can be true to the (mythical?) textus receptus, whatever that means.
Alas and alack.
Whatever, guys... My Picture bible doesn't capitalize anything.
Ben, I understand what you are saying here, the incessant capitalization of Hes, Shes, and whatnot (actually... scratch the "shes" part...) is slightly annoying. However I find myself torn on your sentiments about the capitalization of the speaker in Isaiah. It's instances like that when I appreciate being slowed down by the seemingly misplaced capitalization, so that I must stop to consider what's really going on. While I wish that in many of those cases I would be aware enough to put it together, I'm afraid that on my own, tasty little nuggets like that would go unmined.
Nick, I must admit that I strictly oppose the thought that seeing the bible in "divine terms" is "part of the problem". How in fact shall we see it? I agree that historical interpretation should never be disregarded for in doing so we may very well lose the intended meaning of the text...but that is precisly the issue and what we're after, the intended and divine meaning of the text. The bible is the "external Word", that is, it is objective, fixed, outside ourselves, and therefore unchanging despite the historical context. You can take or leave it. But you can't make it other than what it is. It is a book with fixed letters and words and sentences (although the rather trival and hyper-pious capitalization contests can sometimes annoy). And yes, the bible is speaking to me in devotional reading, and it's through the spirit! Thats the beauty of it, the word is divinely fixed and objective, allowing it to become the chief instument of the spirit. How else would we know one spirit from another?
I would submit that recent interpretation, at least from the right sources, has not necessarily tried to eliminate mystery but rather illumine it! The funny thing about the sacred mysteries is that their revelation may expose an unknown, but often leaves it unexplained and therefore still a mystery. According to 1 Corinthians 4:1, we as Christians should be regarded as "servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God." This charge and Pauls mantra concur that we should be proclaiming that glorious truth of the Gospel, the mystery that was hidden from ages past, now revealed to the world. Let all eyes be opened, and praise God if the intricacies that hold that bible together are more easily seen now than ever!
One thing I've learned in grad school is that even the most faithful translation will inevitably be something of an interpretation. This is true even in the best possible circumstances: say, translating from one modern language to another. When, on the other hand, one translates from a dead language, and then has to edit the text to conform with modern rules of grammar, punctuation, etc.--even more depends on the interpretation.
My NASB is an interpretation of the Bible. Now, Augustine says that insofar as a biblical interpretation conforms to the double law of charity--that is, promotes love of God and love of neighbor--it is an acceptable one, and in line with the spirit of the text. Whether the reading intelligently reflects a specific passage is a moot point.
Regardless of the relative intelligence of such actions, the NASB's editorial decision to capitalize certain pronouns is in conformity with that rule. So are various modern, personal, devotional readings of various passages. In that sense, they're all ok.
But only to a certain extent. Such editorial decisions and devotional readings, more often than not, do not conform to any objective reality of the text. If left unchecked, will eventually rob the Bible of much of its meaning, and only reflect the theology (at best) and the unconscious biases (at worst) of the reader. Another patristic quote, from (I think) Theodore of Mopsuesta: "If they keep on making history serve their own ends, eventually they will have no history left." And no one wants a beggared Bible.
As a postscript, it appears that the editors chose to capitalize in completely arbitrary fashion. Isaiah 61 (an obviously prophetic passage) gets no capitalization, though it clearly refers to Christ; in Isaiah 52 and 53 the pronouns are capitalized but not the proper nouns; in 42 they capitalize every old thing. "Behold My Servant, whom I uphold...I have put My Spirit upohn Him"
Every old thing. Except for the relative pronoun. Apparently, "whom" does not carry the divine weight of "My."
I understand the difficulty: the whole OT is traditionally held to prefigure Christ, and if you start capitalizing, it's difficult to draw the line. But I'm not sympathetic: you could avoid the capitalization altogether (my preference), and if you insist on doing it, you could at least do it more intelligently.
Ben,
Sorry for the late comment. Do you remember which of Tony Esolen's posts that was? I'm afraid that I just don't recheck these comboxes often enough after commenting.
Seth,
Ditto.
You said
BOQ
The bible is the "external Word", that is, it is objective, fixed, outside ourselves, and therefore unchanging despite the historical context....But you can't make it other than what it is.
EOQ
This seems to me to be rather overconfident in our ability to just "know" what the Bible is talking about. This is easily demonstrable by the continuing debates and confusions in the realms of theology. For the most part, theology has often found new questions and rarely answered old ones well. It is helpful to remember the culturally chaotic nature of translation (or as Ben helpfully put it, interpretation).
Perhaps I was overstating my case at the time, but it does seem to me that as modernist Protestants, it is easy for us to overestimate the Bible's role in the Christian life. We don't find the scrolls of scripture healing or performing miracles. As such, it seems that the Bible is not the chief instrument of the Spirit; that's what we are called to be (thus the fruits of the Spirit do not include inerrancy, but do include the virtues of the Christian life).
Don't get me wrong, I do think there is a strong argument to be made for the devotional use of the Bible in our lives. My problem arises when people start throwing away portions of the text because it isn't "speaking" directly to them. Most Christians are fine with didactic texts, but can't understand why the Bible has to contain so many lists, bits of historical information, and other "useless" stuff. It's this attitude that loses track of human authors, instead wanting this to be written from God to me ("and if God wrote it, I'll surely understand it all without any problem").
I would agree that there is recent scholarship that has illumined the Biblical text. But this is often because they're looking for human influences in hermeneutics, not secret divine messages (I submit the "Bible code" as a depressing example to the contrary).
In general, I do want to make sure to point out that your comments on the role of the Spirit as the guide to us in our spiritual wilderness are quite true. The Spirit does guide. But there is just little Biblical evidence to see this kind of personal Spiritual illumination as happening primarily through the text itself. Instead, we find a group of people living communally, using the texts of scripture (via liturgy, prayers through the psalms, and celebrations) to continually remember, repeat, and root us more deeply into these memories that form and guide people of God.
It is this living, historical community that forms the basis for the Spirit's guidance instead of the intellectual, individualistic approach of mere Bible reading. Perhaps what I'm trying to say is that our devotional reading is in finding ways to live with the text, not just learn from it.
Perhaps to clarify, one can look at the role of the Psalms. This isn't something we just read through and think about, but a book of rich emotional prayer focused on the saving person of the LORD. It was (and is still used by some) as a prayer book through which we can deepen our relationship with God. Obviously, this isn't a book from which we simply absorb facts, thoughts, etc, but instead one with which and through which we struggle to discover what it means to live as redeemed humans, as true Christians, as real carriers of the mysterious gospel.
PS Please note that I'm not against learning stuff or absorbing teaching. That is exactly what didactic texts are for. I just get annoyed when that's all people are willing to see.
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