Lost in Translation?

0:00Hello, and welcome to the Thank you Fellows podcast. My name is Caleb Keith and today I am joined by Adam Francisco and Bruce Hillman. I think this is gentlemen the last episode we get away with without having my father back on the show since he's begun so say whatever you want about him now. Well you can but I think it follows as brought to you by the 1517 podcast network and 1517.org. You know if you're sitting around listening to this episode go to 1517.org go to the homepage see the various resources we have there we've got blogs, sermon helps, academies, like a lot of free content you could you could

1:02spend hours a week there just going through new and free content. We've also got like a historic archive of over 10,000 various written pieces, podcasts and things like that. So you can use the search bar there in a topic function, a topic index to look for things that you might have questions about or want to study further again 1517.org go check that out. All right today before we recorded last episode we were all talking about the like studying theology professionally studying theology pastoral training and Bruce made a comment about Greek like and how much Greek does everybody need to know does every pastor need to know Greek and Hebrew does every theologian need to know these ancient languages or to what extent can you use them. Another question is has the internet has digital tools have libraries translation helps like immediate access to let's say the scriptures in Greek on the internet within

2:07a lexicon built in and like really good search and grammar tools changed any of this either has the technology made it so that the accessibility is better so that people could learn it is there something that Greek is supposed to teach you or Hebrew or whatever these ancient languages are supposed to teach you that isn't just the language itself that can be learned through another mechanism or something like that do members of the 1517 thinking fellowship need to know Greek in order to to write articles that are actually useful to people or the podcast like this so Bruce you you want to introduce it any further you want to put a question I mean you were the one who wanted to add the the spice of controversy to it a little bit so yeah yeah I'm not too much of an avant-garde person but I do know that you know at least in academic circles theological academic circles this is kind of people have very strong opinions on

3:10this and that's because of the way that the logical education tends to require this into what extent and that kind of thing I'll just say briefly I think learning ancient languages is a fantastic thing there's it's great my disagreement happens to be with the particular view that some people have maybe even the majority of educators themselves have that in order for the pastor to be an effective and good pastor he has to learn Greek and or Hebrew and this is where my disagreement really is so I look at it like a tool that's a very helpful and a good tool for a pastor to have but when people start to say it's required for theological education in the training of a pastor that's where I push back a bit I think you could just stop the recording now I mean that's a good position but that would be so much fun well this has been the thing it'd be sort of like our planned April 1st episode that we've been

4:12talking about for nine years or we just don't make any noise and say April 1st after 45 minutes I'm with Bruce on this I think you know if you love the scriptures which I think obviously theologians should and pastors should and not that the two that's like to me took the exclusive categories it's strange to me to think that you wouldn't at least try to acquire some sort of maybe not fluency because that takes years and years and years and people just don't have that sort of time or even access to the the resources necessarily to do that but I mean I think it's important to have you should at least know something about the languages in case as you're like doing a study of the scripture you run across something maybe it's in a footnote that tells you that the translators had to reverse the debate over how to translate that word you know to catch those subtle nuances but like Bruce said for a pastor like the languages are

5:16only really helpful if you actually have mastery of them you know and it takes years upon years to master something like coin a Greek or or Hebrew my undergraduate major was in Greek and Hebrew and I was pretty good with him but I never would have even though I've never used it for not just years but decades now I would have never described myself as somebody who had him and master those languages nice meant for your studying them you know so well once you know somebody who has it's kind of sometimes it's even scary to tell people you know them when you meet like certain people who are truly masters like you mean a master Greek you don't want them to quiz you on the spot you know my ability would seem childish next to yeah so like Bruce described it these are useful tools I think for like just think of the pastor and I don't have like nobody should listen to me on terms of like what a pastor needs for education except I guess I did teach it a seminary for three years so I have a little experience in

6:16that but the qualified person I mean I think I would think you know and it's sort of blank slate with all the like church politics and these kind of things push this side the most important thing is that the pastor pastoral candidate knows the scriptures all 66 books and knows all the resources that are out there to help you in deep study the scriptures and like ideally of course it would be you have a couple years of Hebrew and Greek but I just don't know that that's practical anymore I wish we were in a day and age where it was but with also I should add and I don't know squat about this stuff but I do it's been sometime but you know the logo software back when I used to use it you actually literally had got the CD-ROM and put it into your laptop now I know it's all online but the tools for studying the scriptures even getting the nuance of

7:17languages in the you know the what do they call that with the inflection of verbs and etc that can be done without actually mastering the languages now so there's just so many tools this kind of dovetails nicely with their AI conversation like that you know there the tools are available to have our not just a a solid understanding the scriptures but like a deep understanding the scriptures up without even learning the languages is it ideal to learn yes I've said that maybe three times now but that's where I would be I'm with Bruce it's just a little I'm not as what's the word pithy and the way I describe it so Adam majored in the languages I minored in the languages so Adam was a little better than me on this on this place to be good at the languages so this is a guy who like loved it and was really good I think I ace my entrance exams to the seminary of which you know I didn't end up going but yeah I did for a quarter but hey same same this is not me knocking the language I think you know if you

8:19have the time and and ability do it but you just don't know that it's as necessary as we maybe it once was or thought it was given all the tools that are available to help us understand the scriptures so I think there's a couple of things that it helps to I'm gonna try to take like I think it's it's good and well for us to have opinions on this as we have experience with people who have studied them we study them ourselves the various ways people have taken part in the training of church workers are interacting with people who teach and preach we also have I think like a special consideration is Lutherans and the history of Lutheran education and educating teachers of the church and clear G and the history of Whitmer University and the or University of Whitmer during the Reformation and how pivotal of a role like humanism and the Greek scriptures and the teaching of Greek was there in fact like Millanthin's

9:23entire theological career begins by first being a professor of of Greek who kind of sneaks in teaching theology through teaching Greek through the book of Romans and that eventually becomes the Loti communists and you know other various stories there and how much that was retained or promoted that those students who were coming to be theologians and be pastors needed to have a command of the Greek and this ad font as principal back to the sources you need to go back to the sources scripture now one of the things they were facing that we weren't was a shift from you know the these translations of the Bible specifically the Vulgate to having access to you know full full versions of the Bible in Greek the Rasmus Greek New Testament for instance that was previously inaccessible to much of the church most of church almost everybody in the church

10:26and the idea that certain doctrines particularly false ideas were being promoted maybe not have their soul origin in the full gate I think there have been at times where reformation people and Lutherans have oversold like how problematic or how disastrous the Vulgate is or something like this but that certainly we're being promoted by particular translations and interpretations of the Vulgate you know the the the famous maybe the most famous one being like the opening of the 95 DCs and the debate over what does repentance mean or do penance now one could argue that like the Latin there didn't mean do penance in the same way and could be a fine fine look at repentance but the church had interpreted the Vulgate in a particular way in these translations and such as the reformation utilized accessibility and training in Greek to correct errors to look at the scripture freshly the I guess the question then is do we need to do

11:31the same today or is there still benefit to retaining the ability to do that today that is analyzing our doctrine the teachings of our churches the preaching of our pastors through access to the scripture can normative English translations then come up with like a common interpretations that are actually problematic that having access to the Greek might uproot I think the answer of course is yes right to that and so it is beneficial to have people who study and know Greek or various other languages and I think that one of the other skills that comes with it is a particular type of critical reading that can even help you if you read solely in English and this is what I was maybe insinuating at the beginning of the episode is other other things you could study or other forms of reading study comprehension study of grammar that could help one see things in scripture with other tools without having to

12:32study Greek fully or have a have and maintain a mint vocabulary in the coin a or something like that and I again like not to give people an out or say don't learn Greek but I think the answer to that is also yes like I there are things in certain English translations that for instance are translated as imperatives or commands that are subjunctive clauses they are you should or you might or you may or one ought and maybe that changes the meaning in particular places but somebody could come to recognize or know those differences without having a full command of the Greek language so I think if if we're going to say no we don't demand this from everybody who is in a position to teach a preach we still have to have some way to measure reading comprehension ability critical thinking maybe knowledge of particular debates and arguments in the scripture to like

13:33Greek doesn't help you all that much if you don't know what some of these contested verses are so like Adam said knowing the books of scripture knowing their content having experience preaching them some of these things that come with time is also very important because as we go through lecture areas and readings and preaching the church somebody who's very familiar with all of this has an impassioned study of the scripture might know when you're getting to a verse or a section of readings that Christians have argued about or not all Christians agree with the interpretations of and that might prompt deeper study one could certainly benefit then from knowing the Greek and also serve people in their vocations well but somebody could also use the tools available to study those as well in our linear texts Greek texts with lexicon and grammatical aids built in a lot of things like logos and and even some some

14:37online tools even have parsing functions so if you understand the grammar of these things you can do it without knowing the vocabulary in some ways today so I think there are tools in Greek maybe you guys talk about this maybe the study of these languages and maybe the problem Bruce was identifying is that it was used in place of the reading comprehension question so like if you could pass a Greek test that was our baseline for like you can read the scriptures critically and with a comprehension that asks questions and answers questions and maybe that hasn't always been true like people can pass these exams by memorizing flashcards and it doesn't really in always demonstrate their ability to actually work through a text and so it's become I mean maybe throw this out there has it become a crutch to showing good comprehension and good critical skills in a text I have a book from years ago called German for

15:40reading I think is the exact title and it's literally a book for graduate students to teach them how to read the Cambridge University I believe so and it's just a book to help you pass yeah it's incredible all those book it's a great book but it's very like honest in its scope like you're in graduate school you need to know German because of whatever you've chosen to do and you don't have time like you just don't have time to go to Germany and start speak and it's not going to help you to be like the elephant wears an umbrella or something that they would teach you in some children's book like you need to know how to read Hyal's Geshikta like you need to know like the German theology words so this book just gives you that and teaches you how to do that and I kind of respect that approach like it's telling you you're not going to be an expert on this but I'm going to give you enough of this to have access to the trade language but don't think when you get through reading for German that you can go to

16:40Germany and just you know sit down at the bar and strike up a conversation with your with your German that's not going to happen in fact you might not be able to speak it at all you just be able to read it because there's a difference to input and output right so if I have the text in front of me that is all input so it the words are given to me the forms are given to me it's much easier level of language mastery than output where I have to actually choose the right grammatical forms pick the right vocabulary and push it out to someone else so one of my issues that I've seen and this is purely anodonal so I admit this fully but I can't tell you how many sermons I've listened to where pastors have told me not me but they have preached you know something about the Greek or the imperfect or the airst or the perfect tense that they've kind of made a lot of stuff about a certain word which they've gotten from a commentary and by the way all of that's fine I have done that as a pastor many many times but what sometimes annoys me about it is that it's like someone went

17:45to school to become an EMT and now thinks they can do cardiac surgery or you know someone who has a little bit of knowledge but just enough to sort of be dangerous because they don't understand their limits and so sometimes when I hear pastors make a lot about a Greek word I'm like you've actually lost the context of the whole passage because you've been so fascinated about what this one word means but you don't actually realize that the word always only means what it means in its use so even though it has a standard function in that Greek in the coin a Greek the street kind of Greek that the New Testament's written in that doesn't really matter if you lose the context of how the author is using that word I was just reading this past week a sermon by Gregory of Nessia a church who writes in Greek and the Greek is on one side and the English is on the other and my Greek mastery is not such where I can sight read that Greek and especially Gregory's Greek which is not purely coin a which

18:46is the biblical Greek and the scholar who had published the book and translated it made a note on one of these words how Gregory uses this Greek word in a way that no one else in Greek is using it it's his own use of that particular vocabulary word and he pointed that out that's an extreme case but I'm just saying sometimes when Paul uses certain words he's using them from a crystal Jewish sort of background and they're not gonna function the same way as they might function in the Greek in another context and when pastors make too much of what a Greek word means an isolation and lose the context to me that's that's them putting too much faith in their little knowledge of the language so I'm okay I think it's important for pastors to be able to say read Greek meaning like be able to pronounce it so you go to a commentary and you come across the letters you know like know how to you know what bios is for

19:48example for life or something like you know how to read it in the Greek script but there should be a humility even when you go to the commentaries that that's still just that commentator's opinion on that use of the Greek word and sometimes there's major debates on what to make of some of those words so that's a danger that I sometimes just get frustrated by the sort of like well I know Greek because I went to summary for three years and took a couple courses and now I can just tell my congregation every week how you know everything it means but like Adam said before you really have to have a mastery like I remember seeing years ago NT Wright was in the back of a car in Jerusalem in some little clip on YouTube I watched and someone asked him a question and he pulled out his Greek and Hebrew Bible like in just in those scripts and just started reading it and translating it on the spot like that's the level of mastery that most people don't have so yeah Caleb can you confirm something about

20:54Rob didn't he have a New Testament that was English but it used Greek letters so that he could and it was kind of a joke you know like he'd open it and he so you think he's reading the Greek and the fly but he's just reading I've always wanted that I don't even know how I guess if I get an Amazon but to your point that there's nothing that chaps my whatever my bottom then when somebody's obsessing about like verb tense or something and it's almost like they're using it as like a pretense to show you how smart they are but they have a zero clue about the context I think the context in which the biblical books are written the historical backdrop all that stuff is I don't know if it's more essential than the actually learning the language itself but if you don't have that you you run the risk of turning the words or the sentences in the

21:58vocabulary and the page into some sort of abstraction yeah you can make a new theology without even intending to yeah yeah again I have to say one more time though I think it's really important if you have the ability and etc. to learn Greek and Hebrew especially if you're actually aspiring to be a theologian of a public sort like a professor or new certainly if you're a New Testament or a lot of time yeah you abs I mean that's that's the language of scholarship in those arenas it's like if you go into reformation history you've got a you're gonna need to know Latin and if it's German reformation you need to know German you know you just in those sort of professions a pastor is a theologian to be sure they're practical theologian and their jobs actually a little more has a little more weight to it because they're actually responsible for souls you know as opposed to the professor but I think the souls that they're caring for they do need to like when I go to a church if I'm church

23:00shopping I don't church shop but if I did I would want to know that the pastor has had some sort of serious theological training so that I can trust I mean it's not that I've ever doubted a pastor or anything like that but you know so that's important there but there's some red flags so like I've had so this conversation is meant to be like nuanced because nobody wants to say don't study it and you're going to think about it either it's not just right just be clear no one thinks don't study it what's essential so I like I've had some I've experienced some red flags where you know I think you can be a pastor without no agree just put that out there I still think that as long as we can facilitate it we should and that Lutherans have like a particular history that reminds us the importance of being able to go back to the text in the way as close to as it can be it was written okay I think that's important so with both of those

24:01things said I have nets and people for instance who like told me they weren't going to finish a program they were in because they were already serving congregation and they didn't want to learn Greek and that to me is like you know is just sort of a red flag like what why why would something that's many people before you who struggled or didn't have the natural talent in it have figured this out to do the job why would you be exempt personally or you know does not wanting to do it then indicate like hey your lack of commitment means maybe I would have questions about you being in a ministry so those kinds of things on the complete like a guy side you know gustin writes in confessions that he could never master Greek and basically gave it up yeah really for all those who all those Greek students who struggled in in seminary a gust and should read a

25:01gust and then his his Latin is highly highly technical and complex I mean you have to really know your Latin to read him but the Greek he admits he didn't really get the the gussets Greek was probably better than all of our still that was probably mean like extremely humble yeah so he couldn't read Greek like the Greek to test me he couldn't read it like nine year old Malanthans Greek is is better than probably most elsemess pastors when you like read about his extreme talents and and that kind of stuff so it's you know it's funny on the other side of that is kind of what Adam was saying is like the theologian the concordia student the pastor the who has you know let's say done five six semesters in Greek they've they've they've done Greek one and two maybe an advanced Greek course they've read the epistles in Greek and things like that some of the more difficult things not just John or some of the gimmies in the New Testament and now think they're a biblical scholar right like and they can

26:04they can like punch blows with those guys and but never test that you know never write a peer reviewed article never do a long exposition out of a text go to a university that isn't alluded through in university and and have those things tested and it's kind of arrogant about it and that too I think is is as much of a problem and so I think in our vocations utilizing this tool as an element of our vocation so for pastors it's for pastoral care so what like that look like well that might look like comforting somebody who's having apology questions or doubts about the text or who has seen stuff so especially like with the internet online now you can see a lot of a different scholars philosophers agnostics I was talking about before I was complaining about the show ancient eerie scholars who try to draw doubts about like errors in the scripture and they will say things like apologists don't know Greek or they don't know Hebrew so they don't know

27:06what they're talking about when it comes to these verses and can really so doubt into people's minds well that is an opportunity if that if that kind of burden is brought to you to be pastoral and to use your study of the languages pastoral to bring somebody comfort to assure somebody that maybe what they heard was a manipulation or an exaggeration or an overstatement or to help them you know sit down with them in the text and explain that oh maybe this word does have two different meanings and here's why it isn't dishonest to say this is how and why Christians have used it and no it's not just 20th century Christians inventing new uses or whatever that is a pastoral use of those stills I think the same thing in preaching you guys brought up like you know maybe a preacher kind of oversells the use of a Greek word or repeats a word in Greek or something like that during the sermon for a particular type of emphasis but I also think there's ways in which you can deliver the text and its promises to people in new ways that isn't always apparent in English just because

28:12we use the word so haphazardly all the time so like I think a great example is second Corinthians five where it's talked about he who knew no sin was made sin so that we might become righteous well the the combination of words there is very interesting especially in relation to things like John chapter one Matthew and even the Septuagents use of the word made when it comes to he made the male and female if you just stop and pause for a second you can see that all of those words being referenced there are for instance the words are the same when it talks about Christ becoming flesh and Christ becoming sin or that we are made righteous is the same interchange of words of God making them male and female again that's not mind-blowing that's not like reinterpreting the scriptures but it does help you see that for instance when we said that Christ became sin for us

29:12that this isn't just a metaphor it's not a metaphor when he became flesh when the word became flesh it's not a metaphor when Christ becomes your sin or becomes sin for you it's also not a metaphor or when it says that we are going to become righteous that righteousness word is is used in the same way that we are made flesh and bone body and spirit together at the creation so I think those types of things again are there in the text without knowing the Greek like the English translations say all of those things but you can utilize an awareness to go oh these really are the same things like God is revealing like that he creates by the word and he creates righteousness by the word and he took my sins through this same mechanism and that could be useful and pastoral and good in preaching and all of those things and there's many examples across a New Testament where that can be useful and maybe to the preacher even if they don't reference the Greek in the sermon helps them

30:13emphasize a particular truth that is there so I think it can be used to increase the comfort and assurance of consciences by simply giving you a command of increasing your command of the scriptures and your familiarity with them one of the great benefits to me personally in studying them was it genuinely improved my ability to write and communicate in English the first time and part of that was just the the difficulty of the study relearning grammar and learning how to put things into English from Greek and from Latin and from Hebrew helps you with English helps to become a better communicator and that's actually part of Malanthan's argumentation as well in his there's various writings about his explanation of his outline of the course of study at the University of Wittenberg through Greek through theology through rhetoric through classical authors he has a defense of why study Homer why study Cicero and a lot of the time the answer is is that

31:16you know it strips away a particular type of self confidence you might have before having skills and talents and reveals the skills and talents that you will need to learn and master to be excellent at your craft or your vocation and in the case of people who go to the University of W theology if theology isn't just you know mental tingling and becoming special because you spend time thinking about studying God and other people don't but it's actually a vocation for other people then being a masterful and clear communicator is essential to that and tuning your ears and your eyes to see and to hear what God is saying and what words God has for people is genuinely important so even one might study like in Malanthan's context study Greek so that you can read Homer because he thinks that it teaches you how to be a student he thinks it teaches you how to be the recipient

32:18of transmitted knowledge not just to be the guy speaking from on top I see that is super important today like I think a defect of a lot of students and study today is that people don't have mentors or don't know how to be mentored right and there are ways in which one could say that like be knocked down a peg learning the languages learning how much you don't know helps you to not just teach or to preach but actually learn how to learn from other people to be a mentor to be the object of transmitted knowledge and things like that so I think there's immense benefit at the same time I don't think every lay person is defective who doesn't go out and run and study Greek right now you know and go learn it right now I guess the last thing I want to say is I also think this is bad when this erodes people's confidence in their translations and I think that that's something worthy to talk about today too which is do we even have our pastors to be

33:21Greek ultimately because we think our English translations are unreliable and you know do lay people have access actually to the scriptures if they're reading it in English and can they be confident about that our translations that exist now I mean all the major ones right like the the NIV the ESV the NASB the even the new living instead of the straight living they have a lot of committees and experts who go behind them in fact I don't know if it was ESV or NIV some of them you can watch on YouTube the committees meet and discuss the words and then vote on which word in which case or which way to translate it this way they have different philosophy summer thought by thought summer word by word summer so that's why your translations have different nuances and then there are a few occasions where they're very minor but there are a few places where the scholars really really are kind of unsure and need a consensus unlike a single word never on like a the meaning of the

34:27whole passage so he's more about the nuance of how to take something so yeah people can totally trust their translations one thing you if you know a little this here's an adventure knowing a little bit about the languages like the seminary level of knowing about the languages because we used to do this in class all the time is we would translate say like a passage and then we would go to all the major translations and we would read them and in our class we learned really fast that if you want like a direct word for word the n a s b with the Greek one almost every time but it's not a great preaching Bible to sort of like read from and some of the English words it uses which are closest to the Greek words aren't really familiar English words so even people hearing the English words might not quite know what they mean our professor remember one time he he would read something and it would be something like you know and then Jesus left to go to the other side of see a gallery you know like that be the passage and we'd read all of them then he'd get to like the message and it was like Jesus and disciples went to Walmart ate a hot dog and then crossed over on a

35:29fairy to the you know so yeah you the translations versus a paraphrase can be quite different but I look I don't know probably paraphrases either I think I know a lot of people who were given a living Bible like the pure paraphrase or the message and came to faith because they could understand it I look at those works as sort of like preaching like there's just someone preaching on the word but yeah if you want accuracy and your pastor preaches from a Bible that's sort of one of those big translations they're completely trustworthy and there is a lot of scholarship and review and behind them because they know they know people are gonna I mean they can't hide it so yeah I mean we're not Adam can speak more to this we're not Muslims where you feel you you can't translate the passage and and then you just lose by virtue of doing it. Well you know when you were talking the whole time I was in my I don't know if I smiled at all

36:33on screen but I was smiling because I felt like I was getting a little window into what you do on Friday nights you know watching YouTube videos of Bible translation can these debate about like Mark chapter one was Jesus angry when the leper came or did he take the passion hey they get pretty upset sometimes the scholars whether debating yeah yeah and I think you know that's just I mean how are you gonna do it right you we tend to think oh this seems so weird that these guys are arguing in an away voting they're not like doing Jesus seminar passing around a basket and you're putting in colored beads or anything like that but they're they're taking consensus so like what's how are we gonna translate this word or maybe there's an early manuscript that has a different word that's a harder reading like in Mark I think it's one verse 42 like the NIV translates Jesus it says that Jesus was angry when this leper came to him and that because there's an early manuscript that uses that verb it's a harder reading because it's hard to understand

37:37why would Jesus be angry but the majority of the manuscripts say that Jesus took a compassion on the leper and then IV committee decided to go with he was angry whereas the ESV and ASB and the rest went with or decided that the majority of the manuscripts are gonna go with with that or how that renders it you know that he took a compassion on the kid and so like the how else are you going to approach the task so it feels a little funny to us you know maybe you know thinking about scholars voting on things it's not as crass as you know putting it that way but I mean like you said Bruce I mean I mean I'm kind of wondering about your salvation since you didn't say King James and only the King James is the one we should trust but it's very beautiful translation I think it's also maybe we could say super helpful if you're doing serious Bible study and you know maybe you're like me in your 50s and there's no way you're gonna acquire a new language or reacquire a new language even if you use dualingo which is not the best way to learn language you know

38:40there's a coin a Greek version of that it's not on dualingo it's another I think it's called the blango or something yeah yes I've heard it's you know whatever but I mean I think using if you're gonna do serious Bible study using a couple translations or there are even Bibles that have a couple different translations in them so you can kind of wrestle with a lot it's like you're in the translation committee with them in a way you know like you're they're making decisions about how to translate words and every as we know like well as we as we know every translation is an interpretation in some way you know and so I mean there's just no way around it so Caleb back to your original question though are we reading the scriptures if we're not reading them in Greek and that's an interesting question because I think the scriptures are like Bruce said with paraphrases or whatever the scriptures are kind of it's like preaching in a way the translations and I'm totally fine with that I think it's we ought to be aware that it's a lot more complicated behind scenes but as long as the translations are done by serious scholars who have mastery of the language

39:47who have access to the manuscripts etc etc what else are we gonna do just to sort of suspend our belief until we get some sort of until we perfectly acquire coin a Greek for ourselves or you know how else are you gonna get around it and it is good to compare translations because look it's unavoidable because as Adam said that they're making into its interpretations so they're they're having to make choices from one language to another right and so it's in it's inevitable that sometimes you're gonna get some cultural flashpoints that you have to sort of figure out and that's where it's good to have different translations to read so for example the Greek word that traditionally has been translated for homosexuality or gendered language you know the Greek uses gendered language but it doesn't always mean by its gendered language that only that gender is included like we used to say in English we used to do this in English mankind but we know when we say mankind we mean

40:47everyone the Greek does that many times as well not always though so sometimes it is actually talking about a specific gendered group but other times it means everyone so then there's a kind of a political debate that can ensue which is like well do we keep this as brothers or brothers and sisters because the use of brothers here really means the whole congregation where in this use of brothers it means just the elders that is talking or whatever the context is so there are you know when you compare even the different English translations you can sometimes see where the committees come up against these kind of cultural flashpoints and they have to make a decision they're both trying to if they're honest translators trying to be true to the text but they're they're having to make a decision on what is the best translation into for English heroes today to get at the heart of what the ancient writer actually meant and sometimes they're gonna hit that right and sometimes they're not the nice thing about this is these things are never hard to find to they're not hidden and it's

41:48not like people don't know about them in general and they almost never change the actual meaning of the text their nuance I don't know anyone who preached for example ever I'm sure it's happened somewhere but I don't know anyone who ever preached using the gendered brothers when it clearly even in English meant brothers and sisters in that particular context of those verses and was confused by that but some translators think with everything that they want to say brothers and sisters or the congregation or whatever the word they want to choose so that can ruffle feathers sometimes because people can sense a political agenda behind it and sometimes that is true but sometimes I also think the translators are just trying to do the best they can to reach modern readers and you know that's part of the reason they vote yeah I think I mean one of the things that has to be said is there is a particular type of clarity in scripture that does transcend some of this which is like even these little ones would be a problem if it meant it obscured who

42:53Jesus was or what he was teaching right so if it obscured that you know the idea of what the resurrection from the dead is or what it accomplishes or what faith is or any of these major questions you could have a problem even in the example Adam gave of like angry or compassionate there's certainly one that is what it means but does that change what the gospel is and so I tend to think of this in terms of some of the clarity we have from Christ and from the gospels and their stated pointed effect so like John is very clear like these things are written that you might believe or Christ on the road to Emmaus opening up the scriptures so that the disciples would see that all of this is about him or Christ's insinuation or really his accusation against the Pharisees that you know when they search the scriptures for eternal life they're really

43:53searching them for here he is here is eternal life these are about me and so from those points you can then have a principle to ask like is the exchanging of words or is there something here that doesn't quite make sense is a translation or teaching you can even apply this to preaching or teaching if he is completely has nothing to do with there's just no realm of what you could connect it to the personal work of Jesus Christ you might have a problem and then it might be worth investigating and asking questions or if it says something opposite to what you have been taught is the mission of work of Jesus Christ investigation is is then necessary and that investigation then might include or might be necessary to go to a Greek text for clarity at that point and so I think that's where these tools are useful or having access to somebody with ability the pastoral application of these and again using the languages as part of our vocation as teachers as preachers

45:01as as whatever you may be out there to give people confidence in the words that they are reading or particularly the words that they are hearing to not use the languages or study or our study of theology to be like well only experts like me could know what this means that's really not the point at all the point is to deliver the word plainly to God's people and then to have the ability to back up that plain delivery with the skills and the talents necessary to to see and hear those words and that and that's about it so at the end of the day it's very simple as many people as possible who are in positions like this should study the languages yet somebody can preach and teach the truth and know the truth without knowing Greek or Hebrew or any of these other ancient languages it's not a prerequisite of being a true Christian teacher so

46:05well very good thank you for listening to this episode of thinking fellas podcast if you enjoyed this please share it with family friends church members from your social media accounts wherever you can hand it out or share this with people who might find interest or benefit in topics like these if you enjoyed this subscribe to the show then you'll get it next week as fresh episode comes out and we will catch you next time bye