john hobbins (ancient hebrew poetry http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2007/10/improving-on-th.html#more) has an excellent post on the divinity and humanity of the Bible. Read on.
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Improving on the Bible
Doug Chaplin has a perceptive post (http://www.metacatholic.co.uk/2007/10/minimising-mistakes-in-the-bible-or-not/) on the tendency of evangelical translations of the Bible to “improve” on the text in translation. Analogous tendencies have been and continue to be at work in Jewish, Orthodox, and Catholic translation traditions.
In one sense, the harmonization of scripture with subsequent traditions and expectations is a sign of health. It reflects the view that what scripture teaches and what we teach ought to be one and the same. But if the identity is purchased at the cost of remaking scripture into the image of our traditions and expectations, the price is too high.
There are those that believe that the inexhaustible treasures of scripture have been fully plumbed by the tradition they happen to belong to within the parameters of the epistemological framework they happen to subscribe to. Those who think in this way are anti-traditional without realizing it. For all of Jewish tradition and Christian tradition, scripture is not a dark, opaque object which lacks contours and color of its own until the light of subsequent tradition is shone upon it. It is a translucent, light-emitting object in its own right. Its light shapes and gives color to the worship and life of the every generation of the faithful, sometimes in ways that earlier generations would have found incomprehensible.
Once upon a time, those who wished to maintain that the word of God written was to be received with a grateful and teachable heart thought it best to minimize the extent to which that word reflects the vicissitudes of human experience.
That strategy, no matter how well-intentioned, backfires today. It is too easy now for educated persons to see for themselves that the Bible is not a gold brick fallen from heaven which anticipates modern science and historical investigation wherever the latter are right and contradicts them wherever the latter are wrong.
A wiser approach, one that has the advantage of corresponding to the facts on the ground, will insist on the full humanity of scripture even as it insists on its full divinity.
Does the Bible grapple with issues with one part coming to a conclusion at odds with another part? Let the truth of the Bible be located in the tension between the contradictory positions rather than in the assimilation of one position to the other.
Do the biblical authors demonstrate limited and imperfect knowledge on any number of topics? Are they creatures of the culture that was theirs even as they give expression to a relationship they believe they had with one they understood to judge that culture? Yes and yes. That makes them human like you and me.
The miracle of the Bible does not consist in God overriding human limitations. The miracle the Bible participates in is the one Paul came to acknowledge as the fundamental dynamic at work in his life: “Three times I begged the Lord that it might leave me, but his answer was: ‘My grace is all you need; my power is made perfect in weakness.’ I am happy to boast of my weaknesses, for the power of Christ dwells in me through them” (2 Corinthians 12:8-9).
The goal of translation and interpretation cannot be to deconstruct textual content and eliminate the parts that reflect human limitations and keep the parts that express the power of God. The latter form an indissoluble whole with the former. The power of God is made perfect in the former. Eliminate scripture’s humanity, and you rob it of its divinity.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Improving on the Bible
Doug Chaplin has a perceptive post (http://www.metacatholic.co.uk/2007/10/minimising-mistakes-in-the-bible-or-not/) on the tendency of evangelical translations of the Bible to “improve” on the text in translation. Analogous tendencies have been and continue to be at work in Jewish, Orthodox, and Catholic translation traditions.
In one sense, the harmonization of scripture with subsequent traditions and expectations is a sign of health. It reflects the view that what scripture teaches and what we teach ought to be one and the same. But if the identity is purchased at the cost of remaking scripture into the image of our traditions and expectations, the price is too high.
There are those that believe that the inexhaustible treasures of scripture have been fully plumbed by the tradition they happen to belong to within the parameters of the epistemological framework they happen to subscribe to. Those who think in this way are anti-traditional without realizing it. For all of Jewish tradition and Christian tradition, scripture is not a dark, opaque object which lacks contours and color of its own until the light of subsequent tradition is shone upon it. It is a translucent, light-emitting object in its own right. Its light shapes and gives color to the worship and life of the every generation of the faithful, sometimes in ways that earlier generations would have found incomprehensible.
Once upon a time, those who wished to maintain that the word of God written was to be received with a grateful and teachable heart thought it best to minimize the extent to which that word reflects the vicissitudes of human experience.
That strategy, no matter how well-intentioned, backfires today. It is too easy now for educated persons to see for themselves that the Bible is not a gold brick fallen from heaven which anticipates modern science and historical investigation wherever the latter are right and contradicts them wherever the latter are wrong.
A wiser approach, one that has the advantage of corresponding to the facts on the ground, will insist on the full humanity of scripture even as it insists on its full divinity.
Does the Bible grapple with issues with one part coming to a conclusion at odds with another part? Let the truth of the Bible be located in the tension between the contradictory positions rather than in the assimilation of one position to the other.
Do the biblical authors demonstrate limited and imperfect knowledge on any number of topics? Are they creatures of the culture that was theirs even as they give expression to a relationship they believe they had with one they understood to judge that culture? Yes and yes. That makes them human like you and me.
The miracle of the Bible does not consist in God overriding human limitations. The miracle the Bible participates in is the one Paul came to acknowledge as the fundamental dynamic at work in his life: “Three times I begged the Lord that it might leave me, but his answer was: ‘My grace is all you need; my power is made perfect in weakness.’ I am happy to boast of my weaknesses, for the power of Christ dwells in me through them” (2 Corinthians 12:8-9).
The goal of translation and interpretation cannot be to deconstruct textual content and eliminate the parts that reflect human limitations and keep the parts that express the power of God. The latter form an indissoluble whole with the former. The power of God is made perfect in the former. Eliminate scripture’s humanity, and you rob it of its divinity.
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