How To Study The Bible
Vern Peterman · Dec 23, 2001
How to Study Bible (2001-02), No. 12
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4826223917174

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

One of the things we'll be doing this morning is taking a look at translations. Because for most of us, we're not going to spend several years learning Greek and several more years learning Hebrew. Although, further on in this class, we'll be looking at tools that you can use to learn more. But most of us, and frankly even having taken Bible language courses in seminary, I'm still reading the English Bible and then referring back to the Greek to kind of see what's behind it. So learning about what is a translation, what do they do with it, you've got all these different kinds, why all these different kinds, how do we get the ones we have, Those are all pieces of information that I think are helpful.

How many of you have been in an experience where you may have a Bible that has multiple translations or you have compared translations? Have you been through that process? I think it is helpful to take a look at where do these come from and am I comparing apples and oranges? I think in a lot of cases people are and don't know it. And I think it really is good for us to get a little insight. How did we get these? And what are the things I should be looking for in one translation versus another? What's the difference? What have they done? So that's what we want to look at here this morning.

And you have a handout there on how we got the English Bible. First of all, it goes back to how did we get English? And strangely enough, English didn't come together to a place where you could really recognize it as English until really less than a thousand years ago. Prior to that, in fact you'll see an example we'll put up on the screen in a little bit, you will be stunned at what English looked like. There will be a few words that you can recognize and most of it will not be recognizable. Oh, and this is worse. And this is worse, I promise you.

What happened, though, is in the 1300s, a guy by the name of John Wycliffe came along and said, I'm going to give these people an English Bible. And what he had available to him at that point in time was a Latin Bible. This had been translated by Jerome, around the year 400, and he had this Latin Bible, so he translated from the Latin. Now, where did the Latin come from? It came from the Hebrew and the Greek into Latin, and so now you're having something that's translated twice, right? So it maybe is not as reliable as one might want, because you've gone through two translations, but still, it was the first time they had a complete Bible, because prior to that, all they had was portions of it.

They would have, you know, like just this book or little bits. And matter of fact, one of the things they had prior to that was in order to teach people things, they'd just teach them songs. They'd have little scripture songs, and they'd teach them this song and that song to give them the gospel and give them portions of the Bible. So they had more songs than scriptures.

Now, so Wycliffe comes along. He translates the Bible into English from Latin. The people that worked with them were called lollards, and the lollards got called that because they kind of were lolling about. They would hang about kind of the marketplaces and things like that, and they would preach to whoever would listen.

But they couldn't print Bibles, so getting a Bible was still tough, but the lollards would have one, and they would copy, and they would put time into copying. Wycliffe made the Catholic Church at that point so mad that after he died, they dug up his bones and burned them and threw the ashes in the river. That was sort of a suspicious superstition kind of thing that they thought that would really do him bad if they burned his bones and threw the ashes in the river.

Meanwhile, just a century after that, along comes Gutenberg, 1440, comes up with the movable type and if you've ever seen it, it's still a slow process but it's a whole lot better than copying and then you can start coming up with multiple copies of things instead of having just one copy and then the next copy and the next copy.

Some of the other things that happen is that same century about a decade or so later the Muslims did a second sweep into the southern Europe and when they did A whole bunch of people came out of Greece and a lot of the southern part of Europe with a bunch of what?

Ancient documents. And brought them up into Europe where they all of a sudden now had a bunch of documents available in Europe that they didn't previously have available. And then the next thing that happened there is they started printing resource books. Grammars and dictionaries and lexicons and things that they could actually use to help translate. So then along comes Tyndale, William Tyndale. He was the man who took these grammars and took the things that were now freshly available and began translating from the original languages, Greek and Hebrew, into the English of the time.

The problem was that the authorities didn't like it. You see, since about 1229, It was illegal to have a Bible in your own language. You have a Bible in your own language? You're going to die. I mean, that was the way it was. So you'd be burned at the stake for having a Bible in your own language. So it was nasty. So along comes Tyndale. He had a tough time because here he was. Hey, what are you doing? Oh, I'm just translating into English.

Well, that was illegal. And so they chased him all over, even in the continent. you know, on the main part of Europe instead of England. Even there they chased him all over the place and he'd be ducking out the back door while they were coming in the front, you know.

And he finally got everything copied, everything translated at one point and after everything was translated he was on a ship going across the English Channel and the ship sank. He lived, but everything was lost, he had to start over. Everything was lost, he had to start over. But he finally was able to succeed and got everything out.

But they did catch him. That fellow that he thought was trustworthy turned on him because it was a reward. Turned on him and they first strangled him, then burned him. But before they killed him, he said, Lord, open the king of England's eyes. And shortly thereafter, that happened.

After that, there was a series of Bibles. The Coverdale Bible. Coverdale was an assistant to Tyndale. The next one down there is called the Matthews Bible. And it's actually a pseudonym because, again, it was easier to have a pseudonym because then nobody knew who you were. The Great Bible is another one. Coverdale, again, was another fellow involved with that.

In Cranmer's Bible, and Cranmer, by the way, was a fellow who ended up getting burned at the stake. The Geneva Bible, which was a very popular Bible. The Geneva Bible was the one most commonly used and brought over to what was then the colonies and over to the new world.

As a matter of fact, As time went on, they didn't want anything else. We'll talk about that in a minute. The Bishop's Bible is one that shortly was supplanted by the King James Version. The King James Version is 1611. Now, I mentioned earlier that the Geneva Bible is real popular and they didn't want the other translations.

They didn't want the King James Bible because it had King James' name on it. And by golly, they did not want anything that had that guy's name on it. And they figured, you know, They were already having trouble with them, right, because they were getting cast out of England and run out of places. So they wouldn't have a King James Bible. I mean, to them, that was the devil's Bible. That was something they wouldn't touch and use and allow.

But the King James Bible was one that at least finally was broadly printed and distributed and kind of established a standard that, with minor exception, came to be the main Bible that people read for several centuries. Now, a lot of people are not aware, but the King James Bible was revised several times, and I think your handout lists some of the different times. The first edition, of course, was 1611, and then it revised 1629, 1638, 1653. There was another edition right about in there that the printer got in real trouble because where it says, thou shalt not commit adultery, he forgot the knot and he was fined like 50,000 pounds or something. So here I have this Bible all over England that's telling people to, you know, be immoral.

And then finally the last one and it's actually the major one that most people are now using and they say, oh, I got the original King James. Well, that's after about the sixth revision. But it's the 1769. That's what most people use now. And they say, I've got a King James Bible. And it's not the original King James. It's the 1769 revision. In most cases, that's what you'll see folks have. Yeah. The revised standard was supposedly a revision of the King James. But the truth is, they call it the King James version. Technically, a version is an original translation from the original languages. So a revision is revising some prior translation.

Technically speaking, the King James Bible is not a version because it was really based on these earlier Bibles that you have on your list. And the truth is the translators were more experts at Latin than they were Greek and Hebrew. So the King James Bible really isn't a version, and it also wasn't authorized. Even though it's called the authorized version, it was neither authorized nor a version.

But anyway, the Revised Standard Version is one that is revised from the King James. change both the language and in some cases it's a matter of looking at updated manuscripts. And that's something you find a lot of folks get real excited about. You're changing the original manuscript. But actually the people who, we would disagree substantially with the theology of the folks who did the translation of the original King James. So that's something to take note of. in terms of how they translate it.

Now, what has happened since that time, we'll cover in just a little bit. But I thought it would be helpful for us to just kind of take a look at what was this original 1611 like. And this is a 1611, just a short section of the very first part of the Bible. And this is kind of a photo of it. In the beginning, this part doesn't look too unusual other than the old English print.

But then you start to see the difference. And the earth was without form, see a little extra E there, and this is void. And darkness, see what looks like two F's, they made their S's like F's and they put an E at the end. And this is kind of strange, it looks like the printer changed his mind or something. But darkness was upon the face of the deep. So there are definite differences.

Yes. I think that was their way of italicizing, because if you look at it from our perspective with our font, that's what it sounds like. Yeah, this is a copy of a portion of it, but that's small enough sections you could read. We'll get quotes from John 316 through some of these earlier versions so you can compare it. I'll tell you, some of the earlier versions are a bit mind boggling. Here's another from, this is, yeah. Yes. Yes. Good point. That's right. It was, it continued on and was part of the same sentence.

One other point, and it shows up in your handout, and that is when did we get these chapters and verses? The chapters and verses are a help. They're a help in that we can now, I can say, turn to this chapter and this verse and you know where I'm at. But they can be a hindrance because they're not in the original writings. Paul didn't say, gee, I think I'll put a chapter and a verse here, right? But they're a help to find things, but the flip side, The risk is that we might put a break, just as Doug pointed out, we might put a break where one really doesn't belong in the original language.

And we might break it at a verse or a chapter, and there are numerous places in Scripture where you've got to kind of take the verse out, take the number out, take the chapter break out, in order to really get the context. The first Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the first one to put in the chapters around the year 1200. In the middle 1500s was when they put in the verses. So these original early Bibles that you saw before the mid-1500s, they didn't have verse breaks.

One of the commentaries that I have at home is this commentary by a fellow by the name of Chris Austin. And he wrote commentaries on like 6,000 different subjects. The only problem is it's a real chore finding out what he's writing about because there's no chapters and verses of anything. So you have to go through and search and figure out where is he. There's no reference. All he gives you is the book and that's it.

There may have been a kind of prompt way back when because when they excerpted parts of scripture to use in the role of man, They used Gregorian chant. And so using Gregorian chant, you needed to break the text down into chunks so you could go through any melody. Yeah, there was that. And the Jews, as we covered last week, had a similar kind of thing where they would go and sing a certain part.

And each section, when they would copy it, they would make sure each section was copied the same section. They wouldn't just kind of go and then roll over to the next part. each section from one copy to the next would be identical. So there was some sort of a pattern of finding things that way, but it wasn't you can just announce the, you know, here's the book and the chapter and the verse and you're there. You couldn't do that.

Something else, this is an example and it's a little hard to read, so I'll pass around some copies and frankly they're not easy to read either. This is from 1 Timothy, and you see the spelling on Timothy. So anyway, I'll pass around a couple copies of those so that you can take it again or you can pass that to the back when you're done. And I'm going to give you an idea. There's some different spellings and this is admittedly a little tough to read. Now here was the mind-boggling one.

Here is John 3.16. This is the first edition of the King James. That first edition of the King James here.

For God so, so far so good, right? The U's and the V's were reversed from the way we use them, okay? So, God so loathed the world that He, and then see that again? And then, this is the way of spelling son in those days. It gets worse, believe me. That whosoever, stay there, and look at this, believe it. In him should not perish, but have everlasting life. So, a little strange, but... And then you go back. Here's the Rhymes Bible. Rhymes was a fellow who did a lot of the translations into Spanish during that time. And then fairly similar, but look at this. Double V. And we say W... What's that? Okay. Yes. We say W, but notice that our W doesn't look like a W. It's a double V. Look at that. So here it is. There's a double V, actually. In Spanish, the name of the letter W is Doble V. Yes, yes.

And it fits it better, doesn't it? And then look at here's Believe Us Again is really strange. Okay, the Geneva Bible. I could adjust that a little better here. There we go. Yes. Yep. You just might. And frankly, there are cults that still underscore that. And notice this one here. Look at this. And now this is a little simpler, but it's still kind of strange. And then you notice this part. It gets stranger.

And by the way, this is the one that the pilgrims and Puritans said, this is the only one we're going to read. We don't do that King James stuff. Yes, but what I'm saying is later on, they just said, we're not having anything to do with that stuff. We don't want anything from that guy.

Here's the Great Bible, which is another popular one. And you still see the E at the end of world. Believe it is still a little strange. And then look at this parish and life. Kind of different. Then here's Tyndale. Yep. We've still got fair consistency with the prior translation. Now, here's Wycliffe. Boy, now it's getting really strange. And then, here's pre-English. Good luck.

The first entire translation into pre-English was done of the Gospel of John by the name of a fellow, he was Venerable Beattie. Around the year 700, he translated the whole Gospel of John. I doubt that you and I could read it. It was so strange because it's pre-English. He was very scholarly, very well regarded for centuries. But, English at that point in time was very strange. So, if you and I were to have an entire Bible in this form, I think it would be almost lost on us. Yeah, it would be almost lost on us.

Well, part of it was phonetic, but the other thing was, if you look at the history of England, it was Danish, it was Norse, it was French, it was German, and it was all early versions of those, okay? And the language was still scrambled mixes and kind of regionalized mixtures of these various languages, and they still hadn't settled things out. And really it wasn't until many centuries later that some standardized spellings became common. So that's why you notice even within a century how many of those Bibles had variant spellings. And it's just because there wasn't any standard.

It was sort of, it sounds like this, you know. So that was kind of the best they could do. And one of the things you notice in this, we can recognize this word, and this word, and this word, but this is love. And that's sort of recognizable, but look at this. It's an innard swath. So you end up with some things that are partly recognizable, but most of it is is at that point such an undeveloped hodgepodge of early French and early German and Norse. And these confused Englishmen are trying to get this all sorted out. So the language was real difficult. Yeah? That's right.

And that's why so many of the Christian... I'll have to call it speculation that Christians may have reached England by the end of the first century, by the time Revelation was written. But the only real solid evidence that we have that we got there doesn't come until about the fourth century. And the Romans had pulled out of England by about 440. So it was some time before Christianity really got established there.

Because the language was so scrambled for so long, they ended up mostly just singing songs. They had picture books. We have a few original picture books from England where they'd show the gospel in pictures because the people's language was so scrambled. And a lot of it, like you say, people couldn't read. There wasn't any consistent writing. So they put the gospel in pictures and songs because that was the better way to get it across to people. They weren't building another tower. One would wonder. Yes. Okay.

So now here's I think the thing, you know, you think, all right, now we've got, and this statistic is a little dated because it's probably about 10 years old, but about 10 years ago, I heard we had about 400 English translations and versions and it is, and some of them, most of them are obscure and we just, you know, most people don't even hear about them, but Truly, if you go into a Bible bookstore, aside from all the little market segment versions, you know, there's the single woman's Bible and the older kid's Bible and the kids in puberty Bible and everything else. I mean, they've got Bibles for everything you can imagine. But there are indeed, aside from those, a number of different Bible translations. And I think it's helpful, and hopefully this is readable here to some extent, It's helpful to get an understanding of what are they doing when they're translating. What they're doing is the translators are going to say, alright, here's the source language that I have, and it's in Hebrew or Greek. Hebrew for the Old Testament, Greek for the New.

And they're going to look at what are the idioms. Figures of speech. Like what we talked about here a few weeks ago is in English we say, you're pulling my leg. In Spanish, you're pulling my hair. I think Heidi and Helmut said in German, you're carrying me on your arm. Those are all the expressions for you're joking, right? Well, they would have idioms, too, and a lot of times we don't recognize those. They would have some figure of speech or manner of speaking.

For example, the guy comes up to Jesus and he says, I have to go bury my father. Well, that's an idiom. To us, okay, I have to go bury your father? Well, go ahead and do it, and we'll see in a couple days. That was an idiom, and they still use it over in Israel today. And it's a euphemism for, this isn't a high priority for me, I'm not going to take the time.

If you don't understand the idiom, you're not going to be able to translate it. But the translators are going to look at those. They're going to look at the culture. They're going to say, how do people, when they hear this, understand it? Here's an instance I was telling Nancy about. Jesus said to the disciples, I will make you fishers of men. And what do you think of in our culture?

They knew nothing of that. They didn't go fishing with a rod and a string and a hook and lures and bait. How did they go fishing? Nets. That was the way they'd go fishing. So our concept doesn't work. It was a whole different process. And it didn't have to do with finesse and what kind of bait do they like. It meant a lot of work. Now. And gathering together of people. Huh? The public theory, gathering together of people. Because you typically caught fish in groups.

Here's the historical background that they're in, OK? And the occasion of the writer. What's the writer writing about? That whole background really matters because then when you carry it over into the receptor language, you have to say, how can I communicate to these people what was originally intended? And here's a for instance.

People like Wycliffe Bible translators constantly dealing with this issue. How do you tell Eskimos about camels? You know how they do it? humpbacked caribou. Humpbacked caribou. How about sheep? How many sheep have you seen with Eskimos? They don't have them. What they do is they call them woolly caribous. Real hairy caribous. Everything is a caribou because that's what they relate to. In one language, What means something in one language may be difficult to carry over literally into the next language.

Here's an experience that happened to one missionary, just to kind of give you an application. These missionaries went into this village and they were going to have a baby while they were there. And they thought, what can we do that will really honor these people?

I know, we'll name our child after the chief. Problem. In that culture, a name was private property. And so naming the child after the chief was stealing. And they kicked them out of the tribe and they said, don't you ever come back to this place again. Totally ruined their ministry by doing what in this culture would be fine, but in that culture was theft. See the difference? So as we translate, we have to look at what's the meaning in the source, not just the language, with the source culture.

How do I carry that over? Some of you have heard of the story Peace Child. Ever heard of that one? And just for those who may not have heard it, this missionary is going into this culture and as he began telling them the story in the Gospels, these people idolized Judas. because betraying a friend with something like that was something they thought was great. That was really cool. So he was trying to get across, how do I tell these people that that's a bad thing?

And finally he came across in their culture, if you have an enemy, the way that you resolve this thing is you give them a peace child. You take a baby and you give it to the enemy and that resolves this constant conflict back and forth. And now to have Judas, betraying the peace child was unthinkable. You see the difference there?

So that's what the translators are up against. How do I translate something that means one thing in that culture and now another thing in the English? A literal translation takes it across as much as possible without trying to put things into the idiom of this culture More of a paraphrase, or they call it dynamic equivalence, ends up going around this way, where it says, all right, I'm going to, instead of making this fairly literal, I'm going to use figures of speech, and I'm going to use expressions that are more understandable to the people reading it. Now, what's the advantage of a literal translation? How can that help you? That's right.

In other words, what was inspired was what? This. This was what was inspired. So my question is, how do I best understand what was inspired? If I have a more literal translation and then study the things here, I'm going to understand what was originally written better than having somebody else come across with some translation in which they've thrown in their interpretations and understandings. It's possible I might get the right idea, but how do I know they did everything right?

You see the difference there? Now, what that comes to is this. I might need to move that up. the top there, this is the spectrum of English Bible translations. If this is the original language, and this is more English in our culture, if this is older language and this is newer language, this is kind of how some of the different translations fall.

That is, here's King James, which is closer to the original language but it's also older language. Now, what is the disadvantage of an older language? We saw the language, what happens to language when it's a thousand years old, right? But what is the disadvantage of an older language?

Okay. In the King James, for example, people who get accustomed to reading it are really doing a little bit of translating, aren't they? When we read in King James the word conversation, what did it mean then, 400 years ago? More of lifestyle. When we hear conversation, it means what? We think talking. They're talking lifestyle. So here's 1 Peter 3. It tells the woman who is basically married to an unbelieving husband Let him be won over by your conversation without a word. If I take that literally, conversation without a word, what are you talking about?

But what we do is we become accustomed to the language and we say, okay, I know what that means. But in a sense we have to do a little bit of translating it to bring it into our century. The American Standard, which was translated about a century ago, is a little bit closer, but it's actually fairly old language. The, say, the New American Standard, New International, you know, those are more, you know, modern language type Bibles. Yeah?

The biggest tax that the King James only churches have against those is these are copyrighted, and if you're going to use it the way God wants it used, copyright should never stand in the way. And there is a place for that. I mean, there is a point for that, that those translations that are copyright, and not all of them are, but there are a lot that are, and that does create a problem. It does create a problem. Now, you have some of these, they're newer translations, but now you notice I've got quite a range here. The Living Bible and the Good News Bible, and there's actually a new Living Bible now, those are what we call paraphrase.

What they've done is they've made no effort to convey what was originally spoken. All the effort is, how do I get people to understand it here, now, easily? So it's easy to read. That's the plus. The downside of it is it is not good for study because you are so far disconnected from what the original language was trying to convey. You're letting somebody else interpret for you. Yes. Yes. Yes. That's right.

Frankly, and there are times in the Living Bible, I look at it and I say, that is not what was originally intended. There are times when it just flat out misses the point. So, you can get these Bibles, and if you want a quick read, like for storybook type stuff, go ahead and read them. But don't use them for study. And frankly, I would suggest, if you're doing side-by-side comparison to translations, don't even bother.

Because you've got apples and oranges. You've got one over here where they've already done the interpreting work, and you're trying to study it to interpret, and you're comparing it with something else that's literal. So you've got apples and oranges. They have an entirely different intent.

New International is probably a little closer, but there are places where it kind of takes liberties, and you can see it kind of moving away. There are certain places where I look at it and it just does not fit. And what they've done is they've said, okay, how do I convey this so that folks will understand it? But in the process, at times they've kind of made judgments that in my estimation they shouldn't have made.

The New American Standard and New King James and Net Bible are ones I would say if you're going to study and you're looking for a modern language Bible, those are probably some of the better translations to work with in most cases. Wiest is one that probably a lot of you haven't heard of. I've got one copy of it there.

What he does is sometimes wordy, but he'll go through and use very lengthy and carefully chosen words to convey the verb sense in the original Greek? Yeah. Have you read the more verb version? No, I haven't. Okay, it's actually English Scott, so you would think that the Archibald MacTavish is trying to tell you the story. Yeah, really, it's amazing the number of variations that we have in English. Some of them are pretty, you know, wildly free form.

But anyway, the point in doing this here, if you feel comfortable with the King James Version, that's fine. If you struggle with the older language, there's some, but for study purposes, I would stay over on this side. If all you're wanting to do is read as in a story, then the ones over here are fine. But, you know, when it says paraphrase or modern language Bible or something like that, Quite often, it's over on this end, and it's fine for just kind of casual, superficial reading. But if you're really wanting to understand and study, it's not the right stuff.

OK? Any questions on this? Yeah? I was thinking a great parallel to me is what's happened to the American South Pole. Yes. It's very similar to the same thing. Yes. Yes. Yes. We're letting somebody else tell us what it said. And what they're doing is not a very good job.

And that's my problem with it, too, is you end up with You look at things in the Constitution, you actually read through it and think about it, and you think, my heavens, what have we done? And it's the same thing with some of these translations over here. If you're looking at anything other than just sort of a storybook, it's like, boy, what have we lost here? We need to work ourselves over to this side because, frankly, this side is the side that goes along with studying.

Study to show yourself approved. or in the modern English, be diligent, but it really means the same thing. Be diligent to show yourself approved, rightly handling the word of truth. These here are kind of lazy. They're quick read, not good for study, but I think that's an excellent point. Our culture, in its drift to just kind of let somebody else handle it, we've lost something. What I would exhort is let's not lose it. Let's stand by what we can really study and what we can really learn from. Even though, frankly, it's going to take some work. But it's well worth it.

God thinks so. Okay? Let's pray. Lord, we do thank you for your most excellent word. And even though this morning was more of a kind of looking about it and looking at it instead of looking in it, It's still valuable, I think, Lord, just to keep perspective. We would ask that you would indeed draw our hearts and minds to the right perspective so that when we look at your word, Lord, we would be able to draw the riches, the nuggets of truth that are there within it. Thank you for every blessing that you've given us. In Jesus' name, amen.