Manuscript Families

Well, last time we began talking about New Testament manuscripts, how they were passed down from the earliest times, how we've come to hold them today, the copying of them, and how that process was prone to error because the people that copied them weren't inspired like the men who originally wrote the scriptures.

And there were a couple of questions last time that I'd like to come back and answer. I think it was Roger that asked if the copyists, the scribes, were professionals, people who were paid to do that, that did it as a job, or if it was just individuals.

And the answer is that there were some of both. As the church grew, I'll just quote for you Bruce Metzger, and he says, Because the number of Christians increased rapidly during the first centuries, many additional copies of the scriptures were sought by new converts and new churches.

As a result, speed of production sometimes outran accuracy of execution. These were people who said, I want a copy, and they would make one for themselves or their church. They weren't paid to do it, they just wanted a copy.

And so they were prone to mistakes. Others were paid to do it. Some would sit in a room together, and there would be one man at the front, and he would read the copy, and the others would write down what they heard.

And you can imagine that that adds a whole other area of possible mistakes. This guy hears one word, and this one hears another. Or this one spells it one way, and this one spells it another, and so you get differences that way.

But they were paid to do that. They were hired as scribes and worked that way. And so there were some of both. And then later in the fourth century, a lot of that transcribing, copying, was done in the monasteries.

Monks did it. And so they weren't really paid to do it, but that was part of their life, part of what they did every day. They copied the scriptures, and there were strict rules for them. It's a little bit humorous to read some of the rules and some of the penalties for breaking those rules that were laid out for the monks that copied them.

So there were some professionals and some that just did it on their own. And then there was a question about the Dead Sea Scrolls or a comment about the community at Qumran. Those were discovered, I believe, in the 40s.

Those manuscripts that were found there shed a lot of light on the Old Testament. Every book of the Old Testament is represented in the manuscripts that were found at Qumran except the book of Esther.

Not the entirety of every book, but parts of every book of the Old Testament except Esther. And they were the oldest manuscripts that we found of the Old Testament. And the remarkable thing about them was that they were very similar to the more recent manuscripts.

The tradition had been preserved very carefully. And so the Dead Sea Scrolls shed a lot of light on our Old Testament manuscripts. And we're going to press on today. And on the front of your handout, you have what we had on the back last week.

And then on the back is some new information that we'll try to get through today and wrap up our study today. In addition to talking about problems and mistakes that can arise when you copy text like we talked about last week, we also begin to look at manuscript families and then the Textus Receptus.

And we saw that that Textus Receptus that the King James Version of the Bible is based on came from a somewhat inferior manuscript tradition, that Byzantine family that are the latest manuscripts that we have.

And in some ways the least, or the ones with the most mistakes, glosses, smoothing over, and so on. I don't think we need to be troubled by that.

Don't forget about what we said last week, that even in the most divergent manuscripts, those that are the most different, we don't lose any cardinal doctrines of the faith. We don't lose any essential teaching of the Bible.

But also in the 1800s, various scholars begin to incorporate the better manuscripts into their Greek New Testaments. As they would write and publish Greek New Testaments, they wouldn't just stick with the Textus Receptus.

They took some from the Alexandrian family and some from the Western family and the Eastern family and they begin to incorporate those as they went. Well, if you're looking at a manuscript and you've got one here, and you've got one here, and this one says this, and this one says something a little bit different, how do you know which one is better?

How do you know which one is more accurate? Well, you go through a process called textual criticism. And you look at the two texts and there's criteria. I'm not going to tell you all those criteria today.

I don't think this is the place or the time for it. If you're interested, I can give you those principles sometime. But God has been very good to give experts to the church in textual criticism.

And they know all about these manuscripts. And which ones are better and which ones are worse, and how you can narrow it down to find the original reading, the one that's closest to the original. And that's quite a process when you've got over 5,000 manuscripts with portions of the New Testament on them.

You don't just have two manuscripts and you have to sort of choose between them. You've got 5,000. And so I'm thankful that God has given men to the church that are experts at this narrowing down to see the most accurate, most original manuscript.

And their labors pay huge dividends for us. They give us the most accurate Greek text available, and then translators take that Greek text and translate into English or whatever other language they're going to.

And so that's a good thing for us because it means that you don't have to be an expert in textual criticism. And then the translation part means you don't have to be an expert in Greek. And we have these Bibles that are reliable, that we can indeed say are the Word of God, that have come to us even in our own language.

So when a Greek New Testament then is published, it contains what the editors and their experts in textual criticism, what they think is the most accurate reading of the Greek.

And they put that up at the top of the page. Here's the text. It's just like your New Testament except it's written in Greek. They also, down at the bottom of the page, put alternate readings.

Here's one that a different manuscript has, and they give you the manuscript evidence for what's up here and for the alternate reading. And so if you question what's up here, you can look at the manuscripts, and you can do the textual criticism yourself and make your own call.

You can see if you think they've got the most original, the most accurate translation. We also have a very helpful book that Bruce Metzger wrote.

He's one of the men on the... And it's not just one guy doing this. There's a committee of people that look at this, they study it, and they talk together, and they figure out what's the most original. One of those guys on that committee is Bruce Metzger.

We've quoted from him. And he gives us this book, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. And if you want to know why they chose this reading over this one, he explains the process the committee went through, their thought process.

He said certain members of the committee thought this, and others thought this, and we came to a consensus that this was the best reading for this text. So this is helpful to figure out how they arrived at which was the best, the most original reading as they did their work.

So on your sheet here, we have some examples of differences. Differences in the manuscript tradition that make their way into the translations that we have.

And I'm using the King James Version as a representative that followed the Textus Receptus, just one manuscript tradition. And then the NIV is a representative of modern translations that have followed a broader manuscript tradition.

Most of the differences are minor ones. The change of a letter here or there, slight wording difference. Most of them have very little significance for interpreting the text.

Others are slightly more significant, like Romans 10 and verse 17, which is on your sheet there. The King James Version, based on that Byzantine tradition, has, so then faith comes by hearing, excuse me, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.

The NIV, down at the end of that verse, the message is heard through the Word of Christ. So, one manuscript tradition has the Word of God, and the other one has the Word of Christ.

Well, these experts in textual criticism look, and the better manuscript evidence is with the Word of Christ. And I'm not going to show you all of the manuscript evidence today, but that's what they've determined, and I would agree, is the better reading.

And so, most modern translations go with the Word of Christ in that case. So, it's just one word that's different. And they've made that choice for us. Jim. It means that the New King James is based on the Textus Receptus.

It's in the line of the King James Version. They didn't just start with the King James. follow it all the way back to the Greek manuscript. And that's what they use to work on. But we'll talk about that section in a minute here.

So, some examples are relatively minor, just a word here or there. Other times, there's a whole verse that's included in some manuscripts and not included in others. We talked about that back at the very beginning, just asking the question.

An example is Acts 8 and verse 37. It's Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch and most modern translations don't have verse 37. If you're reading along in the King James and we're reading along in the NIV, we skip it and you go, oh, they skipped verse 37.

Well, that's because the Textus Receptus has it, but these other manuscript traditions do not. Again, I think that the NIV gets it right in leaving that verse out and omitting it.

It appears to be a fairly early edition. You find it in old manuscripts, but it might have been part of an oral tradition that was added in.

A lot of times, you find it written in the margin of manuscripts, sometimes with an asterisk that indicates the scribe didn't really think that it should be included, but the copy he was working with had it.

But the best manuscripts did not have it, so likely should be omitted. And so, in the NIV, you'll find it printed down in the footnotes. And then there are two cases where there's an entire passage that's in question.

And this is the exception rather than the rule. There's these two instances. One is John 7, 53 through 8, 11. That's the account of Jesus and the adulterous woman where he stoops and writes in the sand and says, he who is without sin should cast the first stone.

That is not in the best and in the earliest manuscripts. Neither is the ending of the Gospel of Mark, Mark 6, 16 verses 9 through 20.

You'll find them printed in the NIV, other translations with a note that they're not found in the best manuscripts. And if you go back and you look at it, again, they're fairly early editions.

They're old, possibly, again, oral tradition. It didn't actually make it into the writing of Mark and John, but someone thought it should be in there and was added a little bit later.

So most Bibles include them because they're orthodox. There's nothing dangerous in them. They are old readings, but most likely not original.

And as you do that textual criticism, you begin to see that more clearly. They also don't typically fit the style and vocabulary of John or Mark.

And that also makes you, it's not conclusive by itself, but it makes you wonder whether or not they wrote those sections. Any questions about some of these various readings?

Jim? Is there anything lost in translation from Greek to English as far as wording or is there any loss at all? Always. When you go from any language to any other language, you always lose something in translation.

And so you will lose something when you go from Greek or Hebrew to English. We'll talk a little bit about that when we get down to translation philosophies. But yeah, it's very difficult to have a precise translation because languages are so different in the way they're structured and vocabulary and so on.

Any other questions? Dennis? I just wondered why you didn't include 1 John 5, 7, and 8 because that one in the discussion of the text, 1 John 5, 7, and 8 I think it's quite important because in the beginning of the, let's say, the New Testament era and even in the early church, they discussed the Trinity.

It was discussed quite often. And there was never any mention of 1 John 5, 7, and 8 in those discussions of what life would happen when we back in those discussions on the Trinity and how that might be important.

It is important and that's another one of the examples. I just selected some examples, not trying to find all of the ones with significance.

It's certainly one we could talk about. I think the New Testament clearly teaches the Trinity elsewhere and you don't have to have that one to have the Trinity and don't, again, think that it's original.

But I was just selecting a few examples and not all of the significant ones. The point I'm trying to make is at that time, if you're discussing something, you can bring the argument that the text is never mentioned.

Right. Right. Yeah, that's a helpful gauge by which to see if something is original. Was it talked about by the early church fathers?

Here's a text that supports the Trinity, but no early church fathers cited it when they're talking about the Trinity. And so, it would be a really good one if it was original, but they didn't talk about it, so it's likely that it's not original.

That's a very helpful way to consider when you're looking at all the tradition.

Roger? Roger? may Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's very helpful. It's something we tried to emphasize a couple of weeks ago, that the providence of God is superintending over all of this.

The transmission, the translation, all of it bringing to us a reliable Word of God that we hold in our hands. And the point of looking at these things is not to get anyone to question your Bible, oh, there were mistakes in transmission, but rather just to explain why there are differences between various translations, why my Bible might read a little bit differently than yours.

But you're absolutely right that God is sovereign over the entire process, and He's preserved His Word, and we can praise Him for it. Amen. At the bottom of the front side of the sheet there, which we also had last week but didn't get to, we have manuscript traditions and modern versions.

That's mostly for you to look at. You can see where the translations have come from, what manuscript families you can trace them back to. We talked about the Textus Receptus last week, and you get the King James Version from that in 1611, and then later in 1982, the New King James Version, which updated some of the language, some of the archaic expressions, but still used the Textus Receptus as its basis for the Greek.

This is oversimplified. It's not to scale. You can see that it goes from with the Alexandria, and that's the earliest, all the way down to the ESV in 2001.

We're covering a broad span of time there, but the Nestle-Elan text, that's a Greek text of the New Testament. It's undergone 27 editions. You can see from 1898 to 1993.

And what they did, they took the Textus Receptus that Erasmus published and Beza and others, but then they incorporated other manuscripts from the Eastern, the Western, the Alexandrian families. There were other Greek New Testaments before this that started to do that.

I'm just giving you the most common one there. And this is the Nestle-Elan text, the 27th edition. This is the most recent one that's available.

From their Greek New Testaments have come various translations. The American Standard Version in 1901, and you see it feeds off the King James as well.

It tried to stand in that same tradition as the King James of a faithful translation. And then that split off into the New American Standard. That's the Bible I grew up with, that I used for all my childhood and college.

And then the RSV in 1952 and 71, New American Standard was updated back in 95, and then the English Standard Version came out in 2001.

Those all put themselves directly in the line of the King James, but also the best manuscript evidence, which is why you get both there. The NIV in 1978, over on the left side of your paper, does not line itself up with the King James like the other ones do.

It's a newer translation. It keeps some of the spelling of the names from the King James Version, and claims... It makes a reference to earlier translations, but it's essentially new without going back to any others.

It says, The committee also sought to preserve some measure of continuity with the long tradition of translating scriptures into English. So you could draw an arrow from some of these other English translations to the NIV, but it's a fairly stand-alone, very good English translation.

So yeah, you don't just trace the ESV back to the RSV. They didn't just start with the RSV. They went all the way back to the Greek. So you follow those lines all the way back to the originals.

Any questions on manuscript families or the translations that come from them? Pastor John. I understand the difference between the NIV and the ASV and the NAS and so on.

If the NIV took account of all the different families, including the Texas Receptors, the Byzantine, so did the ASV and NAS. Right?

Right. They just claim to stand in the line of the King James tradition of translating the scriptures, and the NIV does not. It doesn't make that claim in the preface.

Do you think that they would give more weight to the Texas Receptors than the NIV words? I think they would give more weight to the way that the King James translated into English. Some of the...

More of the translation style than the manuscripts. If you read the preface, you pick up a New American Standard and read the preface, or an ESV and read the preface, it says, We stand in the line of the King James Version.

And if you read the NIV, it doesn't. And it's talking about how it's translated the Greek into English, I think. Roger. Once in a while, if you read the book, you're quoting the authorized version.

Was that the same as King James? Another name for the King James Version, the authorized version of the King James Version. That's right. Dale. So when we're talking update, what is the update?

Is it basically translational, or is it just updated word? For the New American Standard? Well, yeah, New American Standard. And for going from the RSV to the ESV.

The New American Standard just changed some things. They tried to make it more readable. The New American Standard was a pretty wooden, literal translation.

It didn't flow real well. And it tries to make it a better literary translation that reads better. The New American Standard kept thee and thou with reference to God, but not anybody else.

The New American Standard update dropped that, just going with you, because the Greek doesn't have a special pronoun for God.

It uses the same ones that it does for anybody else. So there were updates like that, a few translation differences. The ESV is pretty radically different from the RSV.

It stands in that tradition, but it was in a lot of ways a new translation, whereas the New American Standard update was, it's pretty similar to the New American Standard.

Okay? Let's do some translation philosophy quickly. I hope we've got a bit of an understanding about why various Bible translations differ in their translation and wording at places.

It's because there's various readings in the manuscript tradition. If that's the case, why are all these modern translations that are based on the same manuscript tradition, like the NIV, the New American Standard, the ESV, why do they have differences?

They're all based on the same manuscript tradition. So we shouldn't get too much variance because of manuscript differences. Why are they different? Well, this is the last subject we'll cover.

It's because of a difference between the philosophy of their translation, why they translated or how they translated. There's two basic philosophies of translation, and there's variations on these and ranges between them, but there's essentially two.

And those two philosophies are essentially literal and dynamic equivalent. So when a translation committee sits down to create a translation of the Bible, they make a conscientious decision about how they're going to do that.

And whichever philosophy they follow has significance for really everything about that translation. I'm just going to define them for you and then give you a few examples of the differences that you get if you go with an essentially literal translation or a dynamic equivalent.

Essentially literal. These translations seek to be word-for-word translations as much as possible. It comes with the understanding that there's differences in word order.

That's what you get when you go from Greek or Hebrew to English. The languages are different. So word order is going to be different. Grammar is going to be different. Syntax will be different. And so you're not always going to be able to get an exact word-for-word representation.

There's not always a one-to-one correspondence for some vocabulary as you go from one language to the other. And that's why it's called essentially literal. It's not just literal, word-for-word, because that's impossible.

But essentially literal. It tries to stick as close to the Greek or Hebrew text as possible. Believing that God inspired the words that those men wrote.

It tries to be faithful to the words and translating them. Examples are the King James Version, the New American Standard, the RSV, that's the Revised Standard Version, and the ESV, which is the English Standard Version.

I'll be using the ESV as a representative example of essentially literal translations. The ESV, I've got a quote there from the ESV preface, and they talk about their philosophy of translation.

I'm not going to take the time to read that. Their focus is on as close to word-for-word as possible while retaining literary excellence. Then you've got the dynamic equivalent.

This is more of a thought-for-thought translation. Instead of word-for-word, you go thought-for-thought. It tries to capture the meaning of the original language in an equivalent expression in the new language.

Examples are the NIV, the New Living Translation, and a whole host of others. And there I've got a quote from the NIV preface. And again, you can read that.

Just notice the second line, the translation. Well, the first concern of the translators has been the accuracy of the translation and its fidelity to the thought of the biblical writers.

And I added that emphasis for thought. Again, it's a thought-for-thought kind of translation. The literal, or essentially literal, more of a word-for-word translation.

Now, within a dynamic equivalent, there's varying levels of how dynamic it gets. Some stick very close to the wording of the original text like the NIV does. Others get pretty generous or loose with their translation, trying to really modernize the language, and sometimes it gets a little fuzzy.

So there's ranges within this dynamic equivalent. The NIV is by far the most conservative, the most, I think, the most accurate and faithful among dynamic equivalent translations.

So let's take a minute and compare the two, see what you get when you go for a word-for-word versus a thought-for-thought. And the main purpose here is to show what kind of differences you get between those two philosophies.

And what I'm going to tell you here, I'm going to tell you up front, is my opinion. You'll see as we go that I tend to favor one of these translation philosophies. That's my opinion. It's not the position of the church.

It's just what I think, what I prefer. And I don't think less of anybody that has a different position than me. So when you compare and contrast, think about other areas of life before you think about the Bible.

Do you prefer word-for-word or thought-for-thought? If you have an eyewitness account of a man who saw one of the members of your family murdered, do you want the thought of what he said or do you want his exact words in describing what happened when he saw your family member murdered from an eyewitness?

Do you want your spouse to hear the thoughts of your wedding vows or the exact words that you vowed to them? Do you men want your wife to follow sort of the thought of the recipe or the exact wording of the recipe when they're making your dinner?

Some are very good at just going with the thought and getting something good and others need right exactly. But one author says precise wording is considered highly important in many contexts of life.

So when you get a dynamic equivalent sometimes, and this is really true with any translation, you get interpretation, not just translation.

You have to make decisions that are involved in interpretation. Just by definition, you do that a little bit more often with a dynamic equivalent. The translator has to decide what the author meant by the words and then give you the thought of it in your language instead of just translating the words that the author wrote.

Let's look at some examples to see what we're talking about. Romans 1.5. You have it there in the ESV and the NIV. Romans 1.5. Through whom we've received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations.

And that obedience of faith, that's the key phrase that we're looking at. That's essentially as it is in the Greek, obedience of faith. You come over to a dynamic equivalent in the NIV and you have grace and apostleship to call people from all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.

And when you get obedience of faith in the Greek, that could mean one of two things. It could mean the obedience which is faith. The act of obedience is the act of faith. Or it could mean, as the NIV translates it, the obedience that comes from faith.

If you have faith in Christ, then your life of obedience will look like this. Obedience will come out of that faith. And so, you see how the NIV has taken what they believe to be Paul's thought and translated it, whereas the ESV gives you just the words that are there in the Greek.

Not my purpose to decide which of those is right today. I don't want to interpret that text. I just want to show you that the NIV makes a, or a dynamic equivalent, makes a translation or an interpretation choice for us.

And essentially literal leaves it for us to have a look at and decide. Perhaps leaving it ambiguous, maybe Paul meant had both in mind when he wrote the obedience of faith.

So there's one example of where you get a thought versus a word for word translation. The Lord of hosts. 1 Samuel 17 and verse 5.

Often in the Old Testament you find the words the Lord of hosts or the God of hosts. And the NIV has chosen to translate that Lord Almighty and God Almighty. They give you the thought of it.

And the thought is right. And it says in the preface to the NIV, because for most readers today the phrase the Lord of hosts and God of hosts have little meaning. This version renders them the Lord Almighty and God Almighty.

That's helpful. We get a picture of who God is and Almighty. That means more to me than the Lord of hosts. But maybe it would help us to get familiar with what Lord of hosts means and get some of that richness out of it.

And the NIV preface is great. It goes on and explains it. It says, These renderings convey the sense of the Hebrew, namely, He who is sovereign over all the hosts or powers in heaven and on earth, especially over the hosts, the armies of Israel.

And I think that meaning is a little richer when you get that Lord of hosts. But the NIV captures it rightly with Lord Almighty. And so you come to 1 Samuel 17.5 and David is coming before Goliath.

You come to me with sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel whom you have defied. I think that's rich.

I think that makes Goliath pause. He's got the God of the hosts of heaven, the host of Israel. He's the Lord of hosts. He's not just a mighty God. He's the Almighty God.

He's Lord over all these things. And so you see how they take the thoughts and give you the thought in the NIV, the words of it in the ESV. Romans 8 and verse 9.

The NIV chose not to translate in most places in the New Testament the Greek word for flesh is flesh, but instead is sinful nature. There are Greek words to use to say sinful nature.

And I think Paul could have done that. That's obscured a bit when the word isn't just translated, but it gives us the thought of it. The NIV does footnote this. You'll find the word flesh down in the footnotes.

So Romans 8 and 9 you get in the ESV, you however are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if in fact the spirit of God dwells in you. And then the NIV, you however are controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the spirit, if the spirit of God lives in you.

The other thing I think you lose there is you lose that contrast between flesh and spirit. The sinful nature and spirit, you don't see the contrast that Paul's making between flesh and spirit.

But you do get the thought, at least in that instance. And then one other example, the last two go together.

In Paul's letter to the Ephesians, he repeatedly uses the metaphor of walking walking to describe the Christian life. He talks about your walk, the way you once walked and the way that you now walk.

And that fits with the New Testament picture of Christianity as the way or a path or a road down which Christians are to walk following their Savior Jesus.

And so Ephesians 1, or excuse me, Ephesians 2, the first two verses in the ESV, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. Following the course of this world, the prince of the power of the air, and so on.

The NIV you get in which you used to live. Similarly in chapter 5 and verse 8, For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of the light.

And then the dynamic equivalent gives you live as children of the light. Now does the NIV get the thought of it right?

Absolutely. Walking is a metaphor for living. And so you don't lose the meaning of the text here. But I think it misses the connection with walking the way of Christianity of the rest of the New Testament.

It misses a little of the richness of walking in the light as opposed to walking in the dark. That's a vivid picture to me. When I walk in the dark, I stumble over things, I fall. But if I walk in the light, I'm able to see what's in front of me.

If you just go live in the dark and light, you lose just a little bit of that. Again, the thoughts on which is better, a dynamic equivalent or essentially literal, are my opinion, not that of the church here.

You can probably tell I would prefer an essentially literal translation. I believe that there's a place for dynamic equivalence, and I believe that the NIV is an excellent dynamic equivalent and a reliable translation.

With these examples, I don't mean to imply that it is not. Some people prefer dynamic equivalent because they're more readable. Generally speaking, that is true, especially with the New American Standard, and it took me a long time to admit this because the New American Standard was my Bible growing up, and I thought, no, it's readable, it's good.

And somebody said, Aaron, it's not. It's wooden, it's choppy, it's... One of my professors called it Bibleese. And the more I read it, and the more I read other translations, I began to see, you know what?

It is... This isn't how people write anymore. It's not how they read anymore. That was hard for me. But you don't... I don't think you have to sacrifice readability. The English Standard version and the New American Standard update are very readable and very...

have a high literary quality to them, and are still essentially literal. Perhaps not as readable as the NIV, but I think close.

But that's another reason some would prefer a dynamic equivalent. It's easier to read and understand. Okay, any questions on translation philosophy?

Roger. Sure.

Sure. And we should say there's a vast difference between the Amplified Bible and the NIV. The NIV is very close to a literal translation. It's, in my opinion, the best of the dynamic equivalents.

But right, the further away you get, the more fuzzy things get. That's very true. Any other questions? Jim? Your thoughts on the whole mission of Acts 1837 after you got time?

I think according to the best manuscripts, it doesn't belong in the text. Bruce Metzger's commentary on the Greek New Testament is helpful on it.

He says, he thinks it's clearly a later edition. He says, perhaps due to the feeling that Philip would not have baptized the Ethiopian without securing a confession of faith which needed to be expressed in the narrative.

We want him to have that confession of faith before he's baptized. That's a possible reason that it would have been added later, but I think it's probably not original. Ed?

Okay. Paraphrase is the... It's a form of dynamic equivalent in a lot of ways.

It's giving you the thought, a thought-for-thought translation in understandable, readable words in the target language that you're translating to.

I think they're helpful to get a picture of the text, but I'd rather have something more literal. I think one of the dangers of paraphrasing is it's a theology that the person is paraphrasing.

Yes. Yeah, and that's the danger if you get too far into a dynamic equivalent or paraphrasing. And I should emphasize again, the NIV is not a paraphrase.

That's a dynamic equivalent. That's true with any translation, though. An essentially literal translation is going to reflect the theological bias of its translators.

Isn't a paraphrase often be an English translation? Is that right? That could be. I'm not... I didn't... I don't know.

Does anybody have a paraphrased Bible that can look in the preface? Because I'm not sure. That's not something I looked at. What? I just wanted to mention that. That's my understanding that the paraphrase doesn't necessarily go back to the regional language.

Okay. The translation of it. Okay. Modernization. I'm going to play the face-to-face. I'm going to start another school.

Another translation. Okay. That's helpful. Yeah. A good distinction. And as you said, not all translations do it, even the King James. Yeah. And I think of the negative that they use, the strong negative that they use in the King James Version is God forbid.

And indeed is a strong... In their day, that was a, I guess, a thing. It was a paraphrase. Sure. Instead of the Greek making us May it never be.

Yeah, every, you know, my beloved New American Standard does it. Yeah, they all have to do some form of dynamic equivalence. And that's why it's an essentially literal translation. You have no such thing as a literal translation. Right. Mike.

I've always thought, reading someone's quite a time notes, it's very subjective. And it's really reassuring to know that in this translation we're talking about, our context is different.

Very good. Alright, well, we've come a long way in a short amount of time and I thank you for making the journey with me through the inspiration, the writing, the acceptance, the collection, the transmission, and the translation of God's Word. We've touched on all those things.

I've got lots to read if anybody wants more information on any of them, but let's finish today by being grateful to God that He's preserved His Word. That we have a Bible in our hands that we can read.

And that it's faithful to the original text. And know that we're privileged people. Not everybody in the world has that. They don't have the Bible in their own language.

And so with that privilege that God has given us, comes responsibility. To do much is given, much is required. We've got this faithful Word of God in our hands. Well, we better make good use of it.

Let's read it. Let's study it. Let's learn from it. Let's profit from it. Let's hear it taught and preached. And soak up as much of it as we can. Because it is the Word of God to men.

So let's be faithful. Faithful students of that Word. Thank you. We're dismissed. And we're dismissed.