We have already examined the following speech versions: Weymouth’s New Testament, The Moffatt Bible, The (Montgomery) New Testament in Modem English, the ASV and the RSV. These all leave much to be desired. Nor is the RSV, as it ought to be, such a great improvement over the ASV. In the interest of a good, sound, trustworthy modern speech version of the Bible, one is not necessarily likely to be produced simply by the head of the family taking up the Bible at the table and explaining the passages in the simple, everyday English that all in the family can understand. A father in the family devotions then could reword the Bible in a plain, conversational style appealing to his family. But that rewording would not necessarily state what the Bible really says. Take Luke 3:23f. Reword this thus—Jesus was about 30 years old when he began his public ministry. Jesus was known as the son of Joseph. Joseph’s father was Heli…—and you get into a peck of trouble! Also in rewording Matthew 27:52-53, one had better be very careful, and not come up with something like—Many…came back to life again. After Jesus’ resurrection, they left the cemetery and went into Jerusalem…—These modern renderings do not inform us, even give us an inkling of what the Bible really says. Could you paraphrase these texts so as to correctly state what it actually does say? Perhaps after some study and research on the text, you could. It is not easy to reword the Bible in everyday English, at the same time expressing the mind of the Spirit, the divine Author. But then with anything short of the latter, it would be unsafe to assume biblical truth is expressed.
The Living Bible (implying all others are dead?) was begun at the Epistle to the Romans, using the ASV as a basis. Yet it is anything but an accurate rephrasing of the ASV. As for accuracy in hewing to the line of the Old and New Testament texts, one would be far better off using the ASV (recall what we wrote about the ASV), not the LB. Take the rewording of Romans 1:32. It omits the judgment of God in favor of “death penalty.” In chapter 3:24, KJV, where we read, “being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,” is the following an acceptable explanation of these words? “Yet now God declares us ‘not guilty’ of offending him if we trust in Jesus Christ, who in his kindness freely takes away our sins.” Very far from it, as, I’m sure you will agree, it is an expression of rank Arminianistic conditional theology. The author admits, in a preface, “…when the Greek…is not clear (to whom?—RCH), then the theology of the translator is his guide…” But Scripture alone is “our guide,” and the determinator of our theology. We had better go back to the Scripture, where it is not so clear, study it more in depth, evaluate all the authorities, let the light of plain scripture shine on the more obscure, and interpret the latter in harmony with the former, not the other way around.
Everyone is familiar with “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated” (Rom. 9:13, KJV). But is the LB justified in making this, “I chose to bless Jacob, not Esau”? “Jacob have I loved” is very simply, not at all archaic, quite up to date, and is still what we call “everyday language.” The LB rendering, even at this point, is not all that helpful, not expressive of the truth in modern terminology, for modem man no longer understands even such simple biblical language as “to bless.”
The author of the LB formed his own publishing company, calling it Tyndale House, after William Tyndale, a father of the English Bible. In a quotation from Tyndale, placed before the preface (’71 ed.), it is recommended that “if…in any places…I have not attained the very sense of the tongue, or meaning of the Scripture, or have not given the right English word,” those with “higher gifts of grace to interpret the sense of Scripture,” are to “put to their hands to amend it, remembering that so is their duty to do so.” This would mean that you would be setting yourself the task of amending and correcting this whole “bible,” in fact, then, producing a “bible” of your own. You’d be getting into a maze and haze far from “the very sense of the meaning of Scripture.” How much easier, with greater dividends, to continue being a disciple (learner) of the KJV!
Some modern language versions of the Bible may make the Bible “come alive” to vast numbers of people. But is this what makes the Bible a “living book”? Hasn’t it always been a living book? Wasn’t it so to the Old Testament saints, later to the New Testament saints, then also to believers in the days of the Reformation? Does more modernization of the text only then outfit the Bible with a vital, vibrant message? Isn’t it a living book because it is the word of El Hay, the Living God (Ps. 84:2)? Isn’t even the KJV a living text because it lives in the counsel of God, in the living church, the divinely “turned on” church? Certainly it still lives in living men’s hearts (Ps. 119:11a). This has been true of me, of my grandfather and of my great-grandfather (a member of the RPDC, Reformed Protestant Dutch Church). I’m sure you can testify similarly.
Look at Genesis 2:9: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is made “the tree of Conscience, giving knowledge of Good and Bad,” which sounds like theosophy, and injects the author’s own personal opinion into the text. Certainly, his rendering of Genesis 6:1-4 is theosophistical. You’ll find that passage in LB interesting. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 5:3) is made, “Humble men are very fortunate…for the kingdom of heaven is given to them.” But more than humility is here. There is spiritual poverty, a knowledge of our spiritual destitution, our misery and need of the living God, in contrast to those who say,” I am rich! and in need of nothing!” Then, too, the word “fortunate” is unfortunate. The Moffatt Bible, adept at textual juggling and disappearing acts, does nevertheless retain the name “the Son of man.” But the LB waves its paraphrastic wand and makes Jesus’ own self-designative name to disappear from the gospels. Instead, “the Messiah,’’ or simply “I” appears. But Jesus had very good reasons for referring to himself as the Son of Man, rather than “the Messiah.” We need not go into these reasons now. But where both these names appear in one passage, it is very strange to find the former omitted, and changed to “I,” as in Matt. 16:13-16. Not only is John 3:13 made to say “Messiah,” instead of “Son of Man,” but also what none of us, I am sure, can believe it does say, viz., “For only I, the Messiah, have come to earth and will return to heaven again.”
One of the catechism questions in “The Essentials,” (Lesson III) is, “How do you explain Exodus 6:3?” The LB will not help you at this point. It reads, “I am Jehovah, the Almighty God, who appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob— though I did not reveal my name, Jehovah, to them.” How can that be the meaning when God revealed the name Jehovah to them at the same time He did the name Almighty God? (Gen. 17:1). Besides, from the beginning, God revealed the name Jehovah to the patriarchs (Gen. 4:26). At John 1:17, LB, we read. “For Moses gave us only (mind you!— RCH) the Law with its rigid demands and merciless justice, while Jesus Christ brought us loving forgiveness as well.” This is not the Word of God. John sets up no such false antithesis, but a unified connection between the promise through Moses and its fulfilment through Jesus Christ. But this is even farther from what God’s Word really says: “and as many as wanted eternal life believed.” Acts 13:48b. Eternal life is made to depend not on the sovereign will of God, but on the will of man. At Acts 4:27-28 the scripture is robbed of the great truth of God’s sovereign and eternal counsel and ordination of whatsoever comes to pass. The text is made to simply state that the Roman powers, all the Gentiles and the Israelites “won’t stop at anything you in your (God’s—RCH) wise power will let them do.” They do not will to stop at what God wills to let them do. What does that mean? That they can & will do what God will not let them do? Here both God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility are destroyed with one blow.
The ’71 ed. of the LB could be called the S.O.B. Bible as it, surprisingly, does have & thinks justifiable the crudity, “You son of a b–!” (I Sam. 20:30). Another appears in Isaiah 5:11, “you drunken bums!” The word virgin (and virginity, Lk. 2:36) is omitted from 12 verses: Mt. 25:1. 7, 11, Lk. 1:27 (only once, instead of twice); Ac. 21:9; I Cor. 7:25, 28, 34, 36, 37; II Cor. 11:2. It appears in Mt. 1:23. At Lk. 1:34 it is inserted where it does not exist. In this way the basis for the doctrine of the virgin birth is weakened. Appeal cannot be made to passages in support of a doctrine where a crucial word is omitted.
It becomes increasingly apparent that no one reading the LB can tell by doing so of what is a paraphrase. Nor does any paraphrase have the warrant, deliberately, or unintentionally, to change, conceal, lose or bury, either the original or the indispensable English text. We want to be sure we have not man’s but God’s Word.
(To be continued, D.V.)