“If I had the authority,” declared the leader of an evangelical parachurch empire, “I’d almost be ready to decree that we go back to the King James.” That in response to my having written here that, if I had the authority, everybody would use the Revised Standard Version. The sorry fact is that English-speaking Christians have largely lost a common biblical vocabulary as a consequence of the proliferation of translations””and of paraphrases passing as translations””over the last forty years. I am told that there are nearly two hundred English translations on the market now, and Bible printers keep churning out new ones, for there seems to be a near insatiable market. There are designer translations for teenagers, mothers, business people, speakers of ebonics (stereotyped black talk), and just about any other market niche or itch that one can imagine.
The result is that little or nothing can be taken for granted when it comes to the recognition of biblical passages or phrases. It is not exactly a matter of biblical illiteracy, for it would seem that millions are regularly reading the Bible, which is a very good thing. But there is little shared biblical language among Christians, and, predictably, ever fewer biblical references in the public culture. The last consequence is not entirely due to the multiplication of versions, of course, but that, one cannot help but believe, is part of it….
Thanks, Kendall, for calling attention to this classic piece by the ever astute Richard John Neuhaus. It’s a very perceptive analysis of a perennial problem that’s not going away. Indeed, if anything, the Babel-like proliferation of translations has only grown worse over the last 12 years since he wrote his lament. Furthermore, if even the Roman Catholic Church, with its far more centralized authority structure can’t seem to get its act together in this area, what is the likelihood that the hodge-podge assortment of Anglican groups known as the ACNA will ever be able to do so?
Let me simply call attention to two further problems that Neuhaus doesn’t take the time or space to address. First, at least when it comes to biblically-based Anglicans, there is the added complicating factor that the very canon of Scripture remains an unsettled issue among us. Personally, I’m disturbed (though hardly surprised) when I visit ACNA churches and find some evangelical Bible translation in the pews or being publicly used that totally lacks the important Deutero-canonical books (known to Protestants and low church Anglicans as “the Apocrypha”).
Second, there is the further problem of the proliferation of study Bibles, many of which are terribly misleading although widely used in conservative circles. It’s notable that there is such a thing as “The Catholic Study Bible” or “The Jewish Study Bible,” both of which are admirablly edited and contain study notes that reflect the highest standards of biblical scholarship. So do the New Interpreter’s Study Bible, the HarperCollins Study Bible, and the Oxford Annotated Study Bible, but they are all based on the NRSV, which has some severe flaws due to its trendy and PC-nature, as Neuhaus notes in passing.
Personally, I’d love to see some publisher, maybe the new publishing house started by the ACNA (Anglican House Pub.), produce “The Anglican Study Bible,” with a comparable set of high quality study notes (dream editors: Christopher Seitz for the OT and N. T. Wright for the NT), based on the ESV, including the Deutero-canonical books.
David Handy+
The ESV Study Bible is nicely done, but without deuter-canonical books, which is why I keep my old RSV close at hand and the OLD edition of The Interpreter’s Bible which is KJV and RSV. I had an oppty to use the new Interpreter’s Bible in the Nashotah House Library and am glad I have the old edition.
Oh, and one more translation for modern times, The Queen James Bible………want to guess the demographic?