Lost in translation - What does the Bible say?:

 In a visit home earlier this year, Mum asked if I knew about this 'new translation' - a few of her facebook friends had started to share Bible quotes from something called The Passion Translation (TPT), and she felt uncertain about  how things were worded.  I looked up their website and examples they showed of their version compared to others and we agreed that the TPT seemed to add bits that were not in any of the mainstream translations and seemed very skewed. 

Well time passes and I didn't hear of this version again, until this week.  I often listen to either an audiobook or a youtube video/podcast walking the dog or now in the car (since new to me car can play from my phone).  An internet 'rabbit hole' - a reference to Alice in Wonderland - can lead to unexpected places, and so I stumbled on posts about the same translation that my mum had mentioned months earlier.

(I started on one youtube video, then the playlist, but there is a combined collection here which includes the the written papers from the professional translators on their books of expertise, as well as the video interviews - which include clips from public sermons by TPT the author)

So with pricked up ears I started to listen. and various alarm bells rang loudly -

1. The author Brian Simmonds (an American preacher) claims that he had a visitation by Christ commissioning him to write, and he named the work after 'an angel named Passion', who looks after his ministry.  (clips then listen on to a translator/scholar's summary)

2. He claims that this is the most true translation, and with angelic help he has been given divine inspiration to allow him without language expertise to have 'downloads' from God about the meaning. (including God hiding meanings) 

3. He claims to have had revealed to him specific hidden secrets from the text that have not been available to readers and translators over the past 2000 years.  (first few minutes and then 16min 33sec)

4. He claims to be more true because he uses the 'Aramaic texts' and that Jesus spoke Aramaic. However scholarship is clear that that the books of the New Testament began in Greek. Whilst the writers may have had access to sources in Aramaic, the books we now have were in Greek - from having to explain the Aramaic terms included and playing with language, ( Eloi to Elijah at crucifixion; the pun in Greek in John 3 conversation with Nicodemus, that only works in Greek).

There are Biblical texts in Aramaic - eg parts of Daniel - which shows how this is not as old as claimed  since Aramaic was a later development than Hebrew. (Imagine modern English appearing in Chaucer)  But there is no 'original' Aramaic new testament.(see here re Ephesians) Rather the Greek was translated into a form of Aramaic and found in later Syrian texts, later than our earliest manuscripts in Greek.
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However we approach the Biblical texts, whether as those who see it as infallible, or those who see the hands of editors and reflections, there is still a core transmission. Generally modern translations use committees of scholars, who can be a check and balance to how the final version emerges.  There are paraphrases - be it The Living Bible or The Message - these are openly admitted to be such. Apparently Peterson did not want his reworking to have verse markers as he did not want to imply equality with the translations, but as something that makes them think.

In contrast The Passion Translation - despite expert translators saying it is even more creative than other paraphrases - claims for itself a direct, perfect for today,  revealing secrets from God for this age and should be people's primary Bible for study. link

Yet this Passion Translation is endorsed by big-crowd gathering preachers in certain corners of American Christianity. And it seems is gradually appearing in British contexts.

There is no translation that is free from interpretation; but this is interpretation claiming to be a translation, and claiming singular insights and special knowledge hidden to the rest of us over centuries. 

Whenever I hear - 'I have the only and best Word of God', then my instinct is to run. Whilst we each value our understanding of the Bible, most of us acknowledge that we can only see 'through the glass darkly' and that we have much to learn or relearn. This is why I preach and talk about asking questions, thinking about our faith, and comparing different views in forming our own.

 

Faith and politics part 5: when belief faces covid

The vaccines 

Rather than celebrating a major combined scientific achievement we see the lack of trust in science combine with growing strength of belief that ‘They’ are out to get us.  Whether the religious claim that the vaccine is ‘the mark of the beast’, and closing buildings in lockdown was anti Christian persecution; or the New World Order cabal that Hilary Clinton was accused of being part of when Trump was campaigning 2016; or Bill Gates and the microchip or nanobots.  Lack of understanding of science leads to confused ideas about the vaccine changing DNA.   No no no it doesn’t.

The vaccine uses messenger RNA technology. RNA is not DNA. DNA is the master copy, RNA is a print out to take out to the bits of the cell that use it to assemble whatever is needed.   The mRNA in the vaccine is a delivery system to give us the code for the protein spike of covid 19, not the illness bit of the virus but just a landmark. The idea is that the mRNA of the protein will mean our body briefly makes some of this inactive landmark until the mRNA breaks down.   The Immune system will recognise the protein as foreign, and create antibodies to attack them and break them down. The end result is an immune system that is primed with antibodies ready if they face the virus, whilst the vaccine mRNA and the proteins made using it are both metabolised out of your body.  Some of the symptoms of an immune response to something foreign – soreness at the area, inflammation etc can occur as the system learns to make the antibodies. Same as with other vaccines – it is symptoms of your defence system acting, not of the illness itself.  Yes you can get covid after vaccine – but your immunity has a head start so less dangerous.

Vaccine take up in the UK in 70% double jabbed and 40% boosted, with 96% for adults.

In US it varies state to state from 78% to less than 50% in 4 states, and half the states are less than 60% vaccinated. (at late Jan 2022 and does not account to county wide variations)

Vaccines work for individuals but also as the ‘herd’ – when enough are vaccinated there becomes a shortage of places for the virus to reproduce.  When the herd immunity levels are reached they offer protection for those who for medical reasons can’t have the vaccine themselves, and cut the recirculation of the illness. 

The mix of trends in parts of the US population do have impacts on the lives of others, not just in rejecting the herd effect, but also where alternative ‘cures’ and ‘protections’ are marketed some of which may be dangerous in themselves. Strange how those who claim the vaccine is untested experimentation, are happy to buy actually untested snake oil solutions.  Then there is the aggression towards medical professionals, retail workers enforcing mask mandates, and death threats to Dr Fauci  ( America’s Dr Whitty ).   And calls for conspiracy believers to dominate elected school boards and other local democracies with their anti science extreme right views.

I am on the left, medical care and welfare safety nets for the poor and the rich can afford to pay more tax and not see any dent in their wealth; others are conservative and see different ways to structure society. We are in a democracy and I support whatever you chose to vote for if you have carefully considered the party policies. No single party will be the perfect fit.  However the extreme right wing is a different matter, it trades in hate for minorities, and feed on the insecurities of people who have lost trust in normal society, rising conspiracies make fruitful recruiting grounds for these extremists. And the idea of them gaining dominance in any place is scary to me, especially somewhere as large and influential as America.

So between 6 day creationism,  conspiracies inc flat earthers, to anti vaxxers, these have become more than just personal belief or choice but something that has real world dangers in our covid world. Effects that will follow us post covid across world politics, as well as the impact on individuals. 

Faith and politics part 4: Covid conspiracy crisis

 

Covid control conspiracy crisis

The majority of the world population when faced with Covid had grown up with every advancing medical science. Just a hundred years ago before antibiotics, when so many conditions could not be ‘cured’ only nursed people would be astonished to look forward to hospitals and medicine today. Meanwhile science and technology opened up so many things that we (at least in the richest countries) could barely imagine living without. 

I don’t like the idea of dividing populations into generations (I am a late Gen x-er apparently), the post war generations, baby boomers, whilst fearful of the abuse of science (nuclear bombs) largely saw science as positive and hopeful, that it will in time have all the answers. In the move away from religion was there a trend to see science as the new faith?

Well in the new millennium doubt came into the faith in science. We started to wonder more often whether what can be done should be done.  Not that the question was never asked before, but the voices got louder. At the same time we face the limits of science and medicine – antibiotic resistance, few answers for the dementia that more people live long enough to develop – and the implications of our previous technologies on the climate.

So now we move on from the proclamations that ‘God is dead’ to ‘Science is playing God’ and adverts that used to see someone in a lab coat as reassuring to a mindset that scientists are playing with fire and not to be trusted.

Enter a pandemic and a time when there is a need to follow guidance, and listen to the science. 2020 populations are used to deciding for themselves, and whilst most of us may follow the guidance as our choice to care for the community and limit the spread etc, others rebel against anything. This is magnified in the USA where the faith related anti-science was already more widespread, and then the vaccines…

Faith and politics part 3 : Flat earth and other theories

 

Flat Earthers and beyond

Yes this view is making a comeback - despite the earth as a globe being proposed centuries before Christ –an idea proposed by Pythagoras (6^th century BC) and affirmed by Plato (4^th century BC) and Aristotle suggested empirical evidence. Whilst around 240 BC the Greek Eratosthenes made a very accurate estimate of the circumference of the earth, by comparing shadows in different cities.

I confess that I was surprised about how early this understanding was, in my imagination it was a medieval insight linked to Copernicus – but it seems his addition was about the planets circling around the sun rather than Earth being the centre of the universe. The globe earth was well established among the learned and through the Middle Ages the churches and emerging universities took a globe world as a given fact.

It was in the 19^th century that stories arose that claimed the middle Ages European view was of a flat earth. And it was linked to the development of the myth of conflict between faith and science. In Britain Samuel Rowbotham (1816–1885) published theories of a flat earth and was a charismatic speaker. Others took up the baton in the years that followed. Things subsided although in 1956 The International Flat Earth Research Society was formed, in the face of the space race and images from orbit the claims of conspiracy and deception began.  In was under new leadership in the 1970s that the membership of the society grew to several thousand. Decline in the 1990s has been followed by another resurrection in the internet age with youtube channels focused on flat earth theories – fed by and feeding into to the rise of both anti science and anti government worldviews.

Of course the number of those committed to the flat earth viewpoint will still be small, more widely though the rate of conspiracy believers seem to be higher, with QAnon as a movement that seemingly binds together a wide range of different groups that were once seen as extreme. And when a former president makes unsubstantiated claims of massive voter fraud, and followers storm Congress, then this conspiracy becomes widely accepted and encouraged by key right wing communicators, and invites people into other conspiracies – especially in the uncertainty of covid times.  

Faith and politics part2 : Creationism to covid anti-vaxxers

 

So what does it matter if a small group of people spend their lives gathering donations to promote unworkable theories of how the laws of physics and biology can fit their need to prove a 6 day creation?   If it was just about that I would live and let live – people are free to believe and interpret their faith however they wish to – until it becomes harmful to others.

The climate in the American Bible Belt has become very literal in its expression of faith, here they have campaigns seeking to teach creationism in science classes, or even to have evolution taken out, here is the heart of Christian home school curricula that reduce science and claim that poetic language in various parts of the Bible are claims to scientific fact. 

The same people who promote creationism as the only valid Christian view of the beginnings of life, are part of the Moral Majority, the Religious Right – the process by which evangelical Christians have been recruited into co-dependency with the Republican party.   A journey that has led many of them to see Donald Trump as almost messianic, despite much in his lifestyle that would be condemned by their moral values. Meanwhile any Democrat is evil, despite Biden being in church much more often than Trump ever would – but then Biden is Catholic and many of them don’t consider catholics as part of their faith.

The attack on Evolution has morphed into a general anti science stance, enforcing the idea that scientists are trying to edit out God, and that science and faith are incompatible.  Science goes back to prechristian thinkers, whilst a lot of mathematics and astronomy was advanced by Islamic scholars whilst Christendom was said to be in the ‘Dark Ages’.   Time moved on and much of scientific study for centuries was linked to the monasteries – this people set aside from regular labour in the fields, more educated, scribes of the ancient Greek texts preserved by the Islamic scholars, and the desire to seek out more understanding of God’s creation – the world around them.  The idea that science is at war with faith is relatively recent, and yes Darwin’s theory was a landmark in that, though Darwin was a man of Christian faith.

So parts of the church responded by proclaiming that evolution and the geology of an ancient earth could not be true, leading them to cling more and more to a literal view of the earliest stories of the Bible.  They became sceptical of science, whilst happy to benefit from uncontroversial aspects -computers, internet, medical progress. This contradictory mindset has been ripe for those rebelling against the science of these Covid times – the anti vaxxers who protest against even others getting the jab; the anti maskers who complain that their rights are being infringed; the church leaders who see requests to avoid gathering in crowds as persecution from the atheist scientist cabal.

Christian literalism has contributed to situations where people are told what to believe, taught to fear science and to expect persecution from the big bad world. Leading to a context where to some it is seen as Christian to defy the scientific advice about covid. - leading to huge variations in state % of vaccinations. Okay no authority or country has had a perfect response to the pandemic, we all have to consider what is best at any point in this journey, and I am sure that hindsight will judge the flaws. However where vast parts of a population have already been conditioned to see science as bad, as anti-christian, then the ability of any authority to seek co-operation in protecting lives and limiting the spread of illness is neutered. This is what we see in the extreme parts of American evangelicalism, running churches that ban the wearing of masks, and prophesy about Trump– until he said he was vaccinated and boosted, when new theories grow.

So yes our view of Genesis may be a private faith matter, however the militant young earth creationists do affect others lives, and in Covid that has become very clear.

Faith and politics part 1 - The passion and fears of creationism

 

I am a Christian, a minister in the church, and I have a scientific mindset (from school I went to University for a degree in Biochemistry and Microbiology).   It is not for me to comment on anyone else’s relationship with God, but I do feel able to comment on what others say about God and how it relates to my encounter/view of God.

How did it all begin? The Bible gives 2 versions of creation – the first based on 6 day creation and where God proclaims all to be good, the second giving a story of the first man and woman breaking God’s command and giving a reason for the challenges of human life – working for a living out of the soil. 

Scholars who look at the texts, and the use of language in the Hebrew, including the words used for God (Yahweh vs Elohim), see that there are different voices in parts of the Old Testament – coming from competing traditions.

Since Darwin raised the theory of evolution parts of the church have reacted by insisting that these early parts of the Bible must be taken as literal truth. This was not the case for generations before that. Not to say that people didn’t take Genesis at face value, but there was no insistence that it had to be literal and many took it as a lesson in matters of faith.

Today there are those for whom the literal truth of Genesis is crucial to their faith, and billions are spent on producing resources (including visitor attractions) to proclaim this ‘truth’.   They seek to defend their position by claiming science backs them up, and in doing so they tie themselves up in ever tighter scientific knots.  They defend the young earth theory of 6000 years, in the face of geological and fossil records that date our world much older – in billions of years. Some will allow for a day being a thousand years but that only doubles the brief time.  

I recall as a teenager going into my biology class with a book debunking evolution and asked to sit out that lesson – and was in the prep cupboard.  I did do the reading for the exam however. I didn’t come from a strict creationist church but had absorbed a particular book that led me to these actions.  I wish I could go back to Mrs Evans and explain why that view was something I let go shortly afterwards.

The struggle for young earth creationists (YECs) is to make science fit a poetic/fable view from a book of theology. So yes all things created in 6 days, with dinosaurs arriving the same day as humans, and trying to merge in a different story about Adam and Eve. But then Cain kills Abel and is banished to wander the earth with a mark on him that he should not be killed – by whom? Who else is out there when they are the first children of Adam and Eve?

Then we come to Noah – how to defend a story as a global flood rather than a local event that passed down in tribal memories? YECs have to theorise how the earth can be drowned up to Everest when there is not enough water on the planet to do that, but their main focus is about how to justify the ability of the Ark to carry all the different animals. This amounts to reducing the massive number of species to a smaller number of ‘kinds’. But then they say that in the less than 6000 years those kinds can expand into many species, basically requiring an evolution at a massive speed that has never claimed by evolution.   (See here for a youtubechannel by a Primatologist)

Why do some Christians feel the need to insist on one specific understanding of the first 11 chapters of the Bible? And in parts of America to demand that creationism is taught in science, whereas in UK I have not heard of that, whilst creation may be part of the RE curriculum.

My impression is that those who seek to defend a literal 6 day creation and Noah’s flood are people whose faith in the Bible as a whole has become entrenched in the concept that every word of it is God breathed, by which they mean a form of automatic writing with God directing every word and all punctuation. They often (for English speakers) see the King James Version of the Bible as the first so most perfect English translation, despite it being neither the first in English, nor the most accurate. Many manuscripts have been discovered since KJV and the translation had political leanings to defend the status of the monarchy, it was also using a dated language even when new.

For those who see every word of the Bible as God dictated, the status of the New Testament and the stories and words of Jesus need the Genesis accounts to be literal truth too.  If one were to be not literal truth then the other would also fall, if creation was not 6 days then Jesus could not be their salvation.

 This seems to be the core reason for their desire to argue for a singular intepretation of the first Biblical chapters and the absolute fear of any other truth.  They have based the core of their faith on a word by word truth of the Bible, and in the young earth theories fall, then so does the basis of their faith.  They must therefore defend creationism with all they have.

This deep commitment to a single view of the scriptures, and a fear of any other point of view leads them to see only creationists as valid Christians, and the need to expend a lot of money to try and convert others to YEC and their ‘true faith’.  Even so it would be a matter for themselves, except that it has powerful impacts on politics within a powerful nation, that is for another post.

This is not the faith I find in my Bible, I find fables that speak of God’s ways, I find people trying to understand their relationship with their God, and through that I hear the voice of God, not through dictation, but through the experiences of other God followers.