moving on

Over a year ago I started blogging as Project1189.org which was a WordPress.org site, hosted on our server...and after five months it vanished. So, being a bit skittish about WordPress, I started this blog on Blogspot in June...now the wheel has turned and in connection with my work at the church, I've just set up three WordPress.com blogs (we're trying to do a major update of the church website). So this week I set up another Wordhavering blog using WordPress.com (might as well have them all together). I will be figuring out how to transfer this blog over there (eventually), but in the meantime, if you still have the stomach for it, you can follow my "intently haphazard" musings and haverings at wordhavering.wordpress.com. You'll find at least one new post waiting for you ("horny religion" - how can you not read that post!)

True gluttons for punishment you can find other more work-related posts from me on these three blogs:

vineyardboisebookcellar.wordpress.com
vineyardboisegroups.wordpress.com
vineyardboiseadulted.wordpress.com

Bless you all...

See you in the funny papers!  :)

a tale of two rich men

So I'm reading Luke 16 yesterday.


Familiar turf.

Two parables I've generally read on their own merits, as isolated units - and that I've also tended to see through the same glasses. Funny how that happens with so much in life.

But yesterday they stood out together. Two tales of two rich men in Luke 16. Perhaps the insight would have been there through my reading the chapter in English, but it was in Greek yesterday, and the identical words in the Greek text at the opening of each parable stood out quite glaringly. "There was a certain rich man..." And then to see the two stories punctuated with the notice that the religious elite sneered at Jesus because they were lovers of money ("Pharisaioi philargurioi" a delightful, rhythmic pairing of words: "Pharisee silver-lovers"). Jesus tells them they only value what is esteemed on a human level and that God takes an entirely different view of things. A good point to remember as we are subtly and often not so subtly pulled into the latest human fashions culturally, morally, religiously, theologically...

But back to the point. Yesterday I saw these stories yoked together and from that yoking saw them reflecting the one upon the other and back again. I was struck that we call the first story "The Dishonest Steward" (at least that's the marginal heading in my Greek Bible) when Jesus doesn't even use the word "dishonest" to describe him. I think our assumption is that this steward was guilty of graft but got caught and so faced termination. What in fact Jesus says as he begins the tale is that a certain rich man had a steward (financial manager) who was accused of wasting his goods. Accused. It's the verb form of "devil" (verb diaballo "to slander;"noun diabolos "accuser, devil") and means to "traduce, calumniate, slander, defame." The verb is used only here in the entire New Testament. When used outside of the New Testament, it is on occasion used of someone passing on a charge based on truth but even then it was with slimy, hostile intent. Yes, this steward is slimed. And the certain rich man doesn't investigate the charges; there is no hearing. The man is given two week's notice. He is to clear out his desk and leave a final report of his doings when he leaves. If there is injustice in the story it's the treatment the steward just received at the hands of his employer. Now he goes about showing great generosity to his employer's accounts by significantly downsizing their past due amounts. And everyone loves him - and his employer is impressed. Savvy generosity. Reminds me of the ending of Fun With Dick and Jane.

Then there's the second story. The certain rich man who "fared sumptuously every day" while the poor (ptochos is the Greek word here for poor - one completely destitute of work or resource or help or pity; the "p" in ptochos is not silent, you literally have to spit the word out) man Lazarus (meaning, appropriately, "God help him") sits daily at his gate. And gets nothing from him. Only the dogs notice him and pay him any mind. And you know the story. Both die. Role reversal afterlife. Rich man in torment looking for a little comfort but finding none - and even his notion of having Lazarus come back from the dead and warn his five brothers of his fate is rebuffed. If they're not listening now, resurrection won't do anything to improve their hearing.

Seeing both of these rich man tales juxtaposed, mirroring each other, with the Pharisees sneering in the middle as they lapped up the lifestyle of the rich and famous, I suddenly saw both in a new light. Both stories serve, among other things, as a picture of what was unfolding in Jesus' ministry. The Pharisees finding themselves in the uncomfortable shoes of two rich men they so admired and wished to emulate. For the first unjustly dismisses his manager as he panders to slanderous charges, revealing himself as not only out of touch, but lacking in character and heart, ungenerous in his assumptions and judgment. The second rich man fares no better; the flawed, ungenerous heart is amplified in his callous dismissal of the poor man sitting right in front of his face, day after day.

And there's Jesus - on the one hand a falsely accused "steward" of the house who is summarily dismissed by the silver-loving Pharisees as they not only listen to devilish charges against him, but who actually help contrive them. But Jesus outdoes them with his own savvy generosity as he freely dispenses scandalous grace, downsizing the debts of losers who would most surely been left "on the hook" by religious book keepers. And then there he is, the poor beggar outside the wealthy man's gate, the man not giving him the proverbial time of day. He was only judged worthy by the dogs - the despised nobodies who gathered around him and "licked his sores." And then Jesus, of course, ends the story by using the Pharisees' cherished eschatological picture of heaven and hell, unbearable pain and unbelievable joy but giving it the exquisite twist of the great reversal as their hero is in torment and what they consider human waste (God help him) is in paradise.

Okay, I've never seen this in any commentaries on Luke or heard a scholar write it up in a thesis - and so I wouldn't offer it up as a definitive commentary. But it will do as havering, as musing. And just to see some new hues in familiar settings was a treat for the day.

Just how many layers unexplored, how many facets unseen are there in this thing we call the Word...

snapshots from the hard road

In the first half of the gospel, many people come to Jesus with what appears comparatively easy faith. They touch him and are healed; it seems as simple as that. But for this man, in this situation, faith is hard. Not for nothing are his words regularly quoted as an ideal prayer for someone caught in the middle between faith and doubt, living in the shadowy world of half-belief where one is never sure whether one can see properly or not…(N.T. Wright, Mark for Everyone)

His voice trembled on the phone, filled with anguish, flushed with angst. This was no newbie, but an seasoned believer suddenly facing a sheer wall as the path curved precariously, unexpectedly. The ultrasound showed potential deformities in his unborn grandchild leaving foreboding options in every direction. So unfair. So hard. Why this...why now…

Another man sits on his couch. Diagnosis. Colon cancer. Major surgery scheduled the next day — but even with the surgery he’s given only a 30% chance of surviving — but no more than three years. And those are the good odds. He is not new to life or to faith; he has been around and seen much. He comments that a good friend of his died just last year after a hard battle with pancreatic cancer. He has visited this place with others, but now it’s different, it’s intensely personal. “This life is such a hard place...such an incredibly hard place,” he says as we bow together.

Another man, another mature believer, sits on a bench as if waiting for a bus to take him away from the “funk” he feels he’s in. A year and a half and more of seemingly endless medical procedures have drained the life out of him. He knows God is sovereign, he believes in and has seen God’s healing hand. But here he sits. Every day that passes only moves him closer to the next examination, the next procedure. “It’s such a long, hard road...I just get weary with walking it.”

And these are three interactions just from this past week — all sharing that common thread that Wright comments upon so aptly. This isn’t a summer holiday we’re in; and this sure isn’t a pleasure cruise, as John Eldredge observes in Waking the Dead. It’s more like a landing craft headed towards a hostile beach.

Why do we think differently? Are we still affected by the lingering aftertaste of a gospel that promises easier, richer, healthier times? Has it always been this hard, it’s just that now that our senses are more engaged as believers we feel it more? Or does the road really get harder, steeper, more lonely as we move along?

Perhaps it’s all of the above. But as Jesus stood in that valley with his own cross vividly before him, he seems struck by the hardness of the ground, angered by how difficult faith seems to be rising even among his own, sensing how short his time to be present to instill it. The demon-possessed boy presents a seemingly hopeless case — a looming shadow of a darker day near on the horizon that would confront them all with the hard places of Gethsemane and Gabbatha and Golgotha.

But prayer does prevail. Faith wins.

...In the story overall, Mark has told us that things are now going to be much harder, but that Jesus, and with him God’s whole saving project, is going to get there in the end. It will take all his resources of spiritual and physical endurance, but he will indeed climb the rock and complete the walk, right to the summit. He will take up his own cross, be faithful to the end, and bring in the kingdom. The question, though, for us must be: are we going with him? Are we left muddled, unable to do even what we used to be able to?  (N.T. Wright, ibid.)

a well worn path

Following are some musings from reflecting on Mark 9:2-13...

"We heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain...we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.”

So says Peter.

At least that explains a few things.

Can you imagine being Peter or James or John — James and John who were called “Thunderheads” by Jesus and Peter whose name roughly translates to “Bloke with foot firmly wedged in mouth” — and not saying something about this to the rest of the guys when you rejoined them in the valley below?

“Tell the vision to no man.”

And they didn’t. Luke reports that “they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.” They may not have said anything, but I wonder how else this spilled out of them.

I can just hear the three disciples coming down the mountain behind Jesus and quietly asking each other, “So, is my face glowing, just a little bit?” It’s hard to imagine them not dropping some hints. “Bet you can’t guess what we just saw…”

Something. Anything.

Of course, considering the track record of the disciples when it came to drawing sound conclusions from the things Jesus said and did, the three probably could have all but said, “SHEKINAH GLORY! VOICE OF GOD! WE JUST SAW JESUS GLORIFIED ON THE MOUNTAIN — AND HE WAS TALKING WITH MOSES AND ELIJAH!” and they still wouldn’t have picked up on it.

But though they kept silent, the spectacle they witnessed (whatever it meant) no doubt reinforced at least a subconscious feeling that they had a preeminent position among the twelve. That potential feeling of smugness was no doubt fed by the blatant failure of the other disciples who had been “left behind” in the valley below as they had been trying to cast out a demon.

Isn’t it interesting that it’s after all this, on the way back to Capernaum, that the first recorded debate takes place over “who is the greatest”? And not too long after that James and John take the subtle approach of asking Jesus directly for the two greatest seats of honor in the kingdom.

No sooner had Jesus answered this argument by placing a child in their midst, identifying anyone like a child as greatest in the kingdom, than John blurts out, “We saw someone casting out demons in your name and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.”

How deep our propensity towards comparison! Spiritual experiences that should humble us, that should fill us with wonder and awe and reverence, with a lasting “Who am I?” glow on our face, instead leave us pompous and snarky and smug.

Epiphanies that should reinforce our great need for one another, that should remind us of our essential unity, our common ties, lead us instead to a biting and dismissing sectarian smartness as we “measure ourselves by one another and compare ourselves to each other” (see 2 Corinthians 10:12).

It’s a well worn path we still walk quite nicely — with each step only demonstrating our personal need for “transfiguration”; that no matter how firm we imagine our grasp of the Word, we have missed the whole point of his coming and of the revelation on the mountain.

Of Rabbits and Elephants

He stood before me with a question.

Elephant or rabbit?

He asked me if I’d read the book The Rabbit and the Elephant: Why Small is the New Big for Today’s Church by Tony & Felicity Dale, along with George Barna.

I have.

Though it was last year sometime. It’s probably on one my shelves in my office or in the bookstore storage room somewhere. It was a follow-up read to Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman. Both were fun and enlightening reads, as I recall (though I recall more of the Starfish book than I do of the Rabbit book).

So what is your take? he asks as we stand underneath the shadow of a fairly large elephant (in the bookstore of the relatively large church I call home). And thinking back on the book and the challenge posed by the title, thoughts were uncorked…

I am struck by the “and” in the title of the book. As I initially considered “rabbit” and “elephant” I do believe I had exchanged the word “or” for “and.” As if we either advocate the rabbit or the elephant. Organized (especially organized, larger, insitutional) church or organic (especially small, simple, unplanned, unorganized, serendipitous) church.

But it’s not “or” it’s “and.”

How deep run our dualistic propensities! How often our basic outlook in religion, in politics, in theology, in philosophy, in general, is either this or that. Now, surely, many things cannot be mixed: light and darkness, Christ and Belial, country music and my daughters; but, as demonstrated by Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, how often is reality in fact a creative combination of seeming incompatibles; strands of different colors and textures and consistencies are woven together to form one tapestry.

So it is with elephants and rabbits.

Elephants are big and fat and bulky. They eat a lot (300-400 lbs a day – though according to that veritable source of truth known as Wikipedia they only digest about 40% of what they consume). And oh how they poop. They can and do stick their big noses in all kinds of places – their trunk being sensitive enough to pick up a single blade of grass and strong enough to rip branches off a tree. They are highly intelligent – they have the largest brain of any land animal. And they can easily trample wee things below…like rabbits. Big churches can and do share many of these traits.

Rabbits are small. They live in groups. Their hind legs can carve you up when they feel threatened – not to mention those sharp teeth that can take off a knight’s head when they’re provoked. And, of course, they breed like crazy. They have quite the breeding turnaround (as opposed to the 22 month’s gestation period for elephants). Smaller expressions of “church” (small groups from a few people to a relative many) can share these same traits.

At this point rabbit people can smugly point out the superiority of being rabbits, the freedom of unofficial warrens, and the “free love” to breed and multiply as you please (spiritually speaking of course)…while the elephant people, trunks high in the air like a dandified Colonel Hathi, can look down their ample proboscis at these dirty little rabbits who will never accomplish anything, living in their little holes. But God has created both. Or perhaps, better, when it comes to big organized churches and small relatively unorganized ones, people create the social structures connected within each varied expression, but God authors and beautifies the fellowship and life that can be found in either.

And I can attest to the wonderful, creative, symbiotic relationship that can exist between elephant and rabbit. When a large church empowers people to freely “breed” in small gatherings of all shapes and sizes and configurations without trying to determine outcomes, control the diet or regulate the life processes involved, the explosion of life is amazing! Alone, rabbit people can isolate and can bite and kick the stuffing out of each other just as effectively as the stomping of any elephant church. Any elephant church can stomp out the spontaneity and life and breeding happening among the rabbit population underfoot.

What a blessing in this season for me to see the two not just existing side by side (as much as it’s possible for a rabbit to exist beside an elephant), but to see how the one empowers and enlivens the other; to witness God creating a partnership that historically is not all that common. Historically small groups have been subersive to the reigning elephant church in society – and many rabbits relish that role; in recent times some elephant churches have alternately tried to adopt the rabbits and their culture so as to control them or just utilize their energy for their own ends – but ultimately feel just as skittish about them as elephants do with any small creature underfoot. But how beautiful to see, at this moment, elephant and rabbit moving together to the same kingdom rhythms, and to see God in the midst.

Elephants and rabbits. God created them both.

It can be a beautiful thing.

Thy words were found and I ate them

Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart. Jeremiah 15:16

I took a five day fast.

A five day fast from books.

It was quite the achievement on my part, if I may say so. Getting away with my love on her birthday weekend, and not taking along a single book. Not one. (Only took me 30 years to learn that.)Three days, two nights. 46 hours, 33 minutes and 27 seconds. Actually, I have no idea the exact breakdown. Just call it 48 hours or so. And upon our return we immediately joined a Superbowl gathering hosted by one of the small groups we belong to (the fabulous FNG).

Still no books. No words. No reading.

Home late, early morning rising to prep for an endoscopy and sigmoidoscopy (my 32 year annual act of penance for my many, many sins).

Still no reading.

My love dropped me off early for the procedure. I had packed three books (typical overkill in this department for me) but ended up having to check in at another door on the far side of the hospital. By the time I got there and checked in, I had barely the time to sit down before they came for me. Back across the campus we walked to a waiting room. No sooner had I sat down (again) than they came for me. “No time to lose,” was the word. Shuttled down the hall to an exam room where I changed into that special hospital garb so many of us know and cherish. The place was packed, time was short, my physician would be there in the next thirty minutes, so all was in high gear as they regathered my info along with needed initials and signatures, stuck me for an IV (thankfully just once), strapped an oxygen hose around my face, and then rejoiced that all was done and ready when the doctor walked in.

No reading. No words on printed page. Only ceiling tiles and a large clock ticking the wordless moments away. Sedation administered. Dim memories of intense gagging followed by slightly more lucid images of my wife helping me get dressed, of me being wheeled out to the car, talk of snow (surely that couldn’t have been right!), of pulling in the drive way at home and insisting I could walk unaided.

And I slept.

Turns out they had administered three doses of sedation and yet another substance on top of that to finally get the scope down my throat (it was the semi-truck version of the scope, able to look sideways as well as straight ahead – I don’t even like to think about what they used for the other end; I just hope it was at least a different scope). “He’ll be alright after he sleeps for a day…well, yeah, after a day,” says the nurse.

Wiped out. Surfaced to some basil tomato soup, tried to watch a movie (reading out of the question). I realized my mind was making up its own scenes for the film. Too weird. Out again for hours. Dinner. An attempt at watching an episode of Law and Order and there was no order to it at all. Out again until 2AM. I get up, shower, think, “My books!” But the shower doesn’t remove the foggy film from my brain. Back to sleep. Tuesday morning. Get up in time to go to work. I feel my brain crashing – how long, O Lord, how long!? I head back home. Sleep three hours. Lunch. Feeling more lucid, but daughter to shuttle, some work to attempt. Home in time for group. Sleep through it.

No books. No reading. Five days. Felt like five months.

This morning I wake and glory hallelujah the fog has lifted. I see clear. I shower, and I sit. Greek Bible. 2 Corinthians. Paul’s emotionally-laden, passionately-filled, Spirit-unctioned words pour into me as the very nectar of heaven. Each word a flood of delight. The poetic rhythms of the Greek, the flow of his mind, his very bowels, opening wide (thankfully no scope required), inviting mine to return the gesture – and receiving it. For an hour and a half I read through the entire book. I’m trying to remember when the Word was so delicious, so precious.

Thy words were found, and I did eat them.

I’ve analyzed and diagrammed and inductively broken down and reassembled 2 Corinthians more times than I can count, and always found blessing in that. But oh the pure, untainted, virgin delight of those wonderful 90 minutes I found in simply eating those words. Rolling them over and around my tongue, ingesting line after line, hearing the beating of Paul’s heart, in its rhythms feeling His.

And thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart.

Perhaps it just takes a few days of chosen and/or enforced word fasting to fully appreciate the feasting on those words, to be blessed anew with what it feels like to have your soul nourished and filled to overflowing through what He speaks. I could have gone to a scholar’s conference that weekend, but chose to fast from words and feast on and with my love. And rather than being sated with the offerings of others’ feasting, I found, quite unexpectantly, at the end of my fast, one of the most memorable, personal feasts of all.

Lord, let your words be found again…

Do you see anything?

The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. Psalm 146:8

And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” And he looked up and said, “I see men, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. And he sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.” Mark 8:22-26

It’s not just another healing.

This rather odd healing encounter of Jesus and the blind man serves as a significant bridge between “Act 1” of Mark (the early Galilean ministry of Jesus) and “Act 2” (preparing the disciples for the final journey to Jerusalem). On one side it connects with what we have just read, starting with the healing of the deaf/mute man in Mark 7:31-37 and the increasingly apparent dull and dimwittedness of the disciples and on the other side with a “first touch” of spiritual perception in Peter’s confession in 8:27-30. But no sooner has Peter confessed “You are the Christ” than it becomes clear that when it comes to Jesus and his mission and the kingdom of God, he still only “sees men, but they look like trees, walking.”

He needs another touch.

“Why does Jesus have to touch the blind man’s eyes twice? Why the ‘partial’ healing?” We might ask the bigger question about our own spiritual eyes and vision.

The fact is, generally speaking, when it comes to our spiritual perception, to our “getting it,” one touch won’t do. It takes the repeated touch of Jesus on “the eyes of our heart” to remove the distortions that accumulate all too easily as we continue to “look through a glass, darkly.”

Perhaps that’s why Paul continues to pray over the Ephesian believers “that the eyes of your heart might be enlightened” — and that’s after spending two full years among them. We’re just as much in need of his repeated touch as was the blind man — and the twelve.

It takes a repeated touch. And evidently it takes Jesus’ spit, too.

What is this with Jesus and his spit? With the deaf/mute man Jesus spat (on the ground? into his hand?) and then touched the man’s tongue (and of course he also thrust his fingers into the man’s ears — it would probably go viral on YouTube). Now in this case Mark says that Jesus spat into his eyes and then touched them (rubbing it in?). Then there’s the case of the man born blind in John 9. There Jesus spits into the dirt and makes his own little mud pile which he then applies to the blind man’s eyes (thankfully then telling him to go wash his eyes).

Jesus and his spit.

There may be many who try to emulate Paul by sending healing hankies in the mail, but curiously they’re aren't any (at least that I’m aware of) that send out vials of spit. Or that have spitting services. The Church of the Holy Spittle. But as head-scratching as this all can be, there’s something wonderfully wild and off-putting about it. The kingdom of God is wonderfully wild and off-putting and unconventional and uncategorizable and uncontainable and unpredictable and undefinable. It defies pat formulations and neat explanations. Now it’s a word, then it’s a wordless touch; now it’s spit in the eyes, then it’s mud; now it’s instantaneous, then it’s in stages; now it’s “I will come and heal him,” then it’s “I won’t come now”; now it’s healing, then it’s suffering; now it’s release from prison, then it’s death.

And in the midst of all these seemingly random and arbitrary rhythms Jesus still leans close and asks us:

“Do you see anything?”

Translators to the Reader_12

For is the kingdom of God become words or syllables? why should we be in bondage to them if we may be free, use one precisely when we may use another no less fit, as commodiously?

End. Finis. El fin. The final 1000 words or so of this rather magnificent preface to the original KJV in 1611. The actual author of this preface is Miles Smith, Bishop of Gloucester, a key member of the KJV translation team, known for his mastery of biblical languages, described as a “severe Calvinist,” and known, in his day, for his high profile walking out on a sermon on one occasion because he considered it boring – and retiring to the pub. Give us more “severe Calvinists” like Miles Smith!

Adam Nicolson in God’s Secretaries makes this comment on this preface I have been laboring through (for me a labor of love – I look forward to humbly making his acquaintance in what will surely be the grandest library of all in the new heavens and the new earth):

Miles Smith – and it is his greatest monument – then wrote the long and beautiful Preface to the translation. It is rarely printed with the Bible nowadays…Smith’s words exude all that is best about Jacobean England, the hopes for this translation and the beliefs in the power and value of the work which was now so nearly complete…It is a defense of what they have done against the cavils of the Roman Catholics, and a paean to James as its progenitur. It insists on the virtues and necessity of translation, and snips a the Catholics for their love of obscurity and darkness. It celebrates the virtues of accuracy, but scoffs, happily enough, at the over-scrupulosity of the Puritans who insist on the same word being translated in the same way every time. It’s atmosphere is generous and majestic and never more sweepingly vigorous – the influence of the pulpit is everywhere here – when describing the part that scripture might play in a man’s life…Was anything ever written about a sacred text that was so fresh, so full of a delight in what these words might bring you? For all the lugubrious seriousness and monomaniac anger and violence that can hang around seventeenth-century religion, Bishop Smith, here writing at the very end of the long translation process in which he had been engaged throughout, remains buoyant with enthusiasm and with a quality that can only be called grace.

And so, the final segment of the Preface:

Reasons Inducing Us Not To Stand Curiously upon an Identity of Phrasing

Another thing we think good to admonish thee of (gentle Reader) that we have not tied ourselves to an uniformity of phrasing, or to an identity of words, as some peradventure would wish that we had done, because they observe, that some learned men somewhere, have been as exact as they could that way. Truly, that we might not vary from the sense of that which we had translated before, if the word signified the same thing in both places (for there be some words that be not of the same sense everywhere) we were especially careful, and made a conscience, according to our duty. But, that we should express the same notion in the same particular word; as for example, if we translate the Hebrew or Greek word once by Purpose, never to call it Intent; if one where Journeying, never Traveling; if one where Think, never Suppose; if one where Pain, never Ache; if one where Joy, never Gladness, etc. Thus to mince the matter, we thought to savour more of curiosity than wisdom, and that rather it would breed scorn in the Atheist, than bring profit to the godly Reader. For is the kingdom of God become words or syllables? why should we be in bondage to them if we may be free, use one precisely when we may use another no less fit, as commodiously? A godly Father in the Primitive time showed himself greatly moved, that one of newfangledness called krabbaton though the difference be little or none; and another reporteth that he was much abused for turning Cucurbita (to which reading the people had been used) into Hedera. Now if this happen in better times, and upon so small occasions, we might justly fear hard censure, if generally we should make verbal and unnecessary changings. We might also be charged (by scoffers) with some unequal dealing towards a great number of good English words. For as it is written of a certain great Philosopher, that he should say, that those logs were happy that were made images to be worshipped; for their fellows, as good as they, lay for blocks behind the fire: so if we should say, as it were, unto certain words, Stand up higher, have a place in the Bible always, and to others of like quality, Get ye hence, be banished forever, we might be taxed peradventure with S. James his words, namely, To be partial in ourselves and judges of evil thoughts. Add hereunto, that niceness in words was always counted the next step to trifling, and so was to be curious about names too: also that we cannot follow a better pattern for elocution than God himself; therefore he using divers words, in his holy writ, and indifferently for one thing in nature: we, if we will not be superstitious, may use the same liberty in our English versions out of Hebrew and Greek, for that copy or store that he hath given us. Lastly, we have on the one side avoided the scrupulosity of the Puritans, who leave the old Ecclesiastical words, and betake them to other, as when they put Washing for Baptism, and Congregation instead of Church: as also on the other side we have shunned the obscurity of the Papists, in their Azimes, Tunike, Rational, Holocausts, Praepuce, Pasche, and a number of such like, whereof their late Translation is full, and that of purpose to darken the sense, that since they must needs translate the Bible, yet by the language thereof, it may be kept from being understood. But we desire that the Scripture may speak like itself, as in the language of Canaan, that it may be understood even of the very vulgar.

Many other things we might give thee warning of (gentle Reader) if we had not exceeded the measure of a Preface already. It remaineth, that we commend thee to God, and to the Spirit of his grace, which is able to build further than we can ask or think. He removeth the scales from our eyes, the veil from our hearts, opening our wits that we may understand his word, enlarging our hearts, yea correcting our affections, that we may love it above gold and silver, yea that we may love it to the end. Ye are brought unto fountains of living water which ye digged not; do not cast earth into them with the Philistines, neither prefer broken pits before them with the wicked Jews. [Gen 26:15. Jer 2:13.] Others have laboured, and you may enter into their labours; O receive not so great things in vain, O despise not so great salvation! Be not like swine to tread under foot so precious things, neither yet like dogs to tear and abuse holy things. Say not to our Saviour with the Gergesites, Depart out of our coasts [Matt 8:34]; neither yet with Esau sell your birthright for a mess of pottage [Heb 12:16]. If light be come into the world, love not darkness more than light; if food, if clothing be offered, go not naked, starve not yourselves. Remember the advice of Nazianzene, It is a grievous thing (or dangerous) to neglect a great fair, and to seek to make markets afterwards: also the encouragement of S. Chrysostom, It is altogether impossible, that he that is sober (and watchful) should at any time be neglected: Lastly, the admonition and menacing of S. Augustine, They that despise God's will inviting them, shall feel God's will taking vengeance of them. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God; [Heb 10:31] but a blessed thing it is, and will bring us to everlasting blessedness in the end, when God speaketh unto us, to hearken; when he setteth his word before us, to read it; when he stretcheth out his hand and calleth, to answer, Here am I, here we are to do thy will, O God. The Lord work a care and conscience in us to know him and serve him, that we may be acknowledged of him at the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom with the holy Ghost, be all praise and thanksgiving.

Amen.

Translators to the Reader_11

Almost done. Two more segments. To include alternative readings from different manuscripts or not? Will including them only stir up doubt and unprofitable debate, or will such forthrightness only enhance the Scriptures and our pursuit of Truth? The Translators decided for the latter and included alternative readings. King James was insistent that no marginal notes be included that explained or indoctrinated (what we would call a “study Bible”). He was insistent that this translation allow the Bible to speak for itself and thus hold within itself all the possibilities of interpretation for believers to search out “by conference” with one another.

Three pull quotes:

Variety of Translations is profitable for the finding out of the sense of the Scriptures: so diversity of signification and sense in the margin, where the text is no so clear, must needs do good, yea, is necessary. In a word, this provides the thesis of this segment: variety, options = good.

It is better to make doubt of those things which are secret, than to strive about those things that are uncertain. One of the nagging tendencies I have observed in evangelical circles: to deny that anything is uncertain (except in matters that we personally are indifferent about). Much of what Paul terms “useless arguments about words” is generally the result of trying to put too fine a point on matters which are, in fact “uncertain” or “secret.” Historically it’s also been at the root of what orthodox Christianity has considered “heresy.” The “heretic” cannot hold truths in tension and ultimately feels he must denigrate one to rescue the other in an effort to remove uncertainty, thereby creating chasms and camps.

Whatsoever things are necessary are manifest. A ancient and much needed pithy piece of wisdom from Chrysostom. “The works of the flesh are obvious”; “The children of God and the children of the devil are manifest.” If it matters it’s manifest – and not just to your eyes or to your camp.

Reasons Moving Us To Set Diversity of Senses in the Margin, where there is Great Probability for Each

Some peradventure would have no variety of senses to be set in the margin, lest the authority of the Scriptures for deciding of controversies by that show of uncertainty, should somewhat be shaken. But we hold their judgment not to be so sound in this point. For though, whatsoever things are necessary are manifest, as S. Chrysostom saith, and as S. Augustine, In those things that are plainly set down in the Scriptures, all such matters are found that concern Faith, Hope, and Charity. Yet for all that it cannot be dissembled, that partly to exercise and whet our wits, partly to wean the curious from loathing of them for their every-where plainness, partly also to stir up our devotion to crave the assistance of God's spirit by prayer, and lastly, that we might be forward to seek aid of our brethren by conference, and never scorn those that be not in all respects so complete as they should be, being to seek in many things ourselves, it hath pleased God in his divine providence, here and there to scatter words and sentences of that difficulty and doubtfulness, not in doctrinal points that concern salvation, (for in such it hath been vouched that the Scriptures are plain) but in matters of less moment, that fearfulness would better beseem us than confidence, and if we will resolve, to resolve upon modesty with S. Augustine, (though not in this same case altogether, yet upon the same ground) Melius est dubitare de occultis, quam litigare de incertis, it is better to make doubt of those things which are secret, than to strive about those things that are uncertain. There be many words in the Scriptures, which be never found there but once, (having neither brother nor neighbor, as the Hebrews speak) so that we cannot be holpen by conference of places. Again, there be many rare names of certain birds, beasts and precious stones, etc. concerning which the Hebrews themselves are so divided among themselves for judgment, that they may seem to have defined this or that, rather because they would say something, than because they were sure of that which they said, as S. Jerome somewhere saith of the Septuagint. Now in such a case, doth not a margin do well to admonish the Reader to seek further, and not to conclude or dogmatize upon this or that peremptorily? For as it is a fault of incredulity, to doubt of those things that are evident: so to determine of such things as the Spirit of God hath left (even in the judgment of the judicious) questionable, can be no less than presumption. Therefore as S. Augustine saith, that variety of Translations is profitable for the finding out of the sense of the Scriptures: so diversity of signification and sense in the margin, where the text is no so clear, must needs do good, yea, is necessary, as we are persuaded. We know that Sixtus Quintus expressly forbiddeth, that any variety of readings of their vulgar edition, should be put in the margin, (which though it be not altogether the same thing to that we have in hand, yet it looketh that way) but we think he hath not all of his own side his favorers, for this conceit. They that are wise, had rather have their judgments at liberty in differences of readings, than to be captivated to one, when it may be the other. If they were sure that their high Priest had all laws shut up in his breast, as Paul the Second bragged, and that he were as free from error by special privilege, as the Dictators of Rome were made by law inviolable, it were another matter; then his word were an Oracle, his opinion a decision. But the eyes of the world are now open, God be thanked, and have been a great while, they find that he is subject to the same affections and infirmities that others be, that his skin is penetrable, and therefore so much as he proveth, not as much as he claimeth, they grant and embrace.

Translators to the Reader_10

At last, we are on the downside of the preface, swiftly approaching its conclusion. Turning from answering brothers on the right and on the left, now the Translators dig into their own purpose and path of translation. This was actually the largest translation committee ever assembled for an English translation up to that point. There had been many shining individual efforts from the likes of John Wyclif and William Tyndale and others. But King James set a high priority on “jointness.” There was high suspicion of anything “private” and a heavy emphasis on the value of joint contributions with mutual accountability (certainly a good emphasis!). Some six committees of translators working independently on different parts of Scripture ultimately bringing together their combined work after not a mere 72 days as was reported of the Septuagint, but nearly seven years.

The one line that stands out to me from this section – one that highlights the importance of taking our time when engaged in what matters most:

Matters of weight and consequence are to be speeded with maturity.

To which I would add Augustine's prayer:

O let thy Scriptures be my pure delight, let me not be deceived in them, neither let me deceive by them.



The Purpose of the Translators, with their Number, Furniture, Care, etc.

But it is high time to leave them, and to show in brief what we proposed to ourselves, and what course we held in this our perusal and survey of the Bible. Truly (good Christian Reader) we never thought from the beginning, that we should need to make a new Translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one, (for then the imputation of Sixtus had been true in some sort, that our people had been fed with gall of Dragons instead of wine, with whey instead of milk:) but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones, one principal good one, not justly to be excepted against; that hath been our endeavor, that our mark. To that purpose there were many chosen, that were greater in other men's eyes than in their own, and that sought the truth rather than their own praise. Again, they came or were thought to come to the work, not exercendi causa (as one saith) but exercitati, that is, learned, not to learn: For the chief overseer under his Majesty, to whom not only we, but also our whole Church was much bound, knew by his wisdom, which thing also Nazianzen taught so long ago, that it is a preposterous order to teach first and to learn after, yea that to learn and practice together, is neither commendable for the workman, nor safe for the work. Therefore such were thought upon, as could say modestly with Saint Jerome, Et Hebraeum Sermonem ex parte didicimus, et in Latino pene ab ipsis incunabulis etc. detriti sumus. Both we have learned the Hebrew tongue in part, and in the Latin we have been exercised almost from our very cradle. S. Jerome maketh no mention of the Greek tongue, wherein yet he did excel, because he translated not the old Testament out of Greek, but out of Hebrew. And in what sort did these assemble? In the trust of their own knowledge, or of their sharpness of wit, or deepness of judgment, as it were in an arm of flesh? At no hand. They trusted in him that hath the key of David, opening and no man shutting; they prayed to the Lord the Father of our Lord, to the effect that S. Augustine did; O let thy Scriptures be my pure delight, let me not be deceived in them, neither let me deceive by them. In this confidence, and with this devotion did they assemble together; not too many, lest one should trouble another; and yet many, lest many things haply might escape them. If you ask what they had before them, truly it was the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Greek of the New. These are the two golden pipes, or rather conduits, where-through the olive branches empty themselves into the gold. Saint Augustine calleth them precedent, or original tongues; Saint Jerome, fountains. The same Saint Jerome affirmeth, and Gratian hath not spared to put it into his Decree, That as the credit of the old Books (he meaneth of the Old Testament) is to be tried by the Hebrew Volumes, so of the New by the Greek tongue, he meaneth by the original Greek. If truth be to be tried by these tongues, then whence should a Translation be made, but out of them? These tongues therefore, the Scriptures we say in those tongues, we set before us to translate, being the tongues wherein God was pleased to speak to his Church by his Prophets and Apostles. Neither did we run over the work with that posting haste that the Septuagint did, if that be true which is reported of them, that they finished it in 72 days; neither were we barred or hindered from going over it again, having once done it, like S. Jerome, if that be true which himself reporteth, that he could no sooner write anything, but presently it was caught from him, and published, and he could not have leave to mend it: neither, to be short, were we the first that fell in hand with translating the Scripture into English, and consequently destitute of former helps, as it is written of Origen, that he was the first in a manner, that put his hand to write Commentaries upon the Scriptures, and therefore no marvel, if he overshot himself many times. None of these things: the work hath not been huddled up in 72 days, but hath cost the workmen, as light as it seemeth, the pains of twice seven times seventy two days and more: matters of such weight and consequence are to be speeded with maturity: for in a business of moment a man feareth not the blame of convenient slackness. Neither did we think much to consult the Translators or Commentators, Chaldee, Hebrew, Syrian, Greek or Latin, no nor the Spanish, French, Italian, or Dutch; neither did we disdain to revise that which we had done, and to bring back to the anvil that which we had hammered: but having and using as great helps as were needful, and fearing no reproach for slowness, nor coveting praise for expedition, we have at the length, through the good hand of the Lord upon us, brought the work to that pass that you see.

Translators to the Reader_9

One last volley fired at the “cavil” (nit-picking complaints and faultfinding) of their opponents – specifically the Translators Roman Catholic opponents. “Why are they always making new translations?” wail their opponents, alleging that the constant making of changes and alterations discredits the value and substance of their work. At length the Translators turn the charge back on those making it by pointing out the constant changes lining their own history. To be human is to be subject to change; it is to recognize flaws in what was previously viewed as impeccable and then to address the flaws. To cease to see the flaws says less of the perfection of what we claim to see and cherish and more of our own blindness. This speaks of so much more than of mere translations. So many names here of which I have no clue – what a rich heritage we stand upon (both good and bad) and how little we know of so much of it. How many stories are buried here, waiting to be uncovered and explored…

Here’s my favorite line from this section – well said indeed! Let all “sons of the Truth” consider:

If we will be sons of the Truth, we must consider what it speaketh, and trample upon our own credit, yea, and upon other men's too, if either be any way an hindrance to it.

An Answer to the Imputations of Our Adversaries (continued)

Yet before we end, we must answer a third cavil and objection of theirs against us, for altering and amending our Translations so oft; wherein truly they deal hardly, and strangely with us. For to whom ever was it imputed for a fault (by such as were wise) to go over that which he had done, and to amend it where he saw cause? Saint Augustine was not afraid to exhort S. Jerome to a Palinodia or recantation; the same S. Augustine was not ashamed to retractate, we might say revoke, many things that had passed him, and doth even glory that he seeth his infirmities. If we will be sons of the Truth, we must consider what it speaketh, and trample upon our own credit, yea, and upon other men's too, if either be any way an hindrance to it. This to the cause: then to the persons we say, that of all men they ought to be most silent in this case. For what varieties have they, and what alterations have they made, not only of their Service books, Portesses1 and Breviaries2, but also of their Latin Translation? The Service book supposed to be made by S. Ambrose (Officium Ambrosianum) was a great while in special use and request; but Pope Hadrian calling a Council with the aid of Charles the Emperor, abolished it, yea, burnt it, and commanded the Service book of Saint Gregory universally to be used. Well, Officium Gregorianum gets by this means to be in credit, but doth it continue without change or altering? No, the very Roman Service was of two fashions, the New fashion, and the Old, (the one used in one Church, the other in another) as is to be seen in Pamelius a Romanist, his Preface, before Micrologus. the same Pamelius reporteth out Radulphus de Rivo, that about the year of our Lord, 1277, Pope Nicolas the Third removed out of the Churches of Rome, the more ancient books (of Service) and brought into use the Missals of the Friers Minorites, and commanded them to be observed there; insomuch that about an hundred years after, when the above name Radulphus happened to be at Rome, he found all the books to be new, (of the new stamp). Neither were there this chopping and changing in the more ancient times only, but also of late: Pius Quintus himself confesseth, that every Bishopric almost had a peculiar kind of service, most unlike to that which others had: which moved him to abolish all other Breviaries, though never so ancient, and privileged and published by Bishops in their Dioceses, and to establish and ratify that only which was of his own setting forth, in the year 1568. Now when the father of their Church, who gladly would heal the sore of the daughter of his people softly and slightly, and make the best of it, findeth so great fault with them for their odds and jarring; we hope the children have no great cause to vaunt of their uniformity. But the difference that appeareth between our Translations, and our often correcting of them, is the thing that we are specially charged with; let us see therefore whether they themselves be without fault this way, (if it be to be counted a fault, to correct) and whether they be fit men to throw stones at us: O tandem maior parcas insane minori: they that are less sound themselves, ought not to object infirmities to others. If we should tell them that Valla, Stapulensis, Erasmus, and Vives found fault with their vulgar Translation, and consequently wished the same to be mended, or a new one to be made, they would answer peradventure, that we produced their enemies for witnesses against them; albeit, they were in no other sort enemies, than as S. Paul was to the Galatians, for telling them the truth [Gal 4:16]: and it were to be wished, that they had dared to tell it them plainlier and oftener. But what will they say to this, that Pope Leo the Tenth allowed Erasmus' Translation of the New Testament, so much different from the vulgar, by his Apostolic Letter and Bull; that the same Leo exhorted Pagnine to translate the whole Bible, and bare whatsoever charges was necessary for the work? Surely, as the Apostle reasoneth to the Hebrews, that if the former Law and Testament had been sufficient, there had been no need of the latter: [Heb 7:11 and 8:7] so we may say, that if the old vulgar had been at all points allowable, to small purpose had labour and charges been undergone, about framing of a new. If they say, it was one Pope's private opinion, and that he consulted only himself; then we are able to go further with them, and to aver3, that more of their chief men of all sorts, even their own Trent champions Paiva and Vega, and their own Inquisitors, Hieronymus ab Oleastro, and their own Bishop Isidorus Clarius, and their own Cardinal Thomas a Vio Caietan, do either make new Translations themselves, or follow new ones of other men's making, or note the vulgar Interpreter for halting; none of them fear to dissent from him, nor yet to except against him. And call they this an uniform tenor of text and judgment about the text, so many of their Worthies disclaiming the now received conceit? Nay, we will yet come nearer the quick: doth not their Paris edition differ from the Lovaine, and Hentenius his from them both, and yet all of them allowed by authority? Nay, doth not Sixtus Quintus confess, that certain Catholics (he meaneth certain of his own side) were in such an humor of translating the Scriptures into Latin, that Satan taking occasion by them, though they thought of no such matter, did strive what he could, out of so uncertain and manifold a variety of Translations, so to mingle all things, that nothing might seem to be left certain and firm in them, etc.? Nay, further, did not the same Sixtus ordain by an inviolable decree, and that with the counsel and consent of his Cardinals, that the Latin edition of the old and new Testament, which the Council of Trent would have to be authentic, is the same without controversy which he then set forth, being diligently corrected and printed in the Printing-house of Vatican? Thus Sixtus in his Preface before his Bible. And yet Clement the Eighth his immediate successor, publisheth another edition of the Bible, containing in it infinite differences from that of Sixtus, (and many of them weighty and material) and yet this must be authentic by all means. What is to have the faith of our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with Yea or Nay, if this be not? Again, what is sweet harmony and consent, if this be? Therefore, as Demaratus of Corinth advised a great King, before he talked of the dissensions among the Grecians, to compose his domestic broils (for at that time his Queen and his son and heir were at deadly feud with him) so all the while that our adversaries do make so many and so various editions themselves, and do jar so much about the worth and authority of them, they can with no show of equity challenge us for changing and correcting.

1 Portesses – a portesse or porteous was a portable breviary (see next note)

2 Breviary – Latin brevis = brief; a summary; a book containing prayers and hymns (somewhat akin to what we would call a devotional)

3 aver – assert, affirm with confidence

Translators to the Reader_8

Wow. This section blows me away each time I read it. The Translators now turn to their “Catholic brethren” with a few rebuffs and scoldings – chiefly for their denigrating and burning of English translations. “The very meanest translation of the Bible in English containeth the word of God.” The King’s speech before Parliament is the King’s speech, no matter how poorly it might be translated into other European languages. Or to put in our terms, the President’s State of the Union speech is the President’s State of the Union speech, no matter how you slice it (okay, unless you play it in reverse). Not only are “the meanest translations in English still the word of God,” but from of old the fathers made favorable use of words uttered by those they considered outright heretics. To this could be added Paul’s quotation of Athenian and Cretan “prophets.” Truth is truth, no matter who utters it. The witty line, “Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater – unless the baby is a heretic” is here soundly rebuffed by the Translators of the very version so often championed by those only too eager to throw out baby and bathwater (and tub and towel and soap and mother and siblings while they’re at it). The King James Only crowd only need read the original preface to their own Bible to be disabused of their notion, if only they would.

Here’s my favorite line of the section:

A man may be counted a virtuous man, though he have made many slips in his life, also a comely man and lovely, though he have some warts upon his hand, yea, not only freckles upon his face, but also scars.

True not only of you and me, but of whatever translation of the Bible we might be holding at the moment…

An Answer to the Imputations of Our Adversaries

Now to the latter we answer; that we do not deny, nay we affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set forth by men of our profession, (for we have seen none of theirs of the whole Bible as yet) containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God. As the King's speech, which he uttereth in Parliament, being translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and Latin, is still the King's speech, though it be not interpreted by every Translator with the like grace, nor peradventure so fitly for phrase, nor so expressly for sense, everywhere. For it is confessed, that things are to take their denomination of the greater part; and a natural man could say, Verum ubi multa nitent in carmine, non ego paucis offendor maculis, etc. A man may be counted a virtuous man, though he have made many slips in his life, (else, there were none virtuous, for in many things we offend all) [James 3:2] also a comely man and lovely, though he have some warts upon his hand, yea, not only freckles upon his face, but also scars. No cause therefore why the word translated should be denied to be the word, or forbidden to be current, notwithstanding that some imperfections and blemishes may be noted in the setting forth of it. For what ever was perfect under the Sun, where Apostles or Apostolic men, that is, men endued with an extraordinary measure of God's spirit, and privileged with the privilege of infallibility, had not their hand? The Romanists therefore in refusing to hear, and daring to burn the Word translated, did no less than despite the spirit of grace, from whom originally it proceeded, and whose sense and meaning, as well as man's weakness would enable, it did express. Judge by an example or two. Plutarch writeth, that after that Rome had been burnt by the Gauls, they fell soon to build it again: but doing it in haste, they did not cast the streets, nor proportion the houses in such comely fashion, as had been most sightly and convenient; was Catiline therefore an honest man, or a good patriot, that sought to bring it to a combustion? or Nero a good Prince, that did indeed set it on fire? So, by the story of Ezra, and the prophecy of Haggai it may be gathered, that the Temple built by Zerubbabel after the return from Babylon, was by no means to be compared to the former built by Solomon (for they that remembered the former, wept when they considered the latter) [Ezra 3:12] notwithstanding, might this latter either have been abhorred and forsaken by the Jews, or profaned by the Greeks? The like we are to think of Translations. The translation of the Seventy dissenteth from the Original in many places, neither doth it come near it, for perspicuity, gravity, majesty; yet which of the Apostles did condemn it? Condemn it? Nay, they used it, (as it is apparent, and as Saint Jerome and most learned men do confess) which they would not have done, nor by their example of using it, so grace and commend it to the Church, if it had been unworthy the appellation and name of the word of God. And whereas they urge for their second defence of their vilifying and abusing of the English Bibles, or some pieces thereof, which they meet with, for that heretics (forsooth) were the Authors of the translations, (heretics they call us by the same right that they call themselves Catholics, both being wrong) we marvel what divinity taught them so. We are sure Tertullian was of another mind: Ex personis probamus fidem, an ex fide personas? Do we try men's faith by their persons? we should try their persons by their faith. Also S. Augustine was of another mind: for he lighting upon certain rules made by Tychonius a Donatist, for the better understanding of the word, was not ashamed to make use of them, yea, to insert them into his own book, with giving commendation to them so far forth as they were worthy to be commended, as is to be seen in S. Augustine's third book De doctrina Christiana. To be short, Origen, and the whole Church of God for certain hundred years, were of another mind: for they were so far from treading under foot, (much more from burning) the Translation of Aquila a Proselyte, that is, one that had turned Jew; of Symmachus, and Theodotion, both Ebionites, that is, most vile heretics, that they joined them together with the Hebrew Original, and the Translation of the Seventy (as hath been before signified out of Epiphanius) and set them forth openly to be considered of and perused by all. But we weary the unlearned, who need not know so much, and trouble the learned, who know it already.

Translators to the Reader_7

Okay, I’ve probably lost the few who actually follow these pages – but I’m just having a ball with this preface! And more than that, I’ve been reading along with it God’s Secretaries by Adam Nicolson – a bestseller back in 2003 about the making of the King James Bible. What a fascinating portrait of the king, the translators, the time. James, the king among the Scots all his life until the death of Elizabeth and the dawning of a new age of peace – or so he dreamt. King James saw himself as something of a new Solomon who would reunite a "divided child" in bringing England and Scotland together, along with Calvinists and Puritans and Anglicans – and he even made overtures to the Roman Church. Sadly, England was plunged into its bloodiest civil war in just another three decades and ultimately nothing came of his vision – except the King James Bible which was at root what we would call an “ecumenical” effort of providing a translation of the Word that would bring all together by leaving room for all to move within its sacred pages. What a history.

This next segment from the preface by the Translators is a “satisfication to our ‘scrupulous’ brethren” – aimed at the more zealous among the Calvinist and Puritan elements with whom the king met at Hampton Court. The Translators again demonstrate their collective sense that in this monumental work they are merely part of an ancient story – a story that calls for their faithful participation in their time; a story that will likewise call future generations to continue to “strike the ground” in efforts that would build on theirs. In fact, in their estimation, the more important the work, the greater the need for ongoing "polishing." For their own part, these Translators would thank the Kenneth Taylors, the Eugene Petersons, the NIV and NLT translating committees, et al, for they only carry forth the same calling and need in our generation – notwithstanding the sometimes bitter tirades of some of the “scrupulous brethren” of our own days.

My favorite line:

Blessed be they, and most honoured be their name, that break the ice, and giveth onset upon that which helpeth forward to the saving of souls.

Let us all continue to “break the ice” in the unique ways of his calling!

A Satisfaction to Our Brethren
And to the same effect say we, that we are so far off from condemning any of their labors that travailed before us in this kind, either in this land or beyond sea, either in King Henry's time, or King Edward's (if there were any translation, or correction of a translation in his time) or Queen Elizabeth's of ever renowned memory, that we acknowledge them to have been raised up of God, for the building and furnishing of his Church, and that they deserve to be had of us and of posterity in everlasting remembrance. The judgment of Aristotle is worthy and well known: If Timotheus had not been, we had not had much sweet music; but if Phrynis (Timotheus his master) had not been, we had not had Timotheus. Therefore blessed be they, and most honoured be their name, that break the ice, and giveth onset upon that which helpeth forward to the saving of souls. Now what can be more available thereto, than to deliver God's book unto God's people in a tongue which they understand? Since of a hidden treasure, and of a fountain that is sealed, there is no profit, as Ptolemy Philadelph wrote to the Rabbins or masters of the Jews, as witnesseth Epiphanius: and as S. Augustine saith; A man had rather be with his dog than with a stranger (whose tongue is strange unto him). Yet for all that, as nothing is begun and perfected at the same time, and the later thoughts are thought to be the wiser: so, if we building upon their foundation that went before us, and being holpen1 by their labours, do endeavor to make that better which they left so good; no man, we are sure, hath cause to mislike us; they, we persuade ourselves, if they were alive, would thank us. The vintage of Abiezer, that strake the stroke: yet the gleaning of grapes of Ephraim was not to be despised. See Judges 8:2. Joash the king of Israel did not satisfy himself, till he had smitten the ground three times; and yet he offended the Prophet, for giving over then. [2 Kings 13:18-19] Aquila, of whom we spake before, translated the Bible as carefully, and as skilfully as he could; and yet he thought good to go over it again, and then it got the credit with the Jews, to be called kata akribeian, that is, accurately done, as Saint Jerome witnesseth. How many books of profane learning have been gone over again and again, by the same translators, by others? Of one and the same book of Aristotle's Ethics, there are extant not so few as six or seven several translations. Now if this cost may be bestowed upon the gourd, which affordeth us a little shade, and which today flourisheth, but tomorrow is cut down; what may we bestow, nay what ought we not to bestow upon the Vine, the fruit whereof maketh glad the conscience of man, and the stem whereof abideth forever? And this is the word of God, which we translate. What is the chaff to the wheat, saith the Lord? [Jer 23:28] Tanti vitreum, quanti verum margaritum (saith Tertullian,) if a toy of glass be of that reckoning with us, how ought we to value the true pearl? Therefore let no man's eye be evil, because his Majesty's is good; neither let any be grieved, that we have a Prince that seeketh the increase of the spiritual wealth of Israel (let Sanballats and Tobiahs do so, which therefore do bear their just reproof) but let us rather bless God from the ground of our heart, for working this religious care in him, to have the translations of the Bible maturely considered of and examined. For by this means it cometh to pass, that whatsoever is sound already (and all is sound for substance, in one or other of our editions, and the worst of ours far better than their authentic vulgar) the same will shine as gold more brightly, being rubbed and polished; also, if anything be halting, or superfluous, or not so agreeable to the original, the same may be corrected, and the truth set in place. And what can the King command to be done, that will bring him more true honour than this? and wherein could they that have been set a work, approve their duty to the King, yea their obedience to God, and love to his Saints more, than by yielding their service, and all that is within them, for the furnishing of the work? But besides all this, they were the principal motives of it, and therefore ought least to quarrel it: for the very Historical truth is, that upon the importunate petitions of the Puritans, at his Majesty's coming to this Crown, the Conference at Hampton Court having been appointed for hearing their complaints: when by force of reason they were put from all other grounds, they had recourse at the last, to this shift, that they could not with good conscience subscribe to the Communion book, since it maintained the Bible as it was there translated, which was as they said, a most corrupted translation. And although this was judged to be but a very poor and empty shift; yet even hereupon did his Majesty begin to bethink himself of the good that might ensue by a new translation, and presently after gave order for this Translation which is now presented unto thee. Thus much to satisfy our scrupulous Brethren.

1 holpen – helped

Translators to the Reader_6

Installment six. Okay, so brevity was not exactly an ancient virtue. In this next section I’m struck by the lack of confidence in Truth these Translators see in those who oppose such “new” works as their own – as if their work could either suppress or even stop the Word of God, or that by pursuing such a “new” translation they were claiming that the Word of God had somehow been obscured or even lost in translations made up to that point. I find the same irony when those who most loudly affirm the value of the Word and the sovereignity of the God who gave it seem to put so much more weight in the imperfect efforts of man as though we can stifle or suppress that Word through supposed bad translations. As if puny man can stop the Word that God says “will not return void to him.” The fact is, our imperfect efforts at translation (and all human efforts at translation are imperfect) at worst are like devilish birds that consume the seed fallen on the wayside – only to spread that Word in ways unanticipated as the seed passes out the other end.

And another thought. The Translators respect ancient efforts at translation enough to be spurred by them to do the same in their own generation. For them to be content with past translations, however brilliant, and to attempt no further of their own would be to "glory in men above that which was in them." A common affliction indeed!

Two pull-quotes here – the first one with a variety of applications, the second just for fun:

It is not he that hath good gold, that is afraid to bring it to the touchstone.

Many men's mouths have been open a good while. (Not the full quote, but a fitting one considering our human tendency to go on and on and on and on…as seen on most cable news programs and not a few pulpits.)

The Unwillingness of Our Chief Adversaries, that the Scriptures Should Be Divulged in the Mother Tongue, etc.

Now the Church of Rome would seem at the length to bear a motherly affection towards her children, and to allow them the Scriptures in their mother tongue: but indeed it is a gift, not deserving to be called a gift, an unprofitable gift: they must first get a licence in writing before they may use them, and to get that, they must approve themselves to their Confessor, that is, to be such as are, if not frozen in the dregs, yet soured with the leaven of their superstition. Howbeit, it seemed too much to Clement the Eighth that there should be any Licence granted to have them in the vulgar tongue, and therefore he overruleth and frustrateth the grant of Pius the Fourth. So much are they afraid of the light of the Scripture, (Lucifugae Scripturarum, as Tertulian speaketh) that they will not trust the people with it, no not as it is set forth by their own sworn men, no not with the Licence of their own Bishops and Inquisitors. Yea, so unwilling they are to communicate the Scriptures to the people's understanding in any sort, that they are not ashamed to confess, that we forced them to translate it into English against their wills. This seemeth to argue a bad cause, or a bad conscience, or both. Sure we are, that it is not he that hath good gold, that is afraid to bring it to the touchstone, but he that hath the counterfeit; neither is it the true man that shunneth the light, but the malefactor, lest his deeds should be reproved [John 3:20]: neither is it the plain-dealing Merchant that is unwilling to have the weights, or the meteyard brought in place, but he that useth deceit. But we will let them alone for this fault, and return to translation.

The Speeches and Reasons, both of Our Brethren, and of Our Adversaries against this Work

Many men's mouths have been open a good while (and yet are not stopped) with speeches about the Translation so long in hand, or rather perusals of Translations made before: and ask what may be the reason, what the necessity of the employment: Hath the Church been deceived, say they, all this while? Hath her sweet bread been mingled with leaven, her silver with dross, her wine with water, her milk with lime? (Lacte gypsum male miscetur, saith S. Ireney.) We hoped that we had been in the right way, that we had had the Oracles of God delivered unto us, and that though all the world had cause to be offended and to complain, yet that we had none. Hath the nurse holden out the breast, and nothing but wind in it? Hath the bread been delivered by the fathers of the Church, and the same proved to be lapidosus1, as Seneca speaketh? What is it to handle the word of God deceitfully, if this be not? Thus certain brethren. Also the adversaries of Judah and Jerusalem, like Sanballat in Nehemiah, mock, as we hear, both at the work and workmen, saying; What do these weak Jews, etc. will they make the stones whole again out of the heaps of dust which are burnt? although they build, yet if a fox go up, he shall even break down their stony wall. [Neh 4:3] Was their Translation good before? Why do they now mend it? Was it not good? Why then was it obtruded2 to the people? Yea, why did the Catholics (meaning Popish Romanists) always go in jeopardy, for refusing to go to hear it? Nay, if it must be translated into English, Catholics are fittest to do it. They have learning, and they know when a thing is well, they can manum de tabula3. We will answer them both briefly: and the former, being brethren, thus, with S. Jerome, Damnamus veteres? Mineme, sed post priorum studia in domo Domini quod possums laboramus. That is, Do we condemn the ancient? In no case: but after the endeavors of them that were before us, we take the best pains we can in the house of God. As if he said, Being provoked by the example of the learned that lived before my time, I have thought it my duty, to assay whether my talent in the knowledge of the tongues, may be profitable in any measure to God's Church, lest I should seem to have laboured in them in vain, and lest I should be thought to glory in men, (although ancient,) above that which was in them. Thus S. Jerome may be thought to speak.

1 lapidosus – stony, full of stones, gritty
2 obtrude – to impose, to push forward
3 manum de tabula – I’ve only dabbled in Latin (so correct me please!) but this looks like “handwriting on a tablet” i.e. they can put it in writing.

Translators to the Reader_5

The fifth installment. The Translators here demonstrate at length that their efforts in putting forth this translation are nothing new; that they had only entered into the labors of those who had gone before over the previous 1600 years – a labor that, by logical extension, would surely continue on into our times and beyond as long as men and culture and language develop and change. In the history they recount, note how many of these ancient works were the works of singular individuals; each translation, whether by empowered committee or skilled individual, serves in its own unique way. 

The final paragraph states their thesis clearly, and the rationale for all translation, ancient and modern, "into the vulgar tongues":


To have the Scriptures in the mother tongue is not a quaint conceit lately taken up, either by the Lord Cromwell in England, or by the Lord Radevile in Polony, or by the Lord Ungnadius in the Emperor's dominion, but hath been thought upon, and put in practice of old, even from the first times of the conversion of any Nation; no doubt, because it was esteemed most profitable, to cause faith to grow in men's hearts the sooner.

Translation out of Hebrew and Greek into Latin

There were also within a few hundred years after Christ, translations many into the Latin tongue: for this tongue also was very fit to convey the Law and the Gospel by, because in those times very many Countries of the West, yea of the South, East and North, spake or understood Latin, being made Provinces to the Romans. But now the Latin Translations were too many to be all good, for they were infinite (Latini Interpretes nullo modo numerari possunt, saith S. Augustine). Again they were not out of the Hebrew fountain (we speak of the Latin Translations of the Old Testament) but out of the Greek stream, therefore the Greek being not altogether clear, the Latin derived from it must needs be muddy. This moved S. Jerome a most learned father, and the best linguist without controversy, of his age, or of any that went before him, to undertake the translating of the Old Testament, out of the very fountains themselves, which he performed with that evidence of great learning, judgment, industry, and faithfulness, that he hath forever bound the Church unto him, in a debt of special remembrance and thankfulness.

The Translating of the Scripture into the Vulgar Tongues

Now though the Church were thus furnished with Greek and Latin Translations, even before the faith of Christ was generally embraced in the Empire; (for the learned know that even in S. Jerome's time, the Consul of Rome and his wife were both Ethnics, and about the same time the greatest part of the Senate also) yet for all that the godly-learned were not content to have the Scriptures in the Language which themselves understood, Greek and Latin, (as the good Lepers were not content to fare well themselves, but acquainted their neighbors with the store that God had sent, that they also might provide for themselves) [2 Kings 7:9] but also for the behoof1 and edifying of the unlearned which hungered and thirsted after righteousness, and had souls to be saved as well as they, they provided Translations into the vulgar for their Countrymen, insomuch that most nations under heaven did shortly after their conversion, hear Christ speaking unto them in their mother tongue, not by the voice of their Minister only, but also by the written word translated. If any doubt hereof, he may be satisfied by examples enough, if enough will serve the turn. First S. Jerome saith, Multarum gentium linguis Scriptura ante translata, docet falsa esse quae addita sunt, etc. i.e. The Scripture being translated before in the languages of many Nations, doth show that those things that were added (by Lucian or Hesychius) are false. So S. Jerome in that place. The same Jerome elsewhere affirmeth that he, the time was, had set forth the translation of the Seventy, suae linguae hominibus, i.e., for his countrymen of Dalmatia. Which words not only Erasmus doth understand to purport, that S. Jerome translated the Scripture into the Dalmatian tongue, but also Sixtus Senensis and Alphonsus a Castro (that we speak of no more) men not to be excepted against by them of Rome, do ingenuously confess as much. So, S. Chrysostom that lived in S. Jerome's time, giveth evidence with him: The doctrine of S. John (saith he) did not in such sort (as the Philosophers' did) vanish away: but the Syrians, Egyptians, Indians, Persians, Ethiopians, and infinite other nations being barbarous people translated it into their (mother) tongue, and have learned to be (true) Philosophers, he meaneth Christians. To this may be added Theodoret, as next unto him, both for antiquity, and for learning. His words be these, Every Country that is under the Sun, is full of these words (of the Apostles and Prophets) and the Hebrew tongue (he meaneth the Scriptures in the Hebrew tongue) is turned not only into the Language of the Grecians, but also of the Romans, and Egyptians, and Persians, and Indians, and Armenians, and Scythians, and Sauromatians, and briefly into all the Languages that any Nation useth. So he. In like manner, Ulfilas is reported by Paulus Diaconus and Isidor (and before them by Sozomen) to have translated the Scriptures into the Gothic tongue: John Bishop of Sevil by Vasseus, to have turned them into Arabic, about the year of our Lord 717; Bede by Cistertiensis, to have turned a great part of them into Saxon: Efnard by Trithemius, to have abridged the French Psalter, as Bede had done the Hebrew, about the year 800: King Alfred by the said Cistertiensis, to have turned the Psalter into Saxon: Methodius by Aventinus (printed at Ingolstadt) to have turned the Scriptures into Slavonian: Valdo, Bishop of Frising by Beatus Rhenanus, to have caused about that time, the Gospels to be translated into Dutch rhythm, yet extant in the Library of Corbinian: Valdus, by divers to have turned them himself, or to have gotten them turned, into French, about the year 1160: Charles the Fifth of that name, surnamed the Wise, to have caused them to be turned into French, about 200 years after Valdus his time, of which translation there be many copies yet extant, as witnesseth Beroaldus. Much about that time, even in our King Richard the second's days, John Trevisa translated them into English, and many English Bibles in written hand are yet to be seen with divers, translated as it is very probable, in that age. So the Syrian translation of the New Testament is in most learned men's Libraries, of Widminstadius his setting forth, and the Psalter in Arabic is with many, of Augustinus Nebiensis' setting forth. So Postel affirmeth, that in his travel he saw the Gospels in the Ethiopian tongue; And Ambrose Thesius allegeth the Pslater of the Indians, which he testifieth to have been set forth by Potken in Syrian characters. So that, to have the Scriptures in the mother tongue is not a quaint conceit lately taken up, either by the Lord Cromwell in England, or by the Lord Radevile in Polony, or by the Lord Ungnadius in the Emperor's dominion, but hath been thought upon, and put in practice of old, even from the first times of the conversion of any Nation; no doubt, because it was esteemed most profitable, to cause faith to grow in men's hearts the sooner, and to make them to be able to say with the words of the Psalm, As we have heard, so we have seen. [Ps 48:8]

1 behoof = advantage or benefit (related to “It behooves you…”)

Translators to the Reader_4

The fourth installment. Now we get to the heart of the matter. Having fully established the fact that they are attempting something that will be misunderstood and picked at and spurned by many (and it was), and the priceless nature of the Word of God, they now expose the great and ongoing need for translation.

Three key quotes capture their thesis:

But how shall men meditate in that which they cannot understand?

It is necessary to have translations in a readiness.

Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the curtain, that we may look into the most Holy place; that removeth the cover of the well, that we may come by the water.

One of the reasons I moved on from the KJV in my teaching (first to the ASV, then primarily to the NIV and from there to an enjoyment of the many translations available all across the spectrum) is that I realized that to my audience— sitting before me nearly four centuries after these translators wrote this preface – the KJV was itself an unknown tongue. I was constantly translating the translation. And while this certainly exalted me as the “translator” and expounder of the “holy oracle” in this strange and holy dialect (that was just the common man’s speech centuries previous), it obscured what should have been plain. Keeping the Word of God confined to an ancient tongue not spoken by the “very vulgar” only creates a dependency on a clergy class to explain it – or worse, relegates the Word as the sole property of that class and thus unfit for common consumption. It was breaking this very dependency through these early efforts in English translations that prepared the ground for what we know as the Reformation.

And one more wonderful irony. The translators in discussing the “work of the Seventy” – the Greek translation of the Old Testament (what we know as the Septuagint) labor to make the point that while many came to see the Seventy’s work as inspired and they as “prophets” and not merely “interpreters” (boy that sounds familiar), the Septuagint was in fact a flawed translation (they were just interpreters after all) – but that didn’t keep the apostles from using it. The apostles did not take upon themselves to make a new translation that was really inspired, but used what was on hand. Not a bad example for us to consider. It’s also good for us to remember that the KJV translators were “interpreters” themselves and not “prophets” and considering their heart expressed in this preface, they would have been horrified that anyone would suggest otherwise.

Translation Necessary

But how shall men meditate in that, which they cannot understand? How shall they understand that which is kept close in an unknown tongue? as it is written, Except I know the power of the voice, I shall be to him that speaketh, a Barbarian, and he that speaketh, shall be a Barbarian to me. [1 Cor 14] The Apostle excepteth no tongue; not Hebrew the ancientest, not Greek the most copious, not Latin the finest. Nature taught a natural man to confess, that all of us in those tongues which we do not understand, are plainly deaf; we may turn the deaf ear unto them. The Scythian counted the Athenian, whom he did not understand, barbarous; so the Roman did the Syrian, and the Jew (even S. Jerome himself calleth the Hebrew tongue barbarous, belike because it was strange to so many) so the Emperor of Constantinople calleth the Latin tongue, barbarous, though Pope Nicolas do storm at it: so the Jews long before Christ called all other nations, Lognazim, which is little better than barbarous. Therefore as one complaineth, that always in the Senate of Rome, there was one or other that called for an interpreter: so lest the Church be driven to the like exigent, it is necessary to have translations in a readiness. Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the curtain, that we may look into the most Holy place; that removeth the cover of the well, that we may come by the water, even as Jacob rolled away the stone from the mouth of the well, by which means the flocks of Laban were watered [Gen 29:10]. Indeed without translation into the vulgar tongue, the unlearned are but like children at Jacob's well (which was deep) [John 4:11] without a bucket or something to draw with; or as that person mentioned by Isaiah, to whom when a sealed book was delivered, with this motion, Read this, I pray thee, he was fain to make this answer, I cannot, for it is sealed. [Isa 29:11]

The Translation of the Old Testament out of the Hebrew into Greek

While God would be known only in Jacob, and have his Name great in Israel, and in none other place, while the dew lay on Gideon's fleece only, and all the earth besides was dry; then for one and the same people, which spake all of them the language of Canaan, that is, Hebrew, one and the same original in Hebrew was sufficient. But, when the fulness of time drew near, that the Sun of righteousness, the Son of God should come into the world, whom God ordained to be a reconciliation through faith in his blood, not of the Jew only, but also of the Greek, yea, of all them that were scattered abroad; then lo, it pleased the Lord to stir up the spirit of a Greek Prince (Greek for descent and language) even of Ptolemy Philadelph King of Egypt, to procure the translating of the Book of God out of Hebrew into Greek. This is the translation of the Seventy Interpreters, commonly so called, which prepared the way for our Saviour among the Gentiles by written preaching, as Saint John Baptist did among the Jews by vocal. For the Grecians being desirous of learning, were not wont to suffer books of worth to lie moulding in Kings' libraries, but had many of their servants, ready scribes, to copy them out, and so they were dispersed and made common. Again, the Greek tongue was well known and made familiar to most inhabitants in Asia, by reason of the conquest that there the Grecians had made, as also by the Colonies, which thither they had sent. For the same causes also it was well understood in many places of Europe, yea, and of Africa too. Therefore the word of God being set forth in Greek, becometh hereby like a candle set upon a candlestick, which giveth light to all that are in the house, or like a proclamation sounded forth in the market place, which most men presently take knowledge of; and therefore that language was fittest to contain the Scriptures, both for the first Preachers of the Gospel to appeal unto for witness, and for the learners also of those times to make search and trial by. It is certain, that that Translation was not so sound and so perfect, but that it needed in many places correction; and who had been so sufficient for this work as the Apostles or Apostolic men? Yet it seemed good to the holy Ghost and to them, to take that which they found, (the same being for the greatest part true and sufficient) rather than by making a new, in that new world and green age of the Church, to expose themselves to many exceptions and cavillations1, as though they made a Translation to serve their own turn, and therefore bearing witness to themselves, their witness not to be regarded. This may be supposed to be some cause, why the Translation of the Seventy was allowed to pass for current. Notwithstanding, though it was commended generally, yet it did not fully content the learned, no not of the Jews. For not long after Christ, Aquila fell in hand with a new Translation, and after him Theodotion, and after him Symmachus; yea, there was a fifth and a sixth edition, the Authors whereof were not known. These with the Seventy made up the Hexapla and were worthily and to great purpose compiled together by Origen. Howbeit the Edition of the Seventy went away with the credit, and therefore not only was placed in the midst by Origen (for the worth and excellency thereof above the rest, as Epiphanius gathered) but also was used by the Greek fathers for the ground and foundation of their Commentaries. Yea, Epiphanius above named doth attribute so much unto it, that he holdeth the Authors thereof not only for Interpreters, but also for Prophets in some respect; and Justinian the Emperor enjoining the Jews his subjects to use especially the Translation of the Seventy, rendereth this reason thereof, because they were as it were enlightened with prophetical grace. Yet for all that, as the Egyptians are said of the Prophet to be men and not God, and their horses flesh and not spirit [Isa 31:3]; so it is evident, (and Saint Jerome affirmeth as much) that the Seventy were Interpreters, they were not Prophets; they did many things well, as learned men; but yet as men they stumbled and fell, one while through oversight, another while through ignorance, yea, sometimes they may be noted to add to the Original, and sometimes to take from it; which made the Apostles to leave them many times, when they left the Hebrew, and to deliver the sense thereof according to the truth of the word, as the spirit gave them utterance. This may suffice touching the Greek Translations of the Old Testament.

1 cavillations – our friend “cavil” again; petty criticisms and nit-picking