Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

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The New Logos

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  4. This is a great illustration to the men I train in my church but probably not in the way you intended. Smugness and lack of pastoral insight is what I’ve come to expect from many in the academy. I was surprised to find this on your otherwise excellent blog.

  5. Thanks, Dan and Paul.

    Just to clarify: I don’t support elitism, though I don’t deny that I can be guilty of it. In this particular case, though, as best I can discern my own motives, my disposition in posting this was mainly jovial. That’s why I placed it in the category “humor.” Comical cartoons often make a valid point with hyperbole, and I think this illustration does that well.

    Of course, I wouldn’t argue that there’s never a place for someone preaching or teaching God’s word to suggest that a particular translation could be rendered more accurately. But that’s not the point of this illustration. The point is that some people—often the least qualified people—bombastically (and arrogantly, it seems) “correct” translations.

  6. The cartoon is funny but I think it can give people the wrong impression. I teach adult SS classes on a regular basis, sadly without any formal training in the Biblical languages, and from an archaic version (KJV, although my church is not KJVO). I regularly suggest better ways of reading the English text, often because the phrasing is misleading, awkward, or otherwise out-of-date. Sometimes I do it because the translation choice is an issue of interpretation that can be argued effectively from the context of the text. Sometimes I do it because a commentator who has spent his whole life studying a book suggests a different translation, and his argument makes sense. I hope I’m not bombastic or arrogant when I do that. Actually, I tend to tread very lightly when I do suggest changes because of the sensibilities that people often have regarding the KJV.

  7. Of course, should I dare ask that regardless of academic pedigrees, no Ph.D., Th.M., nor Th.D. ever translates from a philosophical nor theological point of view?

  9. Hilarious. Thank you for posting this.

    I am often frustrated when you see someone constantly feeling the need to “correct” Bible translators. It begins to make those of us sitting in the pews believe that we do not hold God’s word in our hands, that only those of you with the original Greek do. That’s not many steps away from us all having to read the holy book in the holy language.

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