Translating the messages of an armchair Bible translator

Who out there today isn’t familiar with the term “armchair quarterback”?

You know, the guys who sit in the bleachers or in front of their TV sets and watch the game, and when it’s over talk about all the mistakes that were made and how someone else could have done it better.

Perhaps you have even been guilty of this yourself. From relative ease and relaxation, where your only exertion was spilling popcorn and soda in your lap, you critique the one who measures his toil in sweat and blood.

Though this term comes from football, it has also been applied to other fields of competition as well. What it underscores is that it is easy to criticize where critics would fear to tread.

I think President Theodore Roosevelt said it best in his speech, “The Man in the Arena.” In it he said, “It is not the critic who counts.”

Yes, everyone out there has a natural bent to say how the man in the arena could have fought his opponents better, but they are only those timid souls who would never step into the ring. So what if he failed? At least he failed daring valiantly!

In the field of biblical translation, there are a bunch of armchair quarterbacks out there who can offer how flawed the King James Bible is, but they do so from an air-conditioned office and a regular paycheck. They have not known in their lifetimes any threat against their livelihood, let alone their lives. They have lived in the comforts and security of religious liberty where even heresy is protected.

Just remember the men who were in the real arena; men like William Tyndale, who after his imprisonment continued his translating efforts in a dingy dungeon that was probably little more than a 6-foot by 6-foot closet, complete with chamber pot. Damp and cold, he labored on the Old Testament until his death, writing on a bench while sitting on the floor.

While it is admitted that the King James translators had it little better than the early reformers, let us not forget for whom it was they fought — you and me. In their dedicatory, we find this quote: “So that if, on the one side, we shall be traduced by Popish Persons at home or abroad, who therefore will malign us, because we are poor instruments to make God’s holy Truth to be yet more and more known unto the people, whom they desire still to keep in ignorance and darkness …”

Yet while they achieved their goal and made God’s truth more known, the voice of the critic is heard. But what does he cry?

“The oldest manuscripts are most reliable.”

While we have already noted this to be “convenient” criteria since both pagan Rome and Roman Catholicism had regular Bible-burning campaigns, this is also convenient because these supposed older Greek manuscripts only comprise about a 5 percent witness. Despite Bible burnings, about 95 percent of all Greek biblical manuscript evidence is today called the Majority Text. It is this 95 percent witness from which the King James Bible was translated.

It is also significant to note that while the oldest manuscripts have major disagreements with the Majority Text, they also have major disagreements between themselves.

In fact, often where there is disagreement, one of them will side with the Majority Text. Yet, while the older texts are busy arguing between themselves, there is relative harmony within the Majority Text.

Unless I am missing something here, who is so wise to see the wisdom in bestowing reliability to age where age has little agreement between its members? Has no one ever heard of the term “liar” before? Dare we assume that just because it is called a Bible manuscript that the one who copied it was completely honest with absolute integrity?

Folks, the truth is that things that are different are not the same.

And the truth is also that most of the Bibles currently on the market are based on this 5 percent witness. Yes, this 5 percent witness has significant disagreement between its own members. This list includes the New International Version (all its editions), the New American Standard Bible and the New World Translation, to name three.

The sad part is the number of people who blindly follow the critics. Those who sit back in their easy chairs, whose products only claim to fame is how old their manuscripts are. Just remember this — the first Bible critic was found hanging in a tree in Genesis, chapter 3, and look where we are today as a result.

Ron Hamman is pastor of Independent Baptist Church of Wasilla. Contact him at 357-4229 or ron.hamman@gci.net.

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