An Issue of Translation...

Today in Hebrew class the topic was brought up: "was the language of Abraham the Hebrew which we have?" To which the professor and the class seemed to agree that it was not. The implications of this rather sticky issue can lead to a lot of speculations, but one thing stood out to me that may be a helpful thought when considering the confidence we can have in our Bibles being the "very" word of God.

I have always been a little bothered by the easy way out of textual difficulties which says "Its a problem of translation!". Even the BCO has a troublesome oath for members in that it states this question " Do you believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as originally given, to be the inerrant Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice? " it is the "as originally given" part that causes trouble, because, frankly we don't have the originals - in fact the very languages that we study in seminary as "the originals" are really translations of the original, at least in the case of Hebrew. Far from being a problem for canonicity it actually seems a vindication on the highest level of the doctrine of Scripture in the modern age. Why? Because, we see a process of God's superintendence as always normal to the preservation of the Word of God and we see no problem with the translations. This is not to say that all translations are equally valid, nor am I trying to deny the difficulty of translation, but it is at least worthy to note that Christ would have had a Hebrew text that was not exactly the "original" and he did not mind one bit - nor did he ever say "well if you knew the original you'd understand". Some times it seems we are more in love with the idea of education than we are in revelation. I mean that we can be swept away by the thought that the Hebrew or the Greek hold some sort of secret meanings that the english simply cannot convey and that why God delivered it in those languages, all the while ignoring the very vivid display of the Gospel in our own tongue! Now, don't get me wrong, I like Greek and Hebrew a lot more than English and the Hebrew text is quite beautiful, but trust me, or rather trust God, the Gospel is just as much in the BHS as it is in the ESV!

I believe that this is an important step in having the confidence in the Word of God that we hold in our hands that we need. It also lends credence to the historical process and the vast difficulties of translation being subservient to the Lord just as everything else is.