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St. Francis of Assisi

Wednesday, April 01st, 2009 | Author: Skip Moen

Having thus a fond affection for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us.  1 Thessalonians 2:8 (NASB)

Our Own Lives – “Preach the gospel at all times, and when necessary use words.”  St. Francis got it right.  This is just what Paul said to the Thessalonians.  “We imparted to you the good news along with our own lives.  You saw everything we wanted to say in action because you were witnesses to how we lived.”  The first principle of evangelism is not what we say but how we live.

Paul uses the Greek word psyche, sometimes translated “soul.”  But Paul means a lot more than intellectual knowledge or spiritual apprehension.  He means more than religious education or a code of conduct.  When Paul uses the Greek word psyche, he is trying to capture the Hebrew word nephesh.  The Greek concept of Man was the combination of body-mind-soul, but the Hebrew concept was a single, organic and spirit-filled unity.  Nephesh was all of me, all at once, my embodiment in the world.  That’s why the NASB does not translate this verse as “our very souls.”  That translation would be too Greek.  Paul is expressing a Hebrew idea.  He gives his life to this cause.

Sometimes we wonder why the power of the gospel seems to have such a small effect on the great number of people who claim allegiance to the Christ.  We read the writings of the Apostles.  We see amazing things happening.  We see incredible changes in those people in the first century, and we wonder what’s missing today.  Why did the early church have such a dramatic impact when we seem to do nothing more than add another building to the community every few years?  Perhaps the answer is right here, in this translated phrase.  Too often Christianity has become a Greek-based mental acknowledgement.  We assert that we believe the propositions, the doctrines of the Church.  We agree with the right cognitive conclusions.  But we haven’t embodied them.  They haven’t become our lives.  We have separated saying the gospel from living the gospel.

There’s a simple little test that you can apply to see where you are in all this.  Just ask yourself if anyone around you would know that you are a follower of the Messiah by just watching you.  Would they know that you love God and are obedient to His will without a single word?  Are you a walking sign post for righteousness?  Perhaps this little test gives us another reason why Torah observance becomes important.  God’s purpose is to make you into His billboards.  Of course, you won’t have big letters stamped across your forehead, but how you live should proclaim Him to the world.  That’s why Torah living is different.  If your behavior is the same as the best examples of decent, moral living by non-believers, how can you be a billboard of good news?  God’s plan does not adopt the world’s point of view.  Where we look just like the world, we have nothing further to say.

Topical Index:  evangelism, lives, Torah, psyche, nephesh, 1 Thessalonians 2:8

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , , ,  | 6 Comments

Giving Good News

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 | Author: Skip Moen

Having thus a fond affection for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us.  1 Thessalonians 2:8 (NASB)

A Fond Affection – While most readers of the Bible don’t know it, there are often minor differences in the various Greek texts that underlie our translations.  The original text is no longer available to us, so we rely on copies.  There are literally thousands of fragments of these copies, and they don’t always agree.  So, if you picked up the latest Greek text of the New Testament (the Nestle Arland, 27th edition from the United Bible Society, usually abbreviated as NA27), you would find footnotes on nearly every page showing you which of the extant manuscripts agree and which do not.  The King James Bible is based on a Greek text called the Textus Receptus, which is outdated, thanks to major archeological finds since the translation in 1611. 

What does all this mean?  Well, in this verse, the TR (Textus Receptus) uses the Greek word himeiromenoi but the NA27 uses the Greek word homeiromenoi.  Doesn’t look like much of a difference, does it?  The TR Greek means “to yearn after, to long for,” while the NA27 Greek means  “to have a kindly feeling.”  Perhaps it is only a small change in intensity.  The Greek word is found as the translation of the Hebrew hakah, but only in Job 3:21 (”waiting for death”).  This certainly cannot mean “fond affection,” since no one has a fond affection for death.  The translators of the TR recognized that the LXX took the word to mean “longing for,” and on that basis translated Paul’s phrase as “Longing over you.”  But things have changed since the King James translation.  This is complicated by the fact that this Greek word appears only once in the New Testament and is used only once in the LXX.  Hunting this one down is great detective work.

Now you’ll probably say, “What’s the point?  Who cares about such a tiny change?  If both words mean sort of the same thing, we can understand that idea without all these nit-picky details.”  You would be right.  We can understand the idea.  Translating the text so that we get the idea is the basis of a lot of current Bible translations.  These translations are not so concerned with the actual words.  They just want to communicate the message.  While this is a noble pursuit, it raises a serious issue.  Is the meaning of the text found in the text or is it found in the understanding of the reader?  Do I read the Bible in order to understand what the author of the passage had to say or do I read the Bible for what it means to me?  Is it OK to just get the idea or do I really need to know the exact details of the author’s statement?

These are very important questions principally because if I think that the reader is the focus of the translation, then I am free to change the language so that it has meaning for the reader.  I can ignore the details and even the vocabulary of the original author if the author’s choices don’t communicate to the reader.  I end up with a translation that doesn’t look like the original words at all.  Take The Message as an example.  While it is easy to read in contemporary vocabulary and ideas, it is impossible to work from The Message back to the original language.  The Message is Eugene Peterson’s personal vocabulary choices. 

Here’s the point.  Every translation has to deal with the details.  Every translation adopts some method for dealing with them.  But not every translation takes the same approach.  If you read the Bible in any language except Greek and Hebrew, you need to know how your translation approaches these issues.  Otherwise, you will be subject to the whims of the translator.  So, pick up your Bible and, perhaps for the first time, read the Introduction or the explanation of how the translation was done.  You just might be surprised.

Topical Index:  translations, Textus Receptus, Nestle-Arland 27, longing, affection, 1 Thessalonians 2:8

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , , , ,  | 5 Comments