Integrity of the Text

The last days have begun.  God, through his Son, has fully revealed his nature, and his purpose which stretches back through the prophets to creation. Hebrews 1:1-2 (Ellingworth translation)

Have begun – Read almost any standard translation of this verse.  None of them will be like Ellingworth’s translation.  The crucial differences are the rearrangement of the first idea (“last days” takes primary position) and the addition of several key words (like “fully,” “nature” and “creation”).  In fact, Ellingworth’s offering is almost a paraphrase rather than a translation.  Why should this matter to you?  It should matter because Ellingworth’s book is considered a significant work in the prestigious The New International Greek Testament Commentary series.  If scholars can get away with this, how are laymen supposed to know what is true?  Most of us cannot consult the Greek text for correction.  We have to trust the professionals.  But far too often, the professionals are driven by presupposition about theology rather than a straightforward rendering of the text.

Look what happens to the first thoughts in Hebrews when this rearrangement is allowed to stand.  The Greek text literally reads, “In many parts and in many ways of old, God spoke to the fathers by the prophets.”  Notice that Ellingworth’s translation obscures the entire idea of God speaking and the continuity with the voice of the prophets.  Suddenly the text is all about the full revelation in Christ.  Before we complete the first verse, we have already been told that the old is passing away.  The voice of God through the prophets no longer matters now that the full nature of God has been revealed in his Son.

There are more subtle additions here.  The Greek text speaks of “old” ways and parts.  The word is palai.  It means “long ago, past, or long before now.”  It does not mean “stretches back to creation.”  That idea is not present in the Greek text at all.  But introducing it into the translation shifts the focus from the God of the prophets to the God of creation, bypassing the significant place of Israel’s prophetic legacy.  Now all I need is Genesis 1 as my foundation.  I can skip everything else until I get to Matthew.  In fact, this is how most Christians understand the Old Testament.  God created.  Man fell.  Jesus was born.

Finally, when Ellingworth shifts the temporal location of the text to “the last days have begun,” he reorients the reader from a legacy connected to the history of Israel to a dispensation which no longer needs Israel.  The Greek text builds on continuity.  God spoke in the past through the prophets.  Now God speaks through the Son.  But that isn’t what Ellingworth suggests.  Instead of continuity, we get radical division.  Something new has begun.  The Greek text reads, “in these last days [God] spoke to us in the Son.”  These “last” days are simply an extension of the former days.  They are not radically different.  God is still speaking.  He is just using a new spokesperson.

How hard it is to sort out all the confusion when we don’t know the language of the manuscripts!  How much more diligent must we be!  Once again we find that even the best scholars are held captive by their paradigms.  Ellingworth writes in his introduction, “the writer [of Hebrews] hopes to encourage his readers to maintain their transition from Judaism . . . to Christianity.”[1]

What a sad state we are in when we can’t see the uniform voice of the Lord throughout all the Scriptures!  No wonder we feel separated from our own heritage.  Our faith has been compromised at its core without anyone telling us.  It’s time to become critical assessors of what we are taught.

Topical Index:  have begun, Ellingworth, Hebrews 1:1-2