In Discordance with the Scriptures: American Protestant Battles Over Translating the Bible

This monograph addresses the intramural battles among American Protestants over new English translations of the bible in the late 19th and the 20th centuries. The first major English translation since the King James Bible, the Revised New Testament came out in 1881. It was met with considerable opposition by those Protestants who believed that only the King James authorized version was the true word of God. The translation raised deeper issues: Is the bible immutable or can it be "revised"? Are all translations equally trustworthy? Is the process of translation scientific and objective, or are the translators influenced by their belief systems? These issues have carried down to the last decades of the 20th century, and undoubtedly will continue into the future. Essentially the translation controversy is an aspect of the controversy between fundamentalists and modernists (liberals). In the early part of the last century, the former believed not only in the inerrancy of the bible, but suggested that only a particular version, the King James, was inspired by God. Later, in the 1930's and 40's, when the Revised Standard Version (RSV) which included both the Old and New Testaments was underway, conservatives were outraged that the rendering of Isaiah 7:14 had been changed from the King James translation, "Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son." to "a young woman is with child..." Clearly, this was an affront not only to Jesus' miraculous birth, but to one of the key prophetic links between the Old and New Testaments. Theusen painstakingly takes us through the debates that raged from the 1870s into the 1990's. The problem of modern bible-reading is a magnified version of Isaiah 7:14--confusion of textual with historical questions. The problem is exacerbated in that today we have what the author terms a Babel of bibles. Besides the conservative New International Version (which restores the virgin to Isaiah) and the more liberal New Revised Standard Version, there appear to be countless other editions. The politically correct Inclusive Version removes from the New Testament and Psalms all potentially hurtful language, including that of perceived gender discrimination. Then there are the "study bibles" where the text is accompanied by glosses so that they are essentially popular commentaries on scripture. Sola Scriptura seems to have been left by the wayside. Protestants are constrained to look to the authority of ecclesiastical or quasi-ecclesiastical groups to pass judgment on the suitability of this or that translation. Extensive end notes and bibliography.

The subtitle is American Protestant Battles Over Translating the Bible, but the heart of the book is really the RSV (Revised Standard Version) vs. NIV (New International Version) controversy. The curtain of public veneer is pulled back on the ideological translation wars, to reveal a compelling tale rife with politics, posturing, and power struggles.The introduction gets off on the wrong foot, with some esoteric blather about epistemological hermeneutics (or some such sespequedalian verbiage) and iconoclastic biblicism, that seemed pointless to me, other than as filler. I suggest you skip the introduction and get right into the book itself. Early on, the author takes some unwarranted stabs at William Tyndale, that only aggravated the situation.But once you get into the controversies surrounding the Revised Standard Version translation, the author hits his stride, and the fascinating story behind this influential translation begins to unfold. Then the fundamentalist-reactionary NIV is introduced, and the plot thickens palpably. Great nuts-and-bolts, blood-and-guts reading. I found myself almost unable to put the book down at this point, since this subject fascinates me, and it seems very little is written on the subject. This battlefield history is obviously the author's strong suit, and he plays it well. He comes across with a hard-boiled cynicism, that at times can be a little grating, and at other times, gives his work an edge. When he philosophizes about the implications of various ideologies, he seems on less solid ground. His observations are trenchant without being incisive. Ultimately, the author's thesis was unclear in my mind. Should Bible translators NOT strive to get closer to a perfect ideal of the "inspired original?" What role should religious bias play in the translation process?But no matter. Despite that, and despite an ending that fizzles rather abruptly, the strength of the story survives its weaknesses, and what emerges is a fascinating, well-researched and well-documented battle history of Christendom's American Bible Translation Civil War of the mid-century. I wish such a treatise was available for every translation out there!

Thorough History of Protestant Bible in English in the United States. "In Discordance with the Scriptures" by Peter J. Thuesen, sub-titled "American Protestant Battles Over Translating The Bible". Oxford University Press, 1999.This book presents a history of the revisions of the English translations of the Bible, Old and New Testaments. The book has, however, another central theme: the dilemma that Protestants face when they proclaim, "Sola Scriptura", or "scripture alone", while denying the necessity of a church body to pass on the acceptability of each revision. As a papist, I rely on the Pope to say that one version or another can be printed: "imprimatur". "In Discordance with the Scriptures", points out that Protestants have no such authority. This book records the arguments of Protestants in the United States over the authority that would accept (or reject) each new English translation. The old King James Version, "...deeply internalized by many Americans, and tacitly assumed to be the very Word of God, began to lose its unchallenged cultural hegemony". Page 42. It has always been a wonder to me that Protestants, who effectively demand the separation of church and state, tolerate a Bible with a King's name on it: a bible authorized by an alien king (James was a Scot, you know).The author, Dr. Peter J. Thuesen, spends a good portion of the first two chapters on the influence that the Tyndale Bible had on the foundation of the translations of the Hebrew and Greek versions into English. Tyndale's work predates the King James Version (as does the Catholic English Bible, the Douay-Rheims version). Dr. Thuesen is ecumenical enough to mention the encyclical of Pope Pius XII, "Divino Afflante Spiritu" (Page 80), which encouraged Catholic scholarship in biblical matters in the late 1950s.The book records the difficulties that different Protestant sects or denominations had with the translations that affected theological matters. For example, Isaiah 7:14, was given as child born to at "virgin" as a child born to a "young woman". Dr. Thuesen reaches to John Calvin and into the New Testament accounts of the Virgin Birth (Matthew 1:23) to defend the propriety of the literally correct translation of Isaiah as "young woman". The author further records that it is lamentable that in today's age a "young woman" is not synonymous with a "virgin".Interestingly enough, throughout the book, the author considers the King James Version to be somewhat lacking in accuracy, and that the new revisions, such as the Revised Standard Version, (RSV), are better translations, clarifying some poorer renditions. He does not cover, however, the Christmas story from Luke, which I remember, as a young boy, noting that that Catholic version was "Peace on earth to men of good will", while the English King James version stated, "Peace on earth, good will to men". Big difference! Today, we have, "..Peace on earth to those on whom His favor rests". This brings up style

When something as sacred as the Holy Scriptures gets monkeyed with and becomes a political football, emotions are bound to be stirred. Such was the case when modern translations of the English Bible were issued in 1881 and 1952. Thuesen examines in a brief overview the controversies surrounding these and other modern Bible translations, as well as giving background on English Bible translations beginning with the work of William Tyndale in 1526. It was the Reformation which brought about the rediscovery of the Bible as a rule of faith and life. The Scholastics of the Middle Ages were caught up in an Augustinian view of Scripture which confined its precepts to a shadowy realm of symbolism and allegory. The Enlightenment brought about a desire to examine the Scriptures in their historical-critical context, which ultimately gave rise to destructive higher criticism and what Thuesen calls "lower criticism", which was the response of Bible-believers who nonetheless sought to understand the meanings and milieus of the Biblcal authors. By this time the King James Version of 1611 had become normative in the minds of churchgoers, and the idea of revising it appeared as tampering, even though two updated versions of the King James had been made in the eighteenth century. During the intervening time, however, two manuscripts dating from the fourth century A.D., Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, had been discovered (in the Sinai and in the Vatican respectively), both of which were older than the manuscripts used by Erasmus in compiling his Textus Receptus in the sixteenth century (which had been utilized by the King James translators). By 1870 scholars in Britain and America felt that a new Bible translation was needed in the light of this new manuscript evidence. In the idealistic spirit of the time, it was also felt that a modern language Bible translation assembled by an ecumenical group of Protestant scholars would bridge the gaps between denominations. So the Revised Version was born, making its appearance in final form in 1881, under the watchful eye of committee chairman, theologian, and historian Philip Schaff. The American Standard Version of 1901 created less of a sensation, but the discovery of the Chester Beatty papyri--dating from the second century--in 1931 brought about a groundswell of interest in a new translation, which ultimately resulted in the Revised Standard Version, appearing in 1952. No Bible translation in history has been more thoroughly excoriated than the RSV, which was produced by a committee of scholars gleaned mostly from "liberal" colleges and seminaries under the aegis of the National Council of Churches. A handful of texts which the translators claimed to be clarifying by their translations appeared to many evangelicals and fundamentalists to be rendered in such a way as to cast shadows on cardinal Biblical doctrines. The primary example was that of Isaiah 7:14, in wh