It is always interesting when you listen to a preacher taking difference with a word in a bible translation.
No translation is perfect, but often what follows in preaching is a redaction of the text. It seems many times like the preacher simply differs with the translation of the word because he does not like what the text says.
This may seem somewhat cynical, but often if you make a list of the contents a preacher preaches on you will find that preacher (a: never preaches on: the poor, money, ect.. while preacher b never preaches on righteous living, the exclusive claims or Christianity ect..)
Often the translation disagreements occur precisely at the moment the preacher seems like he must preach on that topic he does not wish to preach on.
2 comments:
There may be a third option. Since translations must win approval by a team of translators there are (were) times when team members submitted to one another to present the "majority" view translation, even though the minority view would fit the context much closer. Majority views develop because a certain doctrine (or variant of a doctrine) becomes popular throughout Christendom and it is easier (very much easier) to go along than to differ. For example, read Titus 1:6. Most translations say something like pastoral candidates must "have children who believe." Yet, that translation is likely inaccurate since the word is not "believe" but "faithful" or "trustworthy." It is not even the kind of faithful or trustworthy that means "full of faith" but the faithful or trustworthy that means "behaves in a predictably proper manner." It is most often used of God, that God behaves toward us in a trustworthy or faithful manner. So, Paul was probably instructing Titus to only choose men to become pastors who have well disciplined children and was saying nothing about whether their children had actually been saved or not. Yet, to argue that point against the opinions of so many Christians can become self-defeating and so the translating team adopts "children who believe" instead of "children who behave in a trustworthy manner because they were well disciplined."
Yes. It is true there is a fuzziness to translation. I've found, however, in many conservative churches there is at times a subtle redaction of scripture. It's not a redaction anything like what you will see in liberal churches, but it exists subtly in topics which will never be preached. I feel a pastor would do well to keep a log of the main points of his sermons and put them in a document to track what he actually preaches on. I mentally track certain topics preached on from the pew and it is surprising how many topics are never preached on in my church which appears to be preaching exegetically through scripture. Sometimes exegetical preaching is fairly deceptive often when maybe 5 or 6 verses are preached on average and suddenly a slab of 20 verses is in a sermon. You can literally preach through a book of the bible while avoiding lots of topics of the book in this way.
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