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“Attention Christians! Are you tired of hearing your pastor correct the preserved word of God (the authorised King James Version) with the Greek or other translations? Are you interested in attending a Bible-believing Baptist church in the Charlotte area? If so, call 394-8051.”
This notice, seen outside a church in Charlotte, North Carolina, seems to suggest that the Greek New Testament is a translation of the King James Version when the Greek text pre-dates it by 1,500 years.
Indeed this church, called the Bible Believers’ Church, maintains that the King James Version “is the perfect word of God … and preserves the very words of God in the form in which he wished them to be represented in the universal language of these last days: English.”
Barton insists that the King James Bible was a revision not an innovation
John Barton uses this vignette in his chapter on Translating the Bible to demonstrate that, throughout the centuries, the translation of the Bible has been intensely political and sometimes controversial. Major translations have included those in Greek and Aramaic of the Hebrew Bible, sometime around the third century BCE; Latin translations of the Greek texts of the Hebrew Bible from the first century BCE; the first Latin translation from the Hebrew text by Jerome in the fourth century CE; many Arabic translations from the 10th century onwards; “reformation translations” into various European languages (and their immediate precursors in the century before Luther); and modern translations into more than 1,000 languages.
In each case the translation of the Bible has been both a vehicle for and a product of prevailing theological, philosophical, cultural and political trends, ideologies and (occasionally) insanities. The iconic standing of the King James Bible, in both cultural and religious terms, is undeniable, and Barton is sympathetic to that status, while at the same time exposing some of the extravagant claims of its brilliance. For example Barton insists that the King James Bible was a revision not an innovation, and that many of its most striking phrases can be attributed to William Tyndale.
Cultural artefact
However, this vignette of the pastor from Charlotte, North Carolina, not only demonstrates how confused and inaccurate certain religious characterisations of the Bible can be, but also how translations and interpretations of the Bible can often reflect world views that are at odds with the nature of the Bible itself. As Barton explains, the Bible is a set of texts of different genres and by multiple hands, which were written and re-written, shaped and re-shaped, over many centuries and by different communities.
He demonstrates that Christian fundamentalists venerate a Bible that does not really exist
Barton’s magnum opus is a history of how the Bible came to be “from its remote beginnings in folklore and myth to its reception and interpretation in the present day”. Barton set himself a formidable task, but the result is remarkable. It is a multi-layered work in which he considers the Bible both as a cultural artefact and as a text of religious significance for both Judaism and Christianity. His analysis of the cultural significance of the Bible is certainly engaging. However it is his analysis of the relationship between the text(s) of the Bible and the religious worlds of Christians and Jews through the centuries that provides the greatest illumination.
Barton rightly insists that the Bible does not map onto religious faith, that neither Judaism or Christianity can really be thought of as scriptural religions, or Bible-centred, that little in the Bible directly addresses the question of what is to be believed, and that there are central doctrines in Christianity that are virtually absent from the New Testament. Moreover he demonstrates that Christian fundamentalists venerate a Bible that does not really exist, and that they idolize a text that they largely misunderstand. Of course this is not a surprising or uncommon conclusion.
However, Barton’s articulation and communication of this point is important and needs to be widely disseminated, especially in contexts where biblical fundamentalists hold significant political power and use the Bible to advance unethical social and political agendas.
Old Testament
The depth of Barton’s scholarship, the erudition of his analysis and the historical range of his inquiry makes this a work of exceptional merit. He captures the scholarly consensus on the complex issues of the composition, transmission, dissemination and interpretation of this extraordinary range of texts, and makes it accessible to a wider audience. The work begins by contextualising the Hebrew Bible (sometimes called the Old Testament) in the history of the ancient Near East and then analyses the content according to the four main genres of the Hebrew Bible: prose, law and wisdom, prophecy and psalms and other poems.
Barton uses the terms Hebrew Bible and Old Testament interchangeably, although he recognises that the term Old Testament is problematic and explains the scholarly debate about the use of these terms. Many scholars no longer use the term Old Testament because it can imply that the Hebrew Bible has been superseded by a new, better or superior Testament. Barton is highly attuned to these concerns, and to the supersessionist and often anti-Semitic theologies that have plagued Christianity over many centuries.
The importance of the different manuscript traditions in the construction of an authoritative New Testament text is also discussed
His chapters From Books to Scripture and Christians and their Books analyse the critical phases in the evolution of the relationship between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, including the changing nature of the relative status of each, and serve to explain the position he takes on the use of the term Old Testament. While many might disagree with his conclusion, Barton’s view is that the term Old Testament is not tainted to the extent that it is unusable.
Barton interrogates the contexts of composition of the New Testament texts via a similarly detailed engagement with contemporary biblical scholarship, once again highlighting the contested, fragmentary and evolutionary nature of the texts in the early centuries of the Common Era. The importance of the different manuscript traditions in the construction of an authoritative New Testament text is also discussed, as is the significance of various translations through the interpretation of the Bible’s religious meaning.
Although a weighty tome (it runs to 661 pages), Barton’s A History of the Bible is a joy to read. Generations of students have been formed by his earlier influential works, and with this compelling new work Barton deserves to garner many new readers.
Linda Hogan is professor of ecumenics at Trinity College, Dublin.
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