Words, and the Word of God—γαρ (Monday with Mounce 49)

I want to continue the conversation from last week when I was talking about verbal, plenary inspiration but this time from the formal side. The question is whether functional translations betray a lower view of Scripture since they don’t translate every Greek word.

Let’s take a passage from the NIV that has long been an issue of debate, and that is the “absence” of translating all the occurrences of γαρ.  Here are the relevant parts of Rom 3:9-19 (NIV’s paragraphing). Paul begins by expressing his thankfulness for them and then says:

(8) First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. (9) γαρ God, whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you (10) in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God’s will the way may be opened for me to come to you.

(11) γαρ I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong …. (13) I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.

(14) I am obligated both to Greeks and Non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. (15) That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome.

(16) γαρ I am not ashamed of the gospel, because (γαρ) it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. (17) For (γαρ) in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

(18) γαρ The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness ….

The charge can be made that the NIV does not translate the γαρ in vv 11, 16, and 18, and in some people’s minds this raises the issue of verbal, plenary inspiration. “If God inspired the biblical writers to say γαρ, then we should translate every one of God’s words.” The argument is that γαρ is an explicit indicator of a causal relationship that should likewise be explicit in the translation.

• Paul is thankful for the Romans because God witnesses to his prayerful thankfulness.
• Paul wants to come to Rome because he wants to be mutually encouraged.
• Paul is eager to preach in Rome because he is not ashamed of the gospel.
• The truth of Paul’s affirmation, “The righteous will live by faith,” is seen to be true because God’s wrath is just punishment for the sin of the world.

Is it fair to conclude that the translators have a lower view of Scripture? I don’t think so. It is an issue of semantic range and translation theory.

1. γαρ has a meaning somewhat less emphatic meaning than a full strength “because.” BDAG gives these three meanings/glosses.

• marker of cause or reason, for
• marker of clarification, for, you see
• marker of inference, certainly, by all means, so, then

The third meaning is weaker than the first, and the second weaker than the third. In other words, γαρ does not always mean “for” in the sense of “because.” As you look at v 9 this is readily apparent. Any kind of causal relationship is forced and “for” can be seen as too strong a word. Schreiner says that it “introduces the next major theme” (page 49), which ”for” does not.

Once this semantic range is seen, it helps explains why the NIV does not always translate it. The γαρ in v 11 introduces reasons for why he wants to come to Rome (v 10). γαρ could have been translated here, but this introduces the issue of how English links concepts. English, and perhaps other noninflected languages, uses series to logically connect ideas. When we hear “A” and it is followed by “B,” it is natural for us to see that there is a connection between the two, and we determine the connection by context. Anyone reading v 11 in context will understand the connection and, it can be argued, an explicit translation of the γαρ is unnecessary.

However, I do not understand why the γαρ in v 16 is untranslated.

And finally, the γαρ in v 18 is problematic. Vv 18ff. are a justification of the theme verses of vv 16-17. God’s justified wrath against all people (who do not follow justification by faith) is evidence that there is no justification apart from faith. And to make things worse, most translation put a section heading before v 18, since 1:18 - 3:20 is a major section in Paul’s thought. More and more I don’t like headings since they break so many connections.

So what is my point? You don’t have to agree with the exegesis, but hopefully you can see how not translating every word does not necessarily indicate a person’s view of inspiration. Even the ESV and NET don’t translate every word; just skim the footnotes on the NET Bible to see all the occurrences of δε that went untranslated.

There is not an exact equivalence between the Greek and English words, and sometimes an explicit translation is too strong, and the sense of the Greek is carried over in context or by punctuation. But nowhere in this discussion is there a justified criticism on a person’s view of verbal plenary inspiration.

William D. [Bill] Mounce posts every Monday about the Greek language, exegesis, and related topics at Koinonia. He is the author of numerous books, including the bestselling Basics of Biblical Greek (third edition coming in 2009!), and general editor for Mounce's Complete Expository Dictionary of the Old and New Testament Words. He served as the New Testament chair of the English Standard Version Bible translation. Learn more and visit Bill's blog (co-authored with scholar and his father Bob Mounce) at www.billmounce.com.  

Comments

[T.C. R]

Thanks for this translation class.

[Brad]

Regarding verbal, plenary inspiration in general, doesn't believing that God inspired each and every word in the scriptures also require that one believe that God did not preserve each and every one of those words? We have a huge number of manuscripts containing a huge number of variations. None of those variations are really important as far as changing the meaning of any major doctrines, but the words themselves are indeed different.

Should we believe 1) that God inspired but did not preserve his word, 2) that God inspired the meaning and left the authors to choose the words and to use their own literary style, or 3) that one of the many variations present in the many manuscripts available to us is THE one, true, verbal, plenary, inspired word and we just need to determine which it really is? Or something else entirely?

I think I would lean towards the second option even though some would claim that I would be taking a low view of scripture by doing so. It seems to me that option 1 would be taking a low view of God and that option 3 is somewhat wacky. But I could just be missing something. I apologize if this is off topic, but you've mentioned verbal, plenary inspiration a number of times in these last two posts.

[Richie]

Bill,

This was a very nicely presented article. Though understanding and agreeing with everything you've said, I'll offer a couple of practical points:

First, in teaching adult, college, and high school courses in English, history and government for many years it is very obvious to me that most people do not know how to read well. Therefore, expecting the average English reader of any age to understand an English text - Bible or otherwise - on the basis of how English is supposed to be properly understood - that is, on the basis of context, punctuation, etc. - may very well be to mislead ourselves. Instead, if we want them to understand an English text they need all the help they can get.

Second, in leading Bible studies over the last 35 years I've seen just how much the connectives such as "for", "because", "therefore" help the average Bible reader to understand the train of thought of a given Biblical section. Over the years the NIV was normally the main version used in the Bible studies I've lead. Often when other versions such as the RSV, ESV, NLT, etc. were used for comparative purposes the connectives that they contain have made clear the train of thought that was not immediately clear from the NIV/TNIV.

Although normal English as reflected in the NIV/TNIV often communicates by other means including context, punctuation, etc., in my experience the average reader of the Bible today does not read well (effectively) - either the Bible or in general - and thus does not understand well from the context, punctuation, etc. On the other hand, connectives are in fact effective for the average person in making the connections inherent in the Biblical text as marked by "gar", etc. So I would hope that the NIV 2011 would add more of these in key places as, for example, in Rom. 1:16 and Romans 8:18, etc.

[Jeremy Pierce]

Brad, 3 is the traditional view of evangelicals since the dawn of modern textual criticism, whether you consider it wacky or not. It does seem to be required once you put together Jesus' concern for every iota of God's word being preserved, God's ability to preserve it, and the facts about the manuscript tradition. No other conclusion but 3 seems to fit the conjunction of those three things.

I'm not sure why you consider it wacky, anyway. It's 1 and 2 that seem wacky to me. I agree with you that it would be strange if God didn't allow his word to be preserved, but you think it's also strange if God allows alterations to be preserved. The assumption seems to be that God should have inspired to copyists as well as the human authors of scripture. I think you could easily extend that to think God should have inspired all teachers of the Bile and commentators, since they can also misrepresent God's word.

I have heard one argument in favor of why God might actually prefer 3 to a situation where copyists never get it wrong. Those on the more liberal end of this kind of question like to accuse evangelicals of bibliolatry for thinking too highly of scripture (and I think they prefer something like your 2 when they say this). But it seems like the temptation to deify the book itself would be even stronger if our Bibles were even closer to the original manuscripts. Even if we read Greek and Hebrew, we have texts that are constructed by the best arguments we can muster for what seems to be the original text. So no one can claim to have something that is absolutely certain to be in every detail what Isaiah or Paul wrote. Given the likeliness of certain readings and the reappearance of the most important teachings in multiple places, we can have reasonable enough certainty of what the Bible teachings in detail, but it's distant enough from the text to maintain some distance between the physical object in front of me that I call my Bible and the very word of God, such that I won't be as tempted to see that physical object as a god. I won't say that I think God did have this motivation when allowing things to go as they did, but it does seem to me to be a plausible explanation for allowing a messier textual tradition than we might have liked.

[Brad]

Jeremy,

"Wacky" was probably a poor choice of words. Problematic might have been a better description. I guess what I'm saying is that if God inspired each and every word, it would be problematic for Him not to have preserved each and every word. Assuming that among the many variations in the manuscripts available to us today is THE one, true, original text (even if we can't determine exactly what it is) that has each and every one of the words originally inspired by God seems also to be problematic to me.

For example, whenever we discover a new manuscript that has a variation for a word in the text for which we have no previous variation, we would then have to assume that a) either that variation is NOT original or b) that God had not preserved that particular original word as that variation had never been available before the new manuscript was discovered. Right? Likewise at any point in the history of textual criticism, we could make that same argument. For example, until the discovery of the DSS the oldest copy of Isaiah available to us was (I think) from around the 10th century or so. If we were to assume at that point in time that one of the textual variants available at that time were THE one, true, verbal, plenary, inspired word, wouldn't we have to assume that the DSS variant was not the originally inspired version? Or else that God had simply not preserved the original? And if He inspired every single word of the original, including grammar, spelling, style, etc. wouldn't it be reasonable to assume He would preserve such? Otherwise, what would be the point of inspiring each and every word?

Fwiw, I agree with your take on the variations and copyists' mistakes and a "messy" textual tradition possibly being a check on "bibliolatry. But it would seem to me that that argument would tend to support the view that God inspired the meaning and the message rather than each and every individual word of the text. It just seems to me that verbal, plenary inspiration must imply verbal, plenary preservation.