NEW TRANSLATION, NEW PEOPLE
By R. M. SINCLAIR

It takes no prophet to predict the impact of new and dynamic Bible translations on a people deeply committed to the Word, but immersed in an old, consecrated, and ecclesiastical translation. One venerable gospel preacher, speaking to a group of young preachers recently, bemoaned the upsurge of interest in modern translations. His fear was that they would make us a new people.

The Church of Christ has been slow in critical study and use even of older translations such as Moffatt and Goodspeed. By 1946 when the Revised Standard Version NT (RSV) appeared, the tide could not be contained. Negative reactions almost amounted to a book burning, and a flood of booklets, tracts, and sermons on why we could nor trust the “new version” appeared. Preachers using it in the pulpit were put on notice. One preacher friend covered his new RSV in black cloth to escape persecution, another sad commentary on a type of Bibliolatry which insists on fine print, India paper, and black morocco! (a holdover no doubt from monastic days).

The flood of interest, only temporarily checked in 1946, is now unleashed. Perhaps the freshest translation to catch the interest of Church of Christ folk is the readable New English Bible NT (NEB). It is about time that we have study Bibles that are printed like modern text books typographically and otherwise, and at modest prices. Perhaps this explains the growing popularity of the NEB. Fortunate for us that help has come from Phillips, Wuest, Schonfield, Dodd and others. More than half of our “church of Christisms” come from anachronisms which we read into the KJV, and as these popular versions grow the doctrinal peculiarities will fade. No wonder the keepers of orthodoxy say, “Hang on to your King James”.

It is a strange mentality which can sing “Christian Hymns” (written almost entirely by “non-christians”) every Sunday and yet repress the fresh and crisp translations with the charge that theirs is a sectarian work! This all reminds me of Alexander Campbell’s comments on a new and rival Bible Society:

Indeed, I am tired of rival establishments in everything called Christianity. There is too much flesh and too little spirit in these antagonistic establishments. I wonder that we have not Baptist and Pedobaptist stores and shops, ploughs and penknives, as well as newspapers, Bible Societies, schools and colleges. (emph. mine RMS)

The KJV is an ecclesiastical translation made for the King of England, who was the head of the Church of England. Most translations are ecclesiastical, even the American Revised and the New American Revised. If there is any doubt that the KJV is ecclesiastical, read Alexander Campbell’s comments on his reprinting of the King’s original instructions to his translators, one of which is: “The old ecclesiastical words to be kept; as the word church, not to be translated congregation, etc.”

Campbell also goes on to point out that final etc. of the King obviously included other old, consecrated, and ecclesiastical words such as baptism (strange isn’t it how we have to let all our people know about the Greek for this last word, while we are silent about church, hell, soul, and a dozen others). Tyndale calls all these ecclesiastical words, juggling terms, which happens to be a very good definition. As Campbell further points out this use of ecclesiastical language smacks of kingcraft or priestcraft or both. Unfortunately, even in the Church of Christ, priestcraft is with us yet. We juggle the same old, ecclesiastical, consecrated words to sustain a doctrinal system of our own making.

If any doubts this, let it be observed who it is that “preserves the doctrinal purity of the Lord’s Church”, and with which version. Almost without exception the preachers are the ones who decide whom to “fellowship” or not, whom to invite to lectureships, and who will write for the papers. They also write out the bulls of excommunication and sit in judgment on other congregations and fellow preachers. What would Campbell have said had he seen our brand of priestcraft! The new translations simply do not lend themselves to our “marking” and “disfellowshipping” manias. Look up all our key verses used to “disfellowship”, and you’ll see how the fresh renditions fail to sustain our factious practices.