The aim makes sense, and takes it to a new level. Past translations have given a nod to out-loud readability (NLT, The Voice) or to presentation in everyday English, but SENT seems to take this to a new level. The first thing I noticed was the use of contractions in dialogue. This is the way people normally speak, but few translations make liberal use of words like “I’m” or “you’re” or “she’s,” instead spelling out both words. Since our common mode of speech runs these words together, it makes sense to present them this way. Another notable feature that one doesn’t typically see is pronunciation keys set in footnotes where they are needed.

The translation uses an intuitive method to indicate words for which there is no corresponding Greek word in the original text. These are typically provided for English style, readability, or explanatory purposes. Almost all translations do this to one extent or another, and SENT does it fairly liberally at points. Consider Romans 12:6-8 (as highlighted in the preface) where greyed words are used to indicate those not in the original text:

And we all have gifts, according to God’s grace, which is given out in a different way to each person. If it’s prophecy, the grace comes out in proportion to their faith. If it’s service, it comes out in their service. If someone is a teacher, it comes out in their teaching. If someone is gifted with encouraging people, it comes out in their encouragement. The giver gives wholeheartedly, the leader leads enthusiastically, the person who serves the needy does it joyfully.

Compare this to your favorite translation, reading both aloud. The additions here are more than in most passages, but still serve to clarify and provide a natural flow in spoken English without changing the meaning.

I’ve not yet spent enough time with the translation to comment on the overall quality of it, so this post is simply to provide a few introductory observations. As I do whenever I pick up a new translation, I turned to a few of my favorite passages, ones I know well. Everyone has different favorites for this purpose, but the exchange between Jesus and Nicodemus should be fairly familiar. Here’s an excerpt:

There was a man from the Pharisees, whose name was Nicodemus. He was a Jewish leader. He came to Jesus at night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you’ve come from God as a teacher. After all, nobody can do the miracles that you do unless God is with them.” Jesus said back to him, “I’m telling you very seriously: unless a person is born over again, they’re not going to see God’s Reign.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a person be born when they’re old? Surely they can’t go back into their mother’s womb for a second time and be born!” Jesus replied, “I’m telling you very seriously: unless somebody is born from water and the Spirit, they can’t enter God’s Reign. What’s born from the flesh is flesh, and what’s born from the Spirit is spirit. Don’t be shocked that I told you, ‘You have to be born over again.’ The wind of the Spirit blows wherever it wants, and you hear the sound of it, but you don’t know where it’s coming from and where it’s going. Everybody who’s been born from the Spirit is just like that.”

Here the dialogue has much fewer textual additions to make it flow, yet the translation is very readable and sounds like a fairly natural conversation.

The Sent Press website offers more information on the translation, as well as links to samples for online reading (pdf), a discussion forum about the translation, and instructions on how to purchase a copy of the preliminary edition — the final version will appear later after revisions and editing has been completed. (The copy I received was a complimentary review copy, which Webb was kind enough to inscribe for me.) Based on my initial look at the translation and review of the website, I’m looking forward to spending more time with it and perhaps offer some further thoughts down the road.

I have a confession to make: I’ve never really been a big fan of The Message. There — I’ve said it. Now I know that many (most?) of you are quite in love with it and will tell me that it has enriched their Bible-reading and made the text come alive again. That’s okay… the reasons I’ve never been enamoured of it are a little different. It isn’t the missing verse numbers nor the fact it was done by one man — J.B. Phillips has those in common, and I love his translation. My issue with it is much along the lines of the challenges faced by any dynamic equivalence translation that seeks to bring the language and setting into as contemporary a setting as possible.

Firstly, with The Message, Peterson attempts to contemporize the story as much as possible, such that when Jesus approaches the scene where there has been a death in the house, we see people coming and going with casseroles. I don’t think that’s in the original, but it helps paint the scene in a graphic way that we can readily relate to. In other words, it captures the sense of the original scene without being too literal about how it was actually written down in the first place. The issue here is that in a real way, the Bible is not a modern story — it isn’t set in our time or place, and that necessarily changes some of the ways we understand it. To be clear, it’s message is timeless, but the narrative story it tells is pretty much fixed in time and space to the events which are described. I may get a kick out of The Cotton Patch Version, but I wouldn’t exactly recommend it as a study tool. Eugene Peterson doesn’t go this far with The Message, but still. This is a challenge with all dynamic equivalence translations seeking to make the historical setting relevant and easy to grasp significant nuances as they occur. Idiom is a particular difficulty, and is often lost completely.

Secondly, speaking of idiom, there are a number of points at which interpretive decisions must be made with dynamic equivalence translations in a way that isn’t as necessary with a more literal rendering. There’s quite a bit of wordplay in John 3, for example, and anything approaching a pun or an idomatic expression is generally lost with any type of translation, unless you do some digging for yourself. With a dynamic equivalence translation, the sense of seeing something new in the text is often the result of an interpretive decision where the translators opt for the sake of clarity to make clear something that may have been ambiguous in the original. For all the sermons we’ve heard explaining the specificity of a Greek word, there are many instances in biblical languages where the original language is less specific than the receptor language (English, in this case). In such cases, an interpretive decision must be made which will have the effect of narrowing the theological understanding of the text. Read the Beatitudes in a variety of translations, and you’ll start to see this — the same is true with a number of texts. My personal preference is to leave the interpretation as wide as possible at the translation level and leave it with the reader — which is sometimes accomplished through margin or footnotes. The more dynamic translations, such as The Message generally do not indicate what has been added to the text, and the reader can be left a little uncertain about where the original language offers or does not offer latitude of a differing range than does the translation.

This preface is not to specifically disparage The Message so much as it is to point out the difficulties in dynamic equivalence translation. In my view, the better these are dealt with, the more dynamic the translation can be without damaging equivalence. Even the NIV and NLT are, strictly speaking, dynamic equivalence, but deal with these issues generally by attempting to stay closer to a literal rendering, seeking to strike a balance between the two. These observations also bring us straight to The Voice, where we find the single biggest difference in this translation is the way in which it deals with these issues. Quoting from p.viii of the Preface:

Italic type indicates words not directly tied to a dynamic translation of the original language. These words or sentences may contain information that would have been obvious to those originally addressed in the Gospel or letter… and are meant to help the reader better understand the text without having to stop and read footnotes or a study guide.

Outlined Boxes delineate material that expands on the theme. This portion is not taken directly from the original language.

Screenplay format is used to avoid the endless repetition of simple conjunctions and to identify dialog. The speaker is indicated, the box is indented, and quotation marks are not used. This helps greatly in the public reading of Scripture. Sometimes the original text includes interruptions in the dialog to indicate attitude of the speaker or who is being spoken to. This is shown either as a stage direction immediately following the speaker’s name or as part of the narrative section that immediately precedes the speaker’s name.

The team working on the translation includes an “award-winning fiction writer, an acclaimed poet, a pastor renowned for using art and narrative in his preaching and teaching, Greek and Hebrew authorities, and biblical scholars.” The unusual makeup of the translation team helps ensure that the eventual rendering is graphic, descriptive, clear, and flows easily. I’m not convinced that the format necessarily aids in public reading unless multiple readers are used for dialogue, but this is a small point.

The website description offers a slight paraphrase of part of the material that appears in the physical copy to describe the project.

Chris Seay’s vision for The Voice goes back 15 years to his early attempts to celebrate the beauty and truth of the biblical narrative. As western culture moved into what is now referred to as postmodernism, Chris struggled with a deep desire to preach the whole story of God. Much like the Hebrews at the time of the New Testament, emerging generations today connect with story rather than isolated facts. Too often, preaching is reduced to articulating truth statements somehow hidden in a complex, powerful, and redemptive story. Jesus taught through parables and metaphors; modern Christians have attempted to translate His teaching into a system of irrefutable fact statements and something seems to be getting lost in the translation.

Hence, a group of writers, poets, scholars, pastors, and storytellers have committed to work together to bring the Scriptures to life in a way that celebrates both beauty and truth.

The result is a retelling of the Scriptures: The Voice, not of words, but of meaning and experience.

The Voice is a fresh expression of the timeless narrative known as the Bible. Stories that were told to emerging generations of God’s goodness by their grandparents and tribal leaders were recorded and assembled to form the Christian Scriptures. Too often the passion, grit, humor, and beauty has been lost in the translation process. The Voice seeks to recapture what was lost.

The obvious question is how well the goals have been accomplished. One of the things I did with the New Testament I received was to take it along with my NLT to our small-group gathering as we were working through some of the early chapters in Matthew. As often happens in such group-discussion settings, there was a certain amount of “my translation says…” going on. By the second time I showed up with my copy of The Voice, even some of the Message-readers were asking how The Voice rendered a certain verse or passage. Generally in these settings, I found that the translation enlivened the text in a helpful way, while the conventions used by the translation to depict added material were easy to distinguish. For the texts in those settings, I did not find any that would significantly change or distort meaning — mainly they offered “flavour” such as context or setting details.

Some other unusual translation decisions have been made for The Voice as well. Titles for Jesus like Messiah or Christ are rendered “Liberating King,” while “baptized” is rendered “ritually cleansed” and John the Baptist is “John the Immerser.” In John 1, the Word is called the Voice. In fact, with the prologue to John being perhaps my favorite scripture passage, it is one that I will often turn to in evaluating a new translation… and where my opinion can be particularly harsh if I feel it’s being mishandled. Here my feelings on the translation are mixed. Overall, the passage comes across more as story than poem, but I can’t fault the translation too much for that. Some of the idioms appear obscured, and interpretive decisions have been made as well. I have written before on darkness and light (a recommended post, btw), referencing John 1:5 where I suggest that the darkness has never “grasped” the light due to the dual meaning possible in the English word, which aligns with the dual meaning possible in the Greek word — it can mean either “comprehend” or “seize.” In verses 16-17, we find interpretive decisions that contrast the grace of Christ with the Law of Moses in a more antithetical manner than is intended (I’ve previously posted about this “grace upon grace” as well). To be fair, both of these particular instances are not easily translated, and there is much discussion about their precise meaning.

An excerpt from Acts 12:

---

Picture this event: Peter is sound asleep between two soldiers, double-chained, with still more guards outside the prison door watching for external intruders. Suddenly the cell fills with light: it is a messenger of the Lord manifesting himself. He taps Peter on the side, awakening him.

Messenger of the Lord: Get up, quickly.

The chains fall off Peter’s wrists.

Messenger of the Lord: Come on! Put on your belt. Put on your sandals.

Peter puts them on and just stands there.

Messenger of the Lord: Pull your cloak over your shoulders. Come on! Follow me!

Peter does so, but he is completely dazed. He doesn’t think this is really happening–he assumes he is dreaming or having a vision. They pass the first guard. They pass the second guard. They come to the iron gate that opens to the city. The gate swings open for them on its own, and they walk into a lane. Suddenly the messenger disappears.

---

Peter finally realized all that had really happened.

Peter: Amazing! The Lord has sent His messenger to rescue me from Herod and the public spectacle of my execution which the Jews fully expected.

Peter immediately rushed over to the home of a woman named Mary. (Mary’s son, John Mark, would eventually become an important associate of the apostles.) A large group had gathered there to pray for Peter and his safety. He knocked at the outer gate, and a maid, Rhoda, answered. She recognized Peter’s voice, but she was so overcome with excitement that she left him standing on the street and ran inside to tell everyone.

Rhoda: Our prayers were answered! Peter is at the front gate!

Praying Believers: Rhoda, you’re crazy!

Rhoda: No! Peter’s out there! I’m sure of it!

Praying Believers: Well, maybe it’s his guardian angel or something.

All this time, Peter was still out in the street, knocking on the gate. Finally they came and let him in. Of course, the disciples were stunned, and everyone was talking at once. Peter motioned for them to quiet down and then told them the amazing story of how the Lord engineered his escape.

The story here does tend to come to life, but importantly, the additions to the text are clearly marked. Does the original text say that everyone was talking at once? No, not exactly — but it is fairly clearly implied, and the stylistic addition helps the flow of the story without changing the meaning of the text.

The New Testament letters are similarly translated, but with no direct action or dialogue, the screenplay style does not appear. I haven’t read through the New Testament in The Voice yet, but the selections I have read lead me to believe that overall, it is to be recommended. It will be of particular interest to those seeking a more dynamic translation than the NIV or NLT, but who want more reference to literal touchstones in translation than The Message affords. Indeed, with the textual additions clearly delineated as they are, The Voice can be used for lay-study as well as reading for pleasure or devotional purposes. The Voice is fresh and lively, adding contextual notes into the text without unacceptably altering the original meaning. While it will have its critics (as all dynamic equivalence translations do), but it can be recommended for daily use and casual study. In this application, I believe it will re-enliven some of the passages which may have become dry and dusty for some through over-familiarization.

Paperback version reviewed; also available in cloth. To date, only the New Testament is available, with a copy of John’s Gospel being downloadable from The Voice website. Hopefully a translation of the Old Testament will also appear in due course.

Purchase online:
Christianbook.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.ca
Amazon.co.uk

Review copy provided by Thomas Nelson;
purchase links are affiliate links.

The introductory chapters naturally explain the metaphor from which the book takes its title, as well as outline the author’s own past approach to the Bible. As well, he gives us an overview of three of the most common approaches to the Bible: reading to retrieve, “those days, those ways”, and reading through tradition. In fact, most people use a combination of these approaches, but McKnight also contends that most people are not aware of how exactly they read the Bible. He provides a questionnaire in an appendix to assist people in thinking through their own approach. The second approach, “those days, those ways,” is where McKnight spends most of his time in the book, describing how to translate “those ways for those days” into “these ways for our day.” He sums up this theme (p.27-28) like this:

God spoke in Moses’ days in Moses’ ways, and
God spoke in Job’s days in Job’s ways, and
God spoke in David’s days in David’s ways, and
God spoke in Solomon’s days in Solomon’s ways, and
God spoke in Jeremiah’s days in Jeremiah’s ways, and
God spoke in Jesus’ days in Jesus’ ways, and
God spoke in Paul’s days in Paul’s ways, and
God spoke in Peter’s days in Peter’s ways, and
God spoke in John’s days in John’s ways, and
and we are called to carry on that pattern in our world today.

McKnight writes, “The biblical way is the ongoing adoption of the past and adaptation to new conditions and to do this in a way that is consistent with and faithful to the Bible.” (p.29) The method he advocates melds the “return and retreive” method, which “return[s] to the times of the Bible in order to retrieve biblical ideas and practices for today” (p.25-26) and the “reading with tradition” method, which goes back in time to the Bible in order to come forward in time to the present.

The introduction concluded, the first three parts of the book are separated into story, listening, and discerning, or “What is the Bible?”, “What Do I Do with the Bible?”, and “How Do I Benefit from the Bible?” These represent three key concepts in biblical interpretation as McKnight describes it.

Part one discusses some attempted shortcuts in Bible reading, one of which sees (for example) the Apostle Paul as a Maestro who organizes and arranges everything necessary to understand the Bible’s message, such that his writings become the grid for all of theology. (This observation and its description will resonate with many post-Evangelicals.) Also in this section, McKnight introduces the memorably-named “wiki-story” to describe the story in the Bible as part of a larger overarching story that is shared and continues to be written.

Part two deals with “listening,” where we approach the Bible not simply as a historical document or prescriptive guidebook, but as God’s written communication with us. This, McKnight suggests, is a relational approach to the Bible. He also observes that the Bible is filled with examples of people who did and didn’t listen. “Good reading”, he writes (p.103), “is an act of love and therefore an act of listening.” From here, he steps into a chapter on “Missional Listening,” also called “The Boring Chapter.” I would protest that I did not find the chapter boring at all, but then I didn’t see the original unedited draft! Of course, if the point of studying the Bible in the first place is to learn how then we should live, it stands to reason that some missional impact will emit from our deep listening to the text.

The third part deals with discerning, where application can be found. As I understand it, the discussion of A.J. Jacobs’ The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible is not intended to be understood as a good example of biblical application. Instead, McKnight steps through a number of thorny issues to illustrate how the approach to the Bible that he describes employs discernment at this last step in order to move the interpretation through to a present-day application which is not necessarily a literal following but which nevertheless remains true to the Biblical text.

The fourth part of the book is in fact a hidden gem, for here McKnight tackles the issue of women in leadership as a “test-case” of how to go back to the text, take what is written, understand its context, and then bring it forward to become words for our day. Given the constraint of space in the book, this is not an exhaustive treatment of the subject, yet it deals with most of the major points of contention surrounding the issue. As such, it is both a summary primer on the subject of women in ministry and an example of how we can approach the Bible and bring its words into our present setting.

The book concludes with five appendices supporting the material found at earlier points in the book. Overall, I found it to be an enjoyably easy read, but one which still managed to treat each point as thoroughly as necessary. Without reservation, I would recommend the book to any Christian grappling with how to take what at times can seems to be archaic language and ideas and faithfully bring them forward and apply them to everyday life in the present day.

In a time when many segments of the church are re-examining themselves, their practices, and their theology, McKnight’s contribution to a renewed approach to the Bible will prove a most helpful contribution to this practice of reexamination — particularly for those attempting to challenge so many of their past assumptions without running off the rails. In many ways, The Blue Parakeet is a treatise of wisdom for its time, and not only this time, but each new era that attempts to consider the cultural gulf between the world of the Bible and the world beyond the window. The Blue Parakeet deserves a place beside Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart’s classic, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (CBD Link).

(Quotations and page numbers in this review are taken from the Advance Reader Copy and may vary in the final published edition.)

I’ve written before on the interaction of the New Testament with the Old Testament, and I began to consider another possibility that follows the Jewish tradition of setting the later sections of scripture essentially as commentary on Torah. This is what emerges:

Scripture / Essential Message

Torah Live this way

Prophets You’re not living this way

Writings It’s good to live this way

New Testament How to live this way in a different time and culture

We tend to forget that the time from the writing of Genesis to the writing of the New Testament is significantly greater than the time from the first century to today. With that understanding, the New Testament itself presents a sound example of how to contextualize the Old Testament writings into a newer time and culture.

I’m just thinking out loud here, not presenting a fully developed thesis… but it’s open for discussion.

Maybe another analogy will point us in the right direction. My relationship to the president and provost and dean of my university, North Park University, might be called a relationship of authority. David Parkyn, our president, Joseph Jones, our provost, and Charles Peterson, our dean, are in one sense authority figures. They have more authority than I do–and they should have. Frankly, knowing the kind of life an administrator is called to live, I am quite happy to cede that authority to them. Actually, I’m not ceding anything to them. They are given authority by the board of trustees, and my responsibility is to acknowledge their authority. However you look at it, they have a kind of authority I don’t.

This was mostly just for context. The analogy he’s making is intended to help explain the authority of the Bible and our relationship with God, but the analogy is what caught my eye, because while it would be an axiomatic description of authority in some circles, it’s revolutionary in others. Let’s get to that part next.

However, it’s all about framing relationship. If I frame their relationship to me in terms of authority — as in “They are my authority figures” — then I have to frame my relationship to them in terms of submission — as in “I do whatever they say.” If a professor’s responsibility is simply one of submission — which it isn’t at our school, since these authority figures engage each of us at the level of personal and professional conversations that sometimes lead to disagreement – the whole relationship is framed by words like “hierarcy,” “authority,” and “obedience.”

You see where we’re going now… pastoral relationships and a hierarchical structure for the church, about which I’ve written quite a lot. In my observation, most groups that talk about this at all tend to be heavy on words like “authority” and “covering,” and don’t tend to promote a lot of individual expression. Where Scot uses “administrator” and “professor,” think “pastor” and “parishioner.”

Is this a proper way of framing the relationship of an administrator and a professor? I hope not. In fact, if an administrator chooses to frame his or her relationship to professors in terms of authority — as in “I am in charge. Listen to me. Do this or that!” — then the dynamic heart of the relationship has gone south. Administrators who appeal to this are usually in trouble. If a man or woman frames his or her relationship to a spouse or to children in terms of the word “authority,” you can bet your sweet bippy that the relationship is not what it should be.

What if we frame our relationship differently? What if, instead of framing a professor’s relationship to the administration in terms of authority, we frame it in terms of love, trust, and conversation? To be sure, within that frame there is authority and sometimes debate and disagreement. I’ve had my share of that. But the point we are making is that the framing of the relationship is very important. What words do we use that best frame such a relationship? I am certain of this, authority and submission are not the best terms.

(p.91-92) These are refreshing words for those whose former pastors framed their relationship in terms of authority. Perhaps they called it “spiritual authority” so it sounded better, as they did at my CLB and those of others. But as I reflected when I first read this passage, people who make a habit of asserting or demanding authority or respect seldom deserve it.

I’ll be posting more on this book soon, and recommending it. You can pick one up at at Amazon or at CBD.

The subject has come up here before, mostly in the context of how the Old and New Testaments relate to one another. Zondervan will soon be publishing Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology), and as part of the prelude to the book’s release they have developed an online quiz on the subject. You can see my results and take the quiz below. I took it twice and didn’t get quite the same answer…

NT Use of the OT — Test Your View!

Fuller Meaning, Single Goal view You seem to be most closely aligned with the Fuller Meaning, Single Goal view, a view defended by Peter Enns in the book “Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament” (edited by Kenneth Berding and Jonathan Lunde, Nov. 2008). Since the NT writers held a single-minded conviction that the Scriptures point to and are fulfilled in Christ, this view suggests that the NT writers perceive this meaning in OT texts, even when their OT authors did not have that meaning in mind when they wrote. It should be noted, however, that advocates of this view are careful not to deny the importance of the grammatical-historical study of the OT text so as to understand the OT authors on their own terms. For more info, see the book, or attend a special session devoted to the topic at the ETS Annual Meeting in Providence, RI (Nov. 2008); Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Darrell L. Bock, and Peter Enns will all present their views.

Fun quizzes, surveys & blog quizzes by

Naturally, I’ll dive in first.

Favorite book: John’s Gospel.

I developed a love of the book in my senior year of Bible College, when I took the course in John taught by a part-time prof who was, incidentally, one of the “youth” way back when my parents were the youth leaders in the church where I grew up. But that part was long ago and not relevant to this discussion…

The thing that struck me was the many layers of meaning in John. He chooses words carefully to convey ideas, and structures his book using a plethora of chiasms, which I love to find and sort out. The fact that the book’s structure is not a matter of common agreement, nor even is the text or its source only adds to its layers. It used to be one of the first books that a new believer was instructed to read, though these days I’d point them to Mark instead. More action. For a gospel, John exhibits a very developed theology, more than the synoptics. Add to that the questions of authorship and about the Johannine Community and stages of redaction that the gospel underwent, and there is simply a lifetime of digging to be done in just this one book. Yet it’s written for the simplest of reasons, “that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that believing, you might have life through his name.” I love the juxtaposition of simplicity and complexity that the book represents to me.

Now, who shall I tag to kick this thing off? Let’s see…

• Kingdom Grace
• Brad Sargent
• Bill Kinnon
• Lori Bjerkander
• (John) A Shepherd

I’ve been setting aside a few things along these lines for the past little while.

For example, in a house church (implied by the small group / cell church comparison), there’s no building… but there are times when a building is a missional positive. Ben Sternke asks, The church is not a building… or is it? — he reflects on an older post on the subject by David Fitch. In such contexts, the building might be referred to as a “ministry center,” but I imagine that some care must be taken to not slip into an attractional mode.

Justin Baeder talks about Gathering-Centered Ecclesiology, what he describes as a post-congregational expression of church that sounds a lot like a network of simple house churches, and jives very well the years-old vision I’ve had for a structure of the local church in a city or region.

One of the most striking posts that I’ve been mulling over for a while is Philip Edwards’ Church, What Church?, which points to nhm-i.org which in turn points to organic-church.org, which reads,

WARNING

This Site Is Dangerous!!!
If you are satisfied with your Church experience, then please do not browse through this site any further. You have been warned… The ideas presented here will challenge you and spoil you for church as usual!

A Complete Reformation

We suggest that a New and Complete Reformation of Church as we know it is very much needed today! We invite you to join us in this exciting journey of discovery!

That sounds ominous… but Philip must have gone browsing anyway. He quotes,

The earliest English translation of the Bible (from the Latin Vulgate) was by John Wycliffe in 1380 (and was handwritten). THIS bible does not contain the word CHURCH. Congregation was used instead (still not a correct rendition of “Ekklesia” in my opinion).

and

In 1611, the King James Version of the bible was completed. The translators were instructed to ensure that the translation would not contradict what was being done in the Anglican Church (King Henry the 8th had split from the Catholics in 1529). The “brief” to the translators of the KJV had 15 general rules that they were instructed to follow. The most significant with regard to our study of the word “Church” is rule 3 which states, “The Old Ecclesiastical Words to be kept, viz. the Word Church not to be translated Congregation &c.”

The point here being that the Greek word ekklesia, now commonly translated “church” had previously been customarily translated as “congregation.” Of course we know it means “assembly” and senses to this effect; I like the word “gathering,” where the “church” is gathered from the places where it is spread through the community, and they come together for their various purposes. “Church” in my mind is a word better reserved for “the church catholic,” the worldwide body of Christ. “Local church” is a linguistic convention that is functional to help make a distinction between the two. The word “church” itself originated from the Greek kyriake, meaning “of the Lord” — supporting its use as a collective noun for Christians.

It would appear that the popularization of the term “church” in lieu of “congregation” began with the 1611 KJV. The effect, to my mind, has been to blur the distinction between the local congregation and the larger organization of the church. For Henry VIII and his successors, this might be seen to have a political aim of associating each congregation with the larger Church of England… implying that the blurring of the distinction was intentional. It’s rather difficult to say if this was the case, of course… but the effect seems to be much along these lines. Nowadays, this leads to much confusion in reading the English Bible and the interpretations that follow, namely that difficulty with one local church expression is projected as difficulty with the Body of Christ as a whole. To the point, criticizing the organization of the local church is in many circles misunderstood to be a direct criticism of the Bride of Christ.

Perhaps we need some new language, or at least some more common convention in using what we’ve got more precisely. Obviously there’s much more here for further thought and analysis… anyone care to offer some ideas?