Peter Carrell Anglican Down Under On Bible translations
Augustine Tanner-Ihm ViaMedia.News Where is the Colour? The CEEC Commissioning of Overseers: A Theological and Ecclesiological Critique
Joanne Woolway Grenfell Civil Society Safeguarding: How the Church of England is learning from past events
[This article is behind a paywall, but has been reproduced in full in a Church of England press release.]
Colin Coward Unadulterated Love The desolation of the Church of England
The will of the Holy Spirit is best discerned collectively as the Holy Spirit was given to the whole church at Pentecost, and not just to individuals or the selective few, eg the western elite. I also doubt whether the selection of informal overseers was put through any vigorous and lengthy equal opportunities process as these are essentially volunteers with decades of experience in leadership who have stepped forward at short notice to fill a pastoral emergency not of their making. This no doubt provides an open invitation to pile in with any and every possible ‘woke’ reason to condemn… Read more »
“… pile in with any and every possible ‘woke’ reason to condemn them.” I like the term ‘woke’…verily I say unto to you it is so Jesus don’t you find? “Keep awake then, for you do not know when the master of the house will come. ….and what I say to you I say to everyone: Keep awake” ( from the ‘little apocalypse’ of Mark 13. REB).
I like that.
I have to say I found Rev Tanner-Ihm’s article quite helpful, quite simply because he expressed a very different viewpoint in a clear, lucid way. Most certainly his cultural background and personal experiences are very different to my own, and it helps me see things from someone else’s perspective. That’s important, not least for helping me relate to the black people coming to my own church and understand their world view. If we don’t talk and share experiences, how do we learn to respect one another? I’m not at all happy with what’s happened recently – but it has nothing… Read more »
As a post script – which is probably reflected in Peter Carrell’s arguments, my Gideons’ pocket NT uses the word ‘overseer’ in I Tim 3. It doesn’t bother me personally – I have other taboo words of my own – but I can understand, and empathise with Augustine’s abhorence of the word. (My step children and grandchildren are of English and Hindi descent, with a goodly spread of other European nationalities added to their recent mixture. Any attempt at defining their racial lineage is therefore likely to be clumsy, runs a good chance of offending someone, and is therefore best… Read more »
Forewoman?
Well, why not? What do they call that role these days?
Certainly – if the gender fits.
One is likely on encountering the term straw boss to recall Tennessee Ernie Ford’s ‘Sixteen Tons’:
‘You load sixteen tons of number nine coal
The straw boss said “Well, bless my soul”‘
The version I know (from The Weavers’ recordings) is ‘damn my soul’. I’m glad to know the ‘straw boss’ bit – on the LP and CD it sounds like ‘the straw bowl’s hollow’ which has always baffled me! I guess the ‘hollow’ will be ‘hollered’.
It is a song with a social message, describing life in a ‘company town’. In some such wages were paid not in currency but in scrip, which would be used for purchases at the ‘company store’, hence:
‘St. Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store.’
Hullo to both of you. I’d forgotten ‘ Sixteen Tons’ – the problem of knowing so many folk and work songs. I was actually remembering a line from Woody Guthrie’s “Talking Union’ – St Peter’ll be the straw boss then, boys.” Don’t know, Clifford, if you’re English or American? Over here in GB the ‘company store’ was also known as the ‘truck shop’ – hence the law compelling employers to pay their staff wages in legal coin, rather than company tokens only redeemable at the store, was known as the ‘Truck Act’. ‘Line boss’ is a railroad term – GB,… Read more »
I have dual nationality, British and Australian. I have been to the USA about fifteen times, but have never lived there. Your information on the Truck Act is interesting.
The Weavers sang a lot of songs with social messages, which is why they got banned in the ‘Reds Under the Beds’ era. It’s interesting that they gingered up Merle Travis’ original lyrics to Sixteen Tons.
Is there anything more “western elite” than a bunch of white, mostly middle class, overwhelmingly male, London-centric, cis-het conservatives trying to force their views on the whole church?
I don’t think that the central members of the CNC are all white, and nor are they “overwhelmingly male”.
I think Jo is referring to CEEC ‘overseers’ not the CNC.
Indeed I am. I had thought that was obvious from the post to which I was replying, which nowhere mentions the CNC but does mention the “overseers”.
The article on translations by Peter Carrell is ok; but it doesn’t add much to the treatment of the same subject by John Barton in, A History of the Bible. My preferred English translation is the R.E.B. about which Barton writes: ” A revised version of [the NEB] appeared in 1989, but–sadly I think- has not been widely used, since the NSRV has proved so popular. The NEB/REB style attempts to render the biblical text as though it was written it had been written yesterday.” I prefer the literary style of the REB to that of NRSV which is the… Read more »
An interesting article which seems not to love American translations too much, however, one translation I have used for many years which has great clarity is the the Contemporary English Version which has some American roots. As an ignoramus of ancient Greek etc. I cannot comment on it’s claims to closely follow the original scripts but it does often offer clarity in plain easy to understand English that many other translations seem not to. On a point of correction, the author describes the Common English Version as the CEV, this should be the CEB (Common English Bible) The CEV is… Read more »
I’ve just bought the NRSV Updated Edition and think it’s very good indeed, at long last some movement away from anti-semitism (although ‘the Jews’ is still used) and anachronisms like ‘slaves’ and ‘sodomites,’ and no lip-service paid to the allegedly felicitous language of the authorised version when the latter got it utterly wrong.
Like Lorenzo I was interested in the idea of an updated version of the NRSV. I was curious to see how far the scholarship and translation update might have moved. One of my own test verses is 2 Kings 23.7, which in the NRSV is “He broke down the houses of the male temple prostitutes that were in the house of the Lord, where the women did weaving for Asherah.” The point being that the word used in Hebrew for these temple functionaries is “Kadeshim” – which should be translated holy men, the Hebrew root Kadesh meaning holy, as in… Read more »
I agree, Simon, but the meaning is uncertain (although definitely note temple prostitutes). Sepharia’s Tanakh translates thus
וַיִּתֹּץ֙ אֶת־בָּתֵּ֣י הַקְּדֵשִׁ֔ים אֲשֶׁ֖ר בְּבֵ֣ית יְהֹוָ֑ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר הַנָּשִׁ֗ים אֹרְג֥וֹת שָׁ֛ם בָּתִּ֖ים לָאֲשֵׁרָֽה׃ He tore down the cubicles of the consecrated workers (*consecrated workers Or “retainers”; meaning of Heb. qedeshi muncertain.) in the House of GOD, at the place where the women wove coverings for Asherah.
The revised JPS translates as ‘He tore down the cubicles of the consecrated workers’ and the Koren Jerusalem Bible has ‘He pulled down the houses of the prostitutes’ – a revision from the 1917 KJB ‘houses of the sodomites’ so interesting to see variations – consecrated workers does reflect kedoshim in the Hebrew. It does seem there are other things affecting the translation. I remember this discussion years ago when I was studying textual work at University. Nothing is every straight forward!
Thanks Marise. As you say, it is interesting to see the variations, and that the slow movement over the decades is in the right direction.
I think my complaint is that so many people, including many who speak confidently on LGBT issues and the Bible, are unaware that the issue even exists.
The Douai-Rheims is a translation from the Latin of the Vulgate, which has “effeminatorum”, so that interpretation is Jerome’s. The Septuagint leaves it untranslated as ‘kadesim’.
Re: antisemitism, despite preferring the Revised English Bible for literary flow, it makes a bad situation worse in John 18:36 “…my followers would be fighting to save me from the clutches of the Jews.” ‘Clutches’ has a very problematic idiomatic sense in English. This translation compounds the antisemitism of John’s gospel. The NRSV has “…keep me from being handed over to the Jews.” The Greek has an aorist subjunctive passive of the verb( link) . The verb is used thematically in the gospel for Jesus being ‘handed over’. The NJB renders the verb as ‘surrendered’. G3860 – paradidōmi – Strong’s… Read more »
In the Jerusalem Bible they use instead of Bishop or Overseer the term “Presiding Elder” the Bishops of My Church the Roman Catholic Church in England , Wales and in Scotland as from Advent are going to be withdrawing the Jerusalem Bible from Public Liturgical use at Mass and replacing it with the American Evangelical English Standard Version ESV. This will take affect from Advent Sunday of this year, which means the Laity will have to purchase New Missals before Advent Sunday and New Lectionary Books will have to be purchased for Cathedrals and Churches, as well as Monasteries and… Read more »
Re; the post colonial and colonial legacy sections of Augustine Tanner-Ihm’s insightful article, it may be of interest to read as well this piece from Anglican Journal (link) about the recent conference on MRI at 60, i.e. mutual responsibility and interdependence in The Communion. (link). Here are some teasers: “The Rev. Charlie Bell, college lecturer in medicine at Girton College, Cambridge, said the Anglican Communion had failed to address the legacy of colonialism, which he called a ‘scandal of history,’ in its global structures. ‘We face an urgent need to reimagine our Instruments of Communion [in a way] that would… Read more »
For those not familiar with Aotearoa artist Colin McCahon – mentioned by Peter Carrell – I strongly recommend you take an opportunity to explore his art and story.