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GOOD AS NEW A Radical Retelling of the Scriptures by John Henson from the ONE community for Christian Exploration second edition 2004 INTRODUCTORY PAGES Click to go to |
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| foreword | Introduction | Firing the canon | Good as New order of books | Glossary | Introduction to the Gospels | |
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This volume contains most of the books included in what is commonly
called the “New Testament.” See “Firing the Canon” for an explanation as to
the selection of books. The terms Old and New Testament have been used by
tradition to describe the first or second parts of the Bible. It’s rude to
those of the Jewish faith and the terms are misapplied, since in both Hebrew
and Christian scriptures “New (Covenant)” refers to a new and radical
relationship with God, not to a collection of texts. Contents Foreword (Rowan Williams)
Firing the Canon (John Henson) |
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Foreword
What would Christianity look like, what would
Christian language sound like, if we really tried to screen out the stale,
the technical, the unconsciously exclusive words and policies and to hear as
if for the first time what the Christian scriptures were saying? John Henson
has devoted much of his life to wrestling with this challenge, and has for
many people made those scriptures speak as never before – indeed, as for the
first time. Patiently and boldly, he has teased out implications, gone back
to roots, linguistic and theological, and re-imagined the process in which a
genuinely new language was brought to birth by those who had listened to
Jesus because they knew they were in a genuinely new world. |
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INTRODUCTION Despite the fact that my shelves, and yours probably, are sagging beneath the weight of all the translations of the scriptures that have appeared in the past forty years or so, we still await a version that strikes as a genuinely contemporary version. Life and language move so quickly that it is a matter of running to stay on the same spot, and translators of the scriptures are characterized by care and caution rather than by the need to keep pace. Move on we must, however, if we believe the scriptures have abiding value for every age and culture as a unique record of humankind’s adventure with God. Two things need to be done. In the first place scholars must continue to study the original languages and explore the cultural situations they expressed. This work has been done very well in the past hundred years and there are commentaries full of sound scholastic argument for the probable meaning or meanings of every word of the received texts. Rarely, however, is there total agreement on the precise meaning of any particular passage, only a study of the options. The choice means that the translator can never avoid bias of a sort. An attempt at word-for-word translation of the Greek or Hebrew, even if possible, would not produce clarity but mystery and ambiguity. In order to clarify, the translator must opt, and this accounts for quite conflicting meanings in differing translations, which nevertheless claim to be true translations rather than paraphrases. Did Jesus say to Simon Peter, “Do you love me more than all else?” (NEB) or “… more than these others?” (REV)? Both are possible, but which you choose will strongly affect the total meaning of the incident recorded. It is of no help to take the line of the NIV, which translates “more than these.” This allows us to make up our own minds but is of itself meaningless since we are given no clue as to the “these” referred to. Too much of this kind of ambiguity will confuse or bore especially the first-time reader who is seeking meaning not a puzzle. The common distinction made between a translation and a paraphrase is thus a false one. What usually passes for a paraphrase rather than a translation indicates the degree of venturesomeness in elucidating the meaning. This is what most readers want unless they are scholars, in which case they should be directed to the original languages. We need to warn people that no translation or paraphrase is any more than somebody’s intelligent, scholarly, inspired, and, one hopes, honest guess. For those who prefer certainty to faith this is a hard pill to swallow. We should always advise the devotee to have at hand at least two translations in order to preserve choice in the matter of interpretation. The work of scholarship must go on in order to check avoidable inaccuracies and to open up the field of options. The second thing needed is a combination of “human skills.” The scriptures were written by real people for real people. We must assume a common humanity between the first writers and readers and ourselves, otherwise we may as well give up from the start. Nobody will communicate anything to anybody. However, within our common humanity people differ. Some people are held to be more “religious.” Others are thought to be more down-to-earth. Some revel in wandering through the forests of scholarship and doctrinal dispute, others want to get to the point, otherwise they are not interested. The problem is that those who translate the scriptures have always been religious and scholarly and heavily committed in the matter of doctrine. To such people communicating with the rough and ready is difficult and for many of them it does not occur that they need to try. They translate in the language of an academic elite and assume this is the language that ought to be spoken by everybody else. I remember asking J. B. Phillips in a seminar what was the essential difference between the language of his translation and the language of the New English Bible, which had just appeared. He replied, “I read the Daily Mirror, the translators of the New English Bible read The Times.” J. B. Phillips produced single-handed the best translation of the twentieth century simply because, at the time, it came nearer than anything else available to the language of the majority of ordinary people. It was thus downgraded in some quarters as a paraphrase, and indeed J. B. Phillips humbly claimed no more for it. Such a view suggested that the other translations were not paraphrases. But who translates more effectively – the one who translates in the language of an enclosed circle or the one who translates in a language understood by everybody? According to the record of the Gospels, the genius of Jesus lay in his ability to put into language that could be grasped by ordinary folk things that the scribes obscured by their sophistication or pedantry. “He spoke as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” The trouble is that Jesus’ words and the words of his followers have been translated for us over and over again by those very scribes and Pharisees. “He spoke as one having authority” is ironically, a good example of a scribe-type translation. What someone in the crowds who heard Jesus for the first time would have said would have been something like, “That chap knows what he’s talking about!” The question of authority is a scribal question (“By what authority do you do these things?”). Jesus was in the business of making God intelligible and lovable to ordinary people. So what is required to turn our scholarly paraphrases into lively translations is the spirit of the founder, the feeling for what makes contact with Ms. or Mr. Average – imagination and more imagination, based on a common and sympathetic humanity. Imagination is essential for translating and interpreting the scriptures. If you use your imagination you may get it wrong. If you don’t use your imagination you are bound to get it wrong! The Good As New version of the early Christian scriptures seeks to be an “inclusive translation” and this means in the first place of those who are neither Pharisees nor scribes. Ordinary people, even those with university degrees, rarely use correct grammar when they speak. The Gospel-writers used the simplest, most straightforward Greek. It is therefore bad translation to put the Gospels into sophisticated English. We avoid descriptions such as “Pharisee,” which will require the novice to go to a Bible reference book for an explanation. Instead we seek descriptions which are immediate and require no explanation, such as “one of the strict set.” Some words which started off as common, homely words in the original Greek have been allowed to become formal ecclesiastical terms by not being translated but left in Greek. Thus “baptize” for the Greek indicated “dip,” but to us it has become exclusively the word for a religious rite, losing its common meaning on the way. When Jesus called Simon “Peter” it indicated something like our “Rocky.” Previous translators simply fail to translate and Peter becomes a surname instead of an affectionate nickname. When we see a dove in the street we call it a pigeon! Numerous are the lay folk who when asked to read “the lesson” say, “Please don’t give me a reading with lots of big words.” Foreign personal names and names of places can be a block to instant comprehension. We have tried in the translations to produce shorter and more familiar names, either by the common practice of shortening, e.g. Nick for Nicodemus, or by choosing a name which reflects the meaning of the Greek or Hebrew name, e.g. Ray for Apollos (the sun God). (The first Christians shortened names in the same way, e.g. Priscilla into Prisca, our “Cilla.”) We have also translated some biblical place names – Dategrove for Bethany, Fishtown for Bethsaida, etc. thus restoring the meaning they would have had for contemporaries. More controversial is our principle of “cultural translation.” We translate “demon possession” as “mental illness,” which is what the instances in the Gospels would be called by most people nowadays. We can still relate to these stories provided we understand that the purpose of their telling is to illustrate the healing abilities of Jesus rather than to assert the existence of demons. As the translation has progressed we have also become aware of the need for “contextual translation.” The Greek can never be translated word for word. Neither should it be translated sentence by sentence, or even in some instances paragraph by paragraph. Sometimes the scripture writers developed what they wished to say over longer sections. For example, the words of Jesus about the “narrow way” have been taken in isolation to mean that the narrow way is the recommendation of Jesus for us. However, Matthew puts the saying in a context that begins with a warning about not judging others and the narrow-mindedness of those who go about looking for specks of sawdust in other people’s eyes (Matthew 7). Looked at in context, the narrow/broad way picture is a favorite picture of the Pharisees, which Jesus quotes in order to refute it. We should no more go searching for the narrow way than we should go around looking for specks of dust. Similarly, Paul appears to advocate celibacy by saying, as in the KJV “touch not a woman” (1 Cor. 7). A reading of what he goes on to say shows he cannot be advocating any such thing, for he actually tells people not to go without sex for too long. Paul is quoting someone else’s opinion in order to contradict it. “Inclusive” also refers to the inclusion of the feminine experience. The custom of using male language to indicate everybody is no longer regarded as a valid way of translating into our culture. Sometimes it is argued that the culture in which the scriptures were written was male-dominated and that this should be reflected in translation. We are among those who would reply that the ministry of Jesus included a revolt against bad aspects of his culture. His radical inclusion of women among his disciples has been obscured by successive generations of male domination in the Church and the translation of the scriptures since the earliest days has reflected this bias. We seek to include the experience of the feminine in our understanding of God. That aspect of God theologically understood as the “First Person” receives no sexual bias at all. “Father” is translated as “the Loving God.” The “Second Person,” Jesus, is male, and although maleness is part of his humanity, it is secondary to it. So titles of Jesus lose their exclusive masculine sense. The cryptic term “Son of Man” becomes “the Complete Person.” “Son of God” is translated “God’s Likeness.” “The Third Person” is regarded as feminine. The Hebrew word for “spirit” (ruach) is feminine. The pigeon, the symbol of the Spirit at the dipping of Jesus is also feminine in Greek (peristera). It may be argued that feminine, masculine, and neuter categorization of nouns in a language do not necessarily denote anything other than a kind of convenience. To classify a pen as feminine means nothing in particular. However, when a word like “spirit,” carrying with it the idea of personality and creativity is classified alongside other words, which are also words for persons, such as woman and mother, it is reasonable to suppose that the choice of classification is significant in terms of sexual understanding. Other radical departures reflect the need to demythologize in order to translate adequately into our own culture. “Kingdom of God” thus becomes “God’s New World,” “Eternal Life” – “Life to the full,” “Salvation” – “Healing” or “Completeness,” “Heaven” – “The world beyond time and space” and so on. ONE was largely responsible for introducing the concept of inclusive language to these islands in its pamphlet Bad Language in Church (1981) amidst some scorn. Our position is now accepted by all but the most change-resistant. We hope the Good As New translation will prove a fitting outcome of that first stand. It is important to realize that the Good As New
translation is unique as a community translation in which all interested
Christians, not only members of ONE, have been invited to take part, whether
assisting in first drafting, amending, revising the language, offering
helpful suggestions, or simply pointing out howlers. The project was the
brainchild of Michael (Meic) Phillips who also provided the first draft of
James, and it was he who encouraged me to set aside other tasks in order to
undertake the bulk of the work. I joyfully acknowledge the debt I owe to a
small number of people whose contributions have provided some of the most
inspired and sparkling touches to the translation, or who have painstakingly
revised the text. |
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FIRING THE CANON - A PERSONAL VIEW. This essay expresses the personal views of John Henson and does not necessarily correspond with the views of other contributors to this volume. I was brought up an evangelical. An evangelical I still am because I believe in spreading “good news” which is what the word “evangelical” means. Since my childhood, an increasing number of self-styled evangelicals have turned good news into bad news. But that is no reason for me to drop the label. An essential part of my evangelical upbringing was the singing of choruses.
They were a form of brainwashing, but many of them put a strong emphasis on
the love of God for us and still their words and bright tunes comfort me
when I am feeling low. But some of them put me on the wrong track. Among
these was “The best book to read… ” We sang, over and over, The canon (the selection of books we have in our Bibles) has been fixed for ever and ever! When? Where? By whom? Some would say, “The Holy Spirit.” There’s no answer to that, as Eric Morecombe would say. In fact, many Christians do not realize this – for five hundred years in western Christendom there has been schism over the contents of the canon. The dyke has already been breached. At the Reformation Martin Luther at a stroke expurgated from the Bible some fifteen books Catholics still have in theirs. The expurgated books are known by Protestants as “The Apocrypha” – their way of saying that the books are not quite kosher. Luther also had a mind to remove from the Bible several books written in the Christian era, especially Revelation and the letter of James, but decided it would be more than the punters would allow. However, he made his position clear in his 1522 preface to Revelation: “My spirit cannot accommodate myself to this book. There is one sufficient reason for the small esteem in which I hold it – that Christ is neither taught in it or recognized.” What he meant was that the Jesus of the Gospels is unrecognizable in the triumphant Jesus of Revelation who leads his people in a war of cruel retribution. Luther’s understanding was surely right. Most of the fundamentalist sects of the fringes of Protestantism, distinguished mainly by their lack of love, have gained their impetus, their twisted theology, their lunacy and fanaticism from too much reading of Revelation. If Luther had had his way we might have been spared Waco. But he was wrong to condemn the letter of James as “an epistle of straw.” He was also wrong to put the Book of Wisdom in the Apocrypha. That’s the problem, isn’t it? Who decides? And because we cannot trust anyone to make the right decision, we must leave well alone. Who decided in the first place? The surprising answer is that no one really knows. It just sort of happened. It would be of comfort to those of an ecclesiastical bent if it could be said that at some particular date in the first few centuries of the Christian Church the leading lights got together in a Council and agreed on the books of the canon in the same way they agreed on the creeds. How assuring if the bishops had examined the many sacred writings circulating among the Christian communities in those days and voted on them, one by one! It is perhaps significant that the first person to attempt to create an exclusive canon was Marcion in 150 C.E. He was proclaimed a heretic! By and large, the books we regard most highly today are those that were most highly regarded from the start, including our present Gospels and the letters of Paul. Thought by many in the early Church to be highly suspect were James, Hebrews, 2 and 3 John, Jude, 2 Peter and Revelation. The last four of these have remained under suspicion throughout the whole of the Church’s subsequent history. Revelation squeaked into our Bibles because it was believed by some to be from the hand of John the Apostle. Had they known, as we do, that this was almost certainly not the case, it would now be unknown except to a few scholars. 2 Peter has always been rumbled by the discerning as fake Peter, as indeed we know it to be. Similarly Jude is fake Jude the brother of Jesus. Such books remain in the canon only because of the firm alliance between the fundamentalists who insist on the infallibility of the Bible in the form they have received it, and traditionalists who fear all change as unsettling and are loathe to admit that Holy Church is capable of getting it wrong. James and Hebrews have stood the test of time and have much to say that is relevant for us today. James is as likely from the brother of Jesus as not, and Hebrews is the best bet for a work written by a woman, Priscilla possibly. The debate about the authenticity of Paul’s letters continues, but the problem of “did he or didn’t he” has largely been overridden by the realization that Paul rarely stated himself to be the sole author of a letter. He was the leader of a team, and much of the hard graft was done for him by friends familiar with his mind. We can imagine him agreeing with the theology of the disputed Colossians and Ephesians, even though he might have put it another way. 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus are a different matter. It is time to bite the bullet and declare these to be pious frauds on the lines of 2 Peter. Not only was the author not as stated but, more important, he did not speak the avowed author’s mind. These “pastoral letters,” as they are often called, got into the canon by incorporating snippets from letters of Paul in order to give verisimilitude to teaching which is not Pauline and which Paul would probably have been unhappy about. The letters represent the first signposts toward the Church’s disgraceful history of heresy hunting. Paul gave up heresy hunting after his conversion. In his letters he strongly, but humbly argued his case. In the “pastorals,” notions of orthodoxy take the place of Paul’s understanding of faith as a journey not yet completed. The genuine quotes from Paul provide touches of warmth in letters whose style is chilly. All in all, we must commend the choices made by those early Christians, whoever they were. By the time Athanasius in 200 C.E. listed the 27 accepted books of the Christian period of sacred writing, the choices had already been made, presumably on the basis of what the communities found helpful. What we today would call Mickey Mouse Gospels, and works of naïve and silly piety, were roundly rejected with a skepticism and maturity Christians today frequently lack in the face of the material presented to them. Their willingness to give the benefit of the doubt in a handful of cases has meant that some good stuff survived at the expense of the survival of more dubious material. If this were the work of the Holy Spirit, we are given an interesting insight into her way of operating (explains evolution?). And was it she who inspired those anonymous voters to put the Gospel of Thomas to one side and then arrange for it to be rediscovered in the twentieth century when we are more ready for it? Where do we go from here? It’s time we ditched our obsession with the hefty tome we have inherited, and recognized what a turn-off it is for those seeking enlightenment. Those who believe the Bible from “cover to cover” (especially the covers) make sure their novices are carefully guided so that they miss most of it. We need to revoke the redundancy notice given by the Church to the Holy Spirit the moment the last full stop was put to the Book of Revelation. We need the courage to say that some things in the Bible are no longer scripture for us, whereas the letters of Bonhoeffer and the sermons of Martin Luther King are, and the hymn/poems of Brian Wren and John Bell may one day be. We must say, if we find it to be true, that The Gospel of Thomas is closer to the Jesus we understand and appreciate than Revelation. As a community we offer new and fresh versions of some of the earliest Christian writings. They include five “Gospels” (counting Thomas), Acts, the letters of Paul – to Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae, Thessalonika and Philemon; the letters of James, Peter, John the Elder and “To the Hebrews.” These writings preserve truths and insights from the first Christians that continue to have value for us today. My own view is that the remaining books of the traditional canon do not have much to add and that Revelation in particular is contrary to the mind of Jesus. (There has not been a vote on this, but feedback suggests that the ONE community for the most part goes along with this. But it must always be stressed that the ONE community is a collection of individuals – very much so, and that none of our publications, including this one, is likely to reflect the standpoint of all our members.) Our intention is not to create a new canon to replace the old, but to do
away with the concept of a closed canon of scripture. The canon perpetuates
some of what should not be there, and inhibits an enthusiastic appreciation
of the treasure-store of Christian writing since biblical times to the
present day (post-biblical scripture). The canon is an idol. We have fired
the canon!! |
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‘GOOD AS NEW’ - ORDER OF BOOKS. MARK’S GOOD NEWS THOUGHT-PROVOKING SAYINGS (Thomas) JOHN’S GOOD NEWS MATTHEW’S GOOD NEWS LUKE’S GOOD NEWS (Part one) LUKE’S GOOD NEWS (Part two – Acts) PAUL’S LETTER TO ROME PAUL’S LETTERS TO CORINTH LETTERS FROM PAUL’S TEAM THE FOUR CALLS Note. The dating of the ‘gospels’ will always be a matter of conjecture. There is almost complete agreement among serious scholars that Mark came first. Thomas could be next. Most put John last, but others strongly argue for an early date, level with Mark or soon after. Matthew and Luke are usually thought to be about contemporary with each other except by those who think that Luke had Matthew to hand or less commonly, but not impossible, the other way round. Some of Luke may be as early as Mark, but added to by additions from Mark and elsewhere after the writing of Acts. We place Luke last in this volume simply to encourage the reader to read Luke and Acts in sequence as Luke intended. The works can probably all be dated before C.E. 90, and the fragments and eye-witness accounts on which they are based before C.E. 50 for the main part. They are more reliable, even in the matter of detail, than they are often given credit for. The independent historian always welcomes a plurality of documents. It makes the quest for historical accuracy easier rather than otherwise- more exciting too. The gospels are a good check on each other. Despite their differences, the story they present of Jesus is, in outline, the same. |
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Introduction to the Gospels (Reg Bridle) Before this new translation is read, there are a few points about the Gospels that need to be borne in mind. Some of us were brought up as members of a Christian church and were made familiar with the Bible at an early age. We may not have been told in as many words, but we probably gained the impression that what we read was a factual record of what was said and done many years before. As we grew older we may have had some doubts about parts of it, especially the miraculous element, feeling that there may have been some exaggeration, but thinking that, for the rest, there was a fairly reliable account of the life of Jesus. That may be the position of many people today, but the truth is not so simple. Just how the Gospels came to their present form cannot be stated with any degree of certainty. It is fairly safe to assume that the first disciples of Jesus, in the light of all that they had known about him and experienced after his death, came to believe that he was no ordinary person but that he was Someone Special, through whom God had done something unique for humankind, and they wanted everybody to know about it. So they began to talk about him. Just what they said there is no means of telling; each one probably had a different way of putting it, though the general sense would have been the same. Those who heard and were convinced would, in turn, have told others. In those days verbal memory was probably better than ours because there was so little writing, and so what was passed on would have been more accurately transmitted than it would be today. But even so, there would have been variations, partly because of what had first been heard, but also because they would each have emphasized the parts that appealed to them most. We can be fairly sure about this because of the variations in the written texts that eventually appeared. Those who passed on the message were not concerned just to tell a tale; they wanted to convince others of the truth of what they said. (This intention is clearly stated at the end of the twentieth chapter of John’s Gospel.) Moreover, in order to do that, the tellers of the tale may well have added to it and enlarged upon it to show how wonderful Jesus was. To us such a procedure may not seem honest, but evidently ideas were different then. The miraculous element may have been “high-lighted,” but it must be remembered that the people of those days had no conception of what we call the “Laws of Nature” and readily believed in “supernatural” workings. Further, again, in all good faith, what they experienced later may well have affected what they said. For example, it is difficult to believe that Jesus would have foretold his resurrection or spoken about his “coming in glory.” As time went on, a split developed, which led to strife between the orthodox Jews and those who had become Christians. Does that situation account for some of the sayings attributed to Jesus? The general picture of Jesus that emerges from the Gospels is surely that of one who is tender and compassionate, showing love to all around. It is difficult for some of us to imagine him calling the Jewish leaders “a generation of vipers,” “whited sepulchers,” and so on. Such phrases may owe their origin to the unhappy experience of the early Christians. Such a suggestion may seem strange, but it must be remembered that the writers of the Gospels were very different from ourselves. They wanted to promote the Christian cause by whatever means were available to them, and what they did seemed right to them. These considerations lead to another point. In the Gospels as we now have them, especially John’s Gospel, we find many long speeches put into the mouth of Jesus. This is in line with the practice of the classical Greek and Roman historians, which in those days was accepted as normal and in no way unhistorical. There is one final point. We do
not know how many such “Gospels” came to be written. A number have survived
in whole or in part, and some of them contain some strange material. For
that reason, as time went on, Church leaders had to decide which ones were
reliable and which not. Eventually what we know as our Four came to be
regarded as reliable and have come down to us. This all took place before
the invention of printing, so that all “books” had to be copied by hand.
Although great care may have been taken to ensure that the copying was
correct, mistakes were bound to occur and these, in turn, would have been
copied. So, as time went on, there was a variation in what was handed down,
and today scholars have to use all their skill to decide just what is the
most likely reading, before attempting to translate it into language and
thought-forms that will be understood today. |
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