Our first discussion with Beth Allison Barr and Scot McKnight at the end of Season 1 was so popular and helpful that they wanted to come back a second time to answer more questions about biblical translations, gender, and bias. We cover the editing process, translation committees, trusting the right experts, different translation styles, why translations aren't more diverse, what Beth and Scot are up to next, and more. These two obviously enjoy one another and have a great time talking through the complexities of how translations come together, what purposes they serve, and what makes a good one. Hint: the ESV isn't their favorite.
Some of the works mentioned in the conversation are:
The whiskey we sample in this episode is Hibiki Japanese Harmony. It's delightful.
The beverage tasting is at 1:26. To skip to the interview, go to 5:19.
You can find the transcript for this episode here.
=====
Want to support us?
The best way is to subscribe to our Patreon. Annual memberships are available for a 10% discount.
If you'd rather make a one-time donation, you can contribute through our PayPal.
Other important info:
Cheers!
Our first discussion with Beth Allison Barr and Scot McKnight at the end of Season 1 was so popular and helpful that they wanted to come back a second time to answer more questions about biblical translations, gender, and bias. We cover the editing process, translation committees, trusting the right experts, different translation styles, why translations aren't more diverse, what Beth and Scot are up to next, and more. These two obviously enjoy one another and have a great time talking through the complexities of how translations come together, what purposes they serve, and what makes a good one. Hint: the ESV isn't their favorite.
Some of the works mentioned in the conversation are:
The whiskey we sample in this episode is Hibiki Japanese Harmony. It's delightful.
The beverage tasting is at 1:26. To skip to the interview, go to 5:19.
You can find the transcript for this episode here.
=====
Want to support us?
The best way is to subscribe to our Patreon. Annual memberships are available for a 10% discount.
If you'd rather make a one-time donation, you can contribute through our PayPal.
Other important info:
Cheers!
I'm Randy, the pastor half of the podcast, and my friend Kyle is a philosopher. This podcast hosts conversations at the intersection of philosophy, theology, and spirituality.
Kyle:We also invite experts to join us, making public space that we've often enjoyed off-air around the proverbial table with a good drink in the back corner of a dark pub.
Randy:Thanks for joining us, and welcome to A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar. Well, friends, this is a fun episode today. We get to talk to a couple of people that we're fans of around here. We haven't talked to anyone, interviewed anyone more than one time besides two people, Beth Allison Barr, and Scot McKnight. Last summer, Beth tweeted and said she would love to talk with Scot McKnight about biblical translations because it's the question that she gets most about her book is which translation is more gender inclusive and what has biases and all that. I said, we'd like to host that conversation, and we did. So last summer, you can go back to it and listen to it. You should before you listen to this episode I would say.
Kyle:And it's been one of our most popular episodes, people have really benefited from it. We heard randomly that a professor had assigned it in an actual university course, we got excited about that and put it on Twitter. And Beth was like, hey, let's do a part two.
Randy:Who would we be to turn Beth Allison Barr down?
Kyle:Right? Yeah, so here we are doing a part two on Bible translations with Beth Allison Barr and Scot McKnight.
Randy:Yeah it's a fun one. And we've also got a fun tasting. What we do on the show is we taste alcoholic beverages in the beginning of the show, because why wouldn't you? And also we like to pretend that we're in a bar and have conversations that happen in a bar uniquely. So Kyle, what do you have here for us?
Kyle:Yeah, so for the first time on the show, I'm pretty sure, we're drinking a Japanese whiskey. So we've, we've had quite a bit of bourbon, we've done a little bit of Scotch, I don't think we've ever done a Japanese whiskey. Japanese whiskey is its own thing. It's not really like either of the others. It has elements of both of the others. And the history of Japanese whiskey borrowed a lot from the traditions of Scotch whisky, but it's old enough now that it's become its own thing, and there's some really interesting stuff. In my experience, it tends to, tends more towards floral notes, brighter notes, not so much of the depth and body of a bourbon, maybe the mouthfeel of a scotch, something like that. I've never been able to afford a really nice Japanese whiskey because they're quite expensive. But my wife gifted me this bottle. And it's...
Randy:What a woman.
Kyle:I know, I know, she's a keeper. This is Hibiki, which is owned by Beam Suntory, you've probably heard of them. And this one's called Japanese Harmony. And it's actually a blend. We don't know the age or anything like that. But it's a blend of five different whiskey types. So there's a malt whiskey, a couple of grain whiskies, a couple of different casks that I've never heard of, and like a smoky malt style, Islay, kind of Scotch style whiskey. And what we're doing here is really trusting the blender, and whoever that is really knows what the hell they're doing, because this is a really delicious pour.
Randy:You must be excited because you're talking like twice as fast as you normally do. So I'm excited.
Kyle:So smell this thing, tell me what you think.
Randy:Yeah, I mean, I would say it's a blend of the nose of a scotch and bourbon. It's got a little bit of smokiness, a little bit of leather stuff to it.
Elliot:Really sweet on the nose.
Randy:Sweet on the nose, yeah.
Elliot:That's the main thing that I pick up on the nose is the sweetness. It smells like, you know the, the bank teller suckers, like those Dum-Dums? It's like a Scotch flavored Dum-Dum.
Kyle:That's so specific. I love that.
Randy:Yeah, yeah that's fun. I mean, you can instantly tell it's a low cut because it doesn't burn your nostrils when you, when you smell the nose.
Kyle:Right, and that carries through the palate. This comes in at 86 proof. So it's really easy drinking. The sweetness carries through. There's none of that depth that you expect from a bourbon but I don't miss it at all.
Randy:That's so good.
Kyle:Yeah, it, floral is a weird way to describe a whiskey because we don't eat flowers, right? But there's just, I can't think of a better way to do it
Randy:It's one of my favorite descriptors, and it's, this delivers on the floral notes.
Elliot:Yep.
Randy:Floral, herbal. It's got some sweetness. You can tell it's not super old, but man is that, that's like a, that's a happy place of whiskies right there. Right? It doesn't taste like, I would never locate this within bourbon or Scotch. Canadian whiskey or Irish whiskey, certainly. It's just this little island.
Kyle:It's its own thing.
Randy:It's its own thing that's been influenced by others, you can tell.
Elliot:Yeah. I love the name Japanese Harmony, because it is, like, there are distinct notes that are working really well together. But they're totally separate. That's the smokiness and the sweet. And then there's that really high pitch, you know, the brightness on top.
Randy:Yep, totally.
Kyle:There's also like, one of the elements in it is a specific kind of Japanese oak, which I wouldn't know how to identify from, like, American oak, but I bet that's giving it a unique thing.
Randy:It's, for me, if there's any wood or oakiness, it's way more subtle than what you would get on a bourbon.
Kyle:Yeah.
Randy:That's good. It's really good.
Kyle:Yeah, it's one of my favorite bottles. You won't find those for cheap, but you can find it at a good liquor store, it's about an $80 bottle I think. And they have, you know, older versions that you won't find anywhere.
Randy:This isn't peated right?
Kyle:I don't believe so, no. They're...
Randy:Cuz I get a little peaty smokiness on the back of my palate.
Kyle:They might, they might do their own version of peating, I'm not sure, I'd have to look into that. I know part of the blend is something reminiscent of a peated Scotch, but I couldn't tell you what the process is.
Randy:Yeah, it's there in like one spot on my palate basically.
Elliot:Alright, Japanese whiskey tour after the Bourbon Trail?
Randy:Let's go.
Kyle:Yeah.
Elliot:Yeah. All right. It's a plan.
Kyle:All right.
Randy:Cheers! Well, Scot McKnight and Beth Allison Barr, thank you so much for joining us again on A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar.
Beth:Well thanks for having us.
Scot:Thank you to be back and good to see Beth again.
Randy:Yeah, I feel like you guys have an excuse to hang out and, and catch up a little bit. And you guys are both breaking your own record of guests on our show. We have never had anyone more than once besides each of you.
Beth:That's really fun. Well, you know, our last, I send out the last podcast we did all the time to people who are like, tell me about Bible translations, and I'm like, look, here you are.
Kyle:Here you go, did that.
Randy:Super fun. Well, we'll hopefully give them more material tonight. Beth, since we last spoke, you announced that you're turning The Making of Biblical Womanhood into a trilogy, which is incredible, and I'm so excited to be able to read that and for you to share that with the world. Can you give us a brief preview maybe of the next two books, and even if you have a timeline?
Beth:Yeah, so no, I do. So I don't know, I can't remember if this is a video or not, but you can see the empty bookshelves behind me. That's because I'm moving offices right now, because I'm moving into a chaired position in history, which means I have more time to write. I'm moving out of my dean position and into a chair position. And so once I realized I was going to be doing that at Baylor, I got serious with Brazos about thinking about new projects. And so I had two that I had sort of been tossing around and they were more than amenable to thinking about two more books to put with The Making of Biblical Womanhood. So the second book that I'm gonna do is called Becoming the Pastor's Wife. And this is something I've been thinking about for a while, but I couldn't get the right angle on it, because I mean, you know, I'm a medieval historian, and so if I'm telling the story that's only 300 years old, I'm like, that's not a story. That's not very long. So. But what I began thinking about as I began toying and reading this idea of the pastor's wife, I suddenly realized that the story of the beginning of the pastor's wife kind of begins when the story about female ordination also changes. And so I began thinking about how those two things are linked. So Becoming a Pastor's Wife is actually the story of female ordination from the ancient world through the early modern world, and the rise of the pastor's wife to the modern time. So I'm really excited about it. It's giving me an excuse to go get into the Dorothy Patterson archives up at Southwestern so I'm, yeah, Scot's laughing, I cannot wait to get into those and see her class material. And then the third book was actually, is one that I've also been thinking about for a long time. And it's called Losing Our Medieval Religion. So clearly, I'm a child of the 90s. And Losing Our Medieval Religion continues my thought that part of our problem as modern evangelical Christians is that we have, we are too short sighted in our history. And that because we are so short sighted, that we have caused ourselves a lot of problems, unnecessary problems. And so I'm going to walk through some contemporary issues and parallel them with the medieval past and talk about what we've forgotten.
Randy:Will, so obviously the second book will, will the third book deal primarily with gender issues in the church historically, or it's just going to be a...?
Beth:It'll be broad. Yeah, it will be broad. I have all sorts of things. I've actually been blogging on a few of these on the Anxious Bench. I have, I have one, actually, that's actually called "Losing Our Medieval Religion," in which I was really irritated when I found out that the SAT was going, was considering dropping all of its pre-Reformation history questions, and I mean, and I was like, I was like, what happens when our history becomes so short? And so that's when I really began thinking about it. But no, no, there's all sorts of things. I mean, I can't wait for my chapter on the papacy, on the medieval papacy, and compare that to some modern pastors. And that's gonna be fun.
Kyle:You mean to say some modern pastors might see themselves as Popes?
Beth:Well, you know, authoriy is an interesting thing, but yes, there are some really....
Randy:Yes.
Kyle:As a matter of fact, yes.
Randy:Yeah, that's fun. Can't wait. Do you have a rough timeline at all?
Beth:Oh, I forgot about that. 2024 for Becoming the Pastor's Wife and 2026 for Losing Our Medieval Religion.
Kyle:Nice.
Randy:Wow, fun. And if you haven't checked out Beth's stuff on Anxious Bench, it's prolific and it's really, really good. If you're looking for more Beth Allison Barr, which you should be, it's there and it's fun. Scot, what are you up to, hat have you been up, have you, writing anything, you have the, you told us last about the, your translation of the New Testament coming out soon?
Scot:Yes, the translation has gone through spasms since I submitted it, we've had glitches in the editorial process. So I was actually informed that the, most of it has been read by an editor, and it will be, I'll be able to start seeing what, what suggestions they have and put them into the final manuscript, and then send it on. I mean, then it'll be ready to start going to copyright, copy, whatever you want to call it, copy editors. Translations are, are hard to edit, because, and mine is peculiar translation, because the editor's job is normally to help you improve your English or to make it clear, whatever. And this they have to stay out of, because they, you know, it's, it's clunky, Greek into English can be clunky. And when we just take English translations and turn, or take the Greek New Testament and turn it into as good of English as we can make it, we're gonna lose something about the Greek in the process.
Kyle:Yeah.
Scot:And I'm irritated enough with translations that we are, we've, we've begun to lose too many things with how familiar we've become with our own language. So, so that's going, but I'm, I'm you know, Randy, you may know I'm doing a 16 volume series of everyday study Bible guides for, sort of like Tom Wright's Bible for Everyone.
Randy:Yeah, yep.
Scot:And two of those are out. Act was, the publication date was today.
Kyle:Nice.
Scot:And I've submitted Philippians and First and Second Thessalonians. They're at the, they're going to the printer.
Randy:Wow.
Scot:And I'm just about done with the Gospel of John.
Randy:Whoa, fun.
Kyle:Wow. So yeah, you've been busy.
Randy:Yeah.
Scot:And the most important thing is I have a book on Revelation coming out next year.
Beth:Oh really?
Kyle:You shouldn't have said that, that's gonna derail the rest of our conversation. Don't say anything about Revelation around Randy.
Beth:Oh, wow. That's great. I can't wait for that one.
Scot:It's called Revelation for the Rest of Us.
Kyle:Nice.
Randy:Fun.
Beth:Is it really?
Scot:Yes. Revelation for the Rest of Us.
Randy:So here's the most important question now, now,
Scot:are you pre-trib, post-trib, or amillennial? Good, you're laughing, thank you. All right. This is a theo-political reading of Revelation.
Randy:Amen.
Scot:It's really about reading Revelation backwards through the lens of Babylon in chapter 18.
Randy:Oh, yeah.
Kyle:Yeah.
Randy:I love Revelation so much. Scot, this is just the Bible geek in me, do you have a favorite epistle?
Scot:Epistle? I have favorite gospels.
Randy:What's your favorite gospels then?
Scot:Matthew.
Kyle:Oh, that was not what I expected, interesting.
Randy:Why?
Scot:Look, this was what my whole life until I, 10 years ago, when I came to Northern. I had never taught Paul until I taught at Northern, as a course. So no, I was a gospel specialist for 30 years.
Randy:Fun. And why would you say Matthew is your favorite?
Scot:I don't know, I I fell in love with Matthew when I was a seminary, first class, first year student. And it's been with me ever since.
Randy:Love it. I just don't understand the people who say that Mark's their favorite. Like, I know Mark was probably the first and...
Beth:It's the shortest!
Randy:It's the shortest and it's just...
Beth:That's why.
Randy:It's the least eloquent.
Beth:You know, they can read it more quickly.
Randy:Oh, you're saying that's a good thing. Got it. Okay. All right.
Beth:That's what I'm saying, it's the shortest, so that's why people, because it's the one that they've read...
Kyle:They don't like to read.
Beth:...all the way through, because you know.
Randy:Yep, yeah. Fun.
Scot:If you have Matthew and Luke, you don't even need Mark.
Kyle:So it's kind of a segue into talking about translations, which is what spurred this whole conversation, what, I'm just curious, what is the peer review process like for publishing a translation? Do you have other, like, translators look at it? How does that work? Because you're going to disagree about all of it right?
Scot:Not really, no, I mean, I have paid attention to other people's translations, like I use the Baylor Handbook to the Greek New Testament religiously for each volume. And they all provide their own translations on the basis of the Greek text. So there was a lot of help there for me, and I paid attention to other translations during the process as well. So no, there's no, it's not going to be, so far as I know, they're not going to send it out to somebody else to see what they think. And even the editors, you know, the editors have said, I'm not sure about this word. I said, this word is used 79 times in the New Testament. When you look up every one of those references, then you can tell me what you think that verse is...
Beth:They're not going, I think there's something to say too, about being an established scholar on different things and the level, you know, if, I think of Scot was recently out of his PhD and he wanted to do a Bible translation, I suspect, I suspect first of all, they wouldn't do it.
Kyle:Yeah, those people don't write Bible translations.
Beth:I don't think they would do it. But it would probably also have a much more... that's an interesting thing about how peer review works. So.
Randy:Scot, would you say that this translation is kind of your pinnacle work? Or do you not see it that way?
Scot:Well, okay, here's how this translation, I don't know if I, I've said this before with you guys. John Goldingay's translation came out, and I read it, and I loved it. Alright? It's sad, not many people are paying attention to it. And I don't know why, it is so good. And it was bound in England with Tom Wright's Kingdom New Testament. And the difference, the, the difference between these two translations' theory is dramatic. Tom's just got you know, this flowing English and periphrastic similarities and analogies, you know, this is what it sounded like in Greek, and this is what it sounds like in Eng... Goldingay, you know, transliterates all the Hebrew names. So you feel like you're reading a Hebrew text in some ways. Well, I told the editor at InterVarsity, John Boyd, I said, John, Tom Wright's translation doesn't belong with John Goldingay's, these are two different theories. He said, what do you think it should happen? I said, it should be one that is based, like Goldingay, on a more literal reading. And he said, would you like to do it? And I said, yeah, I hadn't even thought of it, but I thought, yeah, I'd like to do it.
Randy:That's fun.
Scot:I started working on it. So the the idea is, I mean, there's some times I'm going to venture outside the fence, and try to give some, let's say, analogies or equivalence, dynamic equivalence. But I do a lot of much more literal translation. And it will prove that the ESV is no more literal than the NIV.
Randy:Oh, shots fired.
Scot:And mine will be far more literal than either one of them.
Randy:Nice.
Scot:So it was a lot of fun. And, yes, it's a pinnacle to get to do this. But I wanted to do this because our English translations are so Englishy and so Americanish, that people don't even realize that this is from another world and another time. So I wanted to kind of bring people back to the first century.
Randy:Yeah.
Beth:I'm really looking forward to that, Scott.
Randy:Yep. Can't wait.
Scot:I'll send it to you Beth.
Beth:I know, I know. I'm using his Acts study already, because he sent it to me early. So anyway...
Randy:That's awesome.
Beth:I'm ordering the books, though.
Randy:What, for both of you, what are the most common misconceptions that you found church folks have about Bible translations, and what do you say in response?
Beth:So, you know, I think you've kind of, with thinking about the translation process, I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions about how translation processes take place. And also, you know, I think a lot about, like, the KJV Bible translation process, and for a long time there was this narrative that the all of the, you know, the 50 translators that were pulled together by, really Richard Bancroft, but by King James, to take on this, you know, translation, and that they worked together in this perfect harmony all together, and came out, you know, with this inspired, as some believe, at least authorized version of the Bible. But the fact is, is that the KJV was done, it was very individualized by the people who were doing it. And there was a lot of arguments about words, and there were parts of it that none of the other translators ever saw. And so there was a lot of, it was a lot of, it was much more piecemeal than we think. And it, reflecting a lot of different personalities, like the Bible reflects a lot of personalities. And then you have these translation committees that often, you know, their personalities also come through. So I think you know, when you think about, like the ESV's claim that it is the, you know, the best translation, that it is the most literal translation of the Bible, and then you think about how all of these, you know, these different personalities who all have maybe a different understanding of what literal means coming together and producing what they think in their parts is the most literal, and you pull these together. I mean, it's not, it's not as pure as I think we want to think it is. And I think this gives us, makes us trust Bibles--I don't want to say the Bible is not trustworthy, so nobody go off and say that I said the Bible wasn't trustworthy--but I think it makes us trust versions much more than maybe we should. I think we should always be a little, I think we should always approach Bible translations with caution, and thinking about who they are, who is behind them, and paying attention to how things change. So I would, you know, and of course, y'all know my response to that is I tell people to use multiple versions of the Bible. Multiple, multiple translations of the Bible so that they can compare across and see what differences there are in the verses.
Scot:And Beth touched on one of the things that's important to me, is people ask me, what's the best translation? There is no such thing. And, but people then get stuck on a translation, which is a good thing, I suppose. And then, then they, they think it's the best because it's the one they know. And they compare it to others. And the next thing you know, their pastor uses one, and other people in the church whom they respect or honor or who have authority, they all use that one, the next thing you know, it becomes tribal. So we have, there's such a tribalism about translations that is, to me, is dangerous. And you know, I say this all the time, but most people who give their opinions about translations know nothing about what they're talking about. I mean, how do you, how do you assess someone's translation of the book of Acts who has never read the book of Acts in Greek?
Randy:Yep.
Scot:Because that is one difficult book for normal New Testament people to translate. It's full of language that no one else knows about, or no one else uses. And it's sophisticated. The pastoral epistles are the same way, very sophisticated. And that touches on something that Beth is bringing up. I'm trying, and I think it's more difficult than I thought it would be, to, to give the feel for the different authors of the New Testament. For instance, Matthew and Mark write a very similar Greek. Mark is, Mark got a B in class, and Matthew got a B+. Luke got an A. John didn't go to class, he was in some monastery out there doing his own thing.
Randy:That's my man right there.
Scot:And there's a sense, there's a sensibility about these translations, or these texts, that need to be conveyed in the translations themselves. Because the goal of most translations is to turn it all into a form of English that people are familiar with in our churches. For instance, the NIV wants to use vocabulary that is known 12th grade and below. There are words in the Gospel of Luke and in the book of Acts and in the book of Hebrews that are not known by people in 12th grade. But what are we going to do? Are we going to flatten that sophistication out? And so I think I've tried, so I've used a couple words that most people are gonna say, well I have to look it up. And I want to say to them, well, probably some people had to look up the word that Luke used, because they didn't know what, they had not heard that word before. So I think that the big issue is, is, is the sensibility that we're going to have the best translation. These translations that we talk about, the NRSV, the RSV behind it, the NIV, the TNIV, the ESV, these are good translations, the New Living Translation, they're good. You know, they do, they do a good job at what they're trying to do. And there are going to be reliable translations for people to use in the church. And one of the things that I, I saw this in a church I used to attend whose initials are Willow Creek, that people would put up on the, on the board, you know, they'd put up on their massive screen, you know, they would put up a different translation and say, I, I use this one because I think it's better. And I thought to myself, you have no idea what you're talking... In other words, we don't choose a translation because we like what it says, but because it is faithful and accurate to the original language.
Randy:Yeah.
Scot:So that's, okay.
Randy:I just have to say, as a pastor, thank you Jesus that Scot McKnight isn't part of my church cuz gosh would I be insecure all the time.
Beth:Just wait till you had me analyzing your sermon structure.
Randy:Oh gosh. Don't ever do that.
Scot:What's a sermon structure?
Beth:That's what a lot of people say.
Randy:Yeah, yep. Yep.
Kyle:So, so in our last conversation, it's come up a couple times here too as well, Biblical translation committees came up. This is one of those things that if you look in the preface of your Bible, you might find that it's a thing, but most people don't even think about it. So I bet a lot, lot of listeners probably don't even know they exist. This might be the first time they've ever thought about it. So can you tell us a little bit about how they work, maybe demystify them a little bit? How have they worked historically? How do they work today?
Beth:You wanna start Scot?
Scot:Well, yeah, I was, I was involved in translating Luke for the New Living Translation, and actually another translation before that that nobody knows about, the New Century Version I think it's called.
Beth:Oh, really?
Scot:Yeah. But what I did is I was, I sort of translated Luke. We were, we were kind of given the Living Bible, it was originally going to be a revision of the Living Bible, so we had to make suggestions on top of it. And then there were three of us who did Luke. So then my friend and my teacher, and then my colleague, Grant Osborne then collated the various suggestions to the translation, and then put them together in a translation. And then that was worked out with the New Testament committee. And then Daniel Taylor, who was an amazing English professor at Bethel, who wrote a great book called The Myth of Certainty, he turned it into good prose. And then it kind of worked with a committee. Now the NIV committee, the original translators were, like, given specific books, and then they began to, as a committee, that, like, there were a dozen of them, that began to talk with one another. And now every year, I believe the NIV translation committee, I think it's called the Committee for Bible Translation, and it's guided by Douglas Moo, they, they meet once a year for every suggestion that they've seen during the year. And they go over them painstakingly. So these...
Beth:That's interesting.
Scot:And Beth is right about the King James, I wrote about this one time, I gave a paper about the King James. That was a, that was a polemically started Bible, they wanted to defeat the Puritans.
Beth:Geneva. Yeah, the Geneva Bible.
Scot:And, and they did have some really good specialists who translated things, but it was largely done by an individual, each book.
Beth:Right. Yeah. And they did, and it was, it was as much politically driven as it was, I guess, concern about the text driven. And, and I think that's something that when people think about translations, you've got to think about the motivations behind them. And so I think, and some people, you know, they're like, well, how do we get at the motivations? And some of that you can just, you'll often, you can find, you can Google, you know, why did somebody decide to do a new translation? What was needed about it? Was there, like the NRSV, part of the NRSV was because everybody objected so much to the RSV, where they took out, you know, changed "virgin" to "young woman," talking about Mary in Isaiah, that was very controversial when the RSV came out. And so that's part of the reason why they did the NRSV. So you just got to think, and it's not that that's a bad thing. It's just, know why. Why did they do it? Why did they suddenly decide there needed to be a new Bible translation? What's going on? And a lot of it is actually just modernizing language. A lot of, you know, they're like, people need to have a language that they can relate to. And so that I think drives a lot of it, trying to bring it to a larger audience. So I think, I mean, I still just give that advice all the time, is just know who translated it, and figure out why they did it, at least as best as you can.
Scot:And a lot of them aren't going to tell you. The NIV was sort of a updated, I mean, people had just gotten to the point where the King James was no longer working.
Beth:Right.
Scot:So it was a fairly neutral reason, a good reason. The ESV is, is the, the RSV was John Piper's Bible and Wayne Grudem's Bible. And when the NRSV came out, tied, you know, to the feminist movement...
Beth:Right. Gender inclusivity.
Scot:...and inclusive language, they got irritated by it, and they, they actually got rights to the old RSV because it was being discontinued. And then they edited it. And only 9% of the words of the ESV are not identical to the old RSV. So the ESV is basically a revised version of the RSV, and some of it has some motives that some of us don't think was, was the best of motives.
Kyle:Yeah, we covered those in our last conversation.
Randy:I'm gonna bring up a sensitive name around here with, with, from you, Beth, but um, that was said on Twitter, you know, like your quote, Scot, basically, of only 9% of the ESV is original and the rest is kind of basically the RSV. And Denny Burk said, that's basically every translation we have, just so you know, and wrote it, wrote that, that off really quickly. What do you have, what would your response be to that?
Scot:I can guarantee you that Denny Burk has not done any statistics on all these other translations. That was a dismissal rather than an intelligent remark. But that statement of 9% came from Wayne Grudem. And it is simply not true that the NIV is 9% different than some other translation. There is no translation like it...
Beth:Right.
Scot:...when it came out in 1984.
Beth:Yeah.
Scot:So, and the NLT was originally going to be a revision of the Living Bible, but it's completely different. So I don't, I don't, Denny Burk was just blowing smoke.
Randy:He's pretty good at that.
Beth:I don't see anything from him anymore. I muted him. And I guess I muted, so it's been so, it's been so wonderful.
Kyle:So peaceful on Twitter.
Randy:Maybe we'll stir some things up again with that.
Kyle:So Beth, related to what you just said, something similar came up in the last time we spoke, you recommended that people read the prefaces in their Bibles, right. And one of the things they'll find there are these translation committees. But you also said that they should look into what's influencing the translators and you mentioned, you know, find out where they went to school, where they got their degrees, who they studied with, so you can kind of discern what their biases might be. So one of the things I think about a lot, and I've been writing about recently, is expertise, and in particular, how difficult it can be to discern who the expert is when you're not an expert yourself. So for example, if one of us were asked to identify which of two people with PhDs in organic chemistry was the more expert, most people wouldn't have any idea where to start, right? They'd almost have to choose at random, they shouldn't be at all confident in their choice. And I think something similar is probably true with the world of translation and biblical expertise. So I know this is a hard question, because I run my head against it regularly. But I'm curious if either of you have any advice for somebody in that position. So let's say they take your advice, they look in the preface of their ESV or NIV or CEV or whatever, they Google the people they find there, they find out where they went to school, they look at their publication records, and then they sit back and think, what am I supposed to do with this? Like, I have no idea how to judge, each of them have a community behind them that thinks they're authoritative. So in other words, how do they know who to trust?
Beth:So, you know, I do this a lot, I teach, when I would teach historians' craft, what history is, and why you do it, one of the things that I teach students how to do is to recognize scholars, like, when are you, right, when are you dealing with a book that is written by, you know, that's peer reviewed and written by a scholar, when are you dealing with a book that is maybe popular, did not go through peer review, doesn't have, you know, the person behind it doesn't have very many credentials in it, etc? How do you do that really quickly? And so some of the things that I tell them, I'm like, you know, is it published by an academic press? Look and see if it's published by an academic press. You can also very quickly go and Google that press and see what their peer review process is. Oftentimes, in the beginning of the book, you can look and you can see who was on the committee, who helped the editorial board that helped approve that book. And all of those things can give you clues about the credibility of the author. It doesn't mean that you can't read books that aren't done by academics, it's just understanding the difference between those. And with your chemistry example, organic chemistry, you know, I'm not an organic chemist, but what I would do is I would go to the university webpage of both of the two organic chemists, and I would see who was actually had a lab that had a lot of people in it that was actually actively working. And usually they have a list of all of their publications. And in science labs, they churn out publications pretty quickly. And they're out there all the time. So who is actually doing the research? And who, and where are they getting published, versus people who maybe are an organic chemist, but they got their PhD in 1959 and haven't done any research since 1975 and aren't actively working in a lab. There's a difference when you think about who is, you know, who is maybe citing and talking about, more authoritatively, about the most recent research. So I think you can apply some of those same, you know, skills to thinking about who these people are. Like, you know, we think about Bi... I entered the world of Bible translations through Bruce Metzger. And I still really like reading, you know, I, his book on Bible translations is still one that I really like on the history, you know, how did we get the Bible so to speak, and Bruce Metzger, of course, if you go look him up, I mean, you will immediately see how credentialed that he is, his active publication record, really up until almost his death, and how involved he was in the many translation committees. And so I mean, that just simply gives you a clue. You know, how active are they in research? How active are they in their field? And, you know, more active scholars at least are more engaged in the conversations and make them more current. So, is that is that a little bit helpful? I'll let Scott weigh in.
Scot:Well, you're right, and I think on Bible translation committees, it would be an enormous amount of work to find out how all of them, cuz there could be 15, 20 people, I mean, that's a lot of people to investigate. But I mean, like the NIV, or the ESV, you're gonna find these people are all gathered in evangelical schools. They're not Bruce Metzger at Princeton, you know. And Bruce Metzger was a brilliant, godly, super brilliant man. And he was really careful. I think the question that you asked is the right one, who do you trust? I, that's, this is a very important point for ordinary people when they choose a Bible. You know, if they trust you, and you tell them the NIV is the best translation, they believe you and they go with it and that becomes their Bible. And that becomes the Word of God to them. So it's important. So I would say, we have to ask the question, who do I want to trust? But I want to ask another question connected to it. And that is, do they know this subject? You know, there are a lot of pastors, they have opinions about everything, but that does not make them knowledgeable. So I'd want to ask someone on translations who actually can read the text in the original language. And I'd want to ask them, the people who can, who are not just blowhards, will tell you, that, they'll be honest with you and say, you know, almost all these translations are reliable. Now, they're not going to tell you that, that, I mean, I like to give, I like to blow smoke at the ESV, but it's a reliable translation. I disagree with some things. I disagree with the NIV. And I'm going through it painstakingly now with these 16 volumes, every passage, you know, I'm checking, and I've already been through it, in the last, when I translated the New Testament. So I want to find some people who really know what they're talking about, and I want to I want to get them to give me some judgments. And I think we can be confident that the major translations out there are reliable, but not infallible.
Beth:Yes.
Scot:So we...
Beth:That's great Scot.
Scot:...we need, we need to check out some other translations. I'm nervous about tribalism, because before long, it's, that's the only Bible that matters. And when that happens, you got people saying things that don't know what they're talking about.
Kyle:Yeah.
Beth:So I, you know, one of the things that I tell, and I've written about this with the ESV too, because it's just a really prime example of it, but if the people you're looking at, if they're only in each other's circles, if their circle of scholarship is very small, like, you know, think about some of the translation committees, if there are people from different denominations, from different seminaries representing, you know, representing some intellectual diversity, as well as other types of diversity, which are really important too, that can tell you something, whereas if they are all people who are only drinking from the same cup.
Kyle:Especially if it's got Kool-Aid in it.
Beth:Especially if it's Kool-Aid, yeah.
Randy:So for both of you, then, if that's the case, which makes perfect sense, do you know of translations that have done that, have pulled from a wider academic background and ecumenical maybe even?
Scot:There's two, there's only two.
Beth:Only two? I'll be quiet, then, til Scot...
Scot:Okay now the NIV is all, almost entirely white males with some women. All right. The ESV, I think we know where that, what that reflects. All right. The Common English Bible, the CEB, had intellectual diversity, gender diversity, some ethnic diversity. And the other one is the new NRSVue. It's, it looks like NRS-Vue, V-u-e. But it's a little u and a little e. And it is the new, it's the new revision of the NRSV. But, I've just been told, I don't know that this is true, but I think it's true, is that they were only permitted to make one change per page.
Beth:Really?
Scot:So it's a slight revision, but it has amazing diversity on it. And I'm gonna have to, my TA actually, went, I wrote a commentary on the pastoral epistles in the last couple of years, last few years, and, for Cambridge, and we did it on the NRSV. But the, then they told us we had to use the NRSVue. And my TA went through it and found it, and there were hardly any changes. So, there aren't, it isn't real significant. I think you're looking, when you look at diversity, you're looking at the CEB and the NRSV.
Kyle:Interesting.
Scot:That's the only translations, in my opinion, that have that kind of diversity, although I think both of them are very mainlineish, as well.
Kyle:Yeah.
Scot:Which lacks some of the diversity that it could have, but there's no, no evangelical publisher that has anything like intellectual diversity at the ecumenical level.
Kyle:Yeah.
Scot:They're all evangelical.
Kyle:Sure. Yeah, so with respect to...
Scot:Well they are. Beth, they are.
Beth:No, I know, I know. It's just funny, the way you, "no intellectual diversity." It's funny, sorry.
Kyle:Yeah. No, I mean, it's what you would expect, right? Not much demographic diversity, either.
Beth:That is, that is true. I mean, that's the other thing, you know, are all these people like, from the same geographical area, trained by the same schools, all talking to the same, going to the same conference and not going to other conferences, you know. That always is a mark to me, like, they're all going to the same conference every year and only hearing each other's papers.
Kyle:Yeah.
Beth:And I'm like, that's very small intellectual circles. So.
Kyle:Right. Yeah, that's how echo chambers get formed. Yeah, so with respect to, you know, discerning genuine expertise, I think what you guys were saying has jibed with a lot of what we've said on this podcast and what we've talked with other experts about. And one of the marks, I think, it's not foolproof, but one of the marks of genuine expertise is a kind of intellectual humility. Now this, again, this is not always the case, there are certainly lots of arrogant experts out there, but in general, most experts will be honest with you about the merits of people who disagree with them. And they'll be honest with you about the place that their position takes in the broader discussion. We were just talking with Craig Keener recently, and almost every question we asked him about the Bible he prefaced with"now I'm in the minority here, there are lots of people who disagree with me about this," and he wanted to make sure that we knew that up front. That's a mark of a humble person, and I think humility is something that you naturally acquire in the kind of environment where expertise is formed, you have to kind of resist it, because you're constantly shown the limits of your own knowledge in that kind of environment.
Beth:Yeah, I always, I always tell my students that the further I progressed in my PhD, the more I realized how little I actually knew.
Kyle:Right?
Beth:And and by the time you finish it, you're like, I know nothing. Because you realize how limited your knowledge is.
Scot:And I think there's another side to that, too. The flip side of it is, look, you and I have to make decisions, Beth, we, we, we look through historical sources, and we go, okay, this is what I think is going on. And we say it.
Beth:Right.
Scot:At that point, though, we know that what we have given to people is a, is a, let's say, a hypothesis, a theory, a statement. And it can be challenged. And so willingness to be challenged is, and to engage in that kind of conversation, although there are some conversations that I'm just not going to engage about some of this stuff, but, because it's a waste of time, it's not a conversation, it's a, you know, they're trying to get gotcha moments, so I think that we also propose things and we can state it with absolute clarity and conviction, not certainty, but conviction, and then say, I could be wrong.
Kyle:Yeah.
Beth:Yep, that's exactly right.
Scot:One of my favorite New Testament scholars, I think he's the most knowledgeable man I've ever been around, his name is Dale Allison, and he's, he writes amazing stuff. And I've said, Dale, I'm not sure about that. And he'll go, well I could be wrong. I thought, you got 74 footnotes on this. You've read a lot more than I have on it, and I've read maybe 25 of those footnotes.
Beth:Yeah.
Scot:You know, and so he's, he's willing to say, I could be wrong on that. That's, I think that's what's important.
Kyle:Yeah. So we got a bunch of questions from Twitter, which we're gonna get to in just a second. Before we do that, I'm just curious, and this kind of came up on Twitter, too, ee've talked a lot about the ESV, we focused on that last time we spoke, is there another, or any other translations that are conspicuously or problematically biased in a similar way that people should be aware of?
Scot:Well, I, you know, I've said I think the ESV is biased in, let's say, in the 9%. That old 91% of the RSV was, I love the RSV. I used it all the time until the NRSV came out. And I also use the NIV. I use the, the Bible the congregation I'm speaking at uses. I, for instance, I think all translations are, they lean the direction the author leans or the committee leans, and no one's upright. Okay? I think that's from EB White somewhere. For instance, I'm irritated right now by the NIV's decision on the Greek word ergon, which means "work," and in the plural erga means "works." Alright. When they think it is Christian behavior, they translate the word "deeds." But when Paul is, got a little bit of problem with it, they translate it "works." Now the word "works" is entirely negative in the New Testament. And that is a, I would call that a biased translation of this Greek word. Because Paul used the same word for good deeds and for works that he didn't approve of. Why do we need to split that in half? Because there's something about works that can go in two directions. But when you use two different words, you're not going to get that. So, so but I, you know, I go back, I do give the ESV a lot of grief, but it's a reliable translation.
Beth:So I'm more big picture here. So one of the things that I think is, when we think about English Bible translations in the first half, really, in the middle part of the 20th century, we're going to see a lot more gender bias in them. There's a lot less willingness to recognize Junia, there is a lot less willingness to recognize Phoebe as a deacon, there's a lot more emphasis on, in First, in Timothy, you know, the male pronouns that make it seem like the overseer is, is a man, instead of them being more gender neutral. So you're going to see those within the cultural context of the 20th century U.S. And as a historian, I find that fascinating, and it's not that they're really, it's not they're sketchy translations, it's that they are reflecting a very clear cultural bias, and a way of portraying women. And so there's a lot of similarities. I mean, you can, I mean, like, I grew up on the NIV 1984. And it is more gender biased. And so I think that is something, I kind of like to group translations. The other thing to think about is differences between Catholic translations and Protestant translations. And Catholics and Protestants have a very different understanding of authority, as well as ecclesiastical leadership. And so you're going to see some interesting differences in those and so thinking about too, is this, is this a Catholic translation? And there's a lot of overlap, too, between them, but I mean, thinking about that, too, what are Protestant translations and what are Catholic translations, and, and comparing those. I think everybody should be using, should have a Catholic translation around, and vice versa. I also like to keep the Apocrypha around, you know. Up until the 17th, 18th century, the Apocrypha was in most Bibles, and you know, it's not until we took it out. And so that too, I mean, we're losing a big chunk of Christian history when we don't pay attention to the Apocrypha. So that didn't directly answer your question, but maybe it indirectly helped.
Randy:That's fun. I just quoted the Apocrypha in a sermon for the first time two weeks ago.
Beth:Yeah.
Kyle:Nice.
Beth:Oh, yeah. You know, reading, reading medieval sermons, I sometimes would forget who was actually, like Susanna, I realized, I was like, oh, actually Susanna is in the Apocrypha, you know, because I would read it so much, and I would just think about her as a biblical woman. And then I would realize that oh, actually, you know, so I mean, but medieval Christians wouldn't have really seen a difference. And even early modern Christians, I mean, Susanna became a figure that was used by early modern Protestants, became a really powerful figure that was used all the time. And so even thinking about that, it's not until really recent that we have pulled the Apocrypha out and said, this is not part of our tradition. So.
Kyle:Do Catholic Bibles get updates as often as Protestant translations do?
Scot:They get updated. Yeah, they're, they're, a lot of these updates are, you don't know, they just, they just reprint them and have some changes and some edits and some corrections in them. But yes, they, they're not as, they're a little bit more staid in their change theory.
Kyle:Sure. That's what you'd expect I guess.
Randy:Yeah.
Beth:Although Scot, I heard, I heard a rumor from a reliable source, and I'm not, but I haven't investigated it, that there's going to be a Catholic translation of the ESV that's going to be used for their lectionary. And I, is that true?
Scot:Yeah, I've heard that.
Beth:I've heard, and I was really, I was like, that's, that really struck me as strange for, for a Catholic, for Catholicism to use the ESV.
Scot:It's not coming out of the Vatican.
Beth:Good. Anyway, that's a whole nother, I haven't investigated that, so I don't have much else to say on it. But I wondered if Scot had heard it, too.
Scot:I'd heard that, I've heard that too, yeah.
Randy:So let's hit that speed round of Twitter questions, and just keep in mind, thank you Twitter universe for supplying us with these questions. They're amazing. And Beth and Scot, if you don't like any of the questions, remember, they came from Twitter versus us.
Kyle:Yeah, not, not our fault. And feel free to be as brief as you want in your, in your responses.
Beth:"I'm not answering that one." Yeah.
Scot:We're getting close to our time here aren't we.
Randy:Yes, alright. Here we go.
Beth:Lightning round.
Randy:All right. So this is a longer question, but doesn't have to be a long answer, I don't think. Related to what we were just talking about, Brian Kavanaugh asks, how can we tell good good history from bad? And he specifically mentioned his seminary education leaving out things like Greco-Roman local gods and festivals, trade guilds, pederasty, different people groups in the New Testament, etc. And he said, "I feel like I am now just scratching the surface on what I was told were complete pictures. Any advice?"
Beth:Right. Read more broadly among historians. Don't simply read your church history textbook that was given to you in seminary, if that's the only place you've learned church history from, you know, broaden, reach out, broaden, find out what other books are out there. There could be, I need to write a resource page, I actually wrote a resource page a long time ago for pastors on Anxious Bench on finding reliable sources. And so maybe I need to revive that and do one also for finding reliable historical sources and how to know, so, but I would say broaden, broaden what you are reading
Scot:Seminary curriculum, seminaries are driven by curriculum, they're driven by ministry sources, and they're thinking of sermons. They are not driven by the historical discipline.
Beth:Right.
Scot:So most seminaries do not push students into original sources. So Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, you know, they might mention them, but they're not reading any of it. So a little plug for Northern, our, both of our programs, the Masters level and the DMin level, we get into ancient sources.
Randy:Nice.
Scot:Because I know these pastors would like to do it. They'd like to read some Josephus.
Beth:Yep. Not just the surveys.
Randy:Yep.
Scot:Yeah.
Kyle:Nice. These, these are longer answers than we need, so feel free to...
Beth:Okay, we'll go faster.
Kyle:Any thoughts specifically about the NKJV or the NLT? I know those are very different.
Beth:Well Scot helped translate the NLT. Although I will say that the NLT has variations in its gender response, and maybe one day Scot can illuminate us on that, but whereas it's very good at translating "brothers and sisters," it often still returns to, in some, in some of the Pauline texts, it has more of a gender bias. I don't actually know that much about the NKJV. I know a lot about the KJV. But I don't know very much about the NKJV.
Scot:Amen, amen.
Kyle:All right.
Randy:Nice, there we go. Here's another one. Why do some translations seem inclusive in some passages, but not in other passages? And any advice for those who have been hurt by the clobber passages?
Beth:I think, different, I mean, because different people are involved in translations. And because there are different mode of, you know, it's, in some places, it's innocuous to translate "brothers and sisters," whereas in other places, if you make that gender inclusive, it might convey a different meaning. So I think that, you know, the stance on women in the church often dictates the, where gender inclusivity appears in a Bible.
Scot:And the, I would, I would say that they need a variety of translators in order to hear what other people might hear about some of this stuff. Clobber passages, I think, is too difficult to take on at this point.
Randy:Yeah.
Kyle:Yeah. That's a whole episode, really.
Randy:Yep.
Beth:Yeah, we can, we can talk about healing later.
Kyle:Yeah. Beth, I'm gonna limit you to, like, a two word answer on this, because that's how it's phrased. Was the Protestant Reformation overall good or bad for women? Yes or no?
Beth:It is neither. The Protestant Reformation changed how women are treated in the church, and how evangelicals then picked up on the Reformation really has driven a lot of our understanding of women's roles in the church. So it's more nuanced than that.
Kyle:Nice. Scot, this one's for you, because it's kind of nerdy. So a couple of people mentioned a take on Genesis 3:16, by Susan Foh, am I saying that right? Foh. And apparently it's been pretty influential in complementarian circles, especially on translations like the NLT and the ESV, which render Genesis 3-16 to say something like, "you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you," that's the NLT, whereas the NIV has "your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." So apparently her take on that was very influential. Any thoughts on that? Why it's been so influential? Are there, like, scholarly debates about that?
Scot:I skimmed this when it came out, and I don't, I don't know what Susan Foh was onto. I think Beth probably knows more about this than I do.
Beth:Yeah. So I think one of the reasons why she was so influential is because she said what people wanted to hear. She said that essentially, the curse isn't patriarchy, the curse is women resisting patriarchy. And that's pretty much what she said. And conservative scholars picked up on that. From what I understand, most scholars who read, that's not, that, you take a lot of liberties with the text when you do it that way. Actually, Rachel Green Miller has written a great blog about this, and Rachel Green Miller is still a complementarian, and she has written a great response to that article.
Kyle:All right. I think we can call that our Twitter round. Sorry if we didn't get to your question.
Randy:Yes. Beth, you've got a question for Scot?
Beth:Oh, well, I could. You know, so one of the things that I often think about when I think about where my journey with Bible translations began, it began with The Blue Parakeet. The Blue Parakeet was really revolutionary to me, one of those books that I think a lot of people, I mean, a lot of people have read it, but I also think that it, more people should read it. So Scot, could you tell people, I mean, what is it that you argue in The Blue Parakeet that can help us better understand how to read our Bibles?
Scot:Okay, I think I use this in the book, I haven't read the book in a while, you know, the Bible is full of what I call wiki stories. And that is, there is, let's say, it's Moses talking in Moses's way in Moses's day. And then Isaiah is talking in Isaiah's way Isaiah's day, and Jesus is talking in Jesus's way in Jesus's day, and Paul is talking about Paul's way in Paul's day. And it is not a systematic theology; it is a developing story in the pages of the Bible that has a goal, the New Jerusalem, and has a beginning. And there are all these progressive moments in it, so that we have to read each author, each text, in its own day for what it was doing in the larger picture, rather than turning it into sort of pieces in a puzzle that we have to take apart and find which piece that we can put together, and then we're going to be able to frame a systematic theology. That's not how it works. It is sort of the truth of the gospel, the truth of God, coming to expression at different periods, and we get to watch how this thing happens. And when, when we listen to it well, in its context, we gain the capacity and discerning abilities to be able to do the same thing in our world. So that's, and then I use, I was originally going to do four topics, gospel, atonement, women, and I don't know, something else. And I only got to do the women. I told my editor, I said, this is going to be enough, it's going to sell the book if we can talk about women like this. And so, so I have a good section, I think about a quarter of the book, is on, on women in the Bible, to be able to see them in light of how this story develops, rather than just some one text that, that tells you everything about it. So.
Beth:Yep.
Scot:But that was, for me, one of the most illuminating discoveries in writing, is to watch how women appear in the pages of the Bible.
Beth:Right.
Scot:My conclusion was, if you're going to talk about women, I think you need to ask what did women do, and do you allow women to do in your church what they did, then? And I'm reasonably confident that complementarians simply do not permit that to happen.
Randy:Man, what you're speaking to, Scot, is, we don't really have a good understanding of the treasures that women were bringing in the church throughout history, that we think, we just see it within our postmodern sensibilities. Beth, what kind of influence did that book have for you as you were rethinking women's roles in the church?
Beth:Yeah, it really helped me see that I was looking, that the way we understood women in the Bible was primarily through the lens of Paul, and that we were only, not, and not even through the lens of Paul, through the lens of a handful of verses of Paul, and those clobber passages, and that we were reading everything through that lens, including these stories that took place thousands of years before Paul, and I mean, and in stories that have nothing to do, you know, completely out of context. And often what we would do is ignore what was actually happening in those stories, like the story of Hagar, which I only became really attuned to what's going on in that story much later in my Christian life. And I wish I had read that story in of itself without connecting it to the lens of those clobber passages. And so I think that's, that's what it did for me.
Randy:Awesome. So last question. And this, this might be a simple answer, it might be no changes forecasted in the future, but as we think about the progression and the evolution of biblical translations through the ages, you know, like you can go back to Jerome and then all the changes, what do you foresee, either of you, or both of you, in the future of biblical translations? Is there, will there be pretty much a, a universal gender inclusivity when it comes to putting committees together, will there be a difference in the way these things are brought about, will there be a difference in the language, will there be things that are considered unacceptable now that will be in biblical translations in 50, 100, 200 years from now?
Scot:I have an inspired answer for this.
Randy:Yes, those are my favorite,
Scot:The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. And so...
Kyle:Unless you're David Hume.
Scot:...what we will have is we will have, in the future, different versions of what we've got now.
Randy:That's boring.
Kyle:Give us something meatier, more controversial.
Beth:My hope is that we actually are much more attentive to diversity. We need to have Bibles that aren't translated primarily by white people. You know, I would love to see a modern English Bible translation that stems from black theologians, and see that become much, you know, and even if, you know, I would love to see much more diversity on translation committees, but at the same time, I would also like more texts, more translations that we can use to compare. And so I really would like to be at a place where we can see that, where when somebody asks a question, what's the more, most diverse translation committee, we can actually tell you.
Randy:Yeah.
Beth:More...
Randy:More than two.
Beth:We can really give you some answers. Yeah.
Randy:Yep. Yep. That's good. Any, just in case you got some names for us, but any names of current theologians who are Latinx, or African or African American, Black, who are Asian, who are females, any, any recommendations on scholars that might take us outside of our, our norm a little bit?
Scot:Oh, a hundred of them. There's all, there's all kinds of development in this field today. It's just sad that a lot of the tribes don't hear the other voices. It's there, it's all there.
Beth:Yeah. Yeah, I would, you know, Stony the Road We Trod, for sure, is a great, that was, really started my journey on black theologians.
Scot:Second edition just came out.
Beth:Yeah, yeah. And it's great. I really love that. And so I mean, even that, and then with, I think, with the expansion, you know, Latinx scholars, I'm less, you know, one of, I, Kat Armas has a great book on, you know, Abuelita Faith. And it really shows, you know, the difference when you look at scripture through the eyes of a brown woman. And so I mean, even just, they don't even have to be what we would consider to be credential theologians, but just thinking about how texts are received. And of course, one of Kat's arguments is that we ignore all these female theologians who are really acting as theologians because they don't have the same type of training or credentials, and don't have the same connections.
Kyle:Yeah, and because they're not engaging in the dialectic in the same way that the white dudes are.
Beth:Right, and so we ignore these texts.
Kyle:Yeah. She was on the show, so if listeners want to go check out that interview with her, it's really good. I would add to that list Wil Gafney's book, Womanist Midrash, really excellent.
Beth:Oh yes, Wil Gafney's book. You put me on the spot, and so I was blanking on, but I've actually written a blog post where I list, it was my response to Christianity Today's scandal, and I said, just go read more women. And so I have a response where I have a whole theological, where I pulled up a lot of non-white scholars...
Randy:Nice.
Kyle:Excellent.
Beth:...and historians.
Kyle:All right. We'll put all that in the show notes.
Randy:Yeah. If you haven't read Blue Parakeet or A Church Called Tov or The Making of Biblical Womanhood, go get them now, and just enjoy the next month or two of your life. Scot and Beth, thank you so much for spending time with us again.
Scot:Thank you.
Beth:Than you for having us.
Kyle:Well, that's it for this episode of A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar. We hope you're enjoying the show as much as we are. Help us continue to create compelling content and reach a wider audience by supporting us patreon.com/apastorandaphilosopher, where you can get bonus content, extra perks, and a general feeling of being good person.
Randy:Also, please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, and Spotify. These help new people discover the show and we may even read your review in a future episode. If it's good enough.
Kyle:If anything we said really pissed you off or if you just have a question you'd like us to answer, or if you'd just like to send us booze, send us an email at pastorandphilosopher@gmail.com.
Randy:Catch all of our hot takes on Twitter at@PPWBPodcast, @RandyKnie, and@robertkwhitaker, and find transcripts and links to all of our episodes at pastorandphilosopher.buzzsprout.com. See you next time.
Kyle:Cheers!