Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep953: Behind the Scenes of Bible Translation: Dr. Brandon Smith

Episode Date: March 10, 2022

Dr. Brandon Smith is associate professor of theology at Cedarville University. Previously, he spent the previous four years helping lead the Christian Standard Bible translation and as an elder at a church in the Nashville area. He also helped found the Center for Baptist Renewal and hosts the Church Grammar podcast. His research interests include the Trinity, canonical and theological interpretation, biblical theology, and early church theology (especially AD 100-400). Brandon has a Ph.D. in Theology and New Testament, Ridley College (Melbourne), an M.A. in Biblical and Theological Studies, Criswell College, and a B.A. in Biblical Studies, Dallas Baptist University In this episode, we discuss translation theory, why certain translations differ, whether translations are relatable, how to pick a translation for you or for your church, we also peak behind the scenes of what goes on into translating the Bible, and we unpack why the Christian Standard Bible is, in our humble opinion, the best all around translation out there. Theology in the Raw Conference - Exiles in Babylon At the Theology in the Raw conference, we will be challenged to think like exiles about race, sexuality, gender, critical race theory, hell, transgender identities, climate change, creation care, American politics, and what it means to love your democratic or republican neighbor as yourself. Different views will be presented. No question is off limits. No political party will be praised. Everyone will be challenged to think. And Jesus will be upheld as supreme. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com Stay Up to Date with the Podcast Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. The Theology in the Raw conference is coming up March 31st to April 2nd. We're talking about race. We're talking about politics. We're talking about hell. We're talking about sexuality, gender, and other engaging, controversial topics. There's a range of speakers giving different viewpoints and lots of Q&A, lots of conversations along with talks and incredible worship and fellowship, and the list goes on. If you have not registered yet, go to pressandsprinkle.com or theologyintheraw.com. We are rolling out a new website.

I'm not 100% sure when that website will go live. Either way, if you go to my website, click on the conference page, it will take you to wherever it wants to take you to, to register. I imagine that we will be filled, filled up, sold out by early March. We're on pace to fill up by then. So if you want to attend live in person, do that. Register ASAP. Or you can attend

virtually. If you attend virtually and you can't make the time zone or you fall ill or just don't want to watch it that night or whatever, if you can't make the timing, you do get access to the full video conference, I think for at least seven days. I get this question all the time. If I sign up virtually, do I have to watch it live? Or can I, you know, wait, you know, half a day or a day or a couple days? Yes, register virtually, you can get access to it after. My guest today is Dr. Brandon Smith. He's been a friend for many years, teaches at my old alma mater at Cedarville University. He has a bachelor's degree in biblical studies, an MA in biblical and theological studies, and a PhD in theology and New Testament from Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia under my good friend, Mike Bird. the translation team for the Christian Standard Bible, my favorite translation. And I'm very excited to talk to him about that translation, but also just translation theory. If you're looking, if you have questions about what translation should I use? Why are they different? How are

they different? Which one's better for this kind of reading or that kind of reading? If you want to get inside the background of how translators even go about their business, then this is the podcast for you. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only Dr. Brandon Smith. All right, hey friends, I'm here with my friend Brandon Smith. Brandon, thanks for tuning in from Cedarville, Ohio, my old stomping grounds.

Yeah, man. I'm trying to live in the light that you have left here. I'm just trying to keep your legacy going. My claim to fame is, I think I told you this last time we talked, that painting that's next to the coffee shop, if it's still there, it better still be there. And it, it has a little bike in the corner of the painting. And if you notice the license plate on the bike, it says sprinkle on it. Oh, I've never known. I'll have to go look at it because you told me that. Oh yeah. Yeah. So, um, this is back in the day, gosh, when I was, I was there 07 to 09.

Right. Yeah. So that was back in the day with email. when I was there, 07 to 09, right? Yeah. So that was back in the day with email. I was just getting used to it. Well, I mean, email had been around for 10 years. But they showed me how you can email the entire school body, which somebody said, like, don't ever do this. But yeah, you can email all 3,500 students, all staff, faculty, janitors, and everything. So some genius – so I'm riding my bike to school. That's my transportation.

And you don't lock it up. It's Cedarville. There's no – I don't know what the worst crime would be. Like you pass a homeless guy on the street and forget to give him food or something. Yeah, the Frozen Lake right now has a bicycle on it. That's probably the greatest crime anybody's yeah this week so call the call the squad so anyway so i you know i'm riding my bike from class i ride my bike from class to cafeteria whatever and and uh sure enough i'm kind of like ready i

need to get to class like in two minutes because that's how much i take some of my bike and i go out my bike's gone so some some student took my bike i'm like what the heck dude like i think come to find out i don't know if it's like that now but now then somebody told me later this is after the fact that well that's just kind of that's just what everybody does like everybody just grabs a bike and goes well don't grab my bike dude so so i sent a whole email to the entire school say i think that's kind of do not ride my bike yeah it was it was it was still christian is a christian email but it was bordering it you know so i was really upset i mean anyway it's kind of like it's kind of like your whole life really you know you know

christian but borderline you know and that's how theology started um anyway i i don't know somebody felt bad like oh gosh so sorry i think i i saw it over by whatever this building so anyway so so that painting somebody painted that that painting because the coffee shop was being redone and they put it up there and somebody i think no one told it but somebody pointed out the in that painting there's a little bike off in the corner it says sprinkle this is sprinkles bike yes stay away from it all right so i want to talk about translations. And I get this question. I've gotten questions about translations my entire kind of ministry slash teaching life. It's something that always comes up. There's always translations coming out. And you were heavily involved in the production of the CSB, which is, I think, the best translation that's currently out there. So before we do that, tell us just a little bit of background of who you are, your education, and then how you got into working with the CSB. Yeah, I mean, I grew up in a non-Christian home, became a Christian a little bit later, kind of very quickly in my early 20s, felt called to ministry. And so, you know, I went

the path everybody does, which is you start going to school, figure out what you're going to do. And, you know, in the middle of that, I got a bachelor's degree in Bible and a master's, you know, in HD. And in that I was, you know, working as a communications director at a school I was working at, you know, trying to adjunct a little bit, whatever. And so I was running communications at Criswell College where I was doing my master's and just got a random call one day from the people at Lifeway and said, hey, we want sort of a theologically minded, pastorally minded type person to help run our marketing. Cause they just had that bunch of really good marketers, but nobody who had that

background. So yeah, they invited me out and did the interviews and stuff. And, um, so basically got in there because I, you know, was theologically trained, had been a pastor and knew how to use the internet, you know, pretty much. So, uh, so we started running the marketing there and then that developed into a managing editor position where I was really kind of overseeing our editing and our marketing and was involved in some of the revision stuff. So got through a little bit of everything. It's fun. Cool. Awesome. And then, uh, you, you did your PhD under Mike Bird, right? At, uh, at Ridley? At Ridley. Yeah. Ridley. Yeah. Yeah. How was that? You can rip on him too. This is he'll. Oh, it's fun. Yeah. I mean, you can imagine he doesn't hold power over me anymore, you know? So,

um, no, no, he is, uh, Michael Byrd, what you see on online and in his books is literally who he is. He loves the Lord. He's super smart. Uh, and he's sarcastic and makes fun of you all the time. So, uh, I did, I did a YouTube interview with him recently on his YouTube account. We were just talking about doing a PhD and I just kept sharing stories about the mean things he said to me and the snarky things he said, you know, telling me to save that for Baptist RS and random things. You know, this might've worked in your master's, but this isn't good enough for a PhD and all that fun stuff. But he also was extremely encouraging. So, So it was fun. He's one of the fairest – is that the right word? Just interpreter of scripture. Like I – you know, there's just people that I just feel like you –

I feel like you're doing your best to be truly honest with the text. And I mean all of us have baggage. All of us have biases and whatever. But whenever I read anything by him or hear him talk, I just feel like, man, he's made a concerted effort to get his arms around the issues and has gone with the reading that he has

shown to be the better one according to his research and everything. He's just really honest. He's one of those guys when he says something about a text, I'm like, he's trustworthy. Not that he's always right, but just really trustworthy. Well, he doesn't allow himself to be bullied around by certain factions. Um, and so he makes people mad on, you know, every, every side of it, which, um, you know, he can be a little

provocative at times by admission, but part of it is that he's trying to say like, Hey, you should be aware of your presuppositions and things like that. And let's just look at this issue. So even as a, you know, as a doctoral student, he was always hammering me for that. Like, yeah, you need to put yourself in the place of your worst critic. You know, you need to put yourself in the place of this person and make sure that you're being fair. So I mean, I always experienced as a student, too. So I'm super grateful for it. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about the translation and maybe. Yeah. Just talk to us about what goes on behind the scenes of a translation i guess you can tell just a story of the csb i know it's a revision um of the hcsb which that that technically it was

i love love the hcsb but it's got like this has taken that over and has made some improvements and i do want to be clear too um i didn't, you didn't ask me to come on the CSB, whatever, like, didn't ask me you to come on. So this is,

no one's getting paid for this. I have to say that because I do, the CSB does have sponsors. They do pay for sponsors on the podcast. This conversation

is not part of that at all. This is a, I like this translation. I want to know about translation theory. You're the best guy I know to go to. So just to make that. You missed me and just want to talk to me.

And I miss you, man. Yeah. Yeah. So tell us, maybe start with the HCSB and where that came about and why you guys felt like that needed to be revised and lead, you know, into the CSB. Yeah. I mean, so every translation is different. You know, um, the thing about the ESV was a

revision of RSV. Um, you've got obviously the KJV, the NKJV, then you got translations like the NIV that's basically translated from Greek and Hebrew. There's no preexisting text, you know, so there's all these different ways that they come about. HCSB was originally just from the Greek and Hebrew. In the 90s, basically, Lifeway put together a group of scholars. It ended up being 100 scholars from 17 denominations. So there's often this sort of – it was the Southern Baptist Bible, but it was actually intentionally not supposed to be the Southern Baptist Bible. Now, whether it turned into that is a different conversation, but that was not the goal. It was always an interdenominational thing. And so in the nineties,

I mean, part of the reason why the HCSB came about is you really just had the KJV, NIV in terms of what people were using, KJV, NIV, um, new American standard. And those were kind of all that was, that existed at the time. And so part of it for the HCSB was, you know, um, you've got the NIV, which at the time was considered, okay, more dynamic, you know, uh, NASB is, is like a block of wood, you know, it's very, very literal and very, um, and then, so there really wasn't a middle space that was, that was existing at the time. And you had churches complaining about these two poles. Now it's interesting now because now you have NLT and others that are more dynamic than NIV, but at the time that was part of the conversation. Can you explain dynamic really quick? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, literal dynamic. Yeah, so formal and dynamic are kind of the two things we say, which is formal is trying to be as quote-unquote word-for-word as you can be literal to the Greek. Literal is not a great translation, or not a great way to say it because everything's a translation. Only the Greek and Hebrew are literal, you know. But then dynamic is like, okay, we can make it more colloquial, we can make it more quote unquote word for word, or more easy to understand for modern readers. So all translations are trying to live in that balance

at some level, but some obviously will intentionally lean in one direction. So a very formal translation is just gonna say, you know, it may not be the easiest to read, but it's closer to the Greek wording, the Greek word order or whatever. And so we're just going to leave it there. More dynamic would say, well, there's some options we have to make this translation more understandable for a modern audience.

So HCSB kind of came in trying to live in between those two worlds. And so it was an idea of how do we serve the church with a need that it feels like is there. So that's how the HCSB came about. So then you want some CSB from there. Yeah. Well, I got turned on to the HCSB by Scott – not McKnight. Gosh, I'm blanking on his last name. New Testament scholar – why can't I think of his name?

Scott, Scott, Scott. He taught at Gordon-Conwell, Wheaton, I think St. Andrews for a number. Yeah, Scott. Anyway, brilliant New Testament. You're going to say it, and we'll both be like, yeah, we're both going to be like. This guy, I remember he was writing a commentary on 1 Peter, and he spent all summer on like one verse. He's that kind of scholar.

I bumped into a little roadblock here. What does this mean? And he's like, I'm going to – I will just keep studying until I figure out what it means. Yeah, he's a bulldog. But he's the one that said – I did do a first Peter, so I don't know. Oh.

Might have been second. Scott Haefeman. Scott Haefeman wrote a second Corinthians – his PhD on second Corinthians, kind of a second Corinthians guy who's doing something. Anyway, on Peter. But he's the first. I've never even heard of the HCSB.

And I remember we were at a little pastor's gathering, and he was raving about it. So this is hands down the best translation. I'm like, what? And he was giving these examples. And he even said something. And can you verify this? I don't know. I don't want to misquote him. But he said there was something really different with the kind of freedom that the translators had in translating the text. In fact, he's the one that said, it's the only translation that actually gets John 3.16 right.

the best word to translate hutos in the Greek is not so. Maybe in the KJV, that era might have made sense, but it means in this way. God loved the world in this way. Boom. He gave his only son as, you know, not God so incredibly loved or, you know, that's true too, but that's just not what the Greeks said.

And he said, there's just, and I'm like, how come other trans, like every Greek scholar knows what hutos means. It's like, well, there's just – and I'm like, how come other – like every Greek scholar knows what houtos means. It's like, well, there's some politics behind it. You get a sacred translation of a verse and some Bibles are like, yeah, we're going to leave that the way it is. Like we're not going to mess with John 3.16 or other verses. And I'm like, really? Is there politics behind this?

Not politics, but I mean is it – Yeah. It's like, oh, yeah. And sorry, I'm rambling too much. But Schrember Longman said the same thing about Song of Songs. I mean, if he had it his way, that translation. And he was part of the NLT. And there are some things he's like, I think this is really what the Hebrew is saying here.

And they're like, we can't put that in, man. We're writing to Christians here. Because he's got a very erotic reading of the book which i think is probably correct but anyway so um is is was like is that does that resonate is there something behind the hcsb that did give a lot more um i guess just honesty and freedom to the translators or yeah i mean i think everybody like you said everybody's got presuppositions they're bringing into it but but I think with the HCSB, there was certainly a sort of, Hey, we have a huge bunch of scholars together. We're doing something fresh. We have no text to

depend on. There's no, we're not revising anything. And so there was a sense of, well, just do what you think is best. So I think that's true. I think even with the CSB, we had some of that as well, where it was like, okay, we're, we're, we're coming off the HCSB, but we made a lot of changes in the CSB to HCSB that were noticeable. And, you know, there was a sort of a freedom to say, hey, like we can, we can do that if we want to. Now, obviously there were times where we'd have conversations in the room and say, hey, we might want to change this or that. And, you know, the vote's too close. We're like, okay, we're just not going to mess with that or whatever, you know, but yeah, I mean, I'm sure politics always play a part, but it depends on, uh, who's in charge and what the parameters are, you know, and we all have

different ones, but I felt like with HCSB and with CSB, we had a pretty, pretty good amount of freedom to do what we wanted. So, so the CSB is not a free, you didn't have another separate team of scholars. You had people who were revising some of the translation that had already been done. So it really is. So we had a new, we call it a translation oversight committee. And so it was 10 scholars basically who were new, who had not worked on the HCSB at all, who kind of gave it fresh eyes and said, okay, let's see what the HCSB needs.

Because it had basically not been updated for a really long time, which in the translation world, people get frustrated by updates, but there is a sense in which scholarship advances, language changes. So there was some need there. We were hearing from churches and stuff too about, here are some things that, pastor feedback, scholar feedback, and eventually they just said, hey, let's get some people in a room and see what needs to be done.

By the way, I keep looking at my face in the screen is it does it look so i got new lights and everything this is the lowest setting but i feel like i'm i feel like i'm on my like fourth glass of whiskey at 9 a.m do i look too red or is this fine is it distracting i'm colorblind so you just look you are i can't tell yeah i didn't notice anything but yeah you look great you look great. You got your flat belt on. You got your hoodie. You're just crushing it. I was telling you offline. I got a decaf coffee last night.

It was out of the decaf carafe or whatever. I'm pretty sure it's caffeinated because I didn't sleep from midnight until 6 a.m. I had to cancel an 8 o'clock meeting. I need to get an hour to sleep. Anyway, not your problem. You're doing great.

You're doing great. Can you tell us some unique translation features of the HCSB? And then we'll move specifically on the CSB. Because the more I look at the HCSB, I'm like, there's so many things here that other translations are not doing. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, a couple, a couple of the ones that we were known for that we went away from and got us in the most trouble, I think with you as well, we had some, you and I have had conversations over the years. Um, you know, we, we, uh, for example, the HCSB, uh, had Yahweh in the old Testament,

same time Yahweh come instead of saying Lord capital L O R D or something. It was always Yahweh as much as possible. Um. So that was a really unique thing. That was something that we were really, you know, it was really well known for, you know, saying slave instead of servant in the New Testament was a big one. Saying Messiah instead of Christ more consistently in the New Testament, capitalizing pronouns, he, him, his for God. We went away from all of those, but those were all like the, I mean, those were the, his, for God. We went away from all of those, but those were all like the, I mean, those were the hallmarks in some ways.

Well, yeah. So why, I actually forget, why did you go away from some of those? Because those were some, those were some of the kind of BA features of HVSB where people are like, why have we always done it this way? You know? Yeah, yeah. Well, so the hard, so the capitalizing pronouns, for example, is difficult because one, you're introducing capitalization that Greek is not using. You run into issues in translation, like you think about the baptism scene in Mark. There's a part where it says, like, he looked up or he saw this. And it's like, okay, is that actually Mark or Jesus?

Or John the Baptist, sorry, John the Baptist or Jesus. Well, you're introducing an interpretation there if you capitalize that he or not. Right. So it's like things like that, where you're just kind of introducing an extra wrinkle that may not be necessary. Um, so that, that was like a thing with pronouns. Um, Yahweh, uh, sometimes it's hard to, it's hard to be consistent when you're using Yahweh and the way that HCSB was doing it. So it was like, do we try to do it more or do we remove the inconsistencies? Because it wasn't always... I know Christ wasn't always...

Or Messiah. Sometimes it was Christ. Sometimes I'm like, why Christ here and not Messiah? Is that what you guys ran into? It's hard to... Yeah. I mean, with CSB, we kept Messiah in some places, like tried to do it where it was very obvious that they were speaking to a Jewish audience who would have received it as Messiah.

So even then, I mean, we wrestled even with the CSB of, are we being consistent? Should we just wipe it out? But yeah, I mean, that's, that's the treachery of translation is trying to figure out how to be consistent and, you know, that kind of stuff. But with Yahweh, it was just, um, it was way too hard to be consistent in a way that sometimes could be distracting. Capitalizing pronouns in the same way. Slave, I mean, there's a lot of reasons why you do and don't use that language. Some of it is, you know, think about like in Matthew, it's in Matthew 20, there's two different words there for servant and slave.

Okay. And if you say slave, slave, you're actually two Greek words and you're saying slave in both, but then you might say for doulos slave here but servant over there it was that kind of stuff where it was like we're just not being consistent um and so and then there was the sort of like um the novelty of it was in and of itself could be a problem right where it's like well this is really cool you guys are doing this but if we're not doing it well or consistently then the novelty wears off you know then it's just not a very good translation so those changes have you received more negative feedback like ah we

miss seeing messiah and yahweh more or but yahweh was by far the big yahweh was the biggest uh in terms of negative sort of feedback and then capitalizing pronouns we got killed for that but honestly like no translation does that besides the n kjv at this point so we didn't feel and we all i mean all the modern translations don't do it for the reasons i just said you know i don't like capitalizing pronouns it's so like in i mean early on in my writing i remember i would do it because that's what we're told to do or whatever and then yeah um because it was so you know it's safe you know if you don't do it it's like you're demeaning the name of jesus and then the esv came out and they didn't do it and it was like oh okay you can be concerned about capitalized pronouns um yeah but yeah it's just so clunky like it's it's especially

when you get like who or which or actually there's more who and he and it sometimes like it's just yeah it's a hassle but you just yeah you're just you're the thing the thing that we were trying to do which nobody does it perfectly is you're trying to not introduce extra interpretation into your translation. And that's where some of that kind of stuff was just introducing. Oh, do we think you're always supposed to be here? Do we think this, you know? And so you end up just you end up, I think, causing more problems in some sense. And maybe your average reader may not know it.

But part of the job of translators is to do scholarship and translation. Well, you know. So, yeah, we got job of translators is to do scholarship and translation well. So, yeah, we got accused of – I've got a friend who calls it sentimental capitalization. It's not in the Greek and Hebrew. It's not indicated by the text. It's just a sentimental thing that we perceive to be like – I had somebody email me and say, I can't believe you butchered God's word by lowercasing all the pronouns. And I was like, well, Paul didn't capitalize his pronouns, right? We actually – we added this. This is actually us adding, you know, it's not us taking away.

Yeah. You're like, we didn't leave it in the format that it was originally written with all caps, no spaces. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Figure out. Would you like us to remove commas as well? So what other, and then was it just a clean kind of update with other things? Can

you give an example of other things that went into the CSV? Yeah, I mean, there was definitely, you know, tons of just verses that got smoothed out. A lot of it was like consistency between Old and New Testament references, whether it were cross references. You know, some of the things that we tried to do, like one of the things that was an introduction that we did that we got a little bit of grief for but not much was saying brothers and sisters for Adelphoi instead of just brothers. That's a tough one, yeah. Yeah. So when Paul writes to the Romans, you know, brothers and sisters. And so we did that pretty consistently where we felt like they were addressing – obviously addressing a crowd and Adelphoi.

It was funny because we had gotten a little bit of grief for that But I mean you bring up ESV and I love ESV and love the guys there and I would always point out well ESV actually Puts or brothers and sisters in the footnote So we just we just switched right we thought it should be in the main text and then the footnote we would say or brothers Because we thought actually that's that's what Paul was saying when he wrote Adolfo It was brothers and sisters So it was kind of those things where it was like, we got called, oh, you're doing the gender neutral thing. I was like, no, actually we're very in line with the Colorado Springs statement, for example, which talks about gender and other things in scripture. There's actually room to do this in translation. We were just the first ones to really bite the bullet and do it. So I mean a translation is supposed to render what the Greek says,

but render what it is saying to its audience in a way that – well, I've got different options in my head right now, right? I mean are you supposed to say, okay, this is what Paul said. He said brothers back then they would have just took it for granted that kind of like mankind means all humans you know brothers means brothers and sisters um uh but that's not what paul said like he he did say brothers um and should we leave him in his own context and let the interpreter figure it out or should we do it do a little bit of interpretation here yeah or would you be classified as because

that's the that's the that's the line right translation interpret you want to stay away from interpretation that's the modern reader's job but you do want to translate but this is a little fuzzy isn't it i mean yeah and i mean that's the thing i mean it's something freshmen, you know, when we're talking about hermeneutics, like, you know, first week, it's like, one of the things that you have to realize with translation is that all translation is at some level, all translation is interpretation. Um, you try your best not to do it, but it's the case. I mean, if you think of it, I always tell them like the most basic example you can think of. If you were in English, white house and Spanish, you would say Casablanca house white. So in the most basic, you already realized there's a word order change, right? I was like, imagine that times all the words of the Bible and an

ancient language. You know what I mean? Like it's just a totally, I mean, the problems just continue to extrapolate. And what you do when you do any translation, anybody who's done, who's learned a second language, whatever, you also recognize that there are sometimes three or four English words that a Greek word could render. You know, you have options of how you would translate a word. So it doesn't always have to be this one word. And so sometimes you, you know, when a modern translation will make a change from say the KJV or whatever, it's sort of like, well, hey, you changed the word. It's like, no, actually we just used a modern English version of the same rendering, right? We don't say thou anymore, thou and thee anymore. We say something different. So it's one of those things where when you're

doing translation, you are bringing over from another language and in some sense, another culture and trying to figure out how do we, we would always say like, you know, you put your hand on the chair and the chair is the Greek word and you have room to walk around that chair as long as you keep your hand on the chair, right? There's these options you can do as long as, um, so an example for us, you know, something that we did different, uh, as well was like, um, Hillisterion in like Romans 3 25 propitiation. We set atoning sacrifice, uh, in almost all those cases. Uh, the reason why we did that was, uh, there was a couple of reasons as a translation, we're saying what is faithful to the, to the Greek, which all

translations are doing this, what is faithful to the Greek. And then what is something an English audience would understand. Yeah. And all translations have different ways that they weight those things, but all translations are trying to making, I mean, new American standards, probably the most formal, they still want an English person to understand what they're saying. Right. So we all care about that. But for CSB, we said, okay, what if we find something that is a formal rendering, but maybe isn't propitiation because nobody who doesn't have a biblical background, nobody knows what that means. They have to ask their pastor or something else, right? Your average person that's sitting on the couch reading their Bible and nobody's there to explain it to

them. What is another option for hilasterion that would get the same idea across that might be more understandable? And so we went with atoning sacrifice, which again, you got to do stuff with atoning. It's not like atoning. It's just a thing everybody knows. But you do recognize that atoning sacrifice has the idea of forgiveness, of sacrifice, of making payment or making something right, you know, atoning for your sins. People know basically what that means. And so we did that throughout and said, okay, that's at least a little bit more understandable, but we're not removing the theological weight of what this is trying to get across, you know? So that's an example. Well, even that one, I mean, that still is within the semantic range of

hilasterion, because that's what a propitiation kind of is. And atoning sacrifice, I mean, I like that because it avoids – It includes expiation a little bit too. Well, and there is a slight theological difference between expiation and propitiation. And so if you do even go with propitiation, you're still making an interpretive move that 99% of readers aren't going to notice. But I mean, if you might check it out. And there are some translations. I think the RSV goes with expiation.

Expiation is like wiping away of your sins. And propitiation has a more penal substitution kind of flavor to it. Appeasing wrath. Appeasing wrath, where expiation doesn't include that. But that's an interpretive decision. So yeah, I think Tonyoning sacrifice is better there. So hilasterion, yeah. I mean, hilasterion, because it can contain both of those things,

we thought atoning sacrifice actually gets at all that hilasterion is trying to say. So not that preposition is wrong. Just, you know. So I actually got this question a few days ago from some of my Patreon supporters asking me about kind of how it can be frustrating when you hear preachers correcting translations or saying, oh, this is a bad translation. I'm going to go with this one or whatever. And it's kind of like, well, who are these jokers translating to some pastor with a couple of years of Greek can just render it a bad translation? I'm like, were you part of the translation team?

Can you give us a little, and I've done the same thing. I critique translations cautiously. I know that the translator probably knows Greek better than I do, has probably spent more time on wrestling with how to run this. Although sometimes, I mean mean they're still human they have deadlines it's a big project i'm sure you know yeah um you know anyway yeah that's that's some people don't realize that they think they're these like you know you lock up these scholars in a room with a bunch of white coats and they're just back there you know like yeah yeah you know for 10 or they just all use you know google translate and then we just put it on a page you

know um so can you give us a little insight of what what does it take for one of these hundred Or they just all use Google Translate and then we just put it on a page. So can you give us a little insight? What does it take for one of these hundred scholars? What's the process in them translating the Bible? Yeah. I mean, so first of all, you want to have a group of people who are as good at the languages as humanly possible. So you want to have scholars, particularly senior scholars. I mean, I was by far the junior scholar in the room and just tried to stay out of the way, you know, 99.9% of the time. I just agree with Tom Schreiner, worst case scenario was always my, was always my bet, you know? Um, but, uh, yeah, I mean,

you, you know, you've got, if you're taking it just from the Greek and Hebrew, like the HCSB was, you're talking about, you know, laying out, you know, a Nestle Elan 28 or whatever. You know, that's like, here's the Greek New Testament that we have that's got the best data from all the manuscripts we have and everything that we have. You're starting to work from that. And then you're saying, OK, yeah, how do I make an English sentence out of each one of these Greek sentences? And how do I do it in a way that is fair to the context of the book? The use of the way that that author uses that word. You know, what is the author trying to intend? You know, I think one of my favorite examples

from Hebrew is like Amos 4.6, where it says, I will give you, some translations will say, I will give you cleanness of teeth in all of your cities. And you're like, okay, well, yeah, clean teeth sounds awesome. Like divine dentistry. You know, if anybody can do it, somebody like me with a jacked up grill, you know, I'm hoping that Jesus, that God will fix that one day. Um, but actually, uh, what that means is your teeth are clean because you've had nothing to eat. You've been starved because God is punishing them for their sins. So for us, it's like, okay, a quote unquote, formal literal translation of Hebrew would

be cleanness of teeth. And, and, and a Hebrew person would understand that colloquialism like you and I would understand, you know, English ones that we take for granted. Um, you know, uh, Oh, that's really cool. Well, we meet, we don't mean that's really not warm. Right. You know? Um, so there's those kinds of things. So then what we did was we said, uh, I get, uh, I will give you, uh, nothing to eat. Absolutely nothing to eat. Okay. So we, we, so again, you're taking, you're, you're having to go from Hebrew to English. That's not wrong that we translate it that way. Cleanness of teeth is quote-unquote literal, but nobody would understand.

I mean it would take you a lot of extra work to understand what that meant other than just saying, oh, what does that idiom mean? It just means you don't have anything to eat. So those are the kind of questions that translators are working through is how do we try to be faithful to this but also communicate it properly to the audience. how do we try to be faithful to this, but also communicate it properly, you know, to the audience. So then they, they turn in a translation and then you have, I'm sure the editorial process is grueling, right? I mean, it's not just, okay, here it is. Great. Slap it in. And there we go. I mean, so you have other scholars weighing in and maybe they haven't spent as much time, but. Yep. And you've got copy editors and you've got people going back to the translation committee saying, Hey, is this what you meant to say? Is that what you were saying there? So like with the CSB,

I mean, that was just a revision, which is enough work as it is. A pretty heavy revision, but a revision nonetheless. That started in 2011. And we finished in 2016. And we were supposed to finish in 2020, but the timeline got moved up. Wow. You beat the timeline by 40 years? That's never been done. Yeah. Well, partially why we had a very small, uh, we didn't call it a revision. We called it a, um, a sheen, a new sheen in 2020, because there were a handful of things that we just got rushed on the, on the publication because some publishing stuff. Uh, and so like, that's the thing that thing where like, Oh, we had a lot of things left on the table. We probably could have spent more time

with, but we shouldn't have time. So yeah, you're just living in all of that world. You've got the translation itself. You've got what are the goals of the translation? What do we care about in terms of the way that we render text versus formal and dynamic? What does the publisher want? When does the publisher want it out?

All that kind of stuff. I mean, it's just, it's nonstop. I don't understand how translations don't have typos i'm always waiting to catch a typo because it published okay so like the books that i write at least i mean it goes through i mean i was for me i always let 10 15 people read it in its most rough form um you know then i've got like a personal editor and then i have another editor with the publisher and then there's two more editors that they sent it to and then it's like another read another and there's still typos yeah i gotta type on one of my books like this page one i think i'm like yeah you got to be kidding me there isn't i mean so the

on the copy editing side and for our audit copy editing is kind of like the last like spelling spacing grammar you know that they're not looking for any kind of feel a lot it's not theologically they're not theological editors that's already been done um yeah there must have been a ton of translations they don't have a ton of they just keep going over and over and over until they i mean we we had our first run of csbs There were like three or four just egregious typos that, you know, it's like, how did we not see these? There's a, there's a famous story and I'm not going to say the number cause it's like, I think it's apocryphal at this point, but there's a story about how like the first edition of NKJV had like hundreds and hundreds, I mean, just insane amount of typos. So it does happen. It's very difficult to avoid it. I don't

know about some of the other translations i know nkjv had that issue i know we had three or four you know that came up that were just like i can't believe we missed that oh so do you do a small print run and then get feedback and let the audience catch the first wave catch all the typos yep and then you just run more yeah oh so you're not just like blast here's's all here. Here's 100,000 copies. That's going to last for five years. Like you do a small print run for that reason. Yeah, the first run we came through, I mean, we even gave away 2,000 copies at ETS in 2016.

About, it was like nine months before it came out, six months before it came out. And we just were like, okay, let's just wait and see what happens. You know, and we started, feedback starts coming in, you know. And we still, there were still a few things we didn't catch, but within six months between other scholars, between us, between it just going out in the wild, like we had a, we have a couple CSB Facebook fan, you know, Facebook groups that are like CSB fans that somebody started, we didn't start. And, you know, every once in a while, like I would come across one, some guy in there would be like, hey, CSB people, I found this typo or this spacing issue.

And we're like, oh, my gosh. Wow. So all you do is you just print new ones. And so there's probably somewhere in a warehouse somewhere on people's shelves CSBs with a few errors in them or an ESV with a few errors in them. But you usually can get them caught fast enough to where because you're using the same text, eventually you find most of them and you don't have to worry about it. What would you, what would you say to the Christian who says, yeah, my, my, I feel like every other sermon, my pastor's like correcting a translation or doing this. Like, can we not trust, like, how should they respond to that kind of, and nothing against that. Maybe I'm not saying the pastor is doing anything wrong necessarily, but like, um,

yeah. How should we process that kind of thing? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a tendency on my part to be somewhat prideful and elitist about it. Like kind of what you were saying earlier about like, do you think you know better than Tom Schreiner about how to translate Greek or how to understand Paul? There's a sense in which I think that's true. And I think, you know, even pastors who know their language as well should be careful. Just it's a humility issue, right? Just to sort of, I think, you know, even pastors who know their language as well should be careful. Just it's a humility issue, right? Just to sort of, I think, honestly, the bigger issue, and this is, you know, I spent a lot of my time at CSB just talking to pastors. I mean, I spent so much time talking to pastors and groups of pastors.

And the one thing I would always caution is, okay, whether or not I'm personally offended that you think you know how to translate better than me or something, whatever. Maybe you do. Maybe, you know, I'm infallible. I mean, I'm fallible, not infallible, but, um, but you're actually sewing. Um, Oh my, my light just went out in my office here. It'd be great for YouTube. Yeah, there we go. I got a nice, uh, nice thing going on here. Sorry about that. I have a motion sensor in my office. I think you have my old office. Oh my gosh. So anyway, yeah, so I always say like the danger really, I think, is causing your people to doubt their translations.

Like you're introducing mistrust into the Bibles that they have to take home. And they can't adjudicate the issues like you can or like a scholar can. the issues like you can or like a scholar can. So that's my main bigger concern is you get out there and you say, well, this Bible translation doesn't know what they're doing. And they're like, okay, well, where else do they not know what they're doing? And if I'm reading Mark chapter five at home, can I trust this translation? Can I trust the Bible I have? That concerns me a lot more. It's sort of the church issue. I can get over somebody not liking propitiation versus atoning sacrifice or whatever, you know. And I think there are some things the CSB did that I lost votes on in the room, you know. So it's not perfect.

But there is a sense in which I think you want to be careful not to introduce distrust for your audience and for your average layperson because that's the only access they have is that English Bible they're holding. So that's my bigger concern. that's the only access they have is that English Bible they're holding. So that's my bigger concern. Yeah. If I'm just looked at one that I caught the other day in James 4, 6, and the common translation, including the CSB is, you know, you do not ask because you ask with wrong motives.

And I was, I was, I remember thinking like, what does that mean? You know, I looked up in the Greek and there's those, the Greek word is simply like wrongly. The word motives isn't really there. You ask, because I always thought like, what's the wrong motive? Like, I would always kind of like be all kind of discouraged and worried that I have the wrong motives in a certain prayer. But the word, so that would be an example of that's not, certain prayer but the word that so that that would be an example of that's not and based on the context that is probably what wrongly or badly you ask badly or wrongly but that you know that that is a little more general and vague that could be rendered various ways um and so that that would

be one where it's like you know if i was preaching and i really felt that motives isn't the the best way to render that um i you could say something like not this translation's wrong but saying you know this is one possible way to render this word i think yeah maybe rendering it without the word motives fits the context here a little better or or you know for various reasons i think expiation is what's going on in romans 3 25 um this translation is one like you know kind of like giving and maybe even coaching your people on translating is you are making interpretive decisions that aren't right or wrong it's you know um it's with it's within the purview of the meaning of the word or even brothers and sisters, you know, I kind of like, based on some of the work that I've been doing the last few years, I like brothers and sisters because I know so many people that when they had this,

they wouldn't say it, but they had this idea that it's like a male audience. Like when in first Corinthians 16, when Paul says act like men on, on, on Nidzomai or whatever, he didn't tell the women to leave the room when he said like, he's commanding women to, I think the sense of act like men is like to be strong, courageous, kind of this, this, this stereotype about masculinity in the Roman world, but it's commanded the whole church that. And I think if, yeah, I think having brothers and sisters

is a constant reminder that this is a mixed congregation, you know? Yeah. We say, you think about 1 Corinthians 16, 13? Yeah. I think we say, be courageous and be strong. Oh, really? Not act like men. Yeah. So there's a, there's a good example. Yeah. Literally you could say act like men, but we say be courageous, be courageous, be strong. Yeah. Because I think, because kind of what you're saying, it's part of the idea of when he says act like men, is he saying, um, act like biological men, or is he saying be strong and courageous like the

men are supposed to be in our culture or whatever, you know, and that could apply to women too. So that's a perfect example of like where we, as a translator, you're just trying to say, what's the best way to get this across? Act like men considering right after that verse 15, uh, he says, you know, brothers and sisters, you know, the household of such and such and such and such. And so we say brothers and sisters there. Okay. So did, yeah. Did he tell the women to leave the room?

Was he just addressing just the men? Yeah. Or is there something else going on here in the Greek and the context that, that says something, uh, you know, a little bit bigger. And again, you, you brought up mankind earlier. That's a great example for, for, for most of English speaking, we have understood that mankind means men and women, even though it's mankind. So it's

one of those things where it's like, if Paul were to, let's just say Adolfo was brothers for Paul, he's clearly addressing the brother, brothers and sisters. He's clearly addressing. And that's actually a perfectly good Greek rendering. It's not like we said, oh, we're 21st century people. We know better than Paul, let's say brothers and sisters. It's like, no, actually Adolfo can be translated that way properly. You know, so it's still a proper translation would it be similar to um like i've heard like in spanish if if uh um senorita senorita oh no senorita and what's the term for a man a friend a male friend senora hombre amigo amigo anyway like if there's one man in the room you used a masculine the only time you'd use a feminine is if there is um if there's not a man in the room

and i know we can you know a bunch of you know white progresses we'll get all upset or whatever it's like well let's not be colonial again you know let's let the culture be its culture and you know um you know kind of like kind of like the latinx debacle that you've probably been reading three percent of latinos know and i like that phrase but um uh but i wonder if it's similar though like in the greek you would say brothers as long as there's one man in the room that was a common way to address the room. Is that, do we know that? Or is that, um, it's like that in a lot of Latin languages, I think. I think French is the same thing. I think, I mean, the hard part, obviously the hard part with Greek and with the first century is like, we all want to think that we

can think like first century people, but none of us actually are. So you're all, some of it is always a little bit of guesswork, but I mean, you have, you know, a lot of years of the Greek language being used in which you can understand the various ways it's used in Greek culture, even outside of the Bible, right? So you can see Adolfo being used to address brothers and sisters in all kinds of other contexts besides that. And again, I mean, it's just very clear that Paul is addressing or whoever is addressing men and women. I mean, it's just, it's obvious that they're in the room. It's obviously he's talking to them. First Corinthians is all about two men and women, two of these different groups of people about their unity, about them being

together. And so then all of a sudden to just say like, well, act like men just seems a little out of place. That doesn't mean that's not what's happening. And it could be that literally that's what Paul says, but an English speaker might hear that and think, oh, he's just talking to the men in the room. And that's not necessarily the case. So that would be a good example. Yeah, that's a little more of a longer leash on how to render that phrase. But it is getting to the heart of what the word means and how it would have been heard and received by that first century audience. They would have heard Andrinzema or whatever it is.

And one way to render that, I'm just thinking out loud here, wouldn't be act like men, but that, like you said, the women in the room would not have thought, okay, I need to transition into a biological man or something. That would be a very familiar concept. Okay, let's talk about other because, you know, go ahead. Okay. I was going to say, it's interesting too. When you think about like, you know, uh, I'm not, I don't want to get too, uh, I'm not gonna get hot takey here,

but I'll just say when you're doing translation, um, you know, oftentimes we, you know, when we do the brothers and sisters stuff, we're accused of, well, you're just being modernist. You're just being, you're just bowing to the feminists or PC or whatever. But the truth is that all of us are culturally conditioned, and all of us have different ways of thinking about how – gender is a big issue right now. So obviously this is a question we're asking. We're reading the Bible of we're not trying to import 21st century values into the first century because that would be anachachronistic and that'd be a problem in and of itself. But you're still trying to say this is a modern English audience who is understanding these words a certain way. And like I said, I mean, you might make a big deal about Adolfo being

brothers and sisters, but it's really not that much different, at least for us at CSB. It was not that much different than not saying thee, thou, and thy in the King James anymore. It's just that, that language develops and people understand language in a certain way. And, um, so you want to say it to them in the way that you think that the Greek readers would have heard it and also how the English people are going to understand it, which means you've got options, you know, for how to do that. Um, and so that's where, that's where you just have to, I mean, that's where translation again is treachery. As Schreiner says, you're always trying to figure out how to make those decisions.

But it's funny because everybody on the CSB team are complementarians. So the sort of like you're bowing – Oh, they are? Yeah, you're bowing. So you're bowing to the – the thing is we're all complementarians who are trying to actually just do biblical translation. We're not trying to do a complementarian translation, right? So it's one of those things where we'd get accused of, you know, well, you guys were bowing to the feminists. I'm like, you realize that Tom Schreiner like wrote a book on first Timothy too. That's a complementarian

position, right? So it's one of those things where, no, it's actually that we were trying our best to be, to let the church translate and understand these big issues. So we're not trying to introduce more interpretation. We're letting the churches do that. So I want a long-winded way to say, I want a complementarian Southern Baptist Church and an egalitarian Methodist Church to be able to use the CSB and preach those passages the way that they think

they should be translated and do our best to just try to do what we think the Greek is saying and what it's trying to get across. This Tom Schreiner? So he's all for Brothers and sisters for Adele four. Yeah. He was very, yeah,

very positive about it. Yeah. I'm having him on the podcast. I might've already published it, uh, but he's on physically on next week to, I just realized that most of, whenever I talk about the women question,

almost all my guys, I think all my guests have been egalitarian. So, which is terrible. It's not my style to have one view always represented or whatever. So yeah, I'm having Tom on. Down with the patriarchy, Preston. I know, I know.

I'm having Tom on to bring us all back to the complementarian dark side. He's like the kindest complementarian ever though. Well, my egalitarian scholar friends often say he's our favorite complementarian because he's reasonable. I asked him once, I said tom what's what's the um the biggest challenge to your position and he immediately said it like he was like you know some people are like well there is

none the bible just i'm like i know i know that's the view you hold but if you can't admit that there aren't some arguments on their side that are more powerful than others and it just makes me not want to trust you and he immediately said yeah you got female prophets running around the new testament it's up to me to show that that's not a local church authoritative teaching position which is i can do it but it's it's it's it's it's that's a challenge it's on me i gotta handle that you know so yeah well yeah it's it's yeah shriner is every egalitarian's favorite complementarian and bird is most complementarian's favorite egalitarian because both of them are trying to be you know open-minded genuine with the text yeah and whether you like it or not that's a different conversation so and bird had you know he was a staunch

complementarian back in the day like militant and uh and he has a very kind of nuanced careful egalitarian view his book i his short little book i think is the best i haven't read a lot on this subject but in terms of just a short best. I haven't read a lot on this subject. But in terms of just a short, accessible, honest book that really captures a lot of stuff going on is his – I think it's an e-book. Bossy Wives. Yeah, it's called like Bossy Wives, something or another. Yeah, yeah. Bossy Wives, Bob Hare, and Bourgeois Babes.

Something like that, yeah. It's so good. Which is about as bird as you can get. It is very birdish. Anyway's so good. About as bird as you can get. It's very birdish. I detracted you from where you were going, but. Yeah. No. So yeah. Other translations that people ask you, Hey, Brandon, can you recommend the translation? What do you say? CSB. No, I mean, I always tell people, even when I was at CSB, I mean, one of the things that I would just harp on our team about was

we think the CSB is a good translation. We have reasons to think the CSB is a good translation, but not every church is going to think CSB is a good translation. So when I would talk to pastors, you know, I get, I still get emails almost weekly, if not every other day, um, from pastors or, or direct messages or whatever on Twitter saying, Hey, you know, I'm thinking about the CSB. Can you tell me about it? And my, and our default was always, and my default still is, um, here's why I think the CSB is helpful, but if that's not good for your church, or if you don't like the certain ways that we want to do stuff, like there are a ton of good translations out there. I mean, new American standard ESV, NIV, CSB, NLT. I mean, they're all really good translations with really legitimate scholars who have done really good work. And some of it is just about like, what do you prefer?

You know, one of the reasons why CSB has been so well received, a couple of reasons. The primary one is a lot of guys, a lot of pastors and churches really like, they like a more formal translation, but they feel like, you know, people in the pew don't understand them as well. So like, well, the CSB gives me the formal, but it's a little more understandable. A lot of people are like, we miss NIV 84. And this is the closest thing to NIV 84. I've heard that one a lot, which I didn't expect, but it makes sense. You know, so it's just like, okay, what are you looking for? If you have that pain point of, hey, I want something a little bit more readable, but I don't want to go NLT. I feel like that's too dynamic. Then the CSB is a good one

for you. But if you want something a little more poetic, a little bit more formal, an ESV is a great option for that, right? So for me, it's like we have a lot of good options and it's just about which option serves your church and ministry the best. So I always try to come back to that. Yeah. It depends on what you're looking for. Even for an individual, it's one thing for a church, that is tough because you have new converts, you have old converts, you have old people, young people. And there's such a – it'd be hard to have like – I mean, you do. The main pastors are typically going to use a certain translation. You got Bibles in the pews that are certain translations.

Most churches, it's hard to get away with. You're going to have kind of one translation. I feel like, and again, I'm not just, I think the CSB, I grew up with the NASB, the New American Standard. And I actually liked, because I was so into like slow, deep study of the text. I love that as I was learning Greek and I was used to my NASB, I feel like after a while, I can kind of guess what the Greek is because it is so woodenly word for word, which now that's a misnomer though. You can never render one language into another word for word. You just don't. You can't. You cannot do it. I mean, if I said in French, I'm going to butcher my pronunciation here, but j'ai un clou

means I'm hungry, but literally it means like I have a cavern, like a big hole in my stomach. And French has a lot of stuff like that. Every language does. And so word for word is like you would translate that I have a cavern. It wouldn't make any sense. So word for word isn't always the most accurate. That's where people – it took me years to figure that out.

I kept saying the New American Standard is the most accurate, and it's actually – that's in question. I think you can easily say it's probably the most word for word, literal, woodenly literal, like you even said, word order and stuff. So I still appreciate – if somebody said what translation, I was like, well, if you're doing a five-week study on Romans 1 or something, or, you know, like if you're doing an in-depth study, you don't know the languages and you want one that's going to just give you kind of the meaning of the word, Nazarene might be a good word for word

translation to work with. If you say you want to sit down and read the book of Samuel, then I would say do something more dynamic dynamic like an NLT or something. You just want to get the flow of the story. You try to read the Old Testament stories in the NASB. Yeah. It's painful. Have you ever tried the Young's Literal Translation? That one's my favorite.

Really? That one makes the NASB look like the message. Oh, my word. It's a whole other level. Wow. Yeah, I think there's some truth to that. I know, I always tell pastors to like use multiple translations when you're prepping and choose one that you want to preach from. Like a lot of people would say, oh, I might like, you know, more, more formal, a little bit better, but the CSB preaches so much

better. So like, that's what I'm going to be using. Cause that's what I want my people to buy and I want them to use. So yeah, it's a lot of it is, it's just, what do you value and what are you looking for in the translation that you have more than better or worse, accurate or inaccurate? Like you're right. Like sometimes the most formal is not the most accurate. If by accurate, you mean, what does it mean in English and how do people understand it? You know, there's, there's times when that's not the case. And so, um, I would always just, that's why I'm like kind of trying to avoid like value judgments, like good, bad, whatever. It's like, no, actually they're all actually pretty good. They just have, there's different,

you know, some have strengths and weaknesses and they serve different purposes in some ways. So it'd be easy to go with like the NIV as like a church Bible. The only problem there though, because it is more on the dynamic side, I feel like if you're preaching expository, um, and you're going slowly through the text, you, you, I it's, it text, it's inevitable. You will find yourself, if you know Greek, correcting or at least saying, well, and here's a more literal way of what this verse is saying. And this is where I really do love the CSB because it captures that balance of it's very readable, but it is so close to the, I don't know,

it's that perfect balance between being dynamic and equivalent. And so I think it'd make a great church Bible along with a great personal Bible. And no, I'm not getting paid to say that. You're not. Here's, okay, let me ask you this.

This is going to get maybe a little controversial. I used to use the ESV. You said, so I didn't even realize that the translators of the CSB or HCSB were complementarian from 17 different denominations. That's pretty impressive. Well, we actually wanted you to not notice that. That was part of the point. Well, that's it. The ESV, I just – I felt like they – in several places that are these hot-button passages when it comes to gender and women and ministry and stuff, I just felt like they're showing their hand a little bit.

I don't know if I have any examples in front of me. I remember reading, well, 1 Corinthians 11 and 1 Timothy 3. Oh, the one, I think it was the Deacons one. Oh, yeah, 1 Timothy 3. 1 Timothy 3. 1 Timothy 3.11. Let me see if I have... Yeah, we had a huge conversation about that one in the CSB room, actually. Because you can translate there in 1 Timothy 3.11, you could say wives or you could say women.

And those are two very different translations, right? Because wives indicates that deacons can only be men, potentially does. Oh, you guys say wives too. See, I don't like that. But we had a, I will say we had a long conversation about that one. That was a, we were somewhat split on that one. We didn't make the change primarily because we didn't feel comfortable making a change with as much split in the room. Okay. But I was, I was in favor of women there. Um, because I think it, one, I think the word

gets that point across actually more clearly and doesn't introduce the wives thing, but wives is a translation. That's a fair translation. But again, it's like how much, how much baggage are you bringing with it? How much interpretation are you introducing when you say wives, you know, cause then you could just be saying deacons are only men, uh, or that's at least what you could, you could, um, be indicating. Right. Yeah. Which with, you know, with elders, you know, it does that as well. Right. Husband of one wife, you know, so that's the hard part is you're, you're sitting there in that context, trying to figure out what do we do with these different words and which one means what, and which one indicates what. And, um, yeah, so wives there, we kept wives, but that was a, that was a pretty big conversation. And we have a footnote, uh, in there that says, or women.

Oh yeah. Yeah. And the ESV does too. So the HCSB does say wives as well. So just for the audience, like the Greek word gune, it can mean woman or in certain contexts can be wives. Now here in 1 Timothy 3, 1 to 7, you're giving instructions for aspiring overseers, elders, pastors, whatever. Let's just say overseer. Then in verse 8, he gives instructions to deacons. Okay, now not elders instructions to deacons here okay now not elders but deacons and then verse 11 says gune women or wives and if it says women then it could imply that these are female deacons which from a complementarian reading is fine

because deacons are not like a authoritative like teaching position so So this is where, even when I was a hardcore commentarian, I was like, it doesn't really make sense to give instructions to the wives of deacons and not wives of elders. Like, why? It just seems odd.

It seems like women, deacons is a better reading. Yeah. Well, but like that, so like that word, you know, gune or guneikos in that particular passage, like that exact word Guneikos is used in like Matthew 19 for not divorcing your wives.

Sure. There are times where it like, it is wives and you can't say don't divorce your women, you know? So that's, that's again, and I agree with you on this. I'm saying that's where, that's where the translation issue, but then other places, you know, in Acts, uh, Acts 22, it's used and it just says, you know, both men and women are thrown into prisons, not both men and wives are thrown into prisons, right? So context, and the problem with 1 Timothy 3 is that the context is, yeah, it's a little bit difficult to decide which one you want to do.

Yeah. Yeah. As opposed to some that make it a little bit easier. Ephesians 5, love your guneikos, love your wives. Sure. You can say love your women, I guess, but obviously it's talking about the ones you're married to. Sure. Yeah. So from a word, I mean, the word can mean either one. Like that's. Yeah. And Paul tends to, this is one of those things too, where Paul oftentimes uses that word in a marriage context. Like he does it in Ephesians. He does it in Colossians. It does it in Colossians, it does it in other places in first Corinthians. So it's kind of one of those things where it's like, okay, does Paul, that's another question you're always asking in translation, is Paul

using this word consistently? If he uses it in this context very clearly in other ways, is he using it here in the same way? Because he tends to use that word to mean that. The only, actually the only issue where that comes up is in Ephesians two and 3, which is obvious. I'm sorry, 1 Timothy 2 and 3, which is obviously the most contentious passages, you know, where otherwise it's wives very obviously in every other way that Paul uses it. So that's another question is, okay, Paul uses this word, anytime he uses guneikos, it's always with wives. And then 1 Timothy 2 and 3 seems like, okay, it might be wives or it might be women because it's not quite as clear. So that's another concern is, okay, is Paul now using the word differently in this context when he hasn't used it in other places? Which is dangerous.

Those word studies can be dangerous, but it's a consideration. 1 Corinthians 11 is another big one. He's talking about all women, like, and the man is ahead of the woman, or is it kind of the husband's ahead of the wife? And, I mean, that context is really, that whole chapter is really tricky. I'm just looking at it now. There's bad Trinity stuff that comes out of that, too. I mean, that passage causes a lot of problems. Yeah, yeah. So I felt that in some of these contentious issues, I felt that the ESV did always kind of translate it in a way that did support a more complementarian reading.

Maybe not support, but at least maybe resonate with it. And that's – again, even when I was like hardcore – I'm undecided on this issue. But when I was staunchly complementarian, even then I was like, come on, man. Just tell me what the text says and let me do the work it just makes me suspicious if i feel like if i'm if i'm guessing every time like oh this this translator is probably a commentary like that's not a good response yeah is that a critique that esv gets i mean i've heard other people say that is that is that fair am i being too yeah i mean it's definitely it's definitely a critique they get. I mean, I think it's – we got some of the same ones in the sense that like, okay, we know who your translation committee is made up of.

But I mean, yeah, like that's human fallibility. That's human. say, okay, if I think this is what scripture teaches, then when I'm in this passage, that's a little bit, um, unsure, I'm going to lean toward what I think the scope of scripture teaches. If it feels like it's going to be contradictory or something. Um, you know, they got, they got a lot, for example, uh, ESV got a lot for Genesis three 16, uh, the curse of Eve, where it says, um, you know, your desire will be for your husband. And they said, uh, your desire will be contrary to your husbands. And they got a lot of grief for that. Uh, but that's an example of what we tried to do again. And this is not saying they're a bad translation. ESV is great in so many ways, but what we try to do as best as we could in most of those situations say, let's let the church, let's let the church work that out. Let's not, let's not add things if we, if we don't have to. So first Timothy three with the wives, I mean,

for us was he uses when Paul uses that particular word in that particular form, everywhere else he means wives. So that was kind of the deal breaker. But my argument, to be frank, was actually if you put women in there, you can actually – it's easier for the church to decide. So that's why we put a footnote so that at least the pastor can see that footnote and see that there's another option. That's trying to be honest. That's where I feel like wives is making a more interpretive decision. Yeah, wives is making more of a decision, whereas women opens it up to – it's more neutral, I feel like. Because it very well still could mean wife. I mean, but – wait, I'm looking at the ESV on 316.

Your desire shall be contrary to your husband. That is not what the Hebrew says. My Hebrew is pretty rusty, but contrary to, is that a possible way to render? I mean, I'm a Hebrew in front. I probably couldn't read it. Yeah. It's, it is a, it is a possible, it's just a matter of if you want to, if you want to go with it. I mean, so we chose not to, because we thought it was, we thought it was adding too much, but I mean, like I said, like, uh, there are times where we probably let our interpretation influence us more than we meant to, but we haven't, we, we got, we got accused primarily of false motives. Like, Oh, you guys were giving into the feminist when you say brothers and

sisters. And I was like, that's definitely not what's going on in the room. Is there a place like, I don't want to be, I don't actually say the phrase i always always want to be fair to like other translations because i'm like i get how hard it is that's good that's that's that's really good i really very much respect that i think yeah when you work in translation that's how you should be um uh i was just gonna say is there a place so like i don't use mankind anymore um I use humankind and I do think their English, American English is steeped in kind of a male centeredness that in our culture today, I mean, is, is, is moving away from, and I think that's in most cases a good move. Um, from and i think that's in most cases a good move um and so yeah i i i don't know like i i wouldn't take a bullet for it whatever but like why not just say humankind instead of mankind you know

even though mankind means the same thing but if you're trying to communicate to the world at large some many might kind of like oh it just feels, reminds me of Leave it to Beaver, you know, and the kind of culture. So I don't know. Even if, so again, I hear you saying, you know, obviously that you're trying to render Paul according to Paul, not trying to be PC.

But I mean, I think there could be, as we render it into the target language and target culture, we still should be sensitive to some of the changes happening in that culture. That's just, that, that's just true. Language changes, man. Like, and there could be an Orwellian maybe going too far and, you know, um, but dictionary doesn't solely determine usage. I mean,

usage determines meaning, right. In part. Um, so I don't know. Yeah. And it's, yeah. I mean, you're always a product of your culture. You're always a little concerned about that, right? I mean, for us, brothers and sisters, was really not that issue. I'd say like for us, like slave for doulos, we would say slave a lot, like I'm a slave of Christ. I'm a slave. Well, so there's the translation issues I brought up, which is that sometimes servant and slave can be interchangeable with two different Greek words. Sometimes they're in the same verse, and you've got to be really careful how you do that. And then you start extrapolating and going, okay, now I want to be consistent across the whole testament, and that can just cause more problems.

But also, like I mean it's – we shouldn't feel bad for saying that in a first century – 21st century American context, the word slave means something very particular. 21st century American context, the word slave means something very particular. And Paul is not saying I am a lesser raced person who has been bought and sold and used by God. That's not what he's saying when he says that. He's not talking about title slavery. So we might hear slave and think automatically that. Now CSB still uses slave in some instances. But it's like, I mean, that's a legitimate conversation that you have to have is, okay, a first century reader is immediately going to hear Paul say, I'm a slave of Christ.

Well, what does that bring into mind to a 21st century American, you know, or 21st century English speaker in general, for that matter? And so like, you know, I think we'd admitted at some point, you know, like, hey, that was a consideration. And we got like, well, you know, you shouldn't be PC. Well, it's not being PC. It's actually primarily, we think the language actually demands that we be more careful with it. But also we do care about people reading it and then understanding it properly, you know? So to me, it's like, it's not that much, again, it's not that much different to me. And maybe I'm just a Pollyannish about this, but like, it's not that much different to me than saying, uh, instead of saying cleanness of teeth, saying you were starved Because we're trying to make sure that an English audience understands what is being said and what

is meant. And we want to use the possible renderings we can to do that best. And so some issues are more hot button than others, obviously. I mean, slavery versus divine dentistry are not the same level of concern, but there's still that same like, okay, what is this communicating to our audience today? And is this faithful to the language while communicating properly in English? And if you do mission work and you go over to another country and you just decide, I'm just going to figure out what in this African language means this, and it's an American colloquialism that nobody's ever heard before, it's not going to translate to people you're trying to preach the gospel to in Africa. You know what I mean? So like, we all know that. It's just that some of the

theological political problems can be lumped onto translators and say, well, you're just trying to X, Y, Z. And that might be the case sometimes, but it's not always the case. Slave is. That one's really difficult. How do you – because servant sometimes can be too weak and doesn't – it is slavery. It is – you're a human property. Like bond servants pretty close to slave, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're a human property. Bond servants pretty close to slave, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're considered someone's property, which overlaps with modern antebellum racially-based slavery. But it wasn't – Slavery in the first century was not based on race. It was based on class and status and lack of citizenship and hardship and other – But it wasn't –

A lot of other things, yeah. Yeah. Racism might have – I don't even know if it would have been wrapped up. There was definitely racism or ethnocentrism was everywhere obviously. But I don't know if that was really intertwined with slavery back then. But I'm getting over my skis. I don't know.

But how do you render a word that in the modern context is intrinsically intertwined with race and racism? So we still use slave in places where we think it's appropriate. It's just, again, you're just being careful with when you use it and how you use it. And that's just something I think that is, I think that's like, I mean, if you think of Bible translation as like, what we're really doing is doing mission work in the sense that we're like trying to get the gospel to people. We want to do that in a way that the receiving audience hears the gospel without in any way, you know, obviously doing violence to the receiving audience hears the gospel without in any way, you know,

obviously doing violence to the gospel or to the Bible. So good translators are asking all those questions, I think. Hey man, I've taken you over an hour. This has been a great conversation and thanks for coming on Theology in Raw again. I think this is your second or third time, right? Yes, I think second. Yeah. I mean, we talked so long that my motion sensor got tired of waiting on me. So it's pretty good. Good to talk to you, man. Yeah. Where can people find your stuff?

Do you have a website? Yeah. I mean, Church Grammar is my podcast. That's probably easiest one for podcast listeners to go to Church Grammar. I do stuff with the Center for Baptist Renewal, teaching at Cedarville University. So come take classes with me if you want. Listen to my podcast. But listen to Preston first. Awesome. Yeah, I appreciate that. I was going to say one more thing. Shoot.

Anyway. Yeah, go buy a CSB and check it out. How's that? How's that for a plug? Actually, if you're coming. Okay. So I don't want to give away too many secrets here, but the CSB has made a very generous gift to all attendees of the theology in iraq conference in um march 31st to april 2nd i was blown away with how generous you guys were

i don't know if you know what they gave but they gave pretty i was gonna say this is so well coordinated that i have no clue what you're talking about oh man yeah chris my wife showed me the gift bag we're putting together for attendees. I'm like, jeez, this thing's a lot in here. Anyway. All right, dude. With generosity, that's our thing. That's awesome.

Yeah, keep up the good work. Thanks, man. See ya. Thank you.