Video Transcript for Day 31-40

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Video Transcript: The Grammatical Element (Dr. Weima)

We turn now to the second of our five hermeneutical principles. And again, the first one remember was a bit of a presupposition that undergirded the rest of the categories, it was also more of a subjective category. Now in number two we turn to a more traditional objective category as we do for the remaining ones that we will cover as well. And the second hermeneutical principle can be called the grammatical element, the grammatical element. And one way to explain this, I guess, is to suggest to you my thesis, and that is this. Every translation involves interpretation, every translation involves interpretation. In other words, you can't perfectly go from one language to another in a completely neutral fashion, you'll always either lose something or you'll somehow distort something in the translation process. I have a colleague at another seminary who has a saying it's a little bit different, but it makes the same point it goes like this. 

Every translation is a commentary in disguise. Every translation is a commentary in disguise, a commentary of course that verse by verse explanation of the biblical text. And that saying says that every translation, it may not look like it, it may look like an innocent neutral thing. But wait a minute, there's actually a commentary, not just a translation at work in this process. Let me illustrate that to you in a very simple way, I hope from my own particular background, you may have watched the intro, introductory video in which I talked about my Dutch heritage, I showed those wooden shoes. And so there's a Dutch word that I'd like to talk to you about. In order to illustrate this thesis. Every translation involves interpretation. And the Dutch word is ???????. You have to have a lot of spit in your mouth when you say that word ??????. And I wonder if you heard that word before? And if you haven't, and you probably haven't, how can I get you to understand what that word means? I mean, I could translate it for you. But you know, you'd lose a lot. I'd have to get you to better Close your eyes just for a little while, not too long. 

And I want you to imagine a cold winter's day, the snow is blowing, the wind is howling, the temperature is freezing cold. But the good news is you're at home, and you're in your favorite room, we'll call it the den and there's a fireplace going, can you feel the warmth of the rays of the flames coming on your body. And, of course, you're not alone, you've got all your family and your friends, anybody who's near and dear to you is gathered around. And of course, there's a cup of coffee in your hand and you're sitting in your easy boy chair, and then you have to take a deep kind of cleansing therapeutic breath. I could say that ??????. I mean, I could have translated it for you and simply said the word means warm, cozy. But you know, those English words are kind of wimpy translations, they really fail to capture the force the meaning of that one Dutch word ??????. It's a rich term full of meaning, full of great love for those who are familiar with the term. Well, in a similar way, when you go from the Greek of the New Testament, or the Hebrew, the old testament to English translation, you lose something, you know, you sometimes need a lot of words in English to somehow convey whatever the original Greek original Hebrew might have originally said. They're a bunch of sayings that I've collected that highlight this important business of grammar and the translation process. 

The Italians have a proverb that goes like this, "il traduttore è un commerciante", which means the translator is a trader, it's not a very happy saying, of course, if you're in the translation business, but it's meant to capture the idea that well, no matter how gifted the translator may be, no matter how hard working the translator may be, he or she ultimately betrays the original text. The Swedish Bible translation committee had a statement in their preface, when it first came out that I found kind of striking now, you have to imagine here a bunch of Swedish biblical scholars, they spent many years they're very gifted, they've been working to put together this Swedish translation. And after all of their years of hard work, and despite all of their bill abilities, they have a concession and the foreword of the translation. And their concession is the art of translation is the art of compromise. You know what compromise means. don't you? Know you have a husband and wife going through a difficult time in their marriage and the counselor might say, Oh, you guys have to compromise. You have to give up something in order to for the two to become one and to have a happy relationship, and I find it kind of interesting sobering, that this Swedish Bible translation committee says, you know, what we're giving to you, despite all our years of effort and ability is really a compromise, we had to give up some things as we presented to you this translation. 

Remember my thesis, every translation involves interpretation to some degree. Jewish poet, once said, This, reading the Bible in translation is like kissing your bride through a veil. You can do that, I mean, you can kiss your beloved on the wedding day through a veil. But you know, somehow it loses the intimacy somehow, it's not quite as sweet as the real thing as a direct kiss on the lips. And in a similar way, you can read the Bible with prophet in English, or whatever your native language, maybe I want to stress that you can read the Bible with prophet in your own translation, whatever that may be. But having said that, even though you can do that with Prophet, you nevertheless, still lose something in a certain century or distant from the text. I found another saying from classical scholar, and you have to realize that this is a scholar who makes his living translating his primary job is to translate Latin text into English. And yet he soberly says, translation is sin, right? Despite his hard work, he recognizes that he's doing something bad by rendering the original Latin in an English translation. Now, let me give you an example. 

Of course, there are so many that you could pick from almost any passage of scripture, you can illustrate the grammatical principle, the idea that you have to take seriously the original language, right? That that's part of the interpretation process, but I'm picking out I've got about five of them in a row here, of different types that just to give you as a point of illustration, the first one comes from the Gospel of Luke, five to eight is the parable of the friend at midnight, and it goes like this in case you can't remember it. Then Jesus said to them, suppose one of you has a friend and he goes to midnight and says, friend, lend me three loaves of bread because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him. Then the one inside answers don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything. I tell you, though, he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's Hmm. I don't want to translate it because remember, it says I translate this word, I don't just translate it. 

I interpret it because of the man's Hmm, the Greek word, he will get up and give him as much as he needs. Now, let me give you a bit of backdrop before we look at specifically the grammatical illustration at hand. The parable is a parable about prayer. You say no, it's not the word prayer isn't found anywhere in the parable, I say yes, it is because of its context. That's a another important hermeneutical principle, every passage ought to be understood in its context. And you can go back and you can see that this passage comes from Luke 11, verse five, but if you go to Luke 11, verse one you'll read, one day Jesus was praying. So Jesus was praying, as soon as he said, Amen. The disciples said, Master, teach us how to pray. And then we find the words of what we commonly refer to as the Lord's Prayer. And then right after that comes the parable of the friend at midnight. And this parable comes now not by accident, or fluke chance, no, Jesus had been praying, they said, master teachers how to pray. And so Jesus continued to give them further instruction about prayer by telling them this parable, the parable of the friend at midnight, so, everybody, all commentators agree that this is a parable about prayer. That's not the issue at hand. 

What is the issue is, what is it teaching us about prayer specifically? And the answer clearly is found in verse eight, where Jesus finishes the parable, the story proper, and then he gives the application. Again, Jesus says, I tell you, though, we will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's and then in Greek, it says, "anaideian", he will get up and give him as much as he needs. Now, this Greek word, "anaideian" occurs only one time and the whole New Testament, so we can't just go to other places and see how the word is used there. So I guess we'll have to go then not other places in the New Testament, then we go to the Old Testament, it's not found there, then we go outside the Bible into secular Greek. And then we have a little bit of a problem because the Greek word in it on has at least two different meanings. One meaning you can see is the meaning boldness, and actually boldness fits the context of the parable relatively well. 

Remember, this guy had an unexpected guests come at midnight, and then he goes to his neighbor at midnight now. I have a good relationship with my neighbor, I'm not afraid to ask him for almost anything. But you know, if it's midnight, I'm a little bit hesitant, you have to be bold, you have to have a little bit of "hutzpah", so to say in order to go to your neighbor in the middle of the night, and ask him this, and, and if that's the context of the parable, if that's the meaning that Jesus intended, then he's teaching us to be bold in prayer, just like the man was bold, and that resulted in the answering of his request. So also, we in our prayer life need to be bold, and that will result in the answering of our request. In other words, even though God is great, and we are small, we are not to be shy, we are not to be reticent. But to quote another biblical author, we ought to boldly approach the throne of grace. That's one possible meaning of this word and thereby interpretation of this parable. However, however, "anaideian" can mean also something else. You're not surprised, of course, that words can mean more than one thing, even in English, right? We have that. You take the word hot, for example. If you are watching this video, and you say, you know someone else's watches this video and you meet that person who say, oh, Weima was hot today. Well, what does that mean? 

Well, it could mean different things, it could mean that I'm sweating profusely. That's one meaning of the word hot. It could be that I got angry for whatever reason I blew my top I was hot. Or maybe you're like my pink shirt, and you say, or Weima was hot today. You see, the word hot can have multiple meanings, you can only decide it by its context. So it shouldn't be surprising to us that Greek words do can have multiple meanings and have to be determined by its context. So the Greek word and it means more than one thing, it can mean boldness, but it can also mean persistence. Now, persistence isn't the same as boldness, to be persistent means to do something. And then if you're not successful, you keep on doing it over and over again, until you finally succeed, you don't give up. And that too, fits the context of this parable. Remember, when he first knocked on the door? The answer at first was, Hey, don't bother me, the door is already locked in my children with me in bed, just to pick up a bit of historical context. You know, we have to imagine a first century Jewish Home of peasant people, basically a very simple building with maybe one room dividing the animals in one side, and the whole family sleeping together and the other side. 

And so obviously, in this kind of historical context, it'd be impossible to get up without getting the whole house all stirred. But then we read at the end of the parable, the man gets up and gives them as much as he needs. So even though the answer was no, at first, he must not have given up he must have been persistent, because he ultimately went home and went home with his requested food. And so this too, also will fit not just this context, but larger teaching of Luke, because Luke has another parable in Luke 18, about the persistent widow who goes to the secular judge, and she keeps bugging the judge keeps hounding the judge. And finally, he says, You know, I don't care about God or people, but yet this woman, you know, keeps hounding me. And so he, he answers her request. And Jesus prefaces that story by saying, he told this story to His disciples, so they would always pray and never give up. In other words, that's the teaching of Luke to be persistent in prayer. 

Now, which one is the right one? Well, at this stage, I'm gonna leave you hanging, I'm afraid. And I tell you what I think is the right one. Because that's not the point I want to make. At this point, I simply want you to see how different the interpretation of the parable is, depending on what translation you give to the Greek word "anaideian". a translator comes to the Greek word, and they have to make a choice. How do I translate this word I translated as boldness. So that's a teaching about being bold in prayer, or do I teach it translated as persistent? So it's a teaching about being persistent in prayer, the translator has to pick, as I said, My thesis is every translation, to some degree involves interpretation. Here's a second example a little shorter one that we can cover it comes actually right after the parable we looked at these words, I think are familiar to many of us. Jesus says, so I say to you, ask it will be given to you seek and you will find knock and the door will be open to you. Now, this is not so much a question of the meaning of verbs the meaning of the words use, but maybe the nuance of these words. Those verbs are actually commands, they're imperatives ask, seek, knock, we can put an exclamation mark and those are commands. 

And in the Greek language, there are two different ways that you can give a command. You can get one way using what we call arysta imperatives. I won't have to explain Without all his let me just say that it means it's an unemphatic or unstressed unemphasize way of containing, it doesn't mean that you think it's unimportant, it just means you're not stressing it, you're not emphasizing it. However, a rare form is this present imperative, where it has the idea of an ongoing or continuous action. And each of these three commands and this verse are given in that rarer, more emphatic, ongoing continuous action sense form. So actually, instead of translating it, ask, it'll be given to you I could, with some justification translated, keep on asking or maybe ask persistently, like it'd be given to. And the next one, seek not just seek but keep on seeking or seek persistently, and you will find and not just knock, but keep on knocking or knock persistently in the door will be open to you. You see, the Greek text tells us more in a richer way, right then what the English translation does. Here's the third example from Colossians, two, verse 18. 

Paul is writing to the church of kalasa, in modern day Turkey, ancient Asia Minor, and there was some problem that he was identifying scholars are a little bit perplexed as to exactly how define this problem is, but somehow the readers were doing something that Paul rebukes and he says in the middle of that, don't let anyone who delights in false human humility, and then this phrase, the worship of angels, disqualify you for the price. So Paul is saying, there's some people over there in colossae, who are involved in the worship of angels, the worship of angels. Now, actually, what does that mean the worship of angels, there are two possibilities. Each of them are equally possible from a grammatical point of view. I don't know what you're thinking of, I imagine the way that most people would hear this is when they hear the phrase worship of angels. They're thinking about humans now who are worshipping angels. In other words, these are people who, instead of directing their praise, and their worship, to God, are directing it toward angels. They're involved in the worship of angels. And that's one possible way to render the grammar of this Greek phrase. But an equally possible alternative, it's just as possible is to have this phrase refer to the worship that angels themselves do. That's it, that's a different meaning, not people who are worshipping angels. But we're talking about the worship that angels themselves are engaged in, especially if Paul has a Jewish context in mind. 

The Jews believe that their worship in the earthly temple was simply a mirror reflection of what was happening in heaven in the heavenly temple. And maybe Paul is talking about Jews or maybe Jewish Christians, but people who somehow think that they have a vision into the heavenly realms where they can watch angels worship, or maybe Paul has a view the idea that, that these are people who think that they participate, their worship is some kind of sharing in the worship that angels do. And again, at this stage, I'm not really interested in suggesting to which one is the right one. I simply want this to be an another example of how every translation involves interpretation. how you interpret what Paul is talking about, and addressing to the Colossians is impacted by the grammar of the texts the meaning of not so much words, but the connection, the relationship, the grammatical relationship of these words. Well, maybe you think this is something this grammatical element is only for a select group of people like me as egghead Greek geek types. 

But I want to suggest you that's not the case. Sometimes there are very big important text on which the church has huge issues about which are partly dependent on grammatical considerations. For example, here's a controversial text from 1 Timothy 2:12. Now most translations, you can see the NIV, the most popular English translation around today, render it something like this, "I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men". So if you're involved in a church that's examining the question of women's ordination, whether we should have women pastors or elders or deacons, well, obviously this is an important verse that you'll have to wrestle with. And part of properly interpreting this verse, not the only thing. There's a lot more to our hermeneutic that we have to talk about yet in subsequent sessions. But part of the answer an important part of the answer is grammar kind of questions. For example, one kind of grammar question is, what is the meaning of that word? You can see it there in Greek "authentein", "authentein". Now it's true that it's most common meaning is to have authority. But again, this is like the word we saw in the parable. 

This is a word that occurs only here in the whole Bible occurs nowhere else. And when you go outside the Bible, the word authentic does have some other possible meanings. And so, does Paul have those other meanings in mind? Or is he really talking about women not having authority? That's a question you have to ask and hopefully answer. Or here's not so much a question of the meaning of the word but the relationship of some words you can see here that pull permits actually a woman you mentioned, it's two things to teach, and to have authority. Now, what's the relationship between these two we call them infinitives to teach or to have authority. I mean, one idea could be the Paul has two separate ideas here. Paul comes along and says, I forbid women to do two things, namely, one to teach right, and two to have authority. Those are two separate ideas. However, it's equally possible from a grammatical point of view that the second infinitive is meant to clarify the first infinitive. In other words, when Paul says to teach, he doesn't mean just any old kind of teaching, but a very specific kind of teaching, a teaching in which a woman has authority or proclaims herself to have authority. Somehow these two are brought together, or more technically, the second infinitive acts like an adverb modifying the first infinitive. 

Now, again, stop trying to figure out whether I'm for women in office or against women office, you're missing the point of the illustration, right? The illustration here is instead to show you that grammatical considerations are of great, great importance, importance to interpretation. And what's more, they're unnecessary part of interpretation. If I as a pastor, and trying to explain this verse, and I start talking about the meaning of the verb "authentien", I start talking about the meaning of the grammatical construction between these two infinitives to teach and to have authority. That's not because I'm liberal, that's not a bad thing, that's actually an necessary thing. That's, that's a good part of a reformed hermeneutic. That's a proper way to handle the scriptures. Now, I don't want you to be so scared of your translation, that you throw it away, I mean, that that would be overstating the case. Most translations? Well, virtually all translations are done with great, great care. They're done usually by a team of scholars to stop one person from having an undue bias in terms of the translation. And they're usually done by careful scholars and Bible believing Christians. And so it's not as if we shouldn't trust our English translation. 

But then on the other hand, there is a healthy sense in which we ought to ask ourselves regularly. Now, this may be what my Bible says. But is that actually what the Bible originally stated? In other words, maybe if I knew something about the original Greek or Hebrew, maybe that would shed light on the meaning of a particular passage. In other words, whether you learn the Greek language or not, whether you become like me, a Greek geek, or you don't, it doesn't matter, all of us have to have room in our interpretation for the Bible of our second hermeneutical principle, namely, this grammatical element. I mean, of course, ideally, it'd be great if we knew the Greek well enough, we could do it ourselves. But you know, not many of us have the time or the ability, you know, to develop our Greek skills at that level. And that's why it's important to surround ourselves, not just with a cloud of witnesses, I'm talking about secondary sources, other scholars who have analyzed these kind of things. But I have to say, a good cloud of witnesses, I have to stress that because there's too much information almost available nowadays, you shouldn't trust anything you find. So you know, on the internet, you have to kind of discern what are good, reliable secondary sources, the kind of voices who can help you answer these kinds of questions. In other words, don't be the kind of person who says I don't know Greek. 

You know, therefore, I just forget about this. And also don't think about this as some way to get around what the translation say. Let me give you a personal example of this wrong attitude. A number of years ago, I was serving as an interim pastor in a church, and it was time for us to elect officers, elders and deacons. And so for week one, we had I had a sermon on elders, you know, trying to help people as we nominated and voted for elders to do so in a fitting fashion. I talked about elders, their qualifications, their task and their reward. And then it came to the next week and I thought, well, we got to be fair, we got to have something for deacons. And so I also had a sermon on deacons and I and I looked at every passage in the Bible that talks about deacons Actually, there aren't as many as you might So it wasn't as if I cherry picked as if I deliberately ignored one or two, I was selective in my choices. And I looked at all the texts that possibly could talk about deacons. And as a result of that, I stumbled across Romans 16:1-2, Romans 16, one and two. And if you look at Romans 16, one to two, you'll see there a reference to a woman by the name of Phoebe, who is a something of the Church of Cenchreae. 

Now, in the NIV, which was the Bible that we had in the Pew, in this particular church, where I was preaching, it said, Phoebe who is a servant of the Church of Cenchreae. And so I read the text and people look up the texts in their Bible, and I said to them, the Greek word used here is "Diakonos", right? And one meaning of the Greek word the "Diakonos", is servant. And that's why the NIV has translated the way we find in our Pew Bible today. Phoebe who is a servant of the Church of Cenchreae, but even if you don't know Greek, you can hear the Greek word "Diakonos" could also be translated the word Deacon. So another possible translation is Phoebe who is a deacon or deaconess of the Church of Cenchreae. Well, there was a member of the church who was not there that night and was apparently upset with me and came over the next day. And now listen to the logic of this person. It's a faulty logic. It's the logic I'm trying to avoid by giving you this example. He said something like this to me, he was upset with me. He said, The Bible says and honestly says the Bible, the Bible says, she is a servant, and you have no business saying that she is anything else.

I hope you see the the wrong logic of his thinking. The Bible doesn't say servant. I mean literally, actually, the Bible says Diakonos, right, that's the inspired Word that Paul by the leading of the Spirit was what was given and he wrote to the to the Romans, the Bible says Diakonos, and Diakonos can mean servant. That's a possible meaning of the word, but it can also mean Deacon. And, again, we can debate which one is more likely in this case, but but that's not the point of the illustration. The point of the illustration is again, grammar makes a difference or in terms of my thesis, every translation involves to some degree interpretation. So again, dear friends, if you have the opportunity to ground yourself in the languages, go for it, what a blessing to be able to read and handle the text and its original languages Hebrew and Greek. But even if you can't remember, you can't ignore this second hermeneutical principle. You need to surround yourself with a good cloud of witnesses. Those books are those scholars who do know the language and who can offer you insights into the meaning of the biblical text. Well, that's it then for our second hermeneutical principle, the grammatical element