Soil from Stone

Mistranslations in the ESV

I like the English Standard Version (ESV)--in fact, it's probably my favorite Bible translation--but no translation is perfect. No translation can ever be perfect, simply by the nature of translation, but they can always be better. I'm creating this post to track the mistranslations I find in the ESV. Maybe if enough people point these out to Crossway, they'll make the appropriate corrections.

The most common mistranslations are when the translators render the original Hebrew and Greek according to what they believe the author meant instead of what the author wrote, veering into dynamic equivalence, which is always dangerous. It predisposes the reader to the doctrinal biases of the translators instead of letting the text speak for itself.

Ethnos in 1 Corinthians 5:1, 1 Corinthians 10:20, 1 Corinthians 12:2

ἔθνη (ethne, plural of ethnos) is translated as "pagans" instead of "nations" or "Gentiles". In almost every case, the ESV translates this word as Gentiles. They translate it as "pagan" when they believe Paul is specifically referring to religious practices instead of ethnic identity, but this is anachronistic in that Paul probably made no such distinction in his own mind, and it potentially distorts Paul's meaning.

In the case of 1 Corinthians 12:2, I believe it definitely distorts Paul's meaning. The word pagan comes from a Latin word that essentially meant "country bumpkin", but in English it has come to mean "idol worshiper" or "idolater". Insert that, instead of pagan, into the text and you will start to see why it's a poor translation.

You know that when you were idolaters you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led.

Of course they were led astray to idols. That's the very definition of idolater. But Paul didn't use the word that he uses elsewhere in this same letter for idolater: εἰδωλολάτρης (eidolatres, 1 Corinthians 5:10-11, 6:9, 10:7). If he meant idolater, he would have written eidolatres, but he wrote ethnos, which means Gentiles, not idolaters. Here is how the ESV should read instead:

You know that when you were Gentiles you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led.

In other words, when the Corinthian believers gave up their idols and put their faith in Yeshua instead, they not only stopped being idolaters, but they stopped being Gentiles. As Paul wrote in Ephesians 2, they were made citizens of the Commonwealth of Israel. Not Jews, but Israelites. Former Gentiles.

Diatheke in Hebrews 9:16-17

διαθήκη (diatheke) is translated as "will" instead of "covenant". Diatheke really does mean "last will" in Koine Greek, but the Septuagint used this word instead of συνθήκη (suntheke, agreement or treaty) to translate the Hebrew brit because a covenant is much more than an agreement between two parties. A covenant is a formalized relationship that can only be ended by death and, unless explicitly stated otherwise, it is inherited by the descendants of the parties. In that it specifies blessings and curses for survivors, a covenant is very much like a last will, but a covenant is not the same as a last will.

The ESV doesn't translate diatheke as "will" anywhere else in the Bible and translates it as "covenant" seven times in Hebrews 9. Yet in verses 16-17 it suddenly switches to "will", an idea that is completely foreign to the author's intended meaning. Let me put the context into bullet points to illustrate what I mean:

v11-12 - Christ came as a new kind of high priest and shed his own blood to inaugurate his service into the Heavenly Tabernacle.
v13-14 - The blood of goats and bulls cleanse the flesh, but Christ's blood cleanses the conscience.
v15 - Through his death, Christ became the mediator of a new covenant, which is inherited by all those who are redeemed by his death.
v16-17 - Every covenant (not "last will") is established by the death of a sacrificial victim and only takes effect at that death.
v18-20 - The Sinai covenant was inaugurated with the blood of calves and goats.
v21-22 - The same blood purified the Tabernacle, its vessels, and the people.
v23-24 - Christ's blood purifies the heavenly counterparts.

The mention of inheritance in v15 might put the translators in mind of last wills, but inserting that into this passage is bizarre and derails the text into an irrelevant tangent. It is completely unjustifiable. The entire passage is comparing the Sinai Covenant with the New Covenant. Verses 16-17 are talking about the inauguration of the New Covenant, not the activation of a last will. Verses 18-20 prove this by comparing it to how the all other covenants, especially Sinai, are established.

When the Bible describes a person dividing up his possessions among his descendants, it talks about blessings, not diatheke (e.g. Genesis 49:28). The Bible never talks about "last wills" in this way, but inherited covenants are on every other page.

Monogenes in John 1:14

μονογενής (monogenes) is translated as "only Son" instead of "only begotten". This is a very minor mistranslation, since Yeshua is clearly a son, and if the only begotten is male, then he is also the only son. However, a determined miscreant could misconstrue "only Son" to mean that there might be a divine daughter who was excluded from the text. The ESV should just stick to the literal meaning of "only begotten" or "only offspring".

That was just for the Jews!

Stop oppressing me, man!

Refutation of Matthew Nolan's The Mystery of the Melchizedek

This is a list of major errors I found in the introduction to Matthew Nolan's (Torah to the Tribes) video teaching series, The Mystery of the Melchizedek. He has comments turned off, so I couldn't reply there.

Historical/Manuscript Errors

0:37 - Nolan says the Masoretes began to transcribe the text (presumably only of Psalm 105), but this is false. The Masoretes began ongoing transcription of the Tanakh in the 6th century and continued into the 11th century.

0:37 - Regarding Psalm 110:5 Nolan says "the ancient Hebrew and the Septuagint, which predates the Masoretic by 1200 years has "Yahweh at your right hand". As far as I can tell, all ancient manuscripts of the Psalms, Greek or Hebrew, have Adonai in this verse. I could find no evidence that it ever said YHWH. I don't believe that the Masoretes changed or hid anything in this verse and probably not in any others either.

1:00 - I don't believe Jasher is Scripture nor that it is the book mentioned in Joshua and 2 Samuel. The book known today as Jasher was probably written less than 500 years ago by Joseph ben Samuel and certainly after the New Testament. This can be demonstrated by looking at the Hebrew text, especially the vocabulary and style. In my opinion, Jasher is a book of traditional rabbinic stories, not history.

1:23 - He asserts that "Where in modern scrolls you would find YHWH, in the DSS you would find Melchizedek". This is, at best, a half truth. 11Q13 (The Melchizedek Document) is the only DSS text that I could find in which Melchizedek is substituted for YHWH. The DSS usually put Adonai when they translate to Greek and frequently even put YHWH in paleo-Hebrew script in Greek texts rather than daring to replace it with anything.

1:23 - He asserts that Isaiah 61:2 in the DSS says "to proclaim the acceptable year of Melchizedek", but this is confusing a paraphrased quote from a non-canonical work with the text of Isaiah itself. The quote is from 11Q13, which is a commentary that borrows some phrases from Isaiah and paraphrases them to make its point. The Scroll of Isaiah in the DSS says "the acceptable year of YHWH", and the Gospels confirm this when they quote Yeshua reading, "the acceptable year of the Lord". Kurios, not Melchisedek as in Hebrews 7. Why would Luke record kurios (literal Greek translation of Hebrew adonai), if Yeshua had read Melchisedek?

He says that we don't have the Hebrew of Isaiah that existed at the time of Yeshua, but the DSS preserves the entire book of Isaiah in Hebrew from before Yeshua's time, and it is virtually identical to the Masoretic Aleppo Codex of 930 AD, which also refutes his earlier assertion that the Masoretes changed the text to hide things. We absolutely do have the Hebrew text of Isaiah as it existed in the first century.

Linguistic Errors

0:44 - He says "order" means "in sequence". This is within the Greek semantic range of taxis, but not within the quoted Hebrew of Psalm 110:4 in Hebrews 5:6. Taxis here is a translation of Hebrew dibrah--as Nolan states--which refers to any pattern (e.g. "the order of primates") or arrangement (e.g. "the house is in order"). It doesn't mean "put in a sequential order by speaking it", except, by implication, in the sense of making a logical argument that progresses from one point to another. Taxis is used in the Septuagint to translate Hebrew midah (measure) in 1 Kings 7:37 and Hebrew sum (to set) in Job 28:3. Even more interestingly, Proverbs 31:26 Septuagint translates torah as "ennomos taxis" or "lawfully ordered". None of those are referring to a sequence of items, but to the shape or organization of things. "After the order of" in Psalm 110:4 and Hebrews 5:6 means "according to the pattern of" not "in a chronological sequence of".

0:45 - Nolan says "There is no grammar in Greek". All languages have grammar and Greek is no exception. It is impossible to communicate in any language without it. Greek has a complex grammar involving declensions, tenses, subject-verb agreement, word order, and more, just like other European languages. "Remove the grammar" is a nonsensical statement. This leads him to misinterpret 2 Peter 2:5 as "Noah, the eighth preacher of righteousness". If eighth referred to preacher instead of Noah, then the word order would be different. Instead of "ογδοον νωε δικαιοσυνης κηρυκα" (eighth Noe righteousness preacher), it would say "νωε δικαιοσυνης ογδοον κηρυκα" (Noe righteousness eighth preacher).

Doctrinal/Hermeneutic Errors

0:58 - I think he's taking Romans 5:14 out of context and so misses the point of "death reigned from Adam to Moses". Paul didn't say death stopped reigning at Moses and certainly didn't say anything about an order of priests. He was pointing out that death reigned during this period when some people insist that there was no law (antinomians) or that the only law was conscience (Dispensationalists), so clearly there was a law, which is what allowed death to reign during that period and all the way up until today. And that law must have been something objective that everyone could know or else a guilty verdict would be unjust.

1:01 - He asserts that Melchizedek has no genealogy because he's not a Levite and so not connected to any of the priestly clans, but this is incorrect. He has no genealogy because he quite literally has no genealogy given in Scripture. He might have been Shem, but that is purely extra-biblical tradition. Melchizedek has no mother or father or genealogy recorded in Scripture. (Jasher was written long after Hebrews.)

1:16 - He says the war of Chedorlaomer was to break the bands of the traditions of the Melchizedek that came before them, but Genesis says he was putting down a rebellion of the cities of Sodom. His name wasn't mentioned because he was a descendant of Shem (all of the invading kings probably were), but because he was the high king of the invading alliance.

1:26 - Josiah did not remove anything of value related to Melchizedek from the Temple. He did not remove everything "non-Levitical", but everything pagan. He removed the religious relics of Baal, Asherah, and other false gods.

1:49 - He says the order of Levi has been abolished and passed away, but this is in direct contradiction to the promises of God. Until every last male descendant of Aaron has died, the Levitical Priesthood must stand because God keeps his promises no matter what men do.

2:00 - He says that the "royal law" referenced by James is referring to the Melchizedek priesthood, but James himself says it refers to "You shall love your neighbor as yourself", which is a quote from Leviticus.

I didn't see any need to continue watching the series after this introduction. Either Nolan's scholarship consists of just making stuff up or he is caught up in an extraordinarily tangled web of delusions. In neither case would I ever listen to anything else he has to say on scriptural matters.

Introducing Regular Guy and Friends

Regular Guy's theology isn't deep or complicated. He just takes what Jesus and the Apostles said at face value and believes them. He gets a lot of pushback from people want to pile a lot of nuance and systematic theology onto the Scriptures.

Here are the characters in Regular Guy's life so far: