Episode 145: Dr. Scot McKnight on the 2nd Testament

We have Scot McKnight on again to talk us through his new translation of the New Testament with IVPress called The Second Testament. We talk through translation choices, different methods of translation, and why it’s so important to read the bible in Greek. 

Timestamps:

6:19- Translating Names

13:46- The Committee Approach to Translation

37:15- David Bentley Hart and Translation

47:40- What has Scot Learned?

Charles Kim 0:00

Hello, and welcome to history of Christian theology. My name is Chad Kim. This week, I will be talking with Dr. Scott McKnight about his new translation of the New Testament with InterVarsity. Press called the second testament. Dr. McKnight has been on the show before we talked about his book on Revelation. And this new book has just come out this summer. He's been working on it for many years. So it was nice to be able to talk through his principles of translation, some of his choices, and why it's important that there'll be another translation of the New Testament and the kind of vision that he offers with that book. I'd also like to let listeners know about an opportunity to take a class on St. Augustine with me, I'll be offering an online class to the gravestone Institute. And those there's information on the Facebook page for that. But it'll be a seven week course, we'll be talking through the entirety of the confessions. And it'll be about one hour lectures about once a week, for seven weeks. So if you are interested in being a part of that, please let me know. And I can get you in touch with the right people. And just seems like it's gonna be a good opportunity to work through one of my favorite theologians and work through one of the most important books that he wrote. We also had some nice comments on on our apple podcasts link. So and Fanta said that she thinks that the show is great. And so really appreciated her re reviewing and rating us on iTunes. And we'd recommend that you do the same, we also have Patreon. And we appreciate any support that you'd be willing to give. And that helps keep the show alive and helps keep us hosted and things like that. So that's long enough for an interview. So thank you for listening. And here's my conversation with Dr. Scott McKnight. Well, hello, and welcome to history of Christian theology. Today, I have the privilege privilege of speaking with Scot McKnight. And this is the second time that the Reverend canon Dr. Scott McKnight has come on the podcast he we talked with him about Revelation. And at the end of that episode, actually, he mentioned that he was doing a translation of the New Testament, which I also was interested in. And, and so yeah, so I'm happy to have you. So we'll be talking about the the way that this one's titled is the second testament, a new translation. And this is with IVP. Academic. So appreciate them supplying a copy of the book, and glad that you're here.

Scot McKnight 2:44

Well, thank you very much good to be with you again, brother.

Charles Kim 2:47

Yeah, well, I guess actually, I always, you know, my practice is to write down some questions so that the guest has an idea of where I want to go. But I'm going to just start with I was reading the title, and I realized I didn't put that one down, we could start there. So the second testament, you know, I think that probably alerts us to some of the other moves that you're gonna make throughout the book. But you're, you know, even with that title, you're kind of putting the reader on the backfoot.

Scot McKnight 3:17

Oh, okay. Well, the this is how it started. Tom Wright wrote a translation of the New Testament for his every, the Bible for everyone. They, it did very well. And at during that process, they asked John goldingay, to do the Old Testament. So he translated the Old Testament and wrote the small reflection type commentaries, Tom writes, published his New Testament, separately, then SPCK, who contracted both of them to write the Bible for everyone, put them together into a Bible called the Bible for everyone, okay. And the cover actually looked like the paper jacket looked like a child's Bible. That wasn't a very, but the the book itself was fine. And so I started reading gold again, then at that time, not long after that university, published John golden gaze translation as the First Testament. And it was a beautifully bound book. And so I picked it up, and I began to read it, and I loved it. I loved I thought, Man, this is, this is given me a whole new experience of reading the Old Testament. So I was at an academic meeting with the editor at a university who, who was in charge of the Golden Gate volume, and of course they didn't publish. Right, because that's owned by Zondervan separately. So I he asked me what I thought I said, Well, I said, the first thing that comes to mind is golden gaze translation, and Tom writes translation do not believe Long together because they're so different. Yeah, Tom's is so fluid and dynamic, equivalent type theory. And I said John's is more formal. And I said he translates or transliterates Hebrew words, and it's clunky. It sounds like Hebrew. Sometimes it's difficult in English. And I said, he saw, what do you think should be done? I said, Well, I said, I think you guys need to find someone to translate the New Testament this way. And he said, Would you do it? And without hesitation, I said, Yes, I will. Alright, so I spent two years. And so that's why it's called the second testament. And that's why I have I have followed John's approach. But John translated Hebrew. So his translation is different than mine. I mean, yeah. I'm tempted to use your whole show, you know, Yeshua, and all this stuff for Jesus, but I translated Greek. So I had to use what was going on in the Greek text. And so that's so mine is, is a reflection of John's an echo of John's approach, but with the Greek New Testament, so called the second testament.

Charles Kim 6:19

And so the Yaesu says, Yeah, you alluded to that. So all the names sort of retain a kind of, well, I guess it would be sort of a Hebraic Greek character, be hard to call it strictly speaking Greek. But yeah, there's that that it sounds more like the Greek reads, as as these are sort of Hebrew names in Greek. Is that?

Scot McKnight 6:41

Yo, en us? These are, these are Greek names. And I, I'm translating the Greek translation. Yeah. I'm transliterating. The Greek not the Hebrew, but they do have Hebrew names. So yes, but it's, it's Greek. Yeah,

Charles Kim 6:57

right. Right. But yeah, through a few layers there. And second testament,

Scot McKnight 7:02

let me let me say this though. There's something that happens when someone, let's say, colonizes your name into their language. Yeah. You know. So it's, this is the illustration I always give. We have the book the letter of James. Yeah. But that's, that's an English name that came from Old English that came from Old French that came from Greek. That was, yeah. And that came from Hebrew, Yaakov. Yeah. So I transliterate, the Greek name, and it's Iakovos. And that evokes something different. Now, some of the names it doesn't matter. But I do think that there's a bit of a disrespect in colonizing someone's actual name. Yeah.

Charles Kim 7:59

So it's interesting. I mean, to you, yeah. So you use the language of colonization there sometimes, you know, I guess to put it in a different register, we could call it, you know, sort of the principle of translate ability, like these names are translatable. And so you know, I think of like Thomas, who's called Didymus, the twin or something like so you have sometimes you find the writers actually giving several different versions of the name. And you are taking heat, like, well, even the word for Mary has a certain resonance in Hebrew, like Amar and bitterness, but Maria and Latin sounds like ocean. And so you have you do have the different like, ways that those words sound in their languages, but they keep them right. So they like you know, it's like they keep the name Mary, they they kind of Latinized it a little bit, but they don't totally give her another name and say, No, that's right. Like so. You know, I get me reminds me speaking of low volumes, Caesar's Gallic war, he says, They call themselves the Celts and the bell guy in hell. That's the I, and I call them the goals. And so he he just outright says, Well, you don't even get to get to give your own name. Like, I'm just going to totally give you an REO name. Well, that's

Scot McKnight 9:14

true. That's Julius Caesar. He gets to do what he wants. He's the Emperor. But like, I use Maryam but sometimes, you know, in the New Testament, it's Maria. Yeah. So I just tried to use the Greek name and and transliterate it and let people deal with it the way it is. Yeah. My, my Latin American Spanish speaking, Portuguese speaking students appreciate you on this. And the yeas those, you know, it gives them a little avocation in their own language.

Charles Kim 9:48

Yeah. Well, and so yeah, I've never looked at the Golden gaze trend or golden gaze translation. I have used Robert altars A Hebrew and I love I love his for its readability for the beauty of the language, it feels different, but it's still very readable. I don't know if you're familiar with that.

Scot McKnight 10:11

Well, I've read, I've read all of one volume and most of the other two volumes. The I love Robert altar. And I like what he's doing. And I liked that he has all those notes at the bottom. Yeah. And I don't like the fact that the volumes are so freakin heavy. You break your thumb using them? I mean, there's three big volumes. And that, you know, I've been asked by some people. Why didn't you think of putting annotations at the bottom? Golden Gate didn't and mine is like Golden Gate. And the other thing is it would have made the volume probably? Probably three times longer. Yeah. And then you're talking about a lot more expensive? Yeah.

Charles Kim 10:55

Yeah, well, and maybe one thing that you could sort of talk about in terms of like your process of making it? I don't know this about your scholarship. So have you ever been on the translation committee?

Scot McKnight 11:07

I have. Now, this is interesting. This word committee is interesting. Because it tell me something. That's not really a committee. Okay. But yes, I was involved in translating Luke, okay, for the New Living Translation. Now, someone said that I was involved in Matthew as well, they saw it in their new living translation. And I said, Well, if I was I don't remember doing that at all. But I may have been a consultant, but I don't remember it. I was involved in another one, with Joel green on the Gospel of Luke. But committees, committees don't translate. Someone is commissioned, let's say to be the primary translator, let's just say they ask you to do Augustine ins. And Karidian. Okay. And then the if there's a committee involved, there would be other people who would read it, and make suggestions. And over time, as like the NIV, it was done by a very various translators. Oh, I think all white guys at the beginning. And then they got together and had discussions, but every year, then they would meet, um, for a week or so and go through all the suggestions that came in. Now, that's a lot of money on the part of the Bible, the committee for Bible translation. I don't know who's funding it. And now I think Zondervan does as well. But that that's the committee work that has evolved in discussing revisions, but the original translation was done by probably one person, just as it was for the King James Version. Right. But here's, here's some I wrote about this on Monday, on my on my substack. Though, I think the majority of translations of the Bible have been done by individuals, not by committees. So I mean, I saw a list of about 30 different translations of the New Testament, all done by individuals. I don't know. I don't know the origins of some of these translations. But I know was the New Living Translation, I translated Luke. And I think someone else translated it. And then someone's job was to put them together, in a way. But it's not like a group gets together and goes over the Greek text and comes up with a translate. Do you know how long that would take for scholars to agree on a trip? I

Charles Kim 13:45

don't think I've ever come to an agreement.

Scot McKnight 13:49

And it would, how would they ever they would never agree on chi. On and so

Charles Kim 13:54

yeah, well, and I am I'm part of the project that translate all of Agustin works into English. So I've done Augustine stuff. And yeah, they just, they just send me out whatever I'm going to do. So I'm working on the anti Donna test writings and I do get a little bit of feedback, but it's nowhere near as contentious as as like New Testament. So yeah, so I mean, I had always just heard that it was, you know, committees for the Bible. So you know, that's, that's interesting to me. I actually even heard David Bentley Hart say the other day something about his translation and why it was better because it wasn't a committee. But I guess that, that maybe there's some correction that needs to be made. Most of these actually are just individuals.

Scot McKnight 14:40

Well, you know, I like there's something that happens with a committee that, let's say provides the wisdom of consensus of intelligent people who should know about this stuff. Yeah. Okay. I can I can live with that. And I think that's true, but there's something about an industry joules translation that has more courage. It'll have more edge, it'll have more reflection that a committee might be afraid to do. Yeah. And I think that's what the secret to, let's say, Tom, right, or to John goldingay. And I hope it will be said about mine is that I had the confidence to have some courage to do some things that would never go by a committee.

Charles Kim 15:27

Yeah. Well, and I mean, I think even calling it the second testament, you know, I mean, I've never heard it referred to in that way. I mean, you know, I tell my students in intro to theology like, you know, will academics say things like Hebrew Bible and Greek Bible and these sorts of things, but they all have their problems and difficulties just like old and new and so yeah, so it's even even that even calling it the second testament. Now, I also realized that a lot of times publishers give names. So I don't know if you

Scot McKnight 15:55

even know that it was mine because of Golden Gate first, but first of all, way back in the 1970s, I bought a book from Zondervan by Philip Payne's father, his name is Jay Barton Payne, it was called the theology of the older testament. That was pretty clever. Yeah. I think it was called The older the former. But golden gay wants to make a point that the First Testament and the second, the second testament is not does not make the First Testament old in the sense that we don't need it. Right. But there is a New Testament warrant in Hebrews in chapter eight and 10, for using the word second for for the new covenant. Yeah, so there is new as well. So either way, I think

Charles Kim 16:49

we get our title, the old and new from I think it's Tertullian is the first one who does that, if I remember correctly,

Scot McKnight 16:55

yeah. But we do have, you do have Palaios. And you have kindness and now was used. So this is This to me is a is a is a debate without difference?

Charles Kim 17:12

Yeah. Well, or even differing conceptions of the whether or not newness and oldness are good or bad. So yeah, we live in an age where new means better. But that's not necessarily true for the first century. Oh, interesting. So so what what was your sort of? I mean, I guess, you know, a lot of this goes back to Golden gay, but your What was your kind of intention for this is do you see this as useful to a scholar? I guess it was released with IVP academic, or at least the volume I have. So does that mean, you see this more as like something used in seminaries and and universities? Or do you expect this to be, you know, used in more private study? Or how do you envision people engaging with this?

Scot McKnight 17:57

Well, the publishers has its own categories for its separate divisions, a translation of the Bible is going to go on the academic side, I guess. So it's not, here's who it's for. It's for people. This is just This is virtually the words out of golden gaze, introduction and out of mind, it's for people who are already familiar with the Bible. So in my case with the New Testament, and they are looking for a fresh look at look at the at the New Testament. And so if you already have you're an avid reader of the NIV, or the CB, or the NRSV. Now with the UE after it, any of these translations, and then you pick up mine, I think what you will see is, in a sense, this is this is bold, but I think I'm close, you know, I'm not going to I'm not going to fight for this. You will see what that those translators did to the Greek text. Mine is more the bones of the Greek text and they put flesh, English flesh and muscle on the text. Mine. I like to call it this is, this is fair. It's my it's an untranslated in theory. Yeah, I'm trying to do as little, let's say interpretive moves as possible, though. I'm not capable of not doing some of that. Yeah, I use siblings for adult boy. For for different reasons, you know, so there's, there's interpretation, but I think overall, people will look at if they're reading their NIV and they look at mine, they go Oh, wow, that's, that's not quite as clear as the NIV. And I would say, there's a reason why it's not quite as clear. Yeah. So, okay, you and I know Greek. I don't know what your audience knows, but let's just say it Now that we have pistols Cristo, in the New Testament, faith of Christ, this is debated amongst scholars, is this the faithfulness of Jesus Christ? In other words, something his his acts of faith? Or is it faith in Jesus Christ? Right? Well, there is a debate of whether this is a subjective genitive or an objective genitive. Well, the genitive does not, let's put it this way, the genitive is under determined. It's not specific. And these typical translations make it specific. Yeah. I translated the crystals faith. And I think mine is as underdetermined as the Greek text, and you have to figure out how you think those two words are related, you know, as well as I do, that a genitive is one of the most common cases used. And at the same time, it often is unclear. It has a relationship with the other noun, and you're gonna have to figure it out, but are figuring it out, is more determined than the Greek actually is. So I tried to do that sort of thing quite a bit.

Charles Kim 21:18

Yeah, well, it reminds me of the the sword I think it comes from Italian but translator is traitor, right is the way that we say it in English

Speaker 2 21:26

from Toru. trattorie, or something like a trunk? Yeah,

Charles Kim 21:31

I wasn't going to try to pronounce it because I wasn't going to remember it correctly. I'm not a I'm not an Italian speaker. But so you're trying to sort of betray as little as possible. That's kind of your

Scot McKnight 21:43

that's, that's a very nice way of saying what what this translation is doing?

Charles Kim 21:48

Yeah. Well, but rather than I realized, like I could, I had some places, and I do want to kind of ask about some of those. But actually, I thought maybe it'd be more interesting to start with. And I think you mentioned just then your translation of Adele force and Adele foo as like as siblings, rather than going with brother. Or as I think, is that the what? There's one newer one that says brothers and sisters,

Scot McKnight 22:18

the NIV, the NRSV, the NRSV, UE and the Common English Bible. Yeah. All inclusive, they call it?

Charles Kim 22:24

Yeah. So are there other places that you maybe that you would point to where you'd say you were particularly proud of the way that it came out? Or that you feel like is indicative of what you really wanted to showcase in this?

Scot McKnight 22:40

Showcase? I don't want to that's a little strong for what I think I'm doing

Charles Kim 22:43

but oh, well, let's do something that you feel like is indicative of this, of this principle of not betraying

Scot McKnight 22:50

well of not betraying, alright, so sometimes the translation choice is the choice to say something that I think needs to be said, that is not said in our translations. So instead of Kingdom bus layup, I use empire. Well, you know, this is going to raise some eyebrows. And I'm thinking, Okay, that's all right. The basilica that is used in the gospels, is a term used for and tapas for Pilate, for Herod, that they have a kingdom, and they are connected to Rome. So the use of the word Empire has a sense in which God's Empire is bigger than Rome's empire. I like that translation. Of course, I know that that's pushing the button. But I, I at times choose what I call minority readings, because the committee's are going to find a consensus of the most likely reading and always, never represent the minority readings that I think at times deserve to be represented. So a common word like Peru, my I go, I translate journey, always with the word journey somehow, because it's connected to the Greek word Perea, which is always about a trip or a journey that someone goes on. So I think that's a minority translation. But at the same time, it's one that conveys something. When we say come and go all the time these words disappear into meaninglessness. Yep. I avoided the word justification in the whole translation. I use the word rightness or right somehow, it's always connected to the word right like riding a ship, or writing the direction of the trip. Yep. I use that word and I, I like that. It goes back to EP Sanders who wanted to use the Word righteous as a verb he writes just under the Old English right widening. I liked that because I think it conveys both the Hebrew and the Greek. That would be at work in this so,

Charles Kim 25:15

yeah, well and right, it's, I think what you're that Greek, the DT, the root for decay doesn't change although in English we have access to sort of a Latinate vocabulary, and then a Germanic verb vocabulary, and sort of the Old English following that Germanic root, where, you know, there's not actually two options, but rather one for the Greek. And so it sounds like part of your goal in your NS translation is showing that there's not really like there is an English all of these so called options. There's, there's just one,

Scot McKnight 25:51

well, here's here's one jazz and I think you'd like jazz or Chad,

Charles Kim 25:55

I go by Chad, it's fine. But yeah, okay, sorry. isn't really short for Charles. But that's what my Grandma called me. And so that's what stuff

Scot McKnight 26:04

now, I forgot what I was gonna say. Translation. It'll, it'll come it'll come to mind. But the like, like, for instance, save. So Joe. Yeah, there you go. soteria. Okay, here's one. This is the one I was thinking of. Pistol. What do we do with pistols and bestow? The the words for faith and to believe all right? In English, oui. Oui, oui, flip and flop because of how English uses these different terms in different ways. Sure, so pesto can mean I believe I trust I, let's say I'm trustworthy in some in some sense. pestis noun can mean faith, it can mean the faith, it can mean belief, it can mean allegiance. Well, one of the goals of my translation was to do what Golden Gate did as much as possible. And that is to use one English word for one Greek word as much as possible. Even if at times that doesn't do real well, in English, I'm okay with that. As long as it's not silly. I couldn't do this with this word, I could not find one word. And I want you to understand that the implications of a decision mean that every time that word occurs in the New Testament, I have to adjust it to that word. Yeah. So one of my editors said, I'm not crazy about how you translate this word. I said, Did you look up the other 73 uses? And she said that that's not going to do I'm not doing that. That's your job. And and that was was part of it. So I for for the verb I have sometimes I believe, no, I trust. Sometimes it's allegiance. Sometimes it's the faith. Yeah. So I couldn't go there. But I did was sojo I wanted to use, I think the word save in English in the evangelical world, and this is an evangelical publisher. And I'm connected to the evangelical world. The word

Charles Kim 28:20

is very diplomatic.

Scot McKnight 28:22

The word save has sort of a very evangelical sense. Sure. And it loses that sense of healing as an MCSE. So I use the word deliver. Yeah. And I think people go, okay, that word works. But I really worked hard on that word. And I came to the conclusion that that word I thought worked best for what I was doing. Yeah,

Charles Kim 28:52

well, that that was one that I sent you. I've been doing some of my own research, we'll be looking at some of the use of medical philosophy and health in the patristic era. And, and that was one of the things that I you know, realized, like how, how connected whatever Christ's work was, was a work of healing, although that's easily obscured, as you say, when you're going to wear to salvation. And I heard another scholar talk about the sacralization of language. And so there's this, like, you know, when we, and I was raised in an evangelical context, I'm still in one, while I'm in a kind of Catholic, I teach at a Catholic school now, but but still, that idea of salvation has become almost sacralized. And so it has its own meaning within the register of religious speech. But it's sort of disconnected from as you're pointing out the sort of broader implications of health and deliverance and,

Scot McKnight 29:49

I mean, you know, we're, we're, uh, we're preaching to ourselves here, but we're Amen in here. But one of the things that I recognized immediately When I, I was sitting in this other room when I first started translating that I moved to the upstairs in our house, I'm in the basement now. I would always pick up power on Gingrich tanker. And I would also pick up Liddell and Scott, or the condensation of it in the Brill, bro. And now I have the Cambridge. I love it.

Charles Kim 30:23

I haven't seen it yet. I know it's out there. But I haven't actually used it. What I noticed

Scot McKnight 30:27

very quickly was how theological and Christianize the glosses became In Barack Gingrich. Yeah. And this was one of the things that I learned from Golden gay, is he tried to get rid of, let's say, religious, theological jargon. Yeah. And jargons a little bit of a negative word. But, you know, like, he uses the word taboo. I think it's, you know, for what we would normally call holy. I don't think it's for haram. But in, I had to make a decision not to look at Barack Gingrich at times, because I knew what he was going to do was a Yeah. And so I started using far more than more classical lexica. In order to keep it, let's say, at the level of the language that the people who heard it would have understood it.

Charles Kim 31:27

Yeah. Well, and I guess that was, I mean, that was one of the hard things. So like, I 100%. I'm like, Yeah, I totally agree with the use of the LSJ and brille. And some of those things, but sometimes the translation just gets so obscure, I'm not sure that it would like is that is that what you think a Greek speaker would have? Understood? So like the one that one of the examples that I give, like we, you know, we everybody reads the Gospel of John, right. It's so easy in the Greek, or at least that's what we say. But one of the things that Jesus asks his mom, you know, so there's there at the Cana of Galilee. And and so you know, your translation starting in chapter two, verse two, both yay, Zeus and his apprentices. For for the rest of us, usually that's disciples, but I like it. apprentices were called to the marriage wines lacking gazes, Mother says to him, they do not have wine. And then this is what Jesus says to me. What are this is what Jesus says, Yes. Who says to her, what is there to me? And to you, woman? My hour has not yet come. Right. And so it's one of those ones where I'm like, but that's kind of the question, would it have sounded as obscure to a Greek speaker as it is to us as English speakers? Because that? I mean, that's almost I don't know, if someone came up to me and said, What is there to me and to you? I'm not sure that I would know what they were talking about.

Scot McKnight 32:54

I'm not so sure that's true. But yes, I I mean, there's only you know, in English, only we'll make this a dynamic equivalent. Yeah. That's, that's what we do. Yeah. But these two days. Yeah. To me and to you are connected by and. And so what is there to me? And to you? Yeah. I think that suggests, what is there between us? What is what is the relationship of me to you in this situation?

Charles Kim 33:32

I think it all makes more sense to me. I can understand that. Yeah. Well,

Scot McKnight 33:37

I can, I'm with you. I get you. I get what you're saying. And I think I knew what I was doing there. It's a it's a literal translation of what's actually in the Greek. Right. Yeah. What is there to me? And to you. That's exactly what the Greek text six Dr. Moy Yeah, chi soy. Yeah. Yeah. So I translated that. Yeah.

Charles Kim 34:03

Yeah, I don't know. It's just I, when I was reading it, I was like, but that's just so hard. Because I mean, you know, I think, I mean, we, you know, we could talk about like, how? Well like, for instance, the when you ask in Greek, how are you doing? You say posek? He's, how are you having? Right? And similar to the Latin Komodo Mahabis. But you would never say that in English, you'd say how are you? And so,

Scot McKnight 34:32

but you see, I want people to feel what the Greek text is saying, rather than what a natural English equivalent would be. Yeah. So I'm doing this on purpose. Yeah. And they're gonna have the NIV or the NLT, or whatever they're using. Yeah, in front of them the NRSV. And they're going to look at it and go, I see. But they'll look at mine and they'll go, so that's sort of what the Greeks said. And I say yeah, that's what the Greek says, yeah. But they'll find I don't have to worry about dynamic equivalence. It's everywhere. Yeah,

Charles Kim 35:08

fair enough. So this Well, I mean, the other, I just, I just realized this as I'm talking to you. So I teach intro to Greek every year at the Catholic seminary, and they're, they're good students. So I don't think they do this. But now when I give them the assignment, to you know, not look at a translation when they're translating, so I can see if they're really like, what they're understanding, or they aren't, they can go to your text and get a pretty, I gotta make sure they don't know that this text exists.

Scot McKnight 35:40

But I've, I've said this other Greek professors, you know, teach people who teach Greek beginning Greek, your students will love this translation. Yeah, because I'm giving them much more of a crystal clear reading of that Greek in the into English, then they're going to get with a dynamic equivalent translation. So so please tell them to pick it up.

Charles Kim 36:05

Well, sometimes what we do is an I don't, I have kind of different reasons that I like, sort of the theology and the work of NT Wright and David Bentley Hart for different things that they that they do, but sometimes I'll have the students compare those to what they come up with just so they can see, okay, here's one person who has, you know, some sometimes it feels like NT rights, smuggling in a lot of his feet covenant, the way that he talks about Covenant Theology and stuff like that, and I want them to see like that some of this has to do with the work that he's done elsewhere that he's bringing in. And so I want them to be able to spot that. And then and then but sometimes I you know, I think like, well, even David Bentley, Hart, you know, he's very aware of the, the sort of the Greek Hellenistic world, and, you know, and that's, so he'll let that come in. But I want them to see both of those as part of like, okay, well, what you know how hard it is to figure out what this says, you know, Jen,

Scot McKnight 37:06

the, the interesting thing is, if they look at a NRSV forum, NIV it's so bland. Right, right. The edges aren't there. Yeah. Tom. Tom provides a dynamic equivalent at the, the most English of levels. Yeah. And David Bentley, Hart. And I, I read him on every verse, As I translate it, because I really liked when he first came out, I thought, Oh, I miss doing what I'm doing. Well, he really wasn't. I didn't like the fact that he put and for every Chi in the whole New Testament. I mean, it adds about 15 pages. But I think I think David Bentley Hart is closer to what I'm doing than Tom right. Yeah. And I enjoyed reading. David Bentley Hart. I think he's a bit crabby.

Charles Kim 38:08

I don't think he would be surprised to hear you say that he's been on the podcast. He was at SLU for a while when I came here. So it's I know him a little bit. But yeah. Yeah, I think I think that's right. I mean, you know, I think the phrase that he uses on his is he tries to make it pitilessly literal, you know, such a hearty and language, if I could say it. But yeah, but I feel like yours might be more Pilis. Actually, that might is? Yeah, I do. I do

Scot McKnight 38:41

think he intrudes more far more than I do. Yeah. But there's, there's points of his that are very, very literal. And you know, there's a scholar in England, Richard Burbidge, who's doing a translation of the New Testament, or at least the Gospels, but I think it's a whole New Testament that will sustain and retain the Greek word order.

Charles Kim 39:09

But again, I mean, this is just, this is where I find it so hard, like when like I did some I did a weird program where we spoke Latin. And so like, I was in Rome, where we only spoke Latin for several months. And, like, eventually, you learn to hear Latin as Latin. And I realized quickly that I couldn't translate in the word order of Latin in English and have it makes sense. I had to learn how, like, in some way or it's, it's similar to German, right? When I was learning German, I had to learn German word order and wait forever for that verb to come. Right. Unless you have a 19th century Yeah, yeah. Yeah, trying to learn how to read bark. I mean, just it drove me nuts but and but but that was part of the the sort of the mental framework of speakers of the language. And so that I guess that Just the hard thing and trying to figure out what does it mean to do a translation? Is if you leave it in that word order, like for I mean, you can't, you know, there's no there's no preposition you can put there for the accusative. So if you don't have the accusative in the play, you know, how do you mark, accusative? If we're doing Hebrew, you've got up. But you don't have something like that to show the relationship to the verb. So you have no syntax.

Scot McKnight 40:27

I would agree. I tried to do as little of that as I could and make sense in English. And at times, I've my editor, my first editor at university, called it, he was happy for how chunky it was. Yeah, he liked that word. I thought that's, that's a fair description. Yeah.

Charles Kim 40:50

Yeah, well, it's, uh, yeah, interesting. Yeah. So let's see. So yeah, so anyway, so that kind of explains what's going on. So that's, I mean, I just picked that one out, like I said, because I know it's particularly difficult. One of the other ones that I wanted to talk about was, we already did, but you know, you do a good job, you use the language of deliverance, as we talked about. So I picked out this place in the x, where in the English translation, it goes back and forth, between healing and salvation, but the root is all the same. So 10 of swords, oh, so Teddy, and all those kinds of variations, but you, you right on. So this is Peter speaking, if we today are being examined for this good work for a weakened human, by which this man is delivered, let it be known to you and to all and to all yesterday's people that in the name of yesterday's Christos, from you crucified from God raised from among the dead ones, in this, this person has stood before you healthy. And then this is italicized. This one is the stone Oh, because it's a quotation. This is the stone, the one devalued by you, the one who became the coroner's head, and then you say deliverance, is in no other for there is no other name under heaven, that is given to humans in which it's necessary for us to be delivered. And so you use that deliverance all throughout to show the consistency of the language. And I thought, you know, I really appreciated the like I say the consistency there, because it is the same route. But most English translations just go back and forth on all of them. And you could be mistaken for thinking there was no connection between salvation and health.

Scot McKnight 42:31

And this is one of the things that I think comes through in a translation that does try to gloss a Greek word with one English word as as much as is reasonable, is that you will be able to make these connections that otherwise people do not make in the English Bible in the English dynamic translation. So I appreciate that example that you bring up from Acts chapter four. Yeah.

Charles Kim 42:59

Well, and one other one that I couldn't well, and I asked this question, there, so sometimes you were doing it like a genitive absolute, and that I didn't realize I wasn't paying enough attention to that Greek that that's what was going on. But you use these ellipses, which I thought were meant to indicate a gap in the text or a gap in the reading. But they're, they're there to show the genitive absolute

Scot McKnight 43:23

in the, in the introduction, but I've already learned from a couple people that they didn't look at the introduction, and I can't I can't define this. Every time it appears. But but, you know, what does it mean to have be absolute? You know, we use this word because it's not connected. And so I disconnected it. I didn't know. Any other way to do it.

Charles Kim 43:47

Yeah. So yeah, well, and that's right. That's always again, another heart. A really hard thing to teach a new Greek student our how to deal with those. Yeah. One other one that I just for fun. Wanted to ask you about was Philippians. Three. And I mean, there's not really a whole lot to say but I when I first learned well, my like I had a high school Bible class of some sort. And the professor or the teacher use the word school Balon. And it was the first Greek word I ever remembered. I was I was a high school boy with a high school boys mind. And so learning now he told us that it was the crudest word. I think there's some debate about this, but you go with FISI. So Paul says, let's see. The first eight Yeah, so verse eight, and just so the audience can get a sense of your the style, I consider all matters to be a forfeit because of the higher status of knowing Christus Yes, is my Lord because of whom I forfeited all matters and I consider them to be thieves. sees so that I may gain crystals. I think most of them are like, rubbish or rags or I don't know, there's like other words that other translators use. And you I like, I like that you reach for feces. I wasn't gonna say the swear word I don't I don't know, I don't know exactly who's listening. But everybody can figure it out.

Scot McKnight 45:20

Frankly, school on has been often flipped around by New Testament professors, and people who read Greek and just use the vulgar term. And there's a there's a book about, I think it's on medical terms in Paul. And I'm, I'm of an age where I don't have to remember the author's names all the time. But Mike Byrd put me on to this book. He's a friend of mine. And he mentioned this, so I got a copy of it. I ordered it through our library and read it. And I think he makes a really good case that this would have been in the medical register, rather than in the vulgarity register. Okay. It is very popular in classrooms with seminary students, and college students who liked the who liked to use vulgar terms. To find out that Paul was vulgar just like them, and then they feel like the Bible justified would

Charles Kim 46:28

have been me, that would have been Yes. And a lot of people,

Scot McKnight 46:31

a lot of people like that. And I probably would have cited with that. I don't think I would ever have translated it that way. Because I don't think university would have permitted it. But so I read that and, and it's quite convincing that this term is found, mostly in medical writers, describing you know, what we would call a diagnostic or analytical term. Yeah, or a or thing. Yeah. Organic matter. So I use the word feces, and I thought he was in crap. That's the word I would have gone towards. Yeah. But so I wanted to check my translation. So I read the extensive chapter on it. And that's where it is.

Charles Kim 47:22

Well, that's helpful. I'm gonna I need to find that book. I don't I don't know that one. Yeah.

Scot McKnight 47:27

I wish it's somewhere in some of my notes somewhere.

Charles Kim 47:31

I'm sure I can find it. I had a class with Dale Martin. And he does a lot of stuff with medical terminology and things like that. I'm sure he would be able to help me on that one. So well, I thought I'd end with just another like, sort of softball question, I guess. But like, so what, what kinds of things have you learned from you know, you've translated this whole thing over two years? Has it changed the way that you think theologically the way that you preach the way? I mean, is this just sort of a culmination of your career in some ways as a New Testament scholars? So a lot of it you probably already knew, I don't know any any takeaways from a work like this?

Scot McKnight 48:13

It's an interesting question. Because yes, I've been teaching the New Testament for for I'm in my 41st year as a professor, Okay, time for me to move on a make room for the younger set. But I think the daily engagement with the text leads me to say, it's hard work to translate consistently, with a theory. It's easy to slip into familiar English language of the New Testament, because I'm already familiar with it. I know what it says. But the discipline of saying, I don't know what this says, and I need to back off. One thing that became clear to me, this is something very few people have translated the whole book of Acts, and I'm talking about New Testament professors, and they will not admit this, but I demanded them to admit it to me, so I asked, I have not met anyone who has translated the whole thing in Greek. And now, I haven't asked that many. Yeah, so but I mean, if I were to bump into Craig Keener, I'd think Craig Keener, say I've translated but I've talked to students who've done PhDs in the book of Acts, and I said, Did you translate the whole thing? No. And I've talked to people who've written Greek grammars in Greek syntax, if you translate the whole book of Acts, no, the second half of the book of Acts is an adventure in vocabulary expression. Oh, sure. Read is not found elsewhere in the New Testament, I found the pastoral epistles, far more sophisticated in Greek than I expected, and I had read quite a bit of it. Hebrews is the one that gets all the glory for being the most difficult, but I would, I would say Hebrews is easy, compared to the second half of X and to the pastoral epistles. Yeah, it's got some highfalutin stuff going on. But daily translating. I mean, like, it was three to four hours every day. And sometimes I would go in the afternoon, I usually can't do creative work that much in the afternoon, I can edit and stuff and read. But I found it spiritually lifting, just to just to be translating the New Testament all day long. I thought this is all I have to do is translate. Here's Chad this summer, I wanted to do my editor when, when let me I wanted to put the Lord's Prayer in the King James version.

Speaker 2 51:03

So why I said, because that's what we say, every Sunday. She wouldn't let me. So I had to translate.

Charles Kim 51:12

Yeah, that's good. I mean, I have read, I mean, I can't say I have, I've not tried to translate, but I have read through the second half of Acts. And I find it the most difficult always to do in part because no one ever preaches from it either. And so you know, so you don't really know the text, but all the nautical terms and all the rest of it. But it's funny, because I learned Classical Latin first and then have done more work in ecclesiastical Latin. But if I'm looking for how to explain sort of classical expressions, I find most of them in the Vulgate of the of x the second half of x. And so you have a more sophisticated expression. And I can almost always find a version of it in x. And so I have found these random, you know, little suggestions from it. And again, I I do a little bit of Greek but but I am I'm actually writing a Latin grammar. So it should be out soon with Catholic you. So we'll see how that goes. But so I yeah, I then some of my students have asked if I would do a Greek grammar. I was like, well, they're more than enough of those. No one is, no one has tried to do an ecclesiastical Latin book in some some decades. So at least there won't be too many on the market. But yeah. Well, I really appreciate you taking your time. And yeah, it's thank you for this work. It'll be you know, so it sounds like you sort of expect some people to pick this up if they're already familiar, maybe not the first thing you read, if you're reading the Bible for the first time, but it is helpful to get get a kind of handle on what this feels like in a, as you say, an untranslated approach and maybe an on but like trying not to betray in the old in the old sense. Well, thank you so much. Dr. McKnight. And, yeah, hopefully we'll talk to you again with I don't know what's next. What is next on the plate for you? I don't know.

Scot McKnight 53:13

Well, probably for us. It'll be a book on. I'm doing a book on Jesus and the Pharisees right now. It's kind of slow work, but it's going to be with fortress press. Okay, so, but I'll be with you again, Chad. It's fine. Thanks.

Charles Kim 53:29

All right. Thank you so much.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai