Job 38.31-33 (REB):

Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades or loose Orion’s belt?
Can you bring out the signs of the zodiac in their season
or guide Aldebaran and its satellite stars?
Did you proclaim the rules that govern the heavens
or determine the laws of nature on the earth?

The brilliant Hubble Space Telescope advent calendar marches on, now halfway to Christmas Day. Be sure to check out the latest photos, including this one from the constellation Orion.

This image, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), represents a small section of a larger mosaic - the sharpest view ever taken of the Orion Nebula - a picture book of star formation with massive young stars that are shaping the nebula and pillars of dense gas that may be the homes of budding stars. The bright glow at left is from M43, a small region being shaped by ultraviolet light from a massive young star. Astronomers call the region a miniature Orion Nebula because only one star is sculpting the landscape. The Orion Nebula has four such stars. The Orion Nebula is 1,500 light-years away, the nearest star-forming region to Earth. (NASA, ESA, M. Robberto - STScI)

Once upon a time all the world spoke a single language and used the same words. As men journeyed in the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and bake them hard’; they used bricks for stone and bitumen for mortar. ‘Come,’ they said, ‘let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and make a name for ourselves; or we shall be dispersed all over the earth.’

Then the LORD came down to see the city and tower which mortal men had built, and he said, ‘Here they are, one people with a single language, and now they have started to do this; henceforward nothing they have a mind to do will be beyond their reach. Come, let us go down there and confuse their speech, so that they will not understand what they say to one another.’ So the LORD dispersed them from there all over the earth, and they left off building the city. That is why it is called Babel¹, because the LORD there made a babble of the language of all the world; from that place the LORD scattered men all over the face of the earth.

¹That is Babylon.

I’ve been reading Peter Lopez’s blog, beautyofthebible.com, lately, especially his post, “Genesis 1:1 and God’s Great Ambiguity“. Peter has spent one whole year (!) studying the inherent ambiguity of this verse and how various translations have treated it. In his post, Peter offers a number of different styles of translation, all built on the ambiguity of the underlying Hebrew text. The one that caught my attention was a translation he called “The Narrative”:

1 The beginning: God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was formless and void and darkness was over the abyss. God breathed on the surface of the waters and they started to vibrate. 3 And God said to light “you will exist,” and light existed.

He describes this as “the ultimate campfire story”, narrated to Moses by God, and comments that it “fits with the Toledoth (Hebrew for “generations,” translated “the generations of…”) structure of Genesis, and has that ‘Once upon a time’ feel.” Speaking of which, here’s my “Bulwer-Lytton” narrative translation:

Once upon a time God created the heavens and the earth. It was a dark and stormy night and the earth was a formless abyss. [okay, okay, maybe that's a bit much...]

Ironically, I was skimming through Genesis in the NEB this morning and happened on the story of Babel – and what should I see but “Once upon a time…” (I seem to recall another translation that used this idiom, possibly even for Genesis 1:1, but it’s escaping me at the moment.) Now granted, this phrase has perhaps been corrupted by overuse in childrens’ fairy tales, but isn’t it still equally ambiguous as an English idiom: laced with the mists of ancient history, perhaps fable or myth, while still introducing a story with roots in observable human behavior.

I think this is a marvelous way to introduce the story of Babel, otherwise wedged into the genealogies that span the years from Noah to Abram. It’s as if the author inserted this “fairy tale” as a break in the action, echoing a campfire story told to Moses in the shadows of Sinai. “Did I tell you about the time…”

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P.S. Why don’t more translations use “babble” as a translation for the Hebrew verb balal, “to confuse”, in verse 9? This seems a perfect way to capture some of the literary flavor with an equivalent English pun.

Previous posts: The winner’s wreath | A wilderness of words | Deeds of doom!

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This summer I’ve been reading through some of the later letters of the New Testament, namely those of James and Peter. One of my recent book acquisitions was a Library Edition of the New English Bible NT, which proved to be an upgrade in binding only, as the footnotes and annotations are identical to those in my NEB Oxford Study Edition (unlike in the OT, where the Library Edition reportedly does contain additional reference material). Nonetheless, I’ve been reading the NT in the NEB and enjoying it quite a bit, as you might expect.

The passages on the depravity of the tongue in James 3 caught my attention with their florid language and imagery. What follows is a short look at several verses, comparing the NEB to multiple modern translations.

NEB: James 3:1-2	REB
My brothers, not many of you should become teachers, for you may be certain that we who teach shall ourselves be judged with greater strictness. All of us often go wrong; the man who never says a wrong thing is a perfect character, able to bridle his whole being.	My friends, not many of you should become teachers, for you may be certain that we who teach will ourselves face greater judgement. All of us go wrong again and again; a man who never says anything wrong is perfect and is capable of controlling every part of his body.
I want to focus on the change in the latter part of verse 2 where the NEB follows the traditional KJV rendering (cf. RSV/ESV, NASB, NRSV) in using “bridle” as a translation for the Greek chalinagōgeō, while the REB updates this to “controlling”. Presumably the equestrian reference has been deemed too arcane for modern, idiomatic readers, as virtually every other functional translation includes a similar rendering as the REB. The bridle, of course, is the contraption that goes over the horse’s head, holding the bit in the horse’s mouth and attaching to the reins. Is this really too difficult for the modern reader to understand without it being painted over? By doing so, the functional translations sever a delightful connection between this verse and the following one (see next), where James uses the illustration of the controlling power of a horse’s bit. This transition seems too logical and natural to ignore through a semantic equivalent.
NEB: James 3:3-5a	NLTse
If we put bits into horses’ mouths to make them obey our will, we can direct their whole body. Or think of ships: large they may be, yet even when driven by strong gales they can be directed by a tiny rudder on whatever course the helmsman chooses. So with the tongue. It is a small member but it can make huge claims.	We can make a large horse go wherever we want by means of a small bit in its mouth. And a small rudder makes a huge ship turn wherever the pilot chooses to go, even though the winds are strong. In the same way, the tongue is a small thing that makes grand speeches.
The NLT’s convention of breaking down the source texts into bite-size morsels conveys much the same general meaning as the NEB, but I can’t help but feel that the logic of the passage has been weakened. The NLT drops the “obey/will” in favor of “go wherever we want”, which feels somewhat more whimiscal or capricious than directed. The NEB admittedly is awkward here, especially in verse 4 – somewhat cleaned up in the REB revision: Or think of a ship: large though it may be and driven by gales, it can be steered by a very small rudder on whatever course the helmsman chooses. My preference for accurate nautical terminology has already been documented; needless to say, the use of “gales” and “helmsman” earns points in my book. The latter is perhaps a little more precise than “pilot” in that the helmsman is the one who actually steers the ship, while a pilot is more of a local guide with the authority of a ship’s captain, telling the helmsman where to go in order to navigate a particular passage of water. That said, often the roles are combined from a functional sense, especially where a local pilot is not required. But I suspect this is more than translators need to take into account – I simply prefer the traditional language and welcome it in the NEB. Finally, by translating the Greek melos as “thing” instead “member” or “part of the body”, the NLT loses the comparative aspect of the size of the tongue to the overall body.
NEB: James 3:5b-6	HCSB
What an immense stack of timber can be set ablaze by the tiniest spark! And the tongue is in effect a fire. It represents among our members the world with all its wickedness; it pollutes our whole being; it keeps the wheel of our existence red-hot, and its flames are fed by hell.	Consider how large a forest a small fire ignites. And the tongue is a fire. The tongue, a world of unrighteousness, is placed among the parts of our [bodies]; it pollutes the whole body, sets the course of life on fire, and is set on fire by hell
Compare the use of adjectives between the NEB and HCSB: “immense/tiniest” and “large/small”. How drab is the latter, while the former immediately conjures a more active illustration of a fire, crackling into a blazing roar that echoes the “huge claims” and “grand speeches” of verse 5a. The NEB noted “What a huge forest…” as a textual variant to “stack of timber” – though that would have created an awkward repetition of the adjective “huge” in 5a/b. I might humbly suggest “swath” instead of “stack” as a mediating translation between the two approaches, with “timber” as a literary image of a forest. The HCSB is one of the few translations to use “pollute” in verse 6 – most opt for a variant of “corrupt” or “defile”. The Greek is spiloō, which means “to make a stain or spot” in a moral sense. The study notes to the NEB Oxford Study Edition state that the translation “wheel of our existence” in verse 6 is a reference to Greek mystery thought meaning the whole of our existence, from beginning to end. Some take this as support for the idea of reincarnation, but that clearly is beyond the pale of Christianity and presumably beyond what James had in mind. Finally, the NEB’s literary quality shines through again with the alliterative “flames are fed”, drawing out the all-consuming quality of sin and wickedness, just as fire consumes every inch of a forest unless checked.
NEB: James 3:7-8	TNIV
Beasts and birds of every kind, creatures that crawl on the ground or swim in the sea, can be subdued and have been subdued by mankind; but no man can subdue the tongue. It is an intractable evil, charged with deadly venom.	All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by human beings, but no one can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison
First, I want to briefly comment on the rolling alliteration in the NEB: beasts/birds, creatures/crawl, swim/seas. This type of poetic prose, continued from the previous verse (“flames are fed”), elevates the English language beyond the pedestrian list of beasts illustrated by the TNIV. The literary characteristics of the word choices make them seem deliberate and my memory naturally finds in them an allusion to the Creation accounts in Genesis 1: Genesis 1:26-28 (NEB) — Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image and likeness to rule the fish in the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all wild animals on earth, and all reptiles that crawl upon the earth.’ So God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish in the sea, the birds of heaven, and every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ The question then begs: did the TNIV translations fail to underscore an allusion to Genesis 1 in James 3:7 or did the NEB translators take liberties with the Greek text to draw out this connection? The two phrases that stick out in the NEB are “creatures that crawl on the ground” and “swim in the sea”, translated as “reptiles” and “sea creatures”, respectively, by the TNIV. The former is translated from the Greek herpeton, which generally describes “a creeping animal, reptile”; the equivalent Hebrew seems to be remes, which permeates the Genesis creation account as “creeping thing” in traditional translations. The latter is from the Greek adjective enalios, which means “that which is in the sea, marine”. In these cases, the NEB’s choice of verbose nouns and verbs to translate what can be more simply described does seem to be deliberately creating an echo of Genesis 1. With that conclusion in mind, we look at the Greek damazō (NEB: “subdue”, TNIV: “tame”). The NEB’s rendering more definitely recalls the Creation language of Genesis 1 quoted above, while the TNIV (and many other translations) anticipate perhaps Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew”. Strong’s defines damazō as “to tame” or “curb, restrain”, which certainly would seem to lean toward the TNIV as a more literal translation, though “subdue” as a synonym for “restrain” is well within the scope of possibility, and fits with a Creation motif. Finally, the NEB’s translation of thanatephoros ios as “deadly venom” is a striking allusion to the serpent of Genesis 3, unifying a theme across these two verses that seemingly ties the evil of the tongue to the fall of Creation. And indeed, unifying this entire passage in James with the contrast of the serpent’s deadly venom with the perfect character of a man who never says a wrong thing (3:2).

Concluding thoughts

James’ descent from simply cautioning teachers regarding judgment to perhaps finding an image of the Fall in the deadly venom of the tongue is sudden and vicious. The images, metaphors and hyperbole are mixed together in a literary brew that demands language as artful and colorful as the jumble of images conjured up in our imaginations. The NEB navigates this passage with aplomb, weaving words together with suggestive allusions that revel in semantic meaning. The arc from the perfect teacher to the relentless evil of the tongue is captured in the images of the bridle, bit, rudder, blazing hellfire and fiery course of our lives, all set in relief against the glory of our God-given mandate to subdue creation as its sovereign masters.

A glory, of course, that we have all fallen short of. All, but Christ that is; He who now reigns over Creation as Lord and Master is the only one who has mastered the tongue and doused the flames of the curse with living water. Praise God!

I’m all for a cleaner environment for our enjoyment and our children’s children, but where is the biblical mandate? [...] We’re told in Scripture to love ourselves and not to destroy our bodies, which are God’s sanctuary, but I do not find the same for our physical planet. [...] I believe we need to care for the environment, but the Bible says that it has been subjected to futility by God himself. [...] [You] are doing your part [to use less energy], but I’m wondering in light of Scripture, if it’s worth it.

The comment thread in question was getting rather lengthy and rather than muck up the discussions already in place, I’ve decided to post my response here. Bryan has already said much of this, so I can only hope to echo some of his thoughts and add something worthwhile.

As for our Biblical mandate, I take the stewardship outlined in Genesis 1:28 to be our overriding commandment as human beings, regardless of sin or the corruption of the physical planet.

Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.” (Genesis 1:28, NLT)

We were created to reign over creation in God’s image, to be his ruling viceroys on Earth. By fulfilling this commandment, we give glory to God by fulfilling our purpose. However, to reign over the whole earth and everything that lives on it does not mean to ignorantly or willfully destroy our subjects, but to intelligently understand and promote the welfare and growth of everything within our sphere of responsibility. How else can we explain the course of human history, but the progressing effectiveness of our understanding of creation and how to rule it? It is our role and responsibility to try and leave the earth better than we found it, regardless of whether the entire system is breaking down or not.

Doug’s comment about your argument being “a misuse of eschatology” seems in response to the typical pre-mil position that life is progressively getting worse and therefore there’s no reason to focus on our stewardship of creation because, in the end, Christ will come back and fix everything for us. This is, essentially, what you appear to be saying. That is not to say that any other eschatological system is more correct. I know the common criticism of post-millennialism is that post-mils are viewed as trying to usher in the kingdom by manufacuring heaven on earth. But honestly, the hands-off mindset of many pre-mils suggests that you’re trying to equally hurry His return by hastening the destruction of Creation.

Frankly, that’s an abdication of our creation mandate, of the original role and purpose of humanity, and to ignore our present earth for the future one is misguided. I don’t believe that the corruption and futility of sin has invalidated the Genesis 1:28 commandment. If you don’t try to steward Creation to your greatest ability, then you are no different than the third servant who hid the coins in the ground because he was afraid to take risks and was scared to lose. If God didn’t want us to take risks and invest ourselves in Creation and try to make a return for Him, He would never have left us alone and we would be no different than pigs in the wallow.

I’ve stopped writing about eschatology on this blog because honestly I don’t care anymore about when Christ comes back. It doesn’t matter when; it is enough to know and believe that scripture promises that he will. In the interim, until He does, my purpose as a human being is to worship God as a steward of His creation, living a holy and godly life. Live in the Kingdom now and it won’t matter if Christ comes back during my Old Earth life or not.

The beginning of 2 Peter states that in order to live a godly life and receive God’s promises, we are to make every effort to add goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance,godliness, mutual affection and love to our faith. Isn’t progressive environmentalism nothing less than trying to apply these virtues to our stewardship of Creation?

As for the end, 2 Peter 3:11-12 says that living as such will hasten the coming of the day of God:

You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. (2 Peter 3:11b-12a, TNIV)

You asked, “is [trying] worth it?” I think that Peter would say, most emphatically, “Yes!” As do I.

Dr. Walton has now been kind enough to provide a significant reply, which John has also posted.

The functional hermeneutic suggests that the things we view as structural objects to Creation, e.g. light, water, plants, animals, all have an overlying function or reason for their being. For example, the function of light was to establish time as an organizing principle of the universe. Rather than only viewing Genesis 1 as the definite creation of objects, of things, we should instead can perhaps also read it as God creating organizing principles of function and purpose where there was only purposeless chaos before.

Christ’s sacrifice is described in Revelation [13:8] and 1 Peter [1:19-20] as predestined from before the foundation of the world. This suggests that the function of atonement was also established during Creation, such that it would be Natural for mankind to need to be reconciled to God. After the inevitable Fall, the OT describes in much detail a (imperfect) sacrificial system established by God for the atonement of sins. Christ came later as the perfect fulfillment of that system.

Placing this system within the functional hermeneutic, is it not fair to say that atonement (or salvation or redemption) is an overlying function of God’s relationship to Creation, but that the actual sacrifice of atonement (aka expiation or propitiation) is a structure? We are saved/redeemed within the context of whatever structure God has made available for us: for the OT Jews, it was the sins were atoned for (expiated) by the physical sacrificial system; for Christians, the gift of grace through faith in Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection.

I would caution against the suggestion that this allows for the possibility of other redemptive structures in other religions. The point of a function-driven account of Creation is that the relationship between God and his people is set apart from other cultures and systems. The lineage of faith through the Bible establishes this remnant, not the population of the entire world. Salvation is a function of God’s Kingdom; those who live outside of His kingdom do not experience the purpose of redemption.

As those living within the Kingdom, should our focus be on the function or the structure? We are saved by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross to live in the Kingdom and give glory to God. That is our purpose, our function, as Christians. To fulfill that role, should we primarily be looking back at the cross or looking forward to Kingdom life? I suggest the latter, but that the observance of the sacrament of communion is our reflection on the structure and event of the cross.

The NT suggests this pattern as well. The gospels look back to the cross, establishing the reason and structure, the what, of our salvation. The letters and epistles are functional, answering the question of how we fulfill our purpose of living in the Kingdom. The apocalypse, Revelation, provides hope for the future of the remnant, answering the question of why we live in the Kingdom.

Those who take the Bible seriously as a document of their faith have struggled over the last centuries trying to reconcile what they read in their Bible to what they read in the scientific literature (popular or professional). While scientists have been positing an old age for the cosmos, many traditional Christians have considered such a conclusion contradictory to the account of Genesis 1. The discussion has often been premised on the presupposition that God created all matter in seven days. Consequently, various camps have arisen offering diverse explanations of how long the seven days were and where those seven days ought to be located in time vis a vis cosmic history in order to accommodate this premise. In this paper we will reevaluate the premise that the Bible teaches that matter was created in seven days (of whatever length) and propose a new reading of Genesis 1 based on an ancient worldview (rather than the common concordist approaches) seeking to discover what the chapter proposes concerning the seven days of Genesis. Our findings will help us to reconsider what the Bible demands concerning the age of the cosmos.

For Walton, Genesis 1:3-5 is not about the creation of physical light, it is about the creation of time as an organizing principle of the universe. Similarly, Day 2 (1:6-8 ) is the basis of weather and Day 3 (1:9-13) is the basis of vegetation. These three functions (time, weather and vegetation) are the primary ways that God created how life worked.

For the entire presentation (~50 minutes, followed by a Q&A session), including Walton’s discussion of Days 4-6, the nature of God’s rest and the function of the created cosmos as a representation of the ANE temple (including the garden of Eden), click this link, then click on the photo of John Walton (bottom left). Walton speaks fluidly to his audience and obviously has command of this topic.

** Update ** John Hobbins has written a response to Dr. Walton’s position in which he rebuts the argument that “Genesis 1 is concerned only with the assignment of functions to things” and is “not concerned with the formational history of the things of which the universe is made.” Click here for John’s discussion.

** Update ** John has posted a formal reply by Dr. Walton to the previous post on Ancient Hebrew Poetry.