People often ask me “Which translation do you prefer?” I say “It depends”. A handy answer, for in addition to allowing some nuance, it gives me time to think.
It depends on where I am. If in my chair beside the fire, my preference is for the Lost Gospel of ‘Q’. The earliest known record of the sayings of Jesus, regarded as the source material for much of Matthew and Luke’s gospel. Material without any Pauline influence. I love the simplicity. Take the Lord’s Prayer for example: Father may your name be honoured, may your reign begin (Q34). And I love the directness; Those who think the realm of God belongs to them will be thrown out into the dark (Q64).
If I am not beside the fire, my phone is the way I read another translation, The Mirror Bible. I like its simplicity too, and also the extensive translation commentary and extended notes.
Take my recent meditations. The first of Paul’s letters written some thirty years after the followers of Jesus began to come together in someone’s home and encourage each other in their love for their teacher and what he said. Very little is recorded about them, but what is becoming clearer is how wide the network of house churches spread over much of Palestine, North Africa and Syria.
They needed encouragement, for they were living very counter-cultural lives. The term ’resident aliens’ is very fitting. They tried to appear similar to other residents to avoid the notice of any authority – church or governmental; yet their way of life must have appeared as though they were from another planet. Take the women’s concern for the widows and orphans, their care for the sick and suffering, the incredible healing they did by exorcisms, and the taking in of, to use that callous term ‘unwanted babies’. Coined by men, meaning unwanted by them. I bet the mothers didn’t think so.
Talking of the men, although a minority in number, their influence was significant. And if the record is accurate, they focused on the important matters of the fledgling church. Like circumcision. Paul states: Our Greek companion, Titus, survived the circumcision scrutiny and wasn’t forced to go for the cut. Some disguised Jewish ‘brothers’ secretly sneaked in on us to spy out whether he was circumcised or not (Galatians 2:3-4). Paul and his companions were determined to break down the barriers between Jew and Gentile, while other men were just as determined to keep the distinctions in place and disallow fellowship to those who had not been cut.
I mean, seriously. Two glaring gender differences arise from this fiasco described in the letter. Firstly, consider the travel in disguise; the scheming necessary to examine the Greek’s private part in no small detail; and the effort used by the other men to ensure the poorly disguised didn’t see what they wanted to see. Sure were focusing on important matters. For the men.
Secondly, one could say that the women had no skin in the game. Consider for a moment what the women were doing while the men were focusing on what men like to focus on. The women were attending to distressed and grieving widows. For in that society, the loss of a husband destined the widow to a very uncertain future, and taking on their care was no small undertaking. Similarly, the orphans. Those traumatised and abandoned children would need more than a little attention, as any parent would well know. That is in addition to the children already in their care needing the attention of these caring souls. For the sick, we think of doctors and hospitals; not so then. The already well-occupied women attended to those wounded, diseased or mentally disturbed. Just as well miracles happened, because their case-load was surely full enough without the demon-possessed in the mix.
In spite of this full case-load, we have the record of women taking Jesus at his word and showing such other-centered, self-giving love in that they would frequent the places the teenage slave girls, having been impregnated by their owners or raped by a Jewish man whose mind hadn’t risen above the anatomical cut, were often seen loitering in the hope a Jesus-follower would appear. Abandoning their child was distressing enough; leaving it to die in the communal pit was heart-rending. A grief eased somewhat by the assurance from a caring woman that her infant would be raised in a community where love is the guiding principle.
All this to point out the gender differences between the concerns and focus of the men who wrote the bible, and the concerns and focus of the women who got the Jesus movement well and truly on its way before the bible appeared.
Perhaps this is why I have been accused of having a ‘cavalier attitude toward the bible’. Mea culpa. My thinking on the above gender difference comes from material not in the bible, because the bible was written by men who I would regard as having a cavalier attitude toward women. An attitude they didn’t get from Jesus’ life and teaching. For, if we take my preferred translation: May your name be honoured and those who think the realm of God belongs to them; the game-playing over circumcision neither honours God nor frees them from being thrown out into the dark.
The women and girls, on the other hand, indefatigable in their efforts to love others, and with a life-orientation reflecting a fidelity to what Jesus taught, honours God their father. More than that, their lives declare convincingly that the realm of God belongs to all people. Cut or uncut; they were too focused on what really matters to care either way.
They didn’t fuss over which translation – perhaps we shouldn’t either.
