WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.520 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:40.720 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:41.840 Mahler. And 00:00:41.840 --> 00:00:44.160 I'm still Wo. 00:00:44.160 --> 00:00:48.880 Today's Stone Choir is the final, final, final episode of the Septuagint 00:00:48.960 --> 00:00:51.680 series. This is what we've been calling the bonus episode up to 00:00:51.680 --> 00:00:52.400 this point. 00:00:52.400 --> 00:00:55.360 We haven't selected the name for yet, so you know what it's 00:00:55.280 --> 00:00:58.160 gonna be, but I don't know as we're beginning recording what we're 00:00:58.080 --> 00:00:59.600 gonna call it. 00:00:59.600 --> 00:01:03.520 The prequel episode number ninety nine with the context window in this 00:01:03.520 --> 00:01:09.120 episode are two parts that are book ending the seven parts content 00:01:09.120 --> 00:01:12.400 of the Septuagint story itself proper. 00:01:12.400 --> 00:01:17.840 This episode is going to exclusively focus on what the process should 00:01:17.840 --> 00:01:23.120 look like for a future translation of the Septuagint into English, so 00:01:23.440 --> 00:01:26.560 that you as a reader don't have the problem that we have 00:01:26.560 --> 00:01:30.160 had for the last eighteen months working on this project, which is 00:01:30.160 --> 00:01:32.080 very simply this. 00:01:32.080 --> 00:01:38.400 Brenton, Lexum, Nets, another one that we'll mention, all have the same 00:01:38.400 --> 00:01:42.960 problems, which are that they don't necessarily exclusively rely on the Septuagint 00:01:43.040 --> 00:01:47.760 Even though they call themselves septuagin translations, there are decisions in terms 00:01:47.760 --> 00:01:52.400 of the content included or excluded or word choices that are sometimes 00:01:52.400 --> 00:01:54.560 derived from the rabbinic text. 00:01:54.560 --> 00:01:59.200 Which when you are endeavoring to discover exclusively what is in Greek 00:01:59.280 --> 00:02:03.600 without any rabbinic influence, becomes useless. 00:02:03.600 --> 00:02:06.480 So on one hand, you know, many of you have already gone 00:02:06.480 --> 00:02:08.320 out and bought one of those Bibles, that's great. 00:02:08.320 --> 00:02:08.800 Use it. 00:02:09.200 --> 00:02:12.560 Not criticizing them and saying they're terrible for the sake of being 00:02:12.560 --> 00:02:15.520 a Bible, in the sense of here's what I read at home, 00:02:15.520 --> 00:02:18.880 here's what I study, here's what I you know look at. 00:02:18.880 --> 00:02:21.680 The problem is if the question you're trying to answer is does 00:02:21.680 --> 00:02:24.800 this say exactly what the Greek says, you can't know by looking 00:02:24.800 --> 00:02:25.760 at any of those. 00:02:25.760 --> 00:02:28.400 Even the Nets, which has lots and lots of footnotes, it's a 00:02:28.400 --> 00:02:29.840 very academic version. 00:02:29.840 --> 00:02:33.040 It's not necessarily going to identically reproduce what's in the Greek. 00:02:33.040 --> 00:02:37.120 So that problem has yet to be solved today. 00:02:37.120 --> 00:02:40.880 What we're going to describe, many of you are going to laugh 00:02:40.880 --> 00:02:42.880 at. I'm going to tell you right up front, it's going to 00:02:42.880 --> 00:02:45.440 seem over the top some of the rules that we've come up 00:02:45.440 --> 00:02:49.760 with, some of the processes we're gonna recommend. 00:02:49.760 --> 00:02:53.760 This is by far the most INTJ episode that we've ever done. 00:02:53.760 --> 00:02:58.160 Both Corey and I are trying TJ's we love contingency planning and 00:02:58.160 --> 00:03:01.280 working through things in elaborate fashion. 00:03:01.280 --> 00:03:03.120 This is one of those. 00:03:03.120 --> 00:03:07.120 And while that seems silly for most people in most of your 00:03:07.200 --> 00:03:10.240 life, I want to give you a couple examples of places where 00:03:10.240 --> 00:03:14.320 you see the same sort of processes and assiduous attention to detail 00:03:15.040 --> 00:03:18.720 that doesn't strike people generally as crazy because you know why they're 00:03:18.720 --> 00:03:19.920 doing it. 00:03:19.920 --> 00:03:24.400 One example would be as we're recording this, I'm gonna be having 00:03:24.400 --> 00:03:26.560 surgery next week, the one I was deferred a while ago. 00:03:26.560 --> 00:03:29.680 By the time you're listening, I will have already had surgery. 00:03:29.680 --> 00:03:33.440 So before the surgeon cuts me open and puts his hand inside 00:03:33.440 --> 00:03:36.160 my body, I hope that he cleans his hands really well. 00:03:36.160 --> 00:03:39.120 I hope he scrubs good and long all the way up to 00:03:39.120 --> 00:03:40.000 his elbows. 00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:43.760 Like when you've seen a surgeon scrubbing down, usually in a TV 00:03:43.760 --> 00:03:45.840 show, it looks ridiculous. 00:03:45.840 --> 00:03:47.840 It looks like this guy is crazy. 00:03:47.840 --> 00:03:51.600 If you knew nothing about germs and you watched a surgeon scrubbing 00:03:51.600 --> 00:03:54.480 for surgery, you would think he had lost his mind. 00:03:54.480 --> 00:03:58.960 It seems like a bizarre ritual that serves no purpose whatsoever. 00:03:58.960 --> 00:04:02.800 But once you understand germs and you understand surgery, that a man 00:04:02.800 --> 00:04:05.920 is being cut open, his body is being rent in a way 00:04:05.920 --> 00:04:09.840 that's not intended by God to solve a problem in this case, 00:04:09.840 --> 00:04:12.400 you know, it's not something mean, it's something beneficial. 00:04:12.400 --> 00:04:17.040 Then the fact that the surgeon is doing this seemingly over-the-top cleaning 00:04:17.040 --> 00:04:18.560 ritual makes perfect sense. 00:04:18.560 --> 00:04:22.160 You don't want to introduce any contaminants into the body past the 00:04:22.160 --> 00:04:25.280 skin barrier that's there to keep that stuff out. 00:04:25.280 --> 00:04:30.560 Because although our immune systems are very good at fighting off pathogens, 00:04:30.560 --> 00:04:34.080 they have a much harder time once they get past certain layers 00:04:34.080 --> 00:04:35.360 of defenses. 00:04:35.360 --> 00:04:40.160 So God has given our bodies layers of defenses, and the surgical 00:04:40.160 --> 00:04:44.880 theater also has layers of defenses to keep germs away from when 00:04:44.880 --> 00:04:49.760 the two collide, when the external environment collides with the inside of 00:04:49.760 --> 00:04:53.840 the surgical patient's body, you don't want anything getting in or out 00:04:53.840 --> 00:04:55.280 except for what is intended. 00:04:55.360 --> 00:04:56.640 Means no germs. 00:04:56.640 --> 00:05:00.720 It's a very simple process once you understand why it's happening. 00:05:00.720 --> 00:05:03.760 If you knew nothing about germs, it would seem ridiculous. 00:05:03.760 --> 00:05:07.360 And two hundred years ago if you saw surgical theater, it would 00:05:07.360 --> 00:05:09.360 seem like butchery compared to today. 00:05:09.360 --> 00:05:10.240 And that's why. 00:05:10.960 --> 00:05:16.480 Another example of contaminants causing problems or something I mentioned before I 00:05:16.480 --> 00:05:18.640 used to own and operate a distillery. 00:05:18.640 --> 00:05:22.320 A distillery is basically like a brewery or a winery with the 00:05:22.320 --> 00:05:26.720 additional step of boiling for purification, essentially. 00:05:26.720 --> 00:05:33.200 When someone is brewing or fermenting wine, the hard part that they 00:05:33.200 --> 00:05:36.480 have is that they have their liquid, their water, they have their 00:05:36.480 --> 00:05:40.000 sugar source, and they have their yeast. 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:43.760 And when the yeast feeds on the sugar, it produces lots of 00:05:43.760 --> 00:05:48.320 delicious alcohol and lots of other flavors as well. 00:05:48.320 --> 00:05:53.200 The problem for the brewer or the ventner is that any flavors 00:05:53.200 --> 00:05:57.040 that are produced in that process that are off-flavors, which would typically 00:05:57.040 --> 00:06:01.760 be introduced by some external contaminant, those go into the product. 00:06:01.760 --> 00:06:05.440 Because after a brewer's finished brewing or a ventor is finished with 00:06:05.600 --> 00:06:10.160 wine making, aside from light filtering and maybe some aging, it goes 00:06:10.160 --> 00:06:12.480 into a bottle and that's what you drink. 00:06:12.480 --> 00:06:16.880 So in my case, distilling was the much easier version of that 00:06:17.200 --> 00:06:21.200 because what we brewed wasn't particularly good beer. 00:06:21.200 --> 00:06:23.520 It was very, very sour beer. 00:06:23.520 --> 00:06:28.080 The purpose was never the flavor of what was in Those giant 00:06:28.080 --> 00:06:30.240 vats as we were producing that beer. 00:06:30.240 --> 00:06:33.440 The purpose was the alcohol on some of the flavors, but not 00:06:33.440 --> 00:06:34.240 all of them. 00:06:34.240 --> 00:06:37.680 So when you distill, you're stripping away most of that stuff. 00:06:37.680 --> 00:06:42.560 You're throwing it away entirely and leaving the pure distillation of a 00:06:42.560 --> 00:06:44.240 much smaller portion. 00:06:44.240 --> 00:06:47.760 So distilling is much more forgiving than brewing or winemaking for that 00:06:47.760 --> 00:06:52.480 reason. When you look at the cleanliness and purification steps that are 00:06:52.480 --> 00:06:57.280 necessary in brewing in wineries, they seem over the top too. 00:06:57.280 --> 00:06:59.920 They do a lot more than we necessarily had to do in 00:06:59.920 --> 00:07:01.040 a distillery. 00:07:01.040 --> 00:07:04.480 Not that we were being sloppy by any means, but simply that 00:07:05.040 --> 00:07:08.480 no flavors that we would be concerned about wouldn't get stripped out 00:07:08.480 --> 00:07:11.200 by the spirit making process. 00:07:11.200 --> 00:07:13.840 When it goes into the bottle and you drink it without anything 00:07:13.840 --> 00:07:18.880 apart from filtration, contaminants will do damage to the process. 00:07:18.880 --> 00:07:21.680 They'll do damage to the final product. 00:07:21.680 --> 00:07:24.640 So that's just a couple small examples in the world where we 00:07:24.640 --> 00:07:29.520 see that keeping things pure as you're going through the process sometimes 00:07:29.520 --> 00:07:33.040 looks a little silly from the outside until you understand what it 00:07:33.040 --> 00:07:35.200 is that you're trying to keep out. 00:07:35.200 --> 00:07:39.520 Very simply, the process that we're going to describe today, what it 00:07:39.520 --> 00:07:44.320 is intended to keep out, is the contamination of the rabbis. 00:07:44.320 --> 00:07:46.320 Once we have made the case, as we did in the previous 00:07:46.320 --> 00:07:50.880 seven episodes, the Greek scripture is breathed out by God, we simply 00:07:50.880 --> 00:07:52.160 don't want anything else. 00:07:52.160 --> 00:07:56.000 And we don't want anything that's been influenced by anything else other 00:07:56.000 --> 00:07:57.600 than the Greek. 00:07:57.600 --> 00:08:01.440 So the process that we described today will seem over the top 00:08:01.440 --> 00:08:02.240 to some of you. 00:08:02.240 --> 00:08:05.600 To some, it'll make perfect sense, but that's the reason why. 00:08:05.600 --> 00:08:09.840 We have to keep contamination out at every step of the process, 00:08:09.840 --> 00:08:15.280 because otherwise the leaven of the Pharisees is going to get back 00:08:15.280 --> 00:08:16.240 into the system. 00:08:16.240 --> 00:08:18.880 The whole point is to get it out and keep it out. 00:08:18.880 --> 00:08:22.720 I mentioned there are the three examples of Brenton, Lexum, and Nets, 00:08:22.720 --> 00:08:23.600 which are available today. 00:08:23.600 --> 00:08:25.760 You can download all those online. 00:08:25.760 --> 00:08:27.040 They're fine Bibles. 00:08:27.040 --> 00:08:29.440 I've mentioned specifically Brenton. 00:08:29.440 --> 00:08:34.560 I like it the least, primarily because it is basically King James 00:08:34.560 --> 00:08:37.120 English. I was looking this up earlier to see if I could 00:08:37.120 --> 00:08:38.480 make this claim. 00:08:38.480 --> 00:08:42.160 What I wanted to say was that Brenton's is basically about a 00:08:42.160 --> 00:08:48.880 two hundred year old translation of the King James using the Septuagint. 00:08:48.960 --> 00:08:52.000 What I wanted to say was that that was the first translation 00:08:52.320 --> 00:08:56.480 into English after the King James, which turned out to almost be 00:08:56.480 --> 00:09:02.320 true. There was one significant translation of scripture prior to Brenton, which 00:09:02.320 --> 00:09:05.520 was around eighteen forty four, was when it came out, so you've 00:09:05.520 --> 00:09:07.520 been working on it for a while. 00:09:07.520 --> 00:09:11.360 The previous translation was from a man named Charles Thompson. 00:09:11.360 --> 00:09:14.400 I'd never heard the name, some you probably have, but most you 00:09:14.400 --> 00:09:15.120 probably haven't. 00:09:15.120 --> 00:09:16.880 Charles Thompson's one of the founding fathers. 00:09:17.840 --> 00:09:22.640 He was an Irish born man, he was an orphan who became 00:09:22.640 --> 00:09:26.480 the secretary of the Continental Congress for all fifteen years that it 00:09:26.480 --> 00:09:28.080 was convened. 00:09:28.080 --> 00:09:33.440 Later in his life, he translated the entire Septuagint into English and 00:09:33.440 --> 00:09:35.680 he published that in 1808. 00:09:35.680 --> 00:09:38.720 And he was obviously living in America at the time, he was 00:09:38.720 --> 00:09:40.560 speaking American English. 00:09:40.560 --> 00:09:48.640 So the Thompson translation has significantly less archaic formulations than Brenton. 00:09:48.640 --> 00:09:51.360 We'll link in the show notes in a link to his page 00:09:51.440 --> 00:09:53.120 because it's just very interesting. 00:09:53.120 --> 00:09:55.920 I had no idea when we began that one of the founding 00:09:55.920 --> 00:09:59.760 fathers made the earliest Septuagint translation into English. 00:09:59.760 --> 00:10:00.800 That's really cool. 00:10:00.960 --> 00:10:03.520 Friend was looking at it earlier today as I was working on 00:10:03.520 --> 00:10:06.800 final prep for this episode and seemed like some of the renderings 00:10:06.800 --> 00:10:11.120 were pretty interestingly different from the others in ways that hopefully are 00:10:11.120 --> 00:10:12.320 consistent with the Greek. 00:10:12.320 --> 00:10:13.600 Yeah, we'll go look later. 00:10:13.600 --> 00:10:16.400 So there's a fourth one in the mix that you can consider 00:10:16.800 --> 00:10:20.720 and it's certainly worth checking out just for its historical value In 00:10:20.880 --> 00:10:26.240 2027, there is another translation that will be coming from Oxford University 00:10:26.240 --> 00:10:30.640 Press. It's going to be called the Ancient Christian Study Bible. 00:10:30.640 --> 00:10:34.320 And the intention is for that to become basically the new or 00:10:34.800 --> 00:10:36.960 the next Orthodox study Bible. 00:10:36.960 --> 00:10:40.400 But the team that's working on it is ecumenical, as on just 00:10:40.400 --> 00:10:41.200 Orthodox guys. 00:10:41.200 --> 00:10:43.440 They're Protestants or Catholics working on it. 00:10:43.440 --> 00:10:45.440 Which I think is a very good thing. 00:10:45.440 --> 00:10:50.080 I think it's important for that sort of project not to have 00:10:50.080 --> 00:10:55.120 your own particulars creeping into the translation decisions you're making. 00:10:55.120 --> 00:11:00.720 Because remember, when we're talking about a translation, we're talking about plain 00:11:00.720 --> 00:11:04.240 words. We're talking about men communicating with other men. 00:11:04.560 --> 00:11:09.200 And theology is an additional layer on top of that. 00:11:09.200 --> 00:11:13.840 So one of the beauties of the fact that the Septuagint was 00:11:13.840 --> 00:11:18.960 recorded in Quine Greek is that there are many other examplars of 00:11:18.960 --> 00:11:23.120 Quin Greek from that period, both before and after, that a translator 00:11:23.120 --> 00:11:26.320 can look at to help understand how did they speak in that 00:11:26.320 --> 00:11:29.360 day? How were they using various words and phrases? 00:11:29.360 --> 00:11:34.640 What concepts when they're expressed in one form in Greek would translate 00:11:34.800 --> 00:11:37.920 as a concept, as a thought, into English? 00:11:37.920 --> 00:11:42.480 It's very valuable when you have a big corpus available to you 00:11:42.480 --> 00:11:45.280 beyond just the text you're translating. 00:11:45.280 --> 00:11:47.680 Because there are some cases where if you're just looking at the 00:11:47.680 --> 00:11:52.240 text, you may not be able to tell exactly what the author 00:11:52.240 --> 00:11:55.360 meant. Now, in the case of a book, it's you do your 00:11:55.360 --> 00:11:58.480 best. In the case of scripture, that's not acceptable. 00:11:58.480 --> 00:12:02.400 And so the blessing that the church has is a God put 00:12:02.480 --> 00:12:09.120 scripture into a very accessible, relatively simplified version of Greek that translates 00:12:09.120 --> 00:12:12.640 fine and down in other European language, and a number of others, 00:12:12.640 --> 00:12:16.320 but like European languages going to be the closest cousins. 00:12:16.320 --> 00:12:20.640 This is a tremendous boon to anyone who's doing translation work because 00:12:20.960 --> 00:12:24.720 they can get the thoughts clearly into another language. 00:12:24.720 --> 00:12:28.400 And then if there are certain ways that certain traditions want to 00:12:28.400 --> 00:12:31.920 articulate their theology on top of that, you can You explain it. 00:12:31.920 --> 00:12:34.960 That's why there are pastors and priests to come along and say, 00:12:35.120 --> 00:12:37.120 Here's what this means in our context. 00:12:37.120 --> 00:12:38.160 That's fine. 00:12:38.160 --> 00:12:41.760 It's good for the language itself to be neutral as much as 00:12:41.760 --> 00:12:45.040 possible, not influenced by anyone's theology. 00:12:45.040 --> 00:12:48.960 Because as we've said many times, when we have disagreements among the 00:12:48.960 --> 00:12:52.800 various bodies, at most one of us is right. 00:12:52.800 --> 00:12:57.920 So given that rule, it's best not to be messing with the 00:12:57.920 --> 00:13:02.240 text of one simple language, translating into another simple language. 00:13:02.240 --> 00:13:05.360 Let the language be the language and let the theology be the 00:13:05.360 --> 00:13:09.200 theology. The theology doesn't have to reshape the language just to make 00:13:09.200 --> 00:13:10.880 sure no one gets anything wrong. 00:13:10.880 --> 00:13:12.320 That's a bad approach. 00:13:12.320 --> 00:13:14.880 That's why we have these bookstores that are so full of books 00:13:14.880 --> 00:13:18.960 today. You have Bibles for kids, Bibles for women, Bibles for role 00:13:18.960 --> 00:13:21.040 players, like it's it's insane. 00:13:21.040 --> 00:13:23.360 Let the Bible be in English and let there be one of 00:13:23.520 --> 00:13:26.240 them. So we'll get to that in the end. 00:13:26.240 --> 00:13:29.040 We'll put a link in the show notes to the Ancient Christian 00:13:29.040 --> 00:13:30.000 Study Bible. 00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:32.480 It's certainly not going to meet our criteria that we're going to 00:13:32.480 --> 00:13:33.520 present here today. 00:13:33.520 --> 00:13:35.840 Maybe it would be a better option than the other four. 00:13:35.920 --> 00:13:36.560 I hope so. 00:13:36.560 --> 00:13:37.520 That'd be great. 00:13:37.520 --> 00:13:39.600 Because the things that we're going to describe today it's going to 00:13:39.600 --> 00:13:41.920 be many years before such a thing exists. 00:13:41.920 --> 00:13:44.720 In the meantime, we need to be reading the Bible from the 00:13:44.720 --> 00:13:46.960 original Greek as best we can. 00:13:46.960 --> 00:13:51.040 So I hope that this ancient Christian study Bible bans out. 00:13:51.040 --> 00:13:53.760 You know, I'll get a copy when it comes out and we'll 00:13:53.760 --> 00:13:55.120 see. Whatever. 00:13:55.120 --> 00:13:56.720 It's going to be better than what we have. 00:13:56.720 --> 00:13:58.800 And that's one of the most important things. 00:13:58.800 --> 00:14:03.440 The Masoretic text, the rabbinic text derived Bibles that we have today 00:14:03.680 --> 00:14:07.760 are worse than any of the Septuagint Bibles that are also out 00:14:07.760 --> 00:14:10.640 there. Ultimately, what we want to have is a Bible that's free 00:14:10.640 --> 00:14:12.720 from the yeast of the Pharisees. 00:14:12.720 --> 00:14:17.680 So what we're gonna describe today is basically the team structure. 00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:22.480 Basically I'm gonna be describing a project management role. 00:14:22.480 --> 00:14:27.120 This project of translating the Septuagint cleanly with no interference, what should 00:14:27.120 --> 00:14:27.760 that look like? 00:14:28.560 --> 00:14:30.720 This is by no means exhaustive. 00:14:30.720 --> 00:14:32.720 This is by no means moral. 00:14:32.720 --> 00:14:35.200 These are pragmatic rules. 00:14:35.200 --> 00:14:38.800 So when we say do it like this, it's to achieve the 00:14:38.800 --> 00:14:40.800 sort of cleanliness I just described. 00:14:40.800 --> 00:14:43.440 The point is to keep the contamination out. 00:14:43.440 --> 00:14:47.040 We believe that these rules, if they are followed, will keep the 00:14:47.040 --> 00:14:49.120 contamination out. 00:14:49.120 --> 00:14:53.200 We equally believe that if these rules are not followed, the risk 00:14:53.200 --> 00:14:57.680 of contamination goes way up, even by degrees, these little one rule 00:14:57.680 --> 00:15:00.240 at a time, you strip it away, you increase the risk of 00:15:00.240 --> 00:15:04.240 contamination. One of my favorite movies, one of the only movies I 00:15:04.240 --> 00:15:08.160 like from before about the early nineties, is the Andromeda Strain. 00:15:08.160 --> 00:15:11.280 It's based on a Michael Crichton novel from nineteen sixty nine. 00:15:11.280 --> 00:15:13.520 The movie came out in seventy one. 00:15:13.520 --> 00:15:18.400 It's dated, but it's not that dated in terms of the ridiculousness 00:15:18.400 --> 00:15:18.880 of it. 00:15:18.880 --> 00:15:21.200 The reason I came to mind as I was thinking about this 00:15:21.840 --> 00:15:26.320 is that one of the key elements of the Andromeda strain is 00:15:26.640 --> 00:15:29.280 basically they have a microbe from outer space and they're going to 00:15:29.280 --> 00:15:33.120 try to deal with it in isolation because it was killing people, 00:15:33.120 --> 00:15:37.840 it was hurting people, they get it into this facility though specifically 00:15:37.840 --> 00:15:43.040 designed to contain some xenosourced pathogen. 00:15:43.040 --> 00:15:45.600 And the structure of the facility and all the rules that they 00:15:45.600 --> 00:15:49.520 came up with in anticipation of such an event was specifically designed 00:15:49.520 --> 00:15:52.560 to keep in any earthbound contamination out. 00:15:52.560 --> 00:15:54.800 So when they worked on the pathogen, they knew that that was 00:15:54.800 --> 00:15:56.160 all they were looking at. 00:15:56.160 --> 00:15:58.880 So a lot of the book and a lot of the movie 00:15:58.880 --> 00:16:03.120 is detailed around the specific layers of defenses. 00:16:03.120 --> 00:16:06.240 And if any one of those layers those defenses were breached, the 00:16:06.240 --> 00:16:10.480 pathogen could get out and something from Earth could get in and 00:16:10.800 --> 00:16:12.560 confuse the whole thing. 00:16:12.560 --> 00:16:16.480 So when we describe this process, the same mentality is in mind. 00:16:16.480 --> 00:16:19.360 You know, when the surgeon cuts me open and he didn't scrub 00:16:19.360 --> 00:16:21.360 his hands that well, maybe it'd be fine. 00:16:21.360 --> 00:16:24.560 Maybe his hands happened to be clean before he got there for 00:16:24.560 --> 00:16:27.520 surgery. And so all the scrubbing that day didn't turn out to 00:16:27.520 --> 00:16:28.400 be necessary. 00:16:28.400 --> 00:16:30.160 But you don't want to take the chance. 00:16:30.160 --> 00:16:32.800 You do it not because you know it's absolutely going to prevent 00:16:32.800 --> 00:16:33.600 the problem. 00:16:33.600 --> 00:16:36.400 You do it because it significantly reduces the risk of that sort 00:16:36.400 --> 00:16:37.120 of problem. 00:16:37.120 --> 00:16:38.480 So just keep that in mind. 00:16:38.480 --> 00:16:40.240 These are not moral rules. 00:16:40.560 --> 00:16:42.880 I say that because right off the bat we're gonna be getting 00:16:42.880 --> 00:16:46.560 to some things that some people will feel they're moral condemnations. 00:16:46.560 --> 00:16:47.760 That's not the case. 00:16:47.760 --> 00:16:49.840 These are hygienic matters. 00:16:49.840 --> 00:16:52.880 They're cleanliness rules, they're not moral rules. 00:16:52.880 --> 00:16:56.320 In other contexts and other places, they wouldn't matter at all. 00:16:56.320 --> 00:16:59.680 Basically what we're going to be describing here are four teams that 00:16:59.680 --> 00:17:01.120 will be working together. 00:17:01.120 --> 00:17:04.000 You have a core translation team that would be working directly on 00:17:04.000 --> 00:17:05.040 the text. 00:17:05.040 --> 00:17:09.040 You have a non air gapped research team that would be giving 00:17:09.040 --> 00:17:13.120 sources to that core team, and the non air gapped research team 00:17:13.120 --> 00:17:15.840 is the one that's able to interact with sources that are going 00:17:15.840 --> 00:17:20.720 to be contaminated by the rabbinic authorship, or by church fathers and 00:17:20.720 --> 00:17:24.720 others who were themselves contaminated to some degree by what the rabbis 00:17:24.720 --> 00:17:28.480 said. So the non-air gapped research team is going to be interacting 00:17:28.480 --> 00:17:34.400 with external sources like patristics that may well have been themselves influenced 00:17:34.400 --> 00:17:36.000 by the rabbis. 00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:40.240 Their job is to keep the rabbinic influences away from the core 00:17:40.400 --> 00:17:45.280 team. So nothing that the core team ever sees will be unvetted 00:17:45.440 --> 00:17:47.600 for that sort of contamination. 00:17:47.600 --> 00:17:51.520 There's also going to be an advisory team or an editorial team. 00:17:51.520 --> 00:17:54.080 But in this context, they're not managers. 00:17:54.080 --> 00:17:59.120 They will be reviewing basically what the librarians are sending in, and 00:17:59.120 --> 00:18:02.480 they'll be reviewing what the translators are sending out, just to sort 00:18:02.480 --> 00:18:04.720 of make sure that everyone's on the same page. 00:18:04.720 --> 00:18:07.600 The rules that we're going to describe that are most stringent for 00:18:07.600 --> 00:18:10.640 the translators won't apply to these other two teams because they kind 00:18:10.640 --> 00:18:13.360 of have different purposes and we'll explain that in a minute. 00:18:13.360 --> 00:18:16.720 And we're going to have a legal and clearance team because a 00:18:16.720 --> 00:18:19.280 lot of what is going to be used here will be externally 00:18:19.280 --> 00:18:22.320 sourced sourced from copyrighted materials. 00:18:22.320 --> 00:18:26.080 And one of the fundamental goals at the end of such project 00:18:26.320 --> 00:18:31.040 needs to be to release an English translation of the Septuagint that 00:18:31.040 --> 00:18:36.480 is unencumbered by copyright, free for reproduction, as well as the apparatus 00:18:36.480 --> 00:18:41.360 that includes everything that the translation team used, documenting in Greek or 00:18:41.360 --> 00:18:42.720 whatever other languages. 00:18:42.720 --> 00:18:45.760 Here's exactly what the guys who are translating the Bible, here's what 00:18:45.760 --> 00:18:50.720 they were looking at showing the entire genealogy of every word choice 00:18:50.720 --> 00:18:55.760 made in the Bible, both because it would be incredibly valuable for 00:18:56.000 --> 00:19:01.440 studying, and also to sort of let external viewers read and vet 00:19:01.520 --> 00:19:04.480 and determine that, yeah, this was a good translation effort. 00:19:04.480 --> 00:19:08.560 If mistakes, rares, or whatever crept in when the apparatus is published 00:19:08.560 --> 00:19:10.960 side by side, then sure you can see all of it. 00:19:10.960 --> 00:19:14.080 You need a legal and clearance to you because it will require 00:19:14.080 --> 00:19:18.560 permission from a bunch of rights holders to also publish their stuff 00:19:18.560 --> 00:19:19.520 for free. 00:19:19.520 --> 00:19:22.640 So you need negotiation, you're gonna need checks to be cut. 00:19:22.640 --> 00:19:27.280 And all that is a necessary part of producing the finished work 00:19:27.520 --> 00:19:31.920 that will bear fruit for centuries to come. 00:19:32.160 --> 00:19:36.000 Part of the reason that some of this may seem excessive or 00:19:36.000 --> 00:19:41.200 extreme to some of you is that just just how easy it 00:19:41.200 --> 00:19:45.280 is to ignore the things that influence you, even not to notice 00:19:45.280 --> 00:19:46.480 them at all. 00:19:46.480 --> 00:19:50.160 It's extremely easy to miss those things. 00:19:50.160 --> 00:19:53.920 And I thought about this yesterday when I was writing an article 00:19:54.080 --> 00:19:56.640 that maybe it will be out by the time this episode is 00:19:56.640 --> 00:20:02.000 released, but there are probably a dozen different things that I reference 00:20:02.080 --> 00:20:07.520 or straight up cite in that article that have clearly influenced me 00:20:07.760 --> 00:20:09.680 to the degree that I am aware of them. 00:20:09.680 --> 00:20:10.800 I've memorized them. 00:20:10.800 --> 00:20:13.760 I was writing these things down, citing them from memory, not looking 00:20:13.760 --> 00:20:14.560 them up. 00:20:14.560 --> 00:20:20.240 And so even if I recognize That initial layer, that first layer 00:20:20.240 --> 00:20:24.000 of influence, insofar as just the sheer fact that the thing exists 00:20:24.000 --> 00:20:25.920 in my memory. 00:20:25.920 --> 00:20:30.480 And even if I account for that, if I deliberately ignore that 00:20:30.560 --> 00:20:33.840 and make sure that I don't permit it to influence other downstream 00:20:33.840 --> 00:20:40.320 thoughts, the problem is, at some point it becomes sufficiently attenuated in 00:20:40.320 --> 00:20:43.520 any man's mind that you can no longer do that. 00:20:43.520 --> 00:20:46.960 And so maybe there's that second order or third or fourth order 00:20:46.960 --> 00:20:53.200 effect where you don't realize that you've made this particular decision because 00:20:53.200 --> 00:20:57.600 of some influence three or four rungs up the ladder. 00:20:57.600 --> 00:21:02.000 That is the reason we want to take this level of precaution. 00:21:02.000 --> 00:21:07.360 As Wo said, sometimes you'll see church fathers or others, and there's 00:21:07.280 --> 00:21:09.680 no citation to the rabbis, there's no citation 00:21:10.640 --> 00:21:13.920 even to the rabbinic text, but if you look at the argument 00:21:13.920 --> 00:21:19.040 that they are making, it's clearly drawn from rabbinic sources. 00:21:19.040 --> 00:21:21.920 Because that was a second or even a third order effect. 00:21:21.920 --> 00:21:26.400 And so the goal is to minimize that, to eliminate it to 00:21:26.400 --> 00:21:28.640 the degree that it is possible. 00:21:28.640 --> 00:21:33.280 And that is the reason for taking these sort of seemingly extreme 00:21:33.280 --> 00:21:35.280 measures Measures. 00:21:35.280 --> 00:21:38.480 for those of you who speak German though sort of as an 00:21:38.640 --> 00:21:42.320 aside, but it ties into this because of the structure of the 00:21:42.320 --> 00:21:49.040 thing. There are some editions of the Septuagint translated into German you 00:21:49.040 --> 00:21:50.800 can buy today they exist. 00:21:50.800 --> 00:21:52.480 Some of them are pretty good. 00:21:52.480 --> 00:21:57.840 You have the Ralphs, the Göttingen, the Göttingen is the and I 00:21:57.840 --> 00:21:59.840 mean that in uppercase letters. 00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.640 It is the academic version of the Septuagint, other than obviously the 00:22:04.640 --> 00:22:08.720 Greek itself, because obviously that has the Greek, it has all the 00:22:08.720 --> 00:22:12.640 sources, it has all the annotations, it has the apparatus, but everything 00:22:12.640 --> 00:22:13.760 else is basically in German. 00:22:13.760 --> 00:22:16.160 So you're going to have to know German for that one. 00:22:16.160 --> 00:22:21.600 But as far as not academic versions, just for everyday reading, although 00:22:21.600 --> 00:22:25.600 with quite a healthy number of footnotes, there is the Septuagint Deutsch, 00:22:25.600 --> 00:22:27.600 which was released in two thousand nine. 00:22:27.600 --> 00:22:30.000 I happen to have that version on my desk right now, it 00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:31.360 is also a good option. 00:22:31.360 --> 00:22:32.480 And then the Ralphs. 00:22:32.480 --> 00:22:35.120 The reason that the Ralphs and the Göttingen are relevant is that 00:22:35.120 --> 00:22:37.920 they will be relevant as we go through this episode simply by 00:22:37.920 --> 00:22:42.640 virtue of the Of their position in the academic landscape. 00:22:42.640 --> 00:22:47.040 But the structure that the German Bible Society, I'll just give the 00:22:47.040 --> 00:22:52.160 name in English, used when they were creating the Septuagint Deutsch, the 00:22:52.160 --> 00:22:57.440 most recent version in modern German very readable translation, they did a 00:22:57.440 --> 00:22:58.960 little bit of what we're recommending. 00:22:58.960 --> 00:23:01.680 They did not use the same sort of safeguards, they didn't do 00:23:01.680 --> 00:23:05.520 the air gapping and the isolation, but they did have small teams 00:23:05.520 --> 00:23:09.920 of academics who were versed in relevant areas translating this, and then 00:23:09.920 --> 00:23:13.840 they had an editorial oversight board that helped to organize this, and 00:23:13.840 --> 00:23:18.000 then obviously because it's the German Bible Society, a decent sized corporation, 00:23:18.000 --> 00:23:20.880 they had the legal team as well. 00:23:20.880 --> 00:23:24.880 The step that they did not take that we want to take 00:23:24.880 --> 00:23:29.040 for this version and for any other similar project in any other 00:23:29.040 --> 00:23:33.120 language, whether it's a European language or if it's say Japanese or 00:23:33.120 --> 00:23:36.800 Korean or something else, whatever it happens to be. 00:23:36.800 --> 00:23:40.720 The vitally important step that we want to take is that isolation 00:23:40.720 --> 00:23:42.960 of the translators themselves. 00:23:42.960 --> 00:23:47.040 And the ability to restrict the sources they're using, not in the 00:23:47.040 --> 00:23:50.240 sense, many here restrict and they think negative, not in the sense 00:23:50.240 --> 00:23:54.320 of a negative, but rather in the sense of not permitting things 00:23:54.320 --> 00:23:58.080 that have been contaminated to be in front of the translators when 00:23:58.080 --> 00:24:01.040 they are doing this vitally important work. 00:24:01.040 --> 00:24:05.120 You don't want to permit any sort of contamination, as Wo mentioned 00:24:05.200 --> 00:24:07.040 with the examples that he gave. 00:24:07.040 --> 00:24:11.840 There are certain contaminants that may seem very small, but they can 00:24:11.840 --> 00:24:14.800 have profound effects downstream. 00:24:14.800 --> 00:24:18.320 Another example of that would be, for those of you who are 00:24:18.320 --> 00:24:21.520 more familiar with working in the kitchen, say, canning. 00:24:21.520 --> 00:24:27.200 If you don't properly sanitize the can, what goes into the can, 00:24:27.200 --> 00:24:30.080 then what you get back out of the can is not going 00:24:30.080 --> 00:24:31.520 to be what you wanted. 00:24:31.520 --> 00:24:33.680 As we all know very well, it's going to be the little 00:24:33.680 --> 00:24:37.200 expanded can that will probably kill you if you eat it. 00:24:37.200 --> 00:24:41.200 Another example that comes to mind simply because I moved a bunch 00:24:41.200 --> 00:24:43.680 of chicken feed yesterday. 00:24:43.680 --> 00:24:46.480 When I fill up the drums that I use to store the 00:24:46.480 --> 00:24:51.440 chicken feed long term, I dust diatomaceous earth on top of it. 00:24:51.440 --> 00:24:56.000 The reason I do that, it's a similar concept here, it's not 00:24:56.000 --> 00:24:57.040 exactly the same. 00:24:57.040 --> 00:25:00.400 But the reason that I do that is that it removes some 00:25:00.400 --> 00:25:03.360 of the insects that inevitably get into feed. 00:25:03.360 --> 00:25:06.240 Anyone who's been around animals, worked on a farm knows. 00:25:06.240 --> 00:25:09.760 Granary weevils are basic omnipresent. 00:25:09.760 --> 00:25:11.920 You can almost not get rid of them. 00:25:11.920 --> 00:25:15.360 But if you dust the feed with diatomaceous earth, you can It 00:25:15.360 --> 00:25:18.720 will kill them or at least the larva so they won't continue 00:25:18.720 --> 00:25:21.840 that life cycle in your grain and you won't open up your 00:25:22.080 --> 00:25:25.760 50, 60 gallon drum six months in the future and realize that 00:25:25.760 --> 00:25:27.840 it's full of bugs. 00:25:27.840 --> 00:25:29.120 The same sort of process. 00:25:29.120 --> 00:25:34.400 You're trying to get rid of that contaminant before it reaches the 00:25:34.400 --> 00:25:35.520 final product. 00:25:35.520 --> 00:25:38.240 That's what we want to do with this structure and with this 00:25:38.240 --> 00:25:40.080 setup for the translation. 00:25:40.080 --> 00:25:44.560 The goal is to have a faithful translation of God's Word without 00:25:44.560 --> 00:25:48.800 any of what the rabbis tried to pass off as God's Word. 00:25:48.800 --> 00:25:52.320 As we went over in the previous episodes, there are a lot 00:25:52.320 --> 00:25:52.880 of problems. 00:25:52.880 --> 00:25:56.320 We're trying to get rid of those problems, and so the extremity 00:25:56.400 --> 00:26:00.400 as it may seem of the effort of the design is absolutely 00:26:00.400 --> 00:26:03.920 warranted because it's the only way to be certain. 00:26:03.920 --> 00:26:09.200 And as well said, each additional layer, each additional step just decreases 00:26:09.200 --> 00:26:13.360 the odds of that contamination reaching the final product. 00:26:13.360 --> 00:26:18.480 Any step you take, any additional step you take in order to 00:26:19.040 --> 00:26:23.120 increase that gap, in order to increase that security, in order to 00:26:23.120 --> 00:26:26.720 cut down on the risk of contamination, is a good thing. 00:26:26.720 --> 00:26:28.000 Are they all necessary? 00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:28.640 Perhaps not. 00:26:28.640 --> 00:26:30.000 Maybe you'll get lucky. 00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.640 But each additional one increases the likelihood of the product being what 00:26:34.640 --> 00:26:38.720 you intend instead of what you did not intend. 00:26:40.320 --> 00:26:43.920 So the rules for the selection of the sort of men, and 00:26:43.920 --> 00:26:48.240 obviously they would only be men on the core translation team, which 00:26:48.240 --> 00:26:51.040 would probably be in the neighborhood of a dozen men. 00:26:51.040 --> 00:26:54.000 You know, it's I think a dozen is a nice number. 00:26:54.000 --> 00:26:55.840 It's a number of a jury. 00:26:55.840 --> 00:26:58.640 And I think that in some ways we are looking at creating 00:26:58.640 --> 00:27:02.560 a jury here, although they're gonna work to some degree independently on 00:27:02.560 --> 00:27:03.600 which portions. 00:27:03.760 --> 00:27:06.000 We'll talk a little bit about the process of how they work 00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:06.960 through things. 00:27:06.960 --> 00:27:09.440 You don't want to be too big or too small. 00:27:09.440 --> 00:27:13.600 You want enough men in the mix that different viewpoints and different 00:27:13.600 --> 00:27:18.240 opinions will even each other out and what is produced in the 00:27:18.240 --> 00:27:23.920 end is not a compromise, but a purification and a manifestation of 00:27:23.920 --> 00:27:27.920 the ideals that would take them all into the sort of project, 00:27:27.920 --> 00:27:31.520 which is probably going to take 10, 15, maybe 20 years to 00:27:31.520 --> 00:27:36.240 accomplish. For this core translation team, I think rule number one needs 00:27:36.240 --> 00:27:40.720 to be absolutely zero knowledge of Hebrew. 00:27:40.720 --> 00:27:45.920 Maybe get the outside if somebody like knows the Hebrew alphabet kind 00:27:45.920 --> 00:27:48.800 of suspect, but literally no more than that. 00:27:48.800 --> 00:27:52.640 If they can read it, if they've studied it, just write out, 00:27:52.640 --> 00:27:56.320 period. And that is going to seem like one of the most 00:27:56.320 --> 00:27:57.760 ridiculous ones. 00:27:57.760 --> 00:28:00.560 In particular, you think well that's going to exclude so many types 00:28:00.560 --> 00:28:02.240 of yeah, exactly. 00:28:02.240 --> 00:28:05.840 We are excluding so many types of men here. 00:28:05.840 --> 00:28:09.840 The purpose of the rules, the purpose of keeping things out of 00:28:09.840 --> 00:28:12.720 the clean room is exclusion. 00:28:12.720 --> 00:28:15.920 So you are right that a whole bunch of guys don't get 00:28:15.920 --> 00:28:19.040 to come into the inner sanctum where the real work is being 00:28:19.040 --> 00:28:20.880 done. This is deliberate. 00:28:20.880 --> 00:28:24.080 This is the sort of the most extreme of all the rules, 00:28:24.080 --> 00:28:28.880 in the most absolute, but I put it up front because we 00:28:28.880 --> 00:28:33.040 need to understand if we believe that the rabbis should never have 00:28:33.040 --> 00:28:36.720 had any influence on Christianity, then we have to get the so-called 00:28:36.720 --> 00:28:39.200 Hebrew language entirely out of the mixture. 00:28:39.200 --> 00:28:44.000 And anyone who has ever studied to any degree the so-called Hebrew 00:28:44.000 --> 00:28:47.520 language is contaminated. 00:28:47.520 --> 00:28:50.960 This is something that we see in scripture in other contexts. 00:28:50.960 --> 00:28:53.440 When you look at, for example, the rules for who can be 00:28:53.440 --> 00:28:57.120 a pastor, it excludes a bunch of guys who were fine for 00:28:57.120 --> 00:28:58.800 all sorts of other things. 00:28:58.800 --> 00:29:03.920 But God specifically says for this one thing you cannot be in 00:29:03.920 --> 00:29:05.280 that role. 00:29:05.280 --> 00:29:08.640 It excludes men who were fine as kings, and yet they can't 00:29:08.640 --> 00:29:11.280 fulfill that particular role. 00:29:11.280 --> 00:29:13.920 This is not alien to the Christian faith. 00:29:13.920 --> 00:29:16.000 And so I said at the outset, this is not a moral 00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:18.400 claim. It's not saying, well, you learned Hebrew, you're going to hell. 00:29:18.400 --> 00:29:19.120 I don't think that. 00:29:19.120 --> 00:29:20.160 My dad knows Hebrew. 00:29:20.160 --> 00:29:20.880 Like it's fine. 00:29:20.880 --> 00:29:21.520 It's not fine. 00:29:21.520 --> 00:29:22.000 It was dumb. 00:29:22.000 --> 00:29:22.880 It was a waste of time. 00:29:23.360 --> 00:29:26.480 But everything that everyone has told all of these men to this 00:29:26.480 --> 00:29:29.040 point is you need to learn Hebrew if you want to understand 00:29:29.040 --> 00:29:30.640 the Old Testament. 00:29:30.640 --> 00:29:33.280 False in so many ways that we proved over the last seven 00:29:33.280 --> 00:29:35.920 episodes. By the time we get done with this full series, it's 00:29:35.840 --> 00:29:37.280 gonna be about twenty hours. 00:29:37.280 --> 00:29:40.480 This is a long case to make for how to evaluate and 00:29:40.480 --> 00:29:42.240 then fix this problem. 00:29:42.240 --> 00:29:44.960 We have made the case that you cannot have Hebrew in the 00:29:44.960 --> 00:29:50.320 mix. And an expansion of no Hebrew, but a separate rule nonetheless 00:29:50.480 --> 00:29:53.120 is no theological training whatsoever. 00:29:53.200 --> 00:29:56.800 Guy who's gone to seminary, a guy who has been a theologian, 00:29:56.800 --> 00:29:59.120 whatever, flat out. 00:29:59.120 --> 00:30:01.760 And again, you think, well, that's going to exclude so many guys. 00:30:01.760 --> 00:30:04.080 That's going to exclude our church experts. 00:30:04.080 --> 00:30:06.560 Yes, you're bloody well right. 00:30:06.560 --> 00:30:09.600 The men who have been looking at this stuff their entire lives 00:30:09.600 --> 00:30:13.360 and missed it, who failed to get this right, they don't get 00:30:13.360 --> 00:30:15.680 to be the ones making the decisions. 00:30:15.680 --> 00:30:20.160 They have proven that their judgment is unsound and everything that they 00:30:20.160 --> 00:30:22.400 know is contaminated by the very sort of thing that we don't 00:30:22.400 --> 00:30:23.840 want to have in the room. 00:30:23.840 --> 00:30:25.520 Now, what do we want in the room? 00:30:25.520 --> 00:30:29.920 We want faithful Christians, but just faithful Christians who have not been 00:30:29.920 --> 00:30:32.320 deeply involved in study. 00:30:32.320 --> 00:30:36.000 And that's kind of one of the not the wishy washiest, but 00:30:36.000 --> 00:30:38.640 it's the one that's going to require the greatest degree of judgment 00:30:39.120 --> 00:30:40.880 when these teams are being selected. 00:30:40.880 --> 00:30:43.520 And as Corey said, like I care about English because it's the 00:30:43.520 --> 00:30:46.800 only language I speak, but this same model could be exported to 00:30:46.800 --> 00:30:50.080 Japan. It's gonna be even easier in Germany because as Corey said, 00:30:50.080 --> 00:30:52.880 many of the sources are already in German, so there's less work 00:30:52.880 --> 00:30:54.400 for them to do. 00:30:54.400 --> 00:30:56.480 But at the end of the day, you have to have some 00:30:56.480 --> 00:30:59.200 degree of discernment on which men should be included. 00:30:59.200 --> 00:31:00.960 They have to be faithful Christians. 00:31:00.960 --> 00:31:06.160 Obviously have to buy into everything that we've sort of represented here 00:31:06.400 --> 00:31:10.400 that the Greek scripture is breathed out by God and that nothing 00:31:10.400 --> 00:31:13.120 else belongs in the Bible that we're reading at home to our 00:31:13.120 --> 00:31:17.840 kids. That's a very simple goal, but it's very difficult to achieve. 00:31:17.840 --> 00:31:21.200 And when you look at what's taught in seminaries, when you look 00:31:21.200 --> 00:31:25.200 at what someone who's been deeply involved in theology for many years, 00:31:25.200 --> 00:31:28.560 I would be disqualified, even though I don't even meet the deeply 00:31:28.560 --> 00:31:30.960 involved in theology test. 00:31:30.960 --> 00:31:37.360 But I have been sufficiently attentive to what the rabbis have taught 00:31:37.600 --> 00:31:40.320 that I have absorbed it by osmosis. 00:31:40.320 --> 00:31:42.240 I can't get it out of the wash. 00:31:42.240 --> 00:31:44.640 It's one of those stains that just doesn't come out. 00:31:44.640 --> 00:31:47.440 It has nothing to do with damnation, has nothing to do with 00:31:47.440 --> 00:31:51.600 stupidity. It's a simple fact that were I looking at a Greek 00:31:51.600 --> 00:31:55.120 translation, at a Greek source, assuming that I were fluent in Koine 00:31:55.440 --> 00:31:59.280 Greek, it is simply a fact that it would be impossible for 00:31:59.280 --> 00:32:04.160 me to extricate from my mind the various English translations that I've 00:32:04.160 --> 00:32:05.360 seen of that. 00:32:05.360 --> 00:32:09.440 That's naturally going to guide my thought process. 00:32:09.440 --> 00:32:10.960 You can't get away from that. 00:32:10.960 --> 00:32:13.760 Which means that the ideal sort of man for this is a 00:32:13.760 --> 00:32:18.400 Christian, not a new convert, but not someone who has been deeply 00:32:18.400 --> 00:32:21.280 involved until fairly recently. 00:32:21.280 --> 00:32:24.480 Ideally, one who once he does really care in a In a 00:32:24.480 --> 00:32:27.600 best case, he wouldn't study a bunch of theology from guys who've 00:32:27.600 --> 00:32:30.080 been influenced by this stuff, which is hard. 00:32:30.080 --> 00:32:32.880 Like we'll get to the end about how this is only step 00:32:32.880 --> 00:32:37.120 one of this process, but if you include a man who has 00:32:37.120 --> 00:32:41.680 studied too much theology, or certainly a man who's actually been trained 00:32:41.680 --> 00:32:45.520 formally in theology, you're going to end up with someone who has 00:32:45.520 --> 00:32:47.280 too many priors. 00:32:47.280 --> 00:32:50.880 And remember what I said earlier about the translation process. 00:32:50.880 --> 00:32:55.200 We don't want theology to be informing the output. 00:32:55.200 --> 00:32:57.120 We want philology. 00:32:57.120 --> 00:33:00.880 We want straight up what does the word say, what is a 00:33:00.880 --> 00:33:02.000 normal reading of this? 00:33:02.640 --> 00:33:09.600 If a pagan Greek man in AD fifty five read the Septuagint, 00:33:09.600 --> 00:33:13.040 what conclusion would he reach from the text? 00:33:13.040 --> 00:33:17.200 Now, as we saw with the Ethiopian eunuch, obviously there are cases 00:33:17.200 --> 00:33:18.720 where you need someone to explain it to you. 00:33:18.720 --> 00:33:22.240 There are things you require faith for you to understand. 00:33:22.240 --> 00:33:25.200 But he could read perfectly well what the words were there. 00:33:25.200 --> 00:33:28.640 There was no confusion for this Ethiopian reading in Greek which was 00:33:28.640 --> 00:33:29.760 not his first language. 00:33:29.760 --> 00:33:31.520 He knew exactly what the Greek said. 00:33:31.520 --> 00:33:33.760 He just didn't understand it. 00:33:33.760 --> 00:33:36.960 So I hope that makes sense in the context of a translation 00:33:36.960 --> 00:33:41.360 committee. You don't translate it into something that will fix all of 00:33:41.360 --> 00:33:43.200 the theological problems. 00:33:43.200 --> 00:33:47.520 You translate it from Greek into English or German or Japanese or 00:33:47.520 --> 00:33:53.280 whatever, such that the native reader understands exactly what the words mean, 00:33:53.280 --> 00:33:55.520 but maybe they don't understand the theology. 00:33:55.520 --> 00:33:58.560 That's where the translation needs to be. 00:33:58.560 --> 00:34:01.360 And so we'll talk a little more about the process with some 00:34:01.360 --> 00:34:04.800 of the groups like the editorial group, the advisory group. 00:34:04.800 --> 00:34:06.880 Those are going to be men who are going to be well 00:34:06.880 --> 00:34:09.520 informed in those things, who will act as a check to make 00:34:09.520 --> 00:34:14.320 sure that the translators don't inadvertently create bad theology by their word 00:34:14.320 --> 00:34:16.800 choices. Because that's entirely possible. 00:34:16.800 --> 00:34:20.960 So although we have men who are Christians, but they are not 00:34:20.960 --> 00:34:24.880 deep theologians at the time that they go into this process, that 00:34:24.880 --> 00:34:28.400 doesn't mean that we're just going to create an agnostic or atheistic 00:34:28.400 --> 00:34:30.800 Bible. That's the last thing that we want. 00:34:30.800 --> 00:34:36.560 We want to faithful Christian Bible that truly espouses Christian theology, but 00:34:36.560 --> 00:34:38.800 you don't need to bring a ton of that into the room 00:34:38.800 --> 00:34:39.360 with you. 00:34:39.360 --> 00:34:42.880 You need to bring language experience, but you don't need to bring 00:34:42.880 --> 00:34:44.720 theological experience. 00:34:44.720 --> 00:34:48.880 It's a distinction that from the outside might seem like you wouldn't 00:34:48.800 --> 00:34:49.840 think that would work. 00:34:49.840 --> 00:34:53.200 It doesn't seem like you can have one without the other, but 00:34:53.200 --> 00:34:56.800 it's simply the case that especially when you're not talking about oral 00:34:56.800 --> 00:35:02.320 tradition, when you're just talking about simplified Koine Greek, translated into English, 00:35:02.320 --> 00:35:05.600 if it's any Koine Greek source from the first century, whatever it 00:35:05.600 --> 00:35:09.360 is, forget the Bible, translating anything written in the first century in 00:35:09.360 --> 00:35:14.240 Koine Greek into English is a straightforward process, it's a solved problem. 00:35:14.240 --> 00:35:17.200 Anyone who's a domain expert in that is going to be able 00:35:17.200 --> 00:35:18.720 to do a good job with it. 00:35:18.720 --> 00:35:23.040 And then because it's the Bible, you additionally need checks by men 00:35:23.360 --> 00:35:27.600 who are more familiar against decisions to make sure that it doesn't 00:35:27.520 --> 00:35:33.280 accidentally introduce misleading wording that could produce down the road bad theology. 00:35:33.280 --> 00:35:35.520 But we don't want theologians in the room. 00:35:35.520 --> 00:35:37.600 We don't want scholars in the room. 00:35:37.600 --> 00:35:42.000 Unless it's strictly secular Greek writing. 00:35:42.000 --> 00:35:42.640 That's fine. 00:35:42.640 --> 00:35:45.120 If someone's a Greek scholar, that's the ideal case. 00:35:45.120 --> 00:35:49.360 Unfortunately, classics departments are so polluted at this point that I think 00:35:49.360 --> 00:35:52.000 it might be difficult to find someone who's gone through a classics 00:35:52.000 --> 00:35:55.680 department that isn't a rabid atheist, but if you could find someone 00:35:55.680 --> 00:36:00.160 who was totally ignorant of scripture until you recruited him, made him 00:36:00.160 --> 00:36:04.400 a Christian, but he was fluent and coined a Greek, was very 00:36:04.400 --> 00:36:07.520 good at that, that would almost be the ideal candidate. 00:36:07.520 --> 00:36:09.520 Now he would obviously have to be a Christian for a few 00:36:09.520 --> 00:36:12.880 years and get up to speed on things before you set him 00:36:12.880 --> 00:36:14.240 loose on the Bible. 00:36:14.240 --> 00:36:18.240 But the additional layers outside of the core translation team help to 00:36:18.240 --> 00:36:22.560 guard against even that eventuality. 00:36:22.880 --> 00:36:23.040 And 00:36:23.040 --> 00:36:27.760 it is certainly worth pointing out that, as Woe mentioned in his 00:36:27.760 --> 00:36:32.240 intro, one of the advantages of Greek certainly is that Greek has 00:36:32.240 --> 00:36:35.760 this existing corpus of works, and I'm talking about the ones that 00:36:35.760 --> 00:36:42.080 came prior to the New Testament at least, prior to the Septuagint. 00:36:42.080 --> 00:36:44.640 Because you have all of the ancient Greek texts, you have these 00:36:44.640 --> 00:36:49.200 things that you can rely upon for your translation choices with regard 00:36:49.200 --> 00:36:53.600 to words and what they mean, their etymology, the history, their nuance, 00:36:53.600 --> 00:36:53.920 and 00:36:54.960 --> 00:37:00.640 unlike using certain other materials that have been influenced by the rabbis 00:37:00.720 --> 00:37:05.600 influenced by Hebrew, we don't have this concern with ancient Greek. 00:37:05.600 --> 00:37:10.880 Ancient Greek was not influenced by rabbis, so the translators can certainly 00:37:10.880 --> 00:37:15.440 rely on those materials when they're making some of their translation decisions. 00:37:15.440 --> 00:37:20.400 Similar to what Woe said about himself, I am also certainly disqualified. 00:37:21.200 --> 00:37:24.400 It's not really a task for either of us for various other 00:37:24.400 --> 00:37:28.240 reasons, but even if we were inclined to want to participate in 00:37:28.240 --> 00:37:34.800 this, we're certainly disqualified from being part of the core translation committee 00:37:35.200 --> 00:37:39.040 the core translation team any of those teams if there are multiple 00:37:39.040 --> 00:37:42.400 teams for that so you can compare across them say similar to 00:37:42.400 --> 00:37:45.760 what was done with, of course, the Septuagint. 00:37:45.760 --> 00:37:51.600 But I'm disqualified as for one reason, certainly I mentioned in a 00:37:51.600 --> 00:37:56.880 previous episode, that as I was going through the Psalter, for instance, 00:37:56.880 --> 00:38:01.440 I was comparing some of the stuff in translations of the Septuagint 00:38:01.680 --> 00:38:06.880 mentally with the ESV, because I have read it so many times 00:38:06.880 --> 00:38:10.720 that I have memorized large chunks of the ESV. 00:38:10.720 --> 00:38:14.240 For those who don't know, I've been doing a daily devotions podcast 00:38:14.240 --> 00:38:18.640 for six years now, about this point two thirds between two thirds 00:38:18.640 --> 00:38:20.960 and three quarters of the way through year six. 00:38:20.960 --> 00:38:24.880 And so I read from the ESV translation of the Psalter, I'll 00:38:24.800 --> 00:38:28.480 be switching over to the Septuagint as soon as there is a 00:38:28.800 --> 00:38:34.000 usable version available, but I've been reading from the ESV version every 00:38:34.000 --> 00:38:36.000 single day for six years. 00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:37.200 With no breaks. 00:38:37.200 --> 00:38:41.520 The only time where I have not done it the recording part 00:38:41.760 --> 00:38:44.880 on a specific day is when I have gone hiking for multiple 00:38:44.880 --> 00:38:47.120 days or something and I've recorded it in advance. 00:38:47.120 --> 00:38:50.480 But I have read that so many times that it is permanently 00:38:51.040 --> 00:38:52.160 in my memory. 00:38:52.160 --> 00:38:56.800 And so if I am reading, say the Koine Greek, if I 00:38:56.800 --> 00:39:02.000 am reading what is in the Septuagint, inevitably I am also going 00:39:02.000 --> 00:39:05.120 to have in my mind at the same time the ESV translation 00:39:05.680 --> 00:39:09.760 that came from, at least in part as we demonstrated, not entirely, 00:39:09.760 --> 00:39:12.080 but in part the rabbinic text. 00:39:12.080 --> 00:39:13.920 So I'm disqualified. 00:39:13.920 --> 00:39:17.520 I cannot be part of that part of this project. 00:39:17.520 --> 00:39:21.040 It is vitally important to make sure that we have the right 00:39:21.040 --> 00:39:25.040 men doing the different parts of this task. 00:39:25.040 --> 00:39:29.920 It doesn't matter if a man is otherwise competent or even exceptionally 00:39:29.920 --> 00:39:35.200 competent in some particular area he may very well be disqualified from 00:39:35.200 --> 00:39:39.120 some other portion of the task for some reason that doesn't say 00:39:39.120 --> 00:39:40.640 anything bad about him as a man. 00:39:40.640 --> 00:39:45.200 We're not passing judgment on men who happen to have some disqualifying 00:39:45.200 --> 00:39:49.280 knowledge or whatever it happens to be, were saying that because of 00:39:49.280 --> 00:39:52.400 that, there is no way for them to be sure that they 00:39:52.400 --> 00:39:57.440 are being entirely objective in the necessary way to perform the task. 00:39:57.440 --> 00:40:01.280 And so Woe and I are both disqualified, and so are very 00:40:01.280 --> 00:40:02.960 many other men. 00:40:02.960 --> 00:40:06.000 As we said at the outset, we recognize the difficulty of the 00:40:06.000 --> 00:40:09.760 task, the challenge simply of finding the men who are capable of 00:40:09.760 --> 00:40:14.080 doing this, but this is a long term project, as well said. 00:40:14.080 --> 00:40:17.600 It would probably take 10, 15, 20 years. 00:40:17.600 --> 00:40:21.200 There are additional steps after that initial translation as well. 00:40:21.200 --> 00:40:23.840 This is not something that can be done overnight. 00:40:23.840 --> 00:40:25.920 This is a massive undertaking. 00:40:25.920 --> 00:40:30.080 Even in the case of the Septuagint Deutsch, which as we pointed 00:40:30.080 --> 00:40:33.840 out a couple times already, most of the materials are already available 00:40:33.840 --> 00:40:35.040 in German. 00:40:35.040 --> 00:40:39.040 In fact, in very readable German because German you can still read 00:40:39.040 --> 00:40:42.160 German from centuries ago fairly easily if you know modern German. 00:40:42.160 --> 00:40:45.200 The German language has not changed as much as English. 00:40:45.200 --> 00:40:48.560 So as I pointed out before, if you're reading, say, Middle English 00:40:48.560 --> 00:40:50.960 or something, if you want to read Chaucer. 00:40:50.960 --> 00:40:54.320 You're going to struggle, as a modern English speaker, unless you happen 00:40:54.320 --> 00:40:57.840 to know that form of English, because the language has changed a 00:40:57.840 --> 00:40:59.360 lot. German hasn't changed as much. 00:40:59.360 --> 00:41:02.560 You can read Luther if you know modern German. 00:41:02.640 --> 00:41:06.480 That's a 500 year difference, but you can still read it. 00:41:06.480 --> 00:41:11.040 These men are dealing with stuff, sources, that are much more recent, 00:41:11.040 --> 00:41:16.240 and yet it still took them nine years to translate from those 00:41:16.240 --> 00:41:20.080 materials into the Septuagint Deutsch. 00:41:20.080 --> 00:41:23.040 So this is a bigger undertaking than that. 00:41:23.040 --> 00:41:26.720 It is going to be something that will take some time. 00:41:26.720 --> 00:41:31.040 Part of making sure that you don't do that in vain is 00:41:31.040 --> 00:41:34.960 ensuring that you follow the safeguards and select the right men. 00:41:34.960 --> 00:41:40.160 Not because you like the men, not for any external or extraneous 00:41:40.160 --> 00:41:44.480 reason, but because But because they meet the qualifications and do not 00:41:44.480 --> 00:41:48.480 have any of the disqualifications. 00:41:48.720 --> 00:41:48.800 And 00:41:49.040 --> 00:41:53.680 so because we're looking at such a difficult problem of learning learning 00:41:53.680 --> 00:41:59.120 contamination creeping into a man's knowledge even without his awareness. 00:41:59.120 --> 00:42:03.200 And we're looking at a multi-decade project where ideally you would have 00:42:03.200 --> 00:42:05.920 the same core team working the entire time. 00:42:05.920 --> 00:42:09.760 I think that ideally the men involved in the core team would 00:42:09.760 --> 00:42:12.400 be no older than thirty years old. 00:42:12.400 --> 00:42:14.960 I think it would probably even make sense to set a hard 00:42:14.960 --> 00:42:17.200 cap at say thirty-five years old. 00:42:17.200 --> 00:42:19.840 These numbers are arbitrary, but if you want someone who's still going 00:42:19.840 --> 00:42:23.360 to be able to work when he's 55 or 60, assuming that 00:42:23.360 --> 00:42:26.480 the project is still ongoing and he's in good health and he 00:42:26.480 --> 00:42:31.280 has all his faculties, no issues, and you want a man who 00:42:31.280 --> 00:42:36.880 has not been contaminated just by exposure to the rabbinic teachings in 00:42:36.880 --> 00:42:40.880 the world, you're basically gonna come down on the thirty to thirty-five 00:42:40.880 --> 00:42:43.120 at the upper limit anyway. 00:42:43.600 --> 00:42:46.480 So the other two main groups that would be involved in the 00:42:46.480 --> 00:42:50.480 day-to-day here are the team of researchers or librarians. 00:42:50.480 --> 00:42:53.840 You probably need somewhere between six to twelve, maybe more, depending on 00:42:53.840 --> 00:42:54.800 how many requests. 00:42:54.880 --> 00:42:58.960 Yeah, we'll get into the what those requests would be like later. 00:42:58.960 --> 00:43:03.200 And the advisory team, the sort of semi executive team, except they're 00:43:03.120 --> 00:43:06.320 not really the decision makers, and we'll talk about that later. 00:43:06.320 --> 00:43:10.160 Those men need to be faithful Christians, but most of the other 00:43:10.160 --> 00:43:11.680 rules can be relaxed. 00:43:11.680 --> 00:43:15.280 Some of them, you know, theological knowledge, frankly, is a benefit. 00:43:15.280 --> 00:43:18.320 Some knowledge of Hebrew may well be a benefit, particularly for some 00:43:18.320 --> 00:43:19.360 of the librarians. 00:43:19.360 --> 00:43:22.800 Not a requirement, but as Corey said, when you're looking at a 00:43:22.800 --> 00:43:23.680 patristic source 00:43:24.560 --> 00:43:29.120 to potentially see if you need to sanitize or exclude it before 00:43:29.120 --> 00:43:32.640 you send it into the clean room, if you don't know what 00:43:32.640 --> 00:43:36.000 the rabbis were saying, then you're not necessarily going to pick up 00:43:36.000 --> 00:43:37.040 on it. 00:43:37.040 --> 00:43:40.000 Because we don't expect everyone to be an expert on both the 00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:42.480 Septuagint and the Hebrew texts. 00:43:42.480 --> 00:43:46.640 We expect that they're just going to be assiduous in their determinations 00:43:46.640 --> 00:43:50.560 as they're evaluating each of these things on a case-by-case basis. 00:43:50.560 --> 00:43:54.720 So the advisory team and the research team probably are going to 00:43:54.720 --> 00:44:00.000 be significantly more knowledgeable to some degree about theology and maybe even 00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:01.600 about the rabbinic text. 00:44:01.600 --> 00:44:06.880 That's fine, because crucially, they're going to have no contact whatsoever with 00:44:07.040 --> 00:44:08.880 the source text itself. 00:44:08.880 --> 00:44:11.760 They will never touch the translation. 00:44:11.760 --> 00:44:14.240 The translation is output only. 00:44:14.240 --> 00:44:19.200 They can send questions in, the librarians will sanitize and send data 00:44:19.200 --> 00:44:22.400 in, and we'll talk about that process a little bit, but they 00:44:22.400 --> 00:44:28.480 will never influence what is in the translation overriding what the translators 00:44:29.040 --> 00:44:33.120 determine. So it's okay if they have some of this contaminated knowledge 00:44:33.120 --> 00:44:36.480 that we want to keep out otherwise, because in theory, with the 00:44:36.480 --> 00:44:39.600 structure, they can't do any harm to what the core team is 00:44:39.600 --> 00:44:40.560 working on. 00:44:40.560 --> 00:44:43.440 And of course it's crucial they need to be in agreement on 00:44:43.440 --> 00:44:45.760 every other aspect of this whole project. 00:44:45.760 --> 00:44:50.080 They can't be mad that they're excluded from the translation committee. 00:44:50.080 --> 00:44:52.080 If they wish they were in the room and saw those other 00:44:52.080 --> 00:44:55.200 guys 'cause they're really more qualified, that man has no business being 00:44:55.200 --> 00:44:56.880 involved at all. 00:44:56.880 --> 00:45:00.480 And frankly, if you get in five, ten years and you have 00:45:00.480 --> 00:45:05.200 someone who is regularly bucking at these rules or gradually seems like 00:45:05.200 --> 00:45:07.840 he's more of a problem, he needs to be removed. 00:45:07.840 --> 00:45:11.920 You may well have alternates involved, have a few extra men who 00:45:11.920 --> 00:45:14.240 are participants, but maybe not the main guys. 00:45:14.240 --> 00:45:17.440 Like these are decisions that they don't need to be hard and 00:45:17.440 --> 00:45:18.400 fast rules. 00:45:18.400 --> 00:45:20.400 We just understand we're dealing with men. 00:45:20.400 --> 00:45:22.720 Men have personality conflicts, men have 00:45:23.600 --> 00:45:25.600 evolution and how they view things. 00:45:25.600 --> 00:45:28.480 You know, maybe when they get into the project they agree and 00:45:28.480 --> 00:45:31.760 then later on someone gets in their ear and poisons them. 00:45:31.760 --> 00:45:35.360 I think that'd certainly be a likely possibility that someone would try. 00:45:36.000 --> 00:45:38.480 I mean these men would very much be a target for the 00:45:38.480 --> 00:45:42.880 influence of anyone who wanted to destroy this sort of process. 00:45:42.880 --> 00:45:43.200 So 00:45:44.080 --> 00:45:46.000 it doesn't need to be a hard and fast rule, but you 00:45:46.000 --> 00:45:48.320 just need to be aware that at the end of the day 00:45:48.400 --> 00:45:51.840 if someone is going against all of these principles, not necessarily the 00:45:51.840 --> 00:45:56.880 rules, but the principles involved, they are a liability that needs to 00:45:56.880 --> 00:45:57.920 be removed. 00:45:57.920 --> 00:46:03.040 And if there were particularly egregious misconduct of some sort discovered, perhaps 00:46:03.040 --> 00:46:05.200 you have to scrap whatever they had been working on for the 00:46:05.200 --> 00:46:07.600 last few years and start that from scratch. 00:46:07.600 --> 00:46:11.200 You know, I would hope that that weren't possible, but it's always 00:46:11.200 --> 00:46:12.480 conceivable that someone would 00:46:13.360 --> 00:46:17.200 either sneak in or would change somehow in a way that then 00:46:17.200 --> 00:46:18.800 became harmful. 00:46:18.800 --> 00:46:19.680 This happens. 00:46:19.680 --> 00:46:24.560 It's like it's contamination is spiritual as much as it is about 00:46:24.560 --> 00:46:29.520 knowledge So that's part of the reason for the advisory team. 00:46:29.520 --> 00:46:33.120 It's also part of the reason to have these multiple segregated teams 00:46:33.120 --> 00:46:38.240 that are not adversarial by any measure, but they are going to 00:46:38.240 --> 00:46:42.320 be evaluating from the outside what the others are doing. 00:46:42.320 --> 00:46:45.200 So that as a collaborative measure, they would all come to agreement 00:46:45.280 --> 00:46:47.200 on, yeah, this is the way to go, or no, we have 00:46:47.200 --> 00:46:48.800 a problem here, let's work through it. 00:46:48.800 --> 00:46:54.800 If they're all Christian men, that will automatically be a straightforward, non-acrimonious, 00:46:54.800 --> 00:46:57.200 professional conversation. 00:46:57.200 --> 00:46:59.360 If you have deviation from that, then you know you have an 00:46:59.360 --> 00:47:01.040 additional problem. 00:47:01.440 --> 00:47:05.200 So now we move on to what are the textual sources that 00:47:05.200 --> 00:47:08.720 the inner core team are going to be using the translators. 00:47:08.720 --> 00:47:10.400 And this is really important. 00:47:10.400 --> 00:47:17.040 The determinations of which Greek sources, which patristic sources, which which secular 00:47:17.040 --> 00:47:23.200 sources are incorporated for the translation team to make their judgments is 00:47:23.200 --> 00:47:27.600 vital. If you have the best team in the world and then 00:47:27.600 --> 00:47:29.760 you put a bunch of junk in front of them that has 00:47:29.760 --> 00:47:35.280 some of these problems built in, we've solved no problems whatsoever. 00:47:35.280 --> 00:47:40.720 So essentially the restricted sources for the Septuagint itself need to be 00:47:40.720 --> 00:47:45.200 the so-called Alexandrian text types of the Old Testament. 00:47:45.200 --> 00:47:52.320 So those are the codices Vaticanus, Cyanaticus, and Alexandrinus. 00:47:52.320 --> 00:47:58.560 Each of those is is predating any influence from the rabbinic texts. 00:47:58.560 --> 00:48:01.680 Each of them is exclusive of any of the sort of the 00:48:01.680 --> 00:48:06.400 harmonizations that we see in the Byzantine text types later on. 00:48:06.400 --> 00:48:10.960 For example, we have the Lucianic recensions and others where they attempted 00:48:10.960 --> 00:48:16.240 to harmonize things in a way that got away from what was 00:48:16.240 --> 00:48:20.880 recorded in the Greek Septuagint and started to gradually change some of 00:48:20.880 --> 00:48:24.480 the Greek text types to represent more like what was in the 00:48:24.480 --> 00:48:27.520 Masoretic text and the rabbinic text. 00:48:27.520 --> 00:48:29.360 That's simply impermissible. 00:48:29.360 --> 00:48:32.480 If we assume for the sake of argument what we said in 00:48:32.480 --> 00:48:35.840 the last seven episodes, you can't have any of that. 00:48:35.840 --> 00:48:39.360 So job number one is only the three great unseals for the 00:48:39.360 --> 00:48:40.960 Old Testament. 00:48:40.960 --> 00:48:46.160 The second significant source of information, obviously, less significant than the Septuagint 00:48:46.320 --> 00:48:50.960 itself, would be any sort of secular Koine Greek text from the 00:48:50.960 --> 00:48:53.600 era. Anything like that is fair game. 00:48:53.600 --> 00:48:58.240 For the simple reason that there will be some cases, especially when 00:48:58.240 --> 00:49:01.680 you look at the HapAx Logomena, where you have 00:49:02.720 --> 00:49:07.280 only one example in the entire Old Testament of a word. 00:49:07.280 --> 00:49:10.560 How do you know what it means when you can't look in 00:49:10.560 --> 00:49:13.840 context? Like when I was a kid, I have a big vocabulary 00:49:13.920 --> 00:49:16.720 and I grew up with a dictionary next to me, but most 00:49:16.720 --> 00:49:19.600 of the words that I've learned I learned by osmosis. 00:49:19.600 --> 00:49:22.720 I didn't learn by looking them up in the dictionary and memorizing 00:49:22.720 --> 00:49:26.240 it. I learned English mostly by just reading a bunch of junk 00:49:26.720 --> 00:49:28.880 fiction, like I didn't read fancy books. 00:49:28.880 --> 00:49:32.400 I just read authors who were decent authors and when they used 00:49:32.400 --> 00:49:36.080 a word I didn't understand, I could generally infer from context what 00:49:36.080 --> 00:49:37.200 it meant. 00:49:37.200 --> 00:49:40.000 And in some cases like I don't have any idea what he's 00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:42.640 talking about, then I will look at my dictionary. 00:49:42.640 --> 00:49:44.640 That's how we learn language. 00:49:44.640 --> 00:49:46.080 That's just how it works. 00:49:46.080 --> 00:49:50.640 It's entirely acceptable and in fact necessary for the same sort of 00:49:50.640 --> 00:49:54.400 approach to be used when you're translating scripture from a two thousand 00:49:54.480 --> 00:49:55.920 year old language. 00:49:55.920 --> 00:50:01.040 Quinne Greek is effectively a dead language now, so when you look 00:50:01.040 --> 00:50:04.000 at the past examples that are fixed in time and you look 00:50:04.000 --> 00:50:04.480 in the context 00:50:05.360 --> 00:50:09.200 of that world in that day, the Greek world, which is the 00:50:09.200 --> 00:50:14.080 language God chose to give us scripture in, their understandings of things 00:50:14.080 --> 00:50:19.040 will necessarily inform how translator is going to choose to make clear 00:50:19.040 --> 00:50:22.160 what the thought in Greek means in English. 00:50:22.160 --> 00:50:24.320 Because remember, we want the thoughts to transmit. 00:50:24.320 --> 00:50:26.080 We don't want just straight word for word. 00:50:26.240 --> 00:50:28.480 We'll talk about that near the end. 00:50:28.480 --> 00:50:33.280 But it's crucial though when we as an English speaker, whatever language 00:50:33.280 --> 00:50:38.000 you're fluent in, when you're reading a Bible translation, you want to 00:50:38.000 --> 00:50:40.800 know what words God was using. 00:50:40.800 --> 00:50:42.400 Doesn't need to be identical. 00:50:42.400 --> 00:50:46.080 You don't want a wooden translation That you can't understand because it's 00:50:46.080 --> 00:50:47.600 such poor grammar. 00:50:47.600 --> 00:50:50.480 You want one that clearly conveys the thoughts. 00:50:50.480 --> 00:50:57.280 And using contemporaneous sources from you know third, second century, first century 00:50:57.280 --> 00:51:01.120 BC, and a century or so afterwards, not only is it fair 00:51:01.120 --> 00:51:04.480 game, but it's vital, because that is going to give a degree 00:51:04.480 --> 00:51:08.160 of understanding to the translator of what the sort of man who 00:51:08.160 --> 00:51:12.080 did not know God did not know anything about theology, when he 00:51:12.080 --> 00:51:15.680 picked up the Septuagint and he picked up the New Testament written 00:51:15.760 --> 00:51:18.960 in identical language, what was he gonna read? 00:51:18.960 --> 00:51:22.000 And then when he asked someone, explain this to me, tell me 00:51:22.000 --> 00:51:23.360 what does this mean? 00:51:23.360 --> 00:51:29.120 Then the theology comes in, but not before. 00:51:29.360 --> 00:51:34.080 And as I mentioned, we have fewer concerns about sources when it 00:51:34.080 --> 00:51:38.880 comes to sources that are used purely as it were for Greek 00:51:38.880 --> 00:51:44.400 knowledge, because the Greek sources were not influenced by, tampered with by 00:51:44.400 --> 00:51:46.240 the rabbis. 00:51:46.240 --> 00:51:49.840 These are from, in many cases, ancient Greek sources, because it's not 00:51:49.840 --> 00:51:53.280 just Koina Greek that you would use for this, because obviously as 00:51:53.280 --> 00:51:58.880 a language develops, you wind up with terms in a particular version 00:51:58.880 --> 00:52:01.840 of the language that come from or at least came to you 00:52:01.840 --> 00:52:03.920 through previous versions. 00:52:03.920 --> 00:52:07.600 And so many of the words that we have in English came 00:52:07.600 --> 00:52:12.480 from Middle English or came from earlier versions, came from German. 00:52:12.480 --> 00:52:16.720 So you can look at the etymology and still be safe from 00:52:16.720 --> 00:52:20.240 any of this potential contamination because when you're dealing again with ancient 00:52:20.240 --> 00:52:24.560 Greek, you're not dealing with rabbinic contamination. 00:52:24.560 --> 00:52:26.960 Unfortunately, many of the 00:52:28.080 --> 00:52:33.440 go-to sources for Greek knowledge can't be used for this task. 00:52:33.440 --> 00:52:38.560 For instance, I have BDAG, which is basically the source for biblical 00:52:38.560 --> 00:52:40.480 Greek. I have it open 00:52:41.440 --> 00:52:45.280 It can't be used in a translation project because it is littered 00:52:45.520 --> 00:52:47.680 with Hebrew. 00:52:47.680 --> 00:52:49.200 So it is contaminated. 00:52:49.200 --> 00:52:51.600 It's one of those things that cannot be used. 00:52:51.600 --> 00:52:54.800 It would have to be redacted in order to be passed on 00:52:54.800 --> 00:52:57.120 to the translators. 00:52:57.120 --> 00:53:02.560 And so many of these compendiums that we have where we have 00:53:02.560 --> 00:53:06.400 compiled various references, various usages 00:53:07.280 --> 00:53:11.440 of particular Greek words in order to have a more well-rounded, a 00:53:11.440 --> 00:53:16.080 fuller understanding of the true meaning of the word, the lexical scope 00:53:16.080 --> 00:53:21.360 of the word, they can't be used as is, because oftentimes they 00:53:21.360 --> 00:53:26.720 were undertaken by men with the specific goal of creating this resource 00:53:26.720 --> 00:53:30.080 that could be used alongside the Bible. 00:53:30.080 --> 00:53:33.840 The problem with that is they were created by men who didn't 00:53:33.760 --> 00:53:37.200 realize that the Hebrew was not God's Word. 00:53:37.200 --> 00:53:41.200 And so like I said, Bedag and others are littered with Hebrew 00:53:41.200 --> 00:53:42.560 comparisons to 00:53:43.520 --> 00:53:48.640 the Hebrew Old Testament, which is say the Rabbinic text, alongside explanations 00:53:48.640 --> 00:53:53.120 of what the Greek means in references to, say, Homer and others. 00:53:53.120 --> 00:53:57.680 And so that contamination that you have from the Hebrew makes the 00:53:57.680 --> 00:54:00.160 source source unreliable. 00:54:00.160 --> 00:54:05.760 However, insofar as it is simply referencing ancient Greek sources, it can 00:54:05.760 --> 00:54:07.120 still be used. 00:54:07.120 --> 00:54:11.040 Because again, those ancient Greek sources themselves are not contaminated. 00:54:11.040 --> 00:54:13.360 So if you want to know what a word means, part of 00:54:13.360 --> 00:54:15.840 the way that you can look up what a word in Greek 00:54:15.840 --> 00:54:19.040 means, these days we're all accustomed to, well, you just right-click on 00:54:19.040 --> 00:54:23.040 the word, and then yes, that's very convenient, but it's because of 00:54:23.040 --> 00:54:26.160 all of this work that has already been done by other men. 00:54:26.320 --> 00:54:28.560 And so the way that you actually do it, if you had 00:54:28.560 --> 00:54:31.840 to figure out the meaning of a word for yourself and you 00:54:31.840 --> 00:54:35.440 didn't have access to these resources, you would have to go and 00:54:35.440 --> 00:54:41.440 find it in other sources in that language, and then figure out 00:54:41.440 --> 00:54:44.880 how it's used in that context, and then compare it across sources, 00:54:44.880 --> 00:54:49.440 and then you would develop what would eventually become a dictionary definition 00:54:49.920 --> 00:54:52.560 or a lexicon, whatever it happens to be. 00:54:52.560 --> 00:54:54.720 And so you would go and look at, say, the word in 00:54:54.720 --> 00:54:57.680 Homer. You would see how he used the word, and then you 00:54:57.680 --> 00:55:00.320 can figure out how it developed, and you can of course look 00:55:00.320 --> 00:55:03.440 at etymology as well. 00:55:03.440 --> 00:55:07.920 But given this great wealth of resources that are available in Greek, 00:55:07.920 --> 00:55:12.880 in the relatively minimal danger with regard to contamination, because again the 00:55:12.880 --> 00:55:16.320 rabbis were not fiddling with ancient Greek epics, as much as I'm 00:55:16.320 --> 00:55:17.680 sure they would have loved to have done so, they did not 00:55:17.680 --> 00:55:19.840 have the opportunity. 00:55:19.840 --> 00:55:24.320 These things are pure in the sense of being pure representations of 00:55:24.320 --> 00:55:29.280 the Greek language without contamination from the supposed Hebrew. 00:55:29.280 --> 00:55:33.760 They can be used by the translators without any risk for the 00:55:33.760 --> 00:55:36.640 specific purpose of figuring out what words mean. 00:55:36.640 --> 00:55:40.640 As Woe said, sometimes the word appears once in the Old Testament. 00:55:40.640 --> 00:55:46.640 You probably can't figure out with absolute certainty what the word means 00:55:46.800 --> 00:55:50.400 simply by looking at the Old Testament in that case. 00:55:50.400 --> 00:55:53.680 It's not to say that God's word is incomplete or that God's 00:55:53.680 --> 00:55:57.840 word is unclear, but God's word is written in a specific language, 00:55:57.840 --> 00:56:01.520 and in fact you have to know the language to read it. 00:56:01.520 --> 00:56:06.400 You typically don't just pick up a book and start reading it, 00:56:06.400 --> 00:56:08.320 if you don't know the language. 00:56:08.320 --> 00:56:12.720 Now, granted, that is partly how you can acquire a language, but 00:56:12.720 --> 00:56:15.840 that's not suitable for translating something like God's Word. 00:56:15.840 --> 00:56:20.080 And so sometimes, yes, the translators will need access to resources that 00:56:20.080 --> 00:56:24.720 are external to God's Word for these specific purpose of figuring out 00:56:24.720 --> 00:56:28.400 the usage of the Greek terms and being able to translate them 00:56:28.400 --> 00:56:31.920 faithfully as they are used in the Old Testament. 00:56:33.040 --> 00:56:33.200 And 00:56:33.200 --> 00:56:36.320 so this is the reason why we have both the translation core 00:56:36.320 --> 00:56:39.440 team and we have the library and research team. 00:56:39.440 --> 00:56:41.680 And those two teams are firewalled. 00:56:41.680 --> 00:56:46.240 The core team, the translators, they begin with a blank slate. 00:56:46.560 --> 00:56:49.440 They don't get anything on their own. 00:56:49.440 --> 00:56:53.360 The librarians are going to vet every single thing that's put in 00:56:53.360 --> 00:56:54.320 front of them. 00:56:54.320 --> 00:56:57.520 And in as we've been saying, in the case of the three 00:56:57.520 --> 00:57:03.760 great unseals, in the case of most secular ancient Greek sources, the 00:57:03.760 --> 00:57:08.160 degree of vetting that's necessary by librarians will range from little to 00:57:08.160 --> 00:57:11.440 none. Because when he looks at it, it's like, yeah, well, there's 00:57:11.440 --> 00:57:14.400 clearly no rabbinic contamination here, free for all. 00:57:14.560 --> 00:57:18.560 And anything that's then passed through the firewall, the translation team, is 00:57:18.560 --> 00:57:22.320 basically available to them in their own private internal library permanently to 00:57:22.320 --> 00:57:24.160 be used as a resource. 00:57:24.160 --> 00:57:27.120 As we said at the beginning, one of the goals is that 00:57:27.120 --> 00:57:31.520 all of those resources will be published in parallel with the Bible 00:57:31.520 --> 00:57:35.040 when it's presented, so that anyone can use it for study, anyone 00:57:35.200 --> 00:57:37.360 can see exactly where everything came from. 00:57:37.360 --> 00:57:42.480 There's zero ambiguity about the inputs when you're looking at the output. 00:57:42.480 --> 00:57:46.320 And the research team is fulfilling that role in a way that 00:57:46.640 --> 00:57:50.560 exposes them to contamination, but only so they can remove it when 00:57:50.560 --> 00:57:54.000 they give it to the translation team I think one of the 00:57:54.000 --> 00:57:59.680 last main examples of what the translators would want to have access 00:57:59.680 --> 00:58:05.520 to would be any patristic sources from the first through fourth centuries. 00:58:05.520 --> 00:58:10.240 Basically anything before Jerome is pretty much fair game. 00:58:10.240 --> 00:58:17.120 The principal problem that the librarians will have in vetting and redacting 00:58:17.120 --> 00:58:23.520 that sort of thing is that the modern compendia for those have 00:58:23.520 --> 00:58:25.440 not followed the same rules that we have. 00:58:25.440 --> 00:58:28.080 So they will not be cut off at Jerome. 00:58:28.080 --> 00:58:30.640 They will not be concerned about rabbinic influence. 00:58:30.640 --> 00:58:31.280 They just don't care. 00:58:31.280 --> 00:58:33.200 They're solving a different problem. 00:58:33.280 --> 00:58:37.760 And yeah, there's some tremendous resources that exist today in the modern 00:58:37.760 --> 00:58:42.560 world. They have not existed previously that would be tremendous assets to 00:58:42.560 --> 00:58:43.760 this project. 00:58:43.760 --> 00:58:47.840 One of those would be from the University of California Irvine, their 00:58:48.160 --> 00:58:50.960 thesaurus lingui grici. 00:58:50.960 --> 00:58:56.320 It is something that has been compiling a huge trove of patristic 00:58:56.400 --> 00:58:59.360 quotes. I think they go up through at least like the seventh 00:58:59.360 --> 00:59:03.520 century. Obviously the librarians would want to cut it off as soon 00:59:03.520 --> 00:59:08.240 as they start getting into where we have rabbinic pollution, probably sometime 00:59:08.240 --> 00:59:11.840 after Jerome doesn't have to literally be the year that he started 00:59:11.840 --> 00:59:13.440 working on the Vulgate. 00:59:13.440 --> 00:59:16.480 But it can't be too long after because one of the examples 00:59:16.480 --> 00:59:21.920 we gave previously by way of metaphor was low background steel. 00:59:22.240 --> 00:59:26.560 If you remember, there's a certain type of steel that only exists 00:59:26.720 --> 00:59:30.400 if it was smelted prior to the detonation of the first atomic 00:59:30.400 --> 00:59:37.040 weapon. After the Trinity test in nineteen forty-five, certain radioisotopes were released 00:59:37.040 --> 00:59:41.600 into the atmosphere that because they're just in the air, they're in 00:59:41.600 --> 00:59:44.480 the room with you right now, not in any quantity that can 00:59:44.480 --> 00:59:46.320 do any harm whatsoever. 00:59:46.320 --> 00:59:49.440 But in the process of smelting steel, so much oxygen 00:59:50.320 --> 00:59:52.160 is used in that process. 00:59:52.160 --> 00:59:56.000 Some of those radioisotopes get into the steel that's made after that 00:59:56.000 --> 00:59:57.840 date on nineteen forty five. 00:59:57.840 --> 01:00:00.640 As soon as those winds whipped around the world, all the steel 01:00:00.640 --> 01:00:05.840 made after there was slightly more radioactive, which means that in certain 01:00:05.840 --> 01:00:10.560 medical and research contexts, that steel is worth its weight in gold, 01:00:10.560 --> 01:00:13.840 or it's worth more than its weight in gold if it was 01:00:13.840 --> 01:00:16.960 produced prior to the Trinity test. 01:00:16.960 --> 01:00:20.720 Because it's gonna have a lower background radiation than the stuff that 01:00:20.720 --> 01:00:22.160 was smelted after. 01:00:22.160 --> 01:00:23.680 There's no getting around it. 01:00:23.680 --> 01:00:26.480 Once it's in the world the damage is done. 01:00:27.040 --> 01:00:30.720 in the case that we made in the Septuagint series, particularly the 01:00:30.720 --> 01:00:34.320 first two episodes, is that Jerome did that damage. 01:00:34.320 --> 01:00:39.840 Jerome was the Trinity test for the release of rabbinic radioactive pollution 01:00:39.840 --> 01:00:41.600 into all theology. 01:00:41.600 --> 01:00:44.640 So I don't know exactly when that date is, the researchers will 01:00:44.640 --> 01:00:45.920 have to figure that out. 01:00:45.920 --> 01:00:49.840 But sometime right around four hundred AD, you have to draw a 01:00:49.840 --> 01:00:54.560 hard line and say no resources after there And again, the main 01:00:54.560 --> 01:00:59.840 value in looking at patristic resources prior to that date, to looking 01:00:59.840 --> 01:01:02.240 at them at all, is to see what the early church was 01:01:02.240 --> 01:01:06.240 saying. Because that's entirely valid and incredibly helpful because those were native 01:01:06.240 --> 01:01:07.200 Greek speakers. 01:01:07.200 --> 01:01:10.400 Remember the whole point is what did native Greek speakers think about 01:01:10.400 --> 01:01:14.640 this? The very most valuable native Greek speakers that we have on 01:01:14.640 --> 01:01:18.720 record will be the early church fathers who never gave any thought 01:01:18.720 --> 01:01:23.040 to the Hebrew, who only viewed the Greek as scripture as we 01:01:23.040 --> 01:01:26.560 now view it, those men, what they say about scripture, is incredibly 01:01:26.560 --> 01:01:31.600 valuable in the context of understanding what the words mean. 01:01:31.600 --> 01:01:34.080 That's not to say we subscribe to all their theology, absolutely. 01:01:34.080 --> 01:01:36.800 They all disagreed with each other, so we can disagree with them 01:01:36.800 --> 01:01:41.120 too. It's as not a submission to their theological chops. 01:01:41.120 --> 01:01:44.960 It is a submission to the fact that we have church fathers 01:01:44.960 --> 01:01:49.120 who spoke Greek, who were writing in Greek about the Greek Old 01:01:49.120 --> 01:01:52.960 Testament, what they say is in its context worth its weight in 01:01:52.960 --> 01:01:56.880 gold? That is our low background steel when we're looking at church 01:01:56.880 --> 01:01:59.120 theology, 'cause it's all that exists. 01:01:59.120 --> 01:02:04.160 Once Jerome sets off his atomic bomb, there's no more left. 01:02:04.160 --> 01:02:07.440 From that point on, everyone who could have possibly looked at what 01:02:07.440 --> 01:02:13.280 Jerome translated is going to be looking at what the rabbis taught. 01:02:13.280 --> 01:02:19.600 So this is another example of incredibly valuable resources that undoubtedly the 01:02:19.600 --> 01:02:23.360 translators are going to want to incorporate and view as they're looking 01:02:23.360 --> 01:02:28.320 at this stuff, particularly when there's something difficult or ambiguous or whatever. 01:02:28.320 --> 01:02:30.800 And this is also a case where the fourth team, the legal 01:02:30.800 --> 01:02:34.000 team, is going to be really important because as we said, not 01:02:34.000 --> 01:02:38.000 only do we want the translators to be using these things, but 01:02:38.000 --> 01:02:41.600 ultimately we want these things to be published alongside. 01:02:41.600 --> 01:02:45.280 And when you're talking about these commercial endeavors, these things are available 01:02:45.280 --> 01:02:46.400 for subscription. 01:02:46.400 --> 01:02:48.480 I you can I think it's like a hundred bucks a year 01:02:48.480 --> 01:02:50.960 for the TLG to subscribe to it. 01:02:51.280 --> 01:02:54.640 For someone to do this sort of project and actually publish what 01:02:54.720 --> 01:02:58.880 we're using would be used in this project for free for everyone, 01:02:58.880 --> 01:03:00.640 would involve cutting them a check. 01:03:00.640 --> 01:03:02.640 You're gonna need to have lawyers that would go talk to them 01:03:02.640 --> 01:03:04.560 and say, Look, here's how we wanna use it. 01:03:04.560 --> 01:03:06.160 And we'll talk about that more at the end. 01:03:06.160 --> 01:03:10.640 But it's important at every stage that the best resources be used 01:03:10.880 --> 01:03:14.400 and be used with full knowledge that at some point we're gonna 01:03:14.400 --> 01:03:15.600 need to either have legal clearance 01:03:16.560 --> 01:03:21.360 or the citation is going to strictly be see here, this citation, 01:03:21.360 --> 01:03:24.080 we can't reproduce any of it for legal reasons. 01:03:24.080 --> 01:03:28.960 I find that intolerable, but unless the world collapses, that's what we're 01:03:28.960 --> 01:03:29.520 looking at. 01:03:29.520 --> 01:03:32.320 Now, if the world collapses in the next 20 years, I think 01:03:32.320 --> 01:03:33.360 it's pretty likely. 01:03:33.360 --> 01:03:35.760 All this copyright stuff goes out the window and this gets a 01:03:35.760 --> 01:03:36.720 whole lot easier. 01:03:36.720 --> 01:03:39.200 So I'm not saying pray for the end of the world in 01:03:39.280 --> 01:03:42.480 you know the civil sense, but it would certainly make translating a 01:03:42.480 --> 01:03:45.040 Septuagint a lot more practical. 01:03:45.040 --> 01:03:48.240 I would also include Göttingen and Ralph's and some of those other 01:03:48.240 --> 01:03:49.760 German examples as well. 01:03:49.760 --> 01:03:53.520 All those things, obviously, they're going to be the translators are going 01:03:53.520 --> 01:03:55.360 to want them in the room with them, and they should be 01:03:55.360 --> 01:03:55.920 in the room with them. 01:03:56.560 --> 01:04:00.000 They simply have to be stripped of anything that could ever been 01:04:00.000 --> 01:04:00.720 a text. 01:04:00.720 --> 01:04:05.360 And everything else needs to be there in their private library, which 01:04:05.360 --> 01:04:08.800 ideally, at the end of this project, would be published as an 01:04:08.800 --> 01:04:11.920 apparatus to the scripture. 01:04:12.240 --> 01:04:12.400 And 01:04:12.560 --> 01:04:17.440 of course, the perhaps obvious resource to which they would have access 01:04:17.440 --> 01:04:19.280 is a proper Greek grammar. 01:04:19.280 --> 01:04:19.840 There's 01:04:20.720 --> 01:04:24.080 sort of no objection to that as long as the one that 01:04:24.080 --> 01:04:28.000 they are actually using hasn't been contaminated by something else. 01:04:28.000 --> 01:04:32.640 Which when it comes to an actual Greek grammar is relatively unlikely. 01:04:32.640 --> 01:04:36.480 For those who are less familiar with how translation and things like 01:04:36.480 --> 01:04:39.600 that work, yes, even when you are using a language in which 01:04:39.600 --> 01:04:42.720 you are fluent, it is still very useful to have access to 01:04:42.720 --> 01:04:47.360 a proper grammar book, which is perhaps an alien sentiment to English 01:04:47.760 --> 01:04:51.600 speakers since we're no longer taught grammar in school, which is deeply 01:04:51.600 --> 01:04:56.160 unfortunate. Most English speakers don't learn grammar until they take a foreign 01:04:56.160 --> 01:04:59.520 language, learn the grammar in that language and then have to backport 01:04:59.520 --> 01:05:03.840 it into the understanding of English, which is intolerable, but it's the 01:05:03.840 --> 01:05:06.320 reality of the situation in which we find ourselves. 01:05:06.320 --> 01:05:09.840 So having a grammar of the Greek language present with you when 01:05:09.840 --> 01:05:13.120 you are doing the translation is of course useful so you can 01:05:13.120 --> 01:05:16.640 look at how specific phrases are constructed in things because perhaps you 01:05:16.640 --> 01:05:19.520 don't keep all of that in your head at any given time. 01:05:19.520 --> 01:05:23.840 That's just the reality of using a language that has the complexity 01:05:23.840 --> 01:05:28.720 and nuance of any European language certainly, and definitely Greek is included 01:05:28.720 --> 01:05:29.040 in 01:05:29.040 --> 01:05:29.360 that 01:05:30.480 --> 01:05:34.240 I've mentioned before that that was my exact experience and my brief 01:05:34.240 --> 01:05:35.520 stint with Latin. 01:05:35.520 --> 01:05:38.320 I didn't really end up learning any Latin, but I learned English 01:05:38.320 --> 01:05:41.280 a whole lot better because I was exposed to that structure. 01:05:41.280 --> 01:05:45.600 So I think someone young learning Latin or Greek is very valuable 01:05:45.760 --> 01:05:47.520 'cause it's gonna teach you English. 01:05:47.520 --> 01:05:49.040 To me that's the most valuable thing. 01:05:49.040 --> 01:05:52.800 There are other things that become accessible, but if nothing else, you 01:05:52.800 --> 01:05:57.760 will learn English really well by learning one of those languages. 01:05:57.760 --> 01:06:02.240 So moving on now very briefly to the translation rules. 01:06:02.240 --> 01:06:05.120 These are really simple, I've already alluded to most of them. 01:06:05.120 --> 01:06:08.000 Essentially number one is just thought for thought. 01:06:08.000 --> 01:06:11.280 I looked up earlier without asking Corey which would have saved me 01:06:11.280 --> 01:06:11.680 some time. 01:06:11.680 --> 01:06:14.960 I was curious about what's a really long, ridiculous German word. 01:06:14.960 --> 01:06:16.960 One of the longest words that they have, and I even write 01:06:17.040 --> 01:06:21.040 down what it was, there's a thirty six letter German word for 01:06:21.040 --> 01:06:23.680 motor vehicle liability insurance. 01:06:23.680 --> 01:06:27.440 Now when you hear about translation types, the two most common are 01:06:27.440 --> 01:06:29.680 thought for thought or word for word. 01:06:30.400 --> 01:06:32.960 Where word for word is sometimes literal. 01:06:32.960 --> 01:06:36.240 They mostly mean the same thing, but not exactly, because again, this 01:06:36.240 --> 01:06:37.280 is what we're talking about. 01:06:37.280 --> 01:06:40.720 Even translating English into English can get confusing. 01:06:40.720 --> 01:06:43.200 If I were doing a word for word-for-word translation 01:06:44.480 --> 01:06:50.640 from that 36-letter word in German into English, the word means motor 01:06:50.640 --> 01:06:52.880 vehicle liability insurance. 01:06:52.880 --> 01:06:56.320 But if I were choosing word-for-word translation, I would have to just 01:06:56.320 --> 01:06:57.680 call it insurance. 01:06:57.680 --> 01:07:00.320 Now have I lost context by doing that? 01:07:00.320 --> 01:07:03.680 Have I made it less clear what I'm talking about when I 01:07:03.680 --> 01:07:04.880 say insurance? 01:07:04.880 --> 01:07:07.520 When it means motor vehicle liability insurance? 01:07:07.520 --> 01:07:10.080 Every one of those words is load bearing in that phrase. 01:07:10.400 --> 01:07:13.120 That's not a compound word in English, that's a phrase. 01:07:13.120 --> 01:07:17.120 Motor vehicle liability insurance, so long I can't even pronounce it. 01:07:17.120 --> 01:07:20.800 There's a lot going on there, one word in German, four words 01:07:20.800 --> 01:07:21.600 in English. 01:07:21.600 --> 01:07:24.240 Sometimes language behaves that way. 01:07:24.240 --> 01:07:25.360 There's nothing wrong with it. 01:07:25.360 --> 01:07:28.400 And I picked on German here because I knew that I was 01:07:28.400 --> 01:07:32.400 guaranteed to find a long ridiculous German word that would do this. 01:07:32.400 --> 01:07:34.960 But at the same time, there are short words and long words 01:07:35.360 --> 01:07:41.120 in one language that will translate sort of perpendicularly into another language. 01:07:41.120 --> 01:07:44.000 In doing this work for the last eighteen months, I found a 01:07:44.000 --> 01:07:47.920 number of cases where a short sentence in Greek becomes a very 01:07:47.920 --> 01:07:48.800 long sentence. 01:07:48.800 --> 01:07:52.720 You might have seven words in Greek becomes fifteen words in English. 01:07:52.720 --> 01:07:57.040 If you're sticking to a word for word translation rule, you freak 01:07:57.040 --> 01:07:59.360 out, you're like, oh no, I got too many words in my 01:07:59.360 --> 01:07:59.840 sentence now. 01:08:00.080 --> 01:08:02.800 it's not an authentic translation. 01:08:02.800 --> 01:08:03.920 That's rubbish. 01:08:03.920 --> 01:08:05.520 What does the thought mean? 01:08:05.520 --> 01:08:10.560 What would the native speaker have heard when someone said that to 01:08:10.560 --> 01:08:13.360 him? He would have heard seven words in Greek. 01:08:13.360 --> 01:08:15.520 He would have heard 15 words in English. 01:08:15.920 --> 01:08:19.120 So if you're translating into English, you give him fifteen words. 01:08:19.120 --> 01:08:20.560 It's just that simple. 01:08:20.560 --> 01:08:24.320 We cannot be sticklers in this sort of process in a way 01:08:24.320 --> 01:08:28.080 that sort of woodenly translates things when the whole point is to 01:08:28.640 --> 01:08:30.560 remove ambiguity. 01:08:30.560 --> 01:08:34.800 It's not simply a question of removing the rabbinic pollution. 01:08:34.800 --> 01:08:37.040 We need to make sure that whatever comes out, and this is 01:08:37.040 --> 01:08:39.280 true regardless of your source text. 01:08:39.280 --> 01:08:41.040 You always want your you should. 01:08:41.040 --> 01:08:43.600 I mean, this is my personal preference. 01:08:43.600 --> 01:08:48.640 For most purposes, most people, if you're reading, if you're studying, generally 01:08:48.800 --> 01:08:52.560 you want a Bible that conveys the thought that was captured in 01:08:52.560 --> 01:08:53.600 the original language. 01:08:53.760 --> 01:08:55.840 Because you don't have to think about it. 01:08:55.840 --> 01:08:59.680 Ultimately what we're going for here, the reason for this is very 01:08:59.680 --> 01:09:02.560 simply, for the last eighteen months, Corey and I have been looking 01:09:02.560 --> 01:09:07.120 at the various Greek Septuagint translations in English and realizing over and 01:09:07.120 --> 01:09:10.080 over that we still don't know what the Greek says. 01:09:10.080 --> 01:09:13.840 Because sometimes their disagreements are to the point that when you compare 01:09:13.840 --> 01:09:17.760 them side by side with, for example, the ESV, you can see 01:09:17.760 --> 01:09:19.680 that at least one of them is saying the same thing as 01:09:19.680 --> 01:09:23.840 the SV, which is a dead giveaway, as opposed to the other 01:09:23.840 --> 01:09:26.880 two, that they're not using the Greek. 01:09:26.880 --> 01:09:30.080 So just looking at any single Greek translation today doesn't tell you 01:09:30.080 --> 01:09:31.040 what the Greek says. 01:09:31.040 --> 01:09:32.880 And that's unacceptable. 01:09:32.880 --> 01:09:37.040 Any man in his native language should be able to read the 01:09:37.040 --> 01:09:40.400 words of scripture and know what was recorded in the Old and 01:09:40.400 --> 01:09:41.920 New Testaments in Greek. 01:09:41.920 --> 01:09:45.920 It's gotta be thought for thought to get there. 01:09:46.160 --> 01:09:52.160 The typical range for translations, insofar as type is concerned, ranges from 01:09:52.160 --> 01:09:56.560 sort of the woodenly literal to the fully dynamic is sort of 01:09:56.560 --> 01:09:58.400 the spectrum. 01:09:58.400 --> 01:10:03.520 And we're leaning somewhat more toward the fully dynamic for the very 01:10:03.520 --> 01:10:06.080 reasons that Wo just said. 01:10:06.080 --> 01:10:09.600 The goal of having scripture in your language is so that you 01:10:09.600 --> 01:10:13.200 Is so that you can read it and understand it. 01:10:13.200 --> 01:10:18.560 If we simply wanted something that was woodenly literal, just and word 01:10:18.560 --> 01:10:22.560 for word isn't even possible, so it's almost a ridiculous thing to 01:10:22.560 --> 01:10:23.680 even say. 01:10:23.680 --> 01:10:28.640 But But if you just took the core, the predominant, the most 01:10:28.640 --> 01:10:32.800 likely sense of any given foreign word, and used that and did 01:10:32.800 --> 01:10:35.600 that as the wooden translation, one, you'd end up with something that's 01:10:35.600 --> 01:10:37.520 completely incomprehensible. 01:10:37.520 --> 01:10:42.960 But two, it would be entirely unreadable, in addition to being incomprehensible. 01:10:42.960 --> 01:10:48.080 This is a problem that we see sometimes with relatively literal so-called 01:10:48.240 --> 01:10:50.640 translations of really any work. 01:10:50.640 --> 01:10:53.600 If you get something that leans a little bit too much into 01:10:53.600 --> 01:10:59.520 being woodenly literal or academic to use a specific sense of academic 01:10:59.520 --> 01:11:03.920 and almost abuse the term literal, you wind up with something that 01:11:03.920 --> 01:11:07.760 is not usable by those who speak the target language. 01:11:07.760 --> 01:11:10.640 This is a criticism that I have leveled at the ESV, and 01:11:10.640 --> 01:11:12.960 one of the reasons for that is if you have someone stand 01:11:12.960 --> 01:11:16.320 up and start reading from the ESV, most likely he's going to 01:11:16.320 --> 01:11:21.680 stumble over the word sometimes because it doesn't flow like English, because 01:11:21.680 --> 01:11:26.480 it tries to match the underlying grammar of, unfortunately, in the case 01:11:26.480 --> 01:11:29.520 of the Old Testament, the so called Hebrew, but it also does 01:11:29.520 --> 01:11:30.880 it with the Greek. 01:11:30.880 --> 01:11:34.240 Greek grammar is not the same as English grammar. 01:11:34.240 --> 01:11:36.720 Different languages use different word orders. 01:11:36.720 --> 01:11:41.360 Even just going from German to English, the word order is notably 01:11:41.360 --> 01:11:46.000 different in German versus English, even though it is trivially easy typically 01:11:46.160 --> 01:11:50.000 to translate German into English, even if you have to use more 01:11:50.000 --> 01:11:52.800 words in some cases or fewer in others. 01:11:52.800 --> 01:11:55.920 German, for instance, well when I were discussing this before we started 01:11:55.920 --> 01:12:02.480 recording, typically German is a little longer than English, except for a 01:12:02.480 --> 01:12:06.800 number of times where there are exceptions in which German is significantly 01:12:06.800 --> 01:12:12.560 shorter because German has specific words that mean things that are entire 01:12:12.560 --> 01:12:15.120 phrases in English. 01:12:15.120 --> 01:12:19.680 One that has become popular in recent years and at this point 01:12:20.080 --> 01:12:23.920 it could probably be considered a proper official German word. 01:12:23.920 --> 01:12:26.880 Some people like to try to say that it's an informal word, 01:12:26.880 --> 01:12:30.640 but German has a different relationship to that than English because you 01:12:30.640 --> 01:12:32.640 can create new words in German. 01:12:32.640 --> 01:12:37.760 But the word is Fremshaman, which is just a combination of Fremd, 01:12:37.760 --> 01:12:41.440 other alien, and shaman, which is shame. 01:12:41.440 --> 01:12:43.600 It's vicarious embarrassment. 01:12:43.600 --> 01:12:46.960 So we have the same term in English, obviously it's much longer 01:12:46.960 --> 01:12:50.800 in English, but if you add potential on the end of that 01:12:50.800 --> 01:12:54.320 in German, then it's the potential to cause vicarious embarrassment. 01:12:54.320 --> 01:12:56.880 It takes more words to say that in English than to say 01:12:56.880 --> 01:12:57.920 it in German. 01:12:57.920 --> 01:12:58.640 But we But 01:12:59.520 --> 01:13:02.880 the point is you can translate it, but you have to do 01:13:02.880 --> 01:13:05.040 it in a way that is thought for thought. 01:13:05.040 --> 01:13:08.800 Because if you literally translated that word, all you would have is 01:13:08.960 --> 01:13:13.200 alien shame potential or foreign shame potential, which 01:13:14.160 --> 01:13:18.320 sure you can kind of understand what that means, and in context, 01:13:18.320 --> 01:13:20.480 of course you can understand what it means. 01:13:20.480 --> 01:13:23.760 But it's not a true translation into English because you haven't made 01:13:23.760 --> 01:13:24.960 it into English. 01:13:24.960 --> 01:13:30.240 You have just taken something that was a foreign language, done again 01:13:30.400 --> 01:13:35.280 to abuse the term, but a woodenly literal translation into English, but 01:13:35.280 --> 01:13:36.640 not proper English. 01:13:36.640 --> 01:13:38.560 And that's not the goal. 01:13:38.560 --> 01:13:43.360 We want an English Bible that is actual English that people can 01:13:43.360 --> 01:13:45.120 read and understand. 01:13:45.120 --> 01:13:47.520 And part of the reason that's important is because if you are 01:13:47.520 --> 01:13:51.120 reading the scriptures in your own language, you should one be able 01:13:51.120 --> 01:13:54.960 to read it fluently because it's your language, but two, it should 01:13:54.960 --> 01:13:59.360 be natural in your language so that you can memorize it, so 01:13:59.360 --> 01:14:00.880 that it sticks with you. 01:14:00.880 --> 01:14:04.400 Because when you have something that is so stilted that it is 01:14:04.400 --> 01:14:04.800 difficult to 01:14:05.680 --> 01:14:08.320 parse as a native speaker of the language in which the thing 01:14:08.320 --> 01:14:12.640 is supposedly written, you are going to have more trouble remembering it. 01:14:12.640 --> 01:14:14.320 It will not stick with you. 01:14:14.320 --> 01:14:17.600 This is similar to the sort of three levels here, more than 01:14:17.600 --> 01:14:19.360 three, but three core ones here. 01:14:19.360 --> 01:14:22.640 It's similar to how if you set something to music, you remember 01:14:22.640 --> 01:14:23.760 it better. 01:14:23.760 --> 01:14:27.360 Well, one step below that is just having it in natural language, 01:14:27.360 --> 01:14:30.000 you remember it better, and then the step below that is something 01:14:30.000 --> 01:14:34.800 that is so stilted and unnatural that it's difficult even to read. 01:14:34.800 --> 01:14:38.320 Scripture is something in which you should be spending time, something you 01:14:38.320 --> 01:14:41.120 should be able to memorize, and even if you're not the one 01:14:41.120 --> 01:14:43.360 reading it, because of course, as we've mentioned previously, scripture 01:14:44.240 --> 01:14:47.680 is meant to be read aloud, in many cases, yes, read on 01:14:47.680 --> 01:14:52.000 your own as well, but originally meant to be read aloud. 01:14:52.000 --> 01:14:55.040 That's why it references that a number of times in scripture. 01:14:56.000 --> 01:14:59.520 Well you're not going to remember it hearing it if it's not 01:14:59.520 --> 01:15:03.840 natural language, because your brain is going to have that cognitive burden 01:15:03.840 --> 01:15:07.120 of trying to process what on earth is going on in this 01:15:07.120 --> 01:15:11.360 sentence instead of paying attention to the content. 01:15:11.360 --> 01:15:16.400 If you have that additional layer of difficulty in processing the thing, 01:15:16.400 --> 01:15:21.680 you are going to dedicate resources, cognitive resources, to the processing instead 01:15:21.680 --> 01:15:24.480 of the understanding and the retention. 01:15:24.480 --> 01:15:26.800 So it has to be thought for thought. 01:15:26.800 --> 01:15:30.960 It has to be a dynamic translation. 01:15:30.960 --> 01:15:34.080 Not the sort of translation that you have that claims to be 01:15:34.080 --> 01:15:38.960 literal but really isn't because again that can't be done because words 01:15:38.960 --> 01:15:44.320 have a lexical scope, and the lexical scope is not identical from 01:15:44.320 --> 01:15:46.480 one language to the next. 01:15:46.480 --> 01:15:50.880 And so in some cases it's very clearly almost the same, and 01:15:50.880 --> 01:15:56.320 so fremmed in German and foreign in English are almost identical. 01:15:56.320 --> 01:16:00.480 Their lexical scopes are very close to being the same. 01:16:00.480 --> 01:16:04.320 But you will get words where they have additional senses 01:16:05.440 --> 01:16:08.480 in one language that aren't present in another. 01:16:08.480 --> 01:16:11.520 You have to take that into account when you're doing the translation, 01:16:11.520 --> 01:16:14.160 and so you translate thought for thought. 01:16:14.160 --> 01:16:16.800 Instead of just that literal core sense you may have to use 01:16:16.800 --> 01:16:18.080 a different term. 01:16:18.080 --> 01:16:22.240 But you do that so that the speakers of the target language 01:16:22.240 --> 01:16:23.680 understand it. 01:16:23.680 --> 01:16:25.840 That is again the goal of this. 01:16:25.840 --> 01:16:29.600 There's no point in the project if you just produce something that 01:16:29.600 --> 01:16:34.160 is supposedly faithful to the original language, but is useless in the 01:16:34.160 --> 01:16:35.680 target language. 01:16:35.680 --> 01:16:40.480 We want an English Bible that is the actual word of God. 01:16:40.480 --> 01:16:44.480 And in order to be that, well it has to be English. 01:16:44.480 --> 01:16:48.800 Or it simply fails that initial test of being an English Bible 01:16:48.800 --> 01:16:50.640 instead of something else. 01:16:50.640 --> 01:16:53.760 None of this is to say that we cannot have an academic 01:16:53.760 --> 01:16:58.480 translation, because having something that is literal in that sense is entirely 01:16:58.480 --> 01:17:01.760 fine. But in that case, it's going to be marked up with 01:17:01.760 --> 01:17:04.400 the apparatus, it's going to have footnotes, it's going to give the 01:17:04.400 --> 01:17:07.360 lexical scope of terms, it's going to give alternative readings. 01:17:07.360 --> 01:17:09.360 That is a different beast. 01:17:09.360 --> 01:17:10.960 That is for study. 01:17:10.960 --> 01:17:13.920 It is not for reading, it's not for liturgical use, it's not 01:17:13.920 --> 01:17:17.680 for reading aloud, certainly, because you can't even read that sort of 01:17:17.680 --> 01:17:18.960 thing aloud. 01:17:18.960 --> 01:17:24.080 What we are talking about in this episode is a version of 01:17:24.080 --> 01:17:29.520 the scriptures, is an English translation that is readable to speakers of 01:17:29.520 --> 01:17:31.920 the language we are using right now. 01:17:31.920 --> 01:17:35.120 The language we are using for this episode. 01:17:35.120 --> 01:17:37.840 We want it to be in our language. 01:17:37.840 --> 01:17:40.560 And we want the same thing for every other people in their 01:17:40.560 --> 01:17:41.280 own languages. 01:17:41.280 --> 01:17:43.520 We want there to be a German version and a French version 01:17:44.240 --> 01:17:47.920 and a Finnish version, a Russian version, a Japanese version, and we 01:17:47.920 --> 01:17:51.280 want it to be in language that can be understood by the 01:17:51.280 --> 01:17:53.840 actual speakers of those languages. 01:17:53.840 --> 01:17:56.640 Instead of something that pretends to be faithful to the Faithful to 01:17:56.640 --> 01:18:00.960 the underlying text, but utterly fails in the actual goal of being 01:18:00.960 --> 01:18:07.360 comprehensible to the speakers of the target language. 01:18:07.920 --> 01:18:10.640 This is the reason that right about two years ago when we 01:18:10.640 --> 01:18:15.680 did the last listener feedback episode, the second one, we specifically commended 01:18:15.680 --> 01:18:17.440 the CSB Bible. 01:18:17.440 --> 01:18:20.640 I wouldn't use the CSB as a study bible, but as far 01:18:20.640 --> 01:18:24.000 as readability and speakability, it's outstanding. 01:18:24.000 --> 01:18:26.320 It's a great Bible to read to your family, to read to 01:18:26.320 --> 01:18:30.640 your kids, because it's easy to understand, it flows easily, you're not 01:18:30.640 --> 01:18:31.920 going to stumble over words. 01:18:31.920 --> 01:18:33.040 And it's pretty good. 01:18:33.040 --> 01:18:35.760 I've heard rumors that the CSB team may actually be working on 01:18:35.760 --> 01:18:36.880 a Septuagint for. 01:18:36.880 --> 01:18:38.480 Translation 2. 01:18:38.480 --> 01:18:41.760 I hope that's true, because it will be similarly readable. 01:18:41.760 --> 01:18:44.480 It's not gonna meet any of these rules that we have here, 01:18:44.480 --> 01:18:49.680 but until we have the right, best good version, good enough is 01:18:49.680 --> 01:18:50.720 what we're gonna have. 01:18:51.120 --> 01:18:54.800 So I hope to see more good enough Bibles that we can 01:18:54.800 --> 01:18:55.520 choose from. 01:18:55.520 --> 01:18:58.720 And we'll talk at the end about that proliferation because ultimately that 01:18:58.720 --> 01:19:00.240 shouldn't exist either. 01:19:00.240 --> 01:19:02.960 So until we get to that endpoint, good enough is the best 01:19:02.960 --> 01:19:05.120 we can hope for, and that's fine. 01:19:05.120 --> 01:19:07.600 Eventually we have solved all these problems. 01:19:07.600 --> 01:19:10.800 We need something to tide ourselves over. 01:19:10.800 --> 01:19:13.520 Another thing that the translation committee is going to have to keep 01:19:13.520 --> 01:19:17.280 in mind is that chapters and verses are completely fake. 01:19:17.600 --> 01:19:20.240 is not a call for removing them entirely, they're valuable. 01:19:20.240 --> 01:19:23.280 Printing the Bible is a separate question from translating it. 01:19:23.280 --> 01:19:24.880 I think it should be printed both ways. 01:19:24.880 --> 01:19:26.800 Obviously, we made that case previously. 01:19:26.800 --> 01:19:29.200 In fact, in the listener feedback episode. 01:19:29.200 --> 01:19:33.120 The reason this is so important to remember that chapters and verses 01:19:33.120 --> 01:19:37.440 are fake when you're talking about translation is that if you think 01:19:37.440 --> 01:19:41.200 of the translator's job as just translating one verse at a time 01:19:42.080 --> 01:19:45.520 He's going to break the text badly. 01:19:45.520 --> 01:19:48.400 When you look in the New Testament in particular, and when you 01:19:48.400 --> 01:19:52.400 look at Paul in particular, the man went on for pages and 01:19:52.400 --> 01:19:55.440 pages and pages with his argument, and it's glorious. 01:19:55.440 --> 01:19:58.960 He will go four chapters making the same point because he didn't 01:19:58.960 --> 01:20:00.080 know there were any chapters. 01:20:00.080 --> 01:20:02.000 Paul had no concept of chapters. 01:20:02.000 --> 01:20:05.360 Paul was making one point in one epistle. 01:20:05.360 --> 01:20:09.440 And so when you read it, that comes through much more clearly 01:20:09.520 --> 01:20:13.600 when you get rid of all that peripheral garbage, that visual pollution 01:20:13.600 --> 01:20:15.200 that so many of our Bibles have. 01:20:15.200 --> 01:20:18.640 That's why we also commended readers' Bibles. 01:20:18.640 --> 01:20:19.760 When a translator 01:20:20.640 --> 01:20:24.320 gets tunnel vision on one verse and tries to make a translation 01:20:24.320 --> 01:20:28.320 decision about a word in the context of that verse and that 01:20:28.320 --> 01:20:32.560 word at that time, he's missing half the point because he's looking 01:20:32.560 --> 01:20:35.360 at an author and he's looking at a book. 01:20:35.360 --> 01:20:38.080 That's what matters. 01:20:38.080 --> 01:20:42.320 So if at the beginning of chapter one, Paul begins making an 01:20:42.320 --> 01:20:46.320 argument about a certain idea, a certain concept, and he uses a 01:20:46.320 --> 01:20:51.520 particular word, and then he repeats that word in peripheral and related 01:20:51.520 --> 01:20:56.320 words three, four chapters later, still making the same argument. 01:20:56.320 --> 01:21:01.760 One of the pernicious impulses in the English speaker, and I'm victim 01:21:01.760 --> 01:21:06.160 of this as much as anyone, and more than most, is pursuing 01:21:06.160 --> 01:21:09.280 novelty. I already use that word, I don't want to use it 01:21:09.280 --> 01:21:12.800 again. I don't want to sound repetitive or redundant. 01:21:12.800 --> 01:21:15.360 Scripture has no such problem. 01:21:15.360 --> 01:21:17.200 God has no such problem. 01:21:17.200 --> 01:21:21.600 He will repeat the same phrase several times, verse after verse. 01:21:21.600 --> 01:21:25.760 That repetition must be preserved in the text as it was in 01:21:25.760 --> 01:21:26.720 the original. 01:21:26.720 --> 01:21:30.800 We don't vary it just to make it sound better for our 01:21:30.800 --> 01:21:32.240 English ears. 01:21:32.240 --> 01:21:34.720 Because this isn't a question of readability. 01:21:34.720 --> 01:21:37.840 This is a question of just itching ears. 01:21:37.840 --> 01:21:39.200 That's cultural itching ears. 01:21:39.200 --> 01:21:42.960 That's not a moral failing, but it is idiotic. 01:21:42.960 --> 01:21:44.640 Just leave the text alone. 01:21:44.640 --> 01:21:48.000 If Paul is making an argument in chapter one using a certain 01:21:48.000 --> 01:21:51.280 word, and he uses that word thirty eight times over the next 01:21:51.280 --> 01:21:56.560 four verse the next four chapters, translate the word the same every 01:21:56.560 --> 01:21:58.480 time. It's gonna be repetitive. 01:21:58.480 --> 01:21:59.520 Guess what? 01:21:59.520 --> 01:22:01.920 God repeated that word for a reason. 01:22:01.920 --> 01:22:03.440 Leave it alone. 01:22:03.440 --> 01:22:06.800 This is particularly a warning to English translators. 01:22:06.800 --> 01:22:09.440 It's less of a problem in some other languages. 01:22:09.440 --> 01:22:13.440 I've spent a couple of years reading Russian and some other Eastern 01:22:13.440 --> 01:22:16.000 European authors a long time ago, and that's one of the things 01:22:16.000 --> 01:22:17.440 that smacked me in the face. 01:22:17.440 --> 01:22:20.960 They are very repetitive to the point of being lyrical about it. 01:22:20.960 --> 01:22:24.080 And so I quickly realized like this is weird and alien. 01:22:24.080 --> 01:22:27.440 And I grew to appreciate this is a very different approach to 01:22:27.440 --> 01:22:29.600 communicating and it's cultural. 01:22:29.600 --> 01:22:34.560 It's baked into those races in a way that is lost in 01:22:34.560 --> 01:22:36.960 us. It doesn't mean we can't understand it. 01:22:36.960 --> 01:22:40.560 So when we're looking in English at a two thousand year old 01:22:40.560 --> 01:22:43.920 book that repeated a bunch of words we repeat 'em exactly the 01:22:43.920 --> 01:22:45.360 same way every time. 01:22:45.360 --> 01:22:49.840 This is the sort of harmonization that within a text is entirely 01:22:49.840 --> 01:22:53.600 necessary. Which is the last point that I want to make about 01:22:53.920 --> 01:22:55.760 translation rules. 01:22:55.760 --> 01:23:00.000 There must be zero harmonization of the Old Testament to the New 01:23:00.080 --> 01:23:03.840 Testament. As we gave some examples in the last couple weeks where 01:23:03.840 --> 01:23:07.840 the New Testament and the Old Testament don't match, and the Septuagint 01:23:07.840 --> 01:23:13.440 is not being quoted in the New Testament, we leave it alone. 01:23:13.440 --> 01:23:18.960 If for whatever reason the Holy Ghost quoted a Hebrew foreloga in 01:23:18.960 --> 01:23:22.320 the New Testament, that is what it says in the New Testament. 01:23:22.320 --> 01:23:26.720 When that quotation is coming from the Old Testament and the Septuagint 01:23:26.800 --> 01:23:29.360 says something different, we leave it alone. 01:23:29.360 --> 01:23:32.560 That is one of the places where you do want a footnote. 01:23:32.560 --> 01:23:36.640 A footnote that says this Old Testament verse is repeated in this 01:23:36.640 --> 01:23:38.800 New Testament verse with different wording. 01:23:38.800 --> 01:23:41.360 That is a fine, that is a good, that is a glorious 01:23:41.360 --> 01:23:45.200 thing. That is no cause for concern any more than the synoptic 01:23:45.200 --> 01:23:46.880 gospels are any cause for concern. 01:23:46.880 --> 01:23:50.880 We don't bother footnoting all the places where the same story is 01:23:50.880 --> 01:23:53.680 repeated in slightly different ways with different wording. 01:23:53.680 --> 01:23:54.880 It's what God does, it's fine. 01:23:54.880 --> 01:23:56.480 He repeats himself. 01:23:56.480 --> 01:24:00.240 So the very harmonization that we do want to see internal to 01:24:00.400 --> 01:24:03.840 books and certainly chapters and you know pieces. 01:24:03.840 --> 01:24:06.400 When we're looking between the Old and New Testament, and there are 01:24:06.400 --> 01:24:10.560 going to be differences in a textual basis, leave it alone. 01:24:10.560 --> 01:24:16.640 Now, on the other hand, the question of wording the New Testament 01:24:16.640 --> 01:24:21.120 Greek in harmony with what is in the Old Testament, I think 01:24:21.120 --> 01:24:22.320 that should be done. 01:24:22.320 --> 01:24:25.520 We talked about that a little bit in the last couple episodes. 01:24:25.520 --> 01:24:28.000 There are a bunch of cases where the New Testament is quoting 01:24:28.000 --> 01:24:33.040 the Old Testament, and either for the sake of obscuring the fact 01:24:33.040 --> 01:24:37.040 that the translators were relying on the Septuagint without admitting it, or 01:24:37.040 --> 01:24:40.560 just because they were translating into English, and so they were feeding 01:24:40.560 --> 01:24:45.520 the itching ears that wanted variety, they deliberately avoided using the same 01:24:45.520 --> 01:24:48.640 phrasing in the New Testament as the Old Testament. 01:24:48.640 --> 01:24:53.040 Personally, I think as a translation rule, the If the New Testament 01:24:53.040 --> 01:24:58.160 phrases a quote in one way, and the Old Testament is what 01:24:58.160 --> 01:25:02.720 is being quoted, and the Greek is essentially the same, I think 01:25:02.720 --> 01:25:05.680 that those should be quoted as much as possible verbatim. 01:25:05.680 --> 01:25:10.480 Now when things are reworded because of you know singular versus plural 01:25:10.800 --> 01:25:14.880 or e versus i, that sort of thing, obviously you leave it 01:25:14.880 --> 01:25:17.760 alone. That is inspired, we don't mess with it. 01:25:17.760 --> 01:25:21.040 But all the words that have not changed, they've just been rearranged 01:25:21.040 --> 01:25:25.120 or whatever, but it's reads basically the same. 01:25:25.120 --> 01:25:28.000 When you read a quote of the New Testament, you should recognize 01:25:28.000 --> 01:25:29.360 it without the footnote. 01:25:29.360 --> 01:25:32.320 You should say, hey, I just saw that in Isaiah. 01:25:32.320 --> 01:25:35.520 I'm reading this long section, I see a bunch of Isaiah quotes 01:25:35.520 --> 01:25:37.680 here, because they're going to read the same. 01:25:37.680 --> 01:25:41.760 Because if the underlying Greek text is the same, the English translation 01:25:41.760 --> 01:25:43.200 should be identical. 01:25:43.200 --> 01:25:44.320 That's not harmonization. 01:25:44.640 --> 01:25:50.320 That's just not messing with something for the sake of novelty. 01:25:50.400 --> 01:25:54.480 So now I'm gonna briefly run through what this workflow would actually 01:25:54.480 --> 01:25:55.120 look like. 01:25:55.120 --> 01:25:57.600 Because we've been given a bunch of rules and describing some of 01:25:57.600 --> 01:25:58.240 these moving parts. 01:25:58.960 --> 01:26:01.760 Let me describe what it would look like in motion to give 01:26:01.760 --> 01:26:03.600 you a sense of what we mean. 01:26:03.600 --> 01:26:07.360 Translators and the inner team are going to be requesting sources from 01:26:07.360 --> 01:26:08.640 the librarians. 01:26:08.640 --> 01:26:13.360 Those librarians' tasks is to sanitize those sources, add them to the 01:26:13.360 --> 01:26:17.760 work in progress apparatus, consult legal and say, hey, we're pulling in 01:26:17.760 --> 01:26:20.240 the source from this external group. 01:26:20.240 --> 01:26:23.120 Go talk to them, see if we can secure rights to publish 01:26:23.840 --> 01:26:25.840 independently later on. 01:26:25.840 --> 01:26:29.040 You don't need permission to use it as a reference, but you 01:26:29.200 --> 01:26:31.120 don't need a permission to cite it. 01:26:31.120 --> 01:26:34.800 But you do need legal clearance to produce the apparatus that ideally 01:26:35.520 --> 01:26:39.200 would come out at the end of this. 01:26:39.200 --> 01:26:41.440 The translators as they go. 01:26:41.440 --> 01:26:45.600 I think ideally you would want three men working on any particular 01:26:45.600 --> 01:26:49.280 passage, not in parallel identically, but I think it would make sense 01:26:49.280 --> 01:26:52.480 to have a three man rule for whatever is translated piece by 01:26:52.480 --> 01:26:56.000 piece, you know, verse by verse, but you know section where it's 01:26:55.920 --> 01:26:57.120 it's coherent. 01:26:57.120 --> 01:27:00.080 Three guys should sign off on it and all be in harmony 01:27:00.320 --> 01:27:03.040 that yeah, this is we think this is good enough. 01:27:03.040 --> 01:27:06.640 And obviously the all twelve translators or how many ever they're gonna 01:27:06.640 --> 01:27:09.520 be can could solve with each other freely, but I think you 01:27:09.520 --> 01:27:14.480 would always for any particular passage wanna have a three-man rule for 01:27:14.480 --> 01:27:18.160 w anything that's passed out to the librarians. 01:27:18.160 --> 01:27:22.320 Once the translators have finished a piece, they pass it out, they 01:27:22.320 --> 01:27:23.280 give it to the librarians. 01:27:23.280 --> 01:27:25.040 The librarians can look at it. 01:27:25.040 --> 01:27:26.160 They're not really editors. 01:27:26.160 --> 01:27:30.000 They're not really reviewers, but obviously their opinions matter. 01:27:30.000 --> 01:27:36.000 The advisory board would review whatever is produced, and between the advisory 01:27:36.000 --> 01:27:39.600 board and whatever concerns the librarians may have, if there are any 01:27:40.000 --> 01:27:44.640 reason why say there was some theological issue that maybe these less 01:27:44.640 --> 01:27:49.840 theologically knowledgeable translators might have introduced through a word choice, any concerns, 01:27:49.840 --> 01:27:54.480 questions or whatever would be passed back through the librarians to the 01:27:54.480 --> 01:27:58.880 translators for reevaluation or clarification or whatever. 01:27:58.880 --> 01:28:03.840 Crucially, the advisory committee is not permitted to speak to the translation 01:28:03.840 --> 01:28:05.120 committee directly. 01:28:05.120 --> 01:28:09.840 The librarians, the research middle ground, the firewall, those are the only 01:28:09.840 --> 01:28:13.920 ones who can ever talk to the translation committee because their paramount 01:28:13.920 --> 01:28:18.160 job is to make sure nothing of the rabbinic influence ever gets 01:28:18.160 --> 01:28:19.360 inside the clean room. 01:28:19.360 --> 01:28:19.920 And that would include 01:28:20.800 --> 01:28:23.200 pointed questions coming outside. 01:28:23.200 --> 01:28:27.280 So collectively, that group, the the librarians and the advisory team are 01:28:27.280 --> 01:28:30.160 gonna have to fight it out amongst themselves. 01:28:30.160 --> 01:28:33.360 Is this the rabbinic corruption creeping back in? 01:28:33.360 --> 01:28:34.800 Are we making a mistake here? 01:28:34.800 --> 01:28:36.880 Have they done the right thing and we're just coming from the 01:28:36.880 --> 01:28:37.760 wrong place? 01:28:37.760 --> 01:28:41.360 Or is there genuinely a theological problem that we can also see 01:28:41.520 --> 01:28:43.440 the Greek supports what we're saying? 01:28:43.440 --> 01:28:46.320 So do you guys agree that this would work better because this 01:28:46.320 --> 01:28:50.560 actually makes a problem theologically? 01:28:50.560 --> 01:28:53.920 Once all that is done, basically that could then go on to 01:28:53.920 --> 01:28:55.280 being typeset. 01:28:55.280 --> 01:28:57.840 Yeah, obviously it wouldn't all happen at once, but you could do 01:28:57.840 --> 01:29:01.280 this incrementally as you go along, get things ready to go, so 01:29:01.280 --> 01:29:03.920 you don't need to wait a ton of time after the whole 01:29:03.920 --> 01:29:06.800 process finished before it's published. 01:29:06.800 --> 01:29:09.600 The crucial part of this, I think one of the most important 01:29:09.600 --> 01:29:13.920 things of this entire model is that the translation committee decisions are 01:29:13.920 --> 01:29:20.640 final. No one outside of that hermetically sealed firewalled group has final 01:29:20.960 --> 01:29:24.320 say for the precise reason that they are the least polluted by 01:29:24.320 --> 01:29:25.760 the rabbis. 01:29:25.760 --> 01:29:30.080 They are in the unique position to make decisions with the least 01:29:30.080 --> 01:29:31.920 amount of influence. 01:29:31.920 --> 01:29:35.920 Because remember, particularly since most of our audience, although by no means 01:29:35.920 --> 01:29:37.680 all of it is Protestant. 01:29:37.680 --> 01:29:42.720 One of the central conceits of the Reformation is sola scriptura, which 01:29:42.720 --> 01:29:45.760 means, as we've said previously, by scripture alone. 01:29:45.760 --> 01:29:49.040 Doesn't mean scripture alone, it means by scripture alone. 01:29:49.040 --> 01:29:54.000 Which raises the question by what is the by scripture alone? 01:29:54.000 --> 01:29:58.480 The judgment of sound doctrine is by scripture alone. 01:29:58.480 --> 01:30:03.040 So if all we Protestants actually believe that's true, then we need 01:30:03.040 --> 01:30:06.720 to trust the faithful Christian men inside a sealed room with the 01:30:06.720 --> 01:30:09.760 Greek, don't need to have a bunch of guys arguing with them 01:30:09.760 --> 01:30:13.840 about theology for them to make a sound translation decision. 01:30:13.840 --> 01:30:19.520 Now, the theology, as we've said, is orthogonal, it's downstream, it's related, 01:30:19.520 --> 01:30:23.600 but it's not central to translation, which is why this project really 01:30:23.600 --> 01:30:25.520 should be ecumenical as well. 01:30:25.520 --> 01:30:29.280 I would strictly prohibit all the guys at any portion of this 01:30:29.280 --> 01:30:31.760 being all from the same denomination. 01:30:31.760 --> 01:30:32.640 No way. 01:30:32.640 --> 01:30:36.400 You need guys who fight tooth and nail over doctrine to be 01:30:36.400 --> 01:30:39.040 in agreement before we can proceed. 01:30:39.040 --> 01:30:41.760 Now, there are two ways that can go. 01:30:41.760 --> 01:30:46.800 Either you can produce something watered down and toothless and neutered, or 01:30:46.800 --> 01:30:51.040 you can produce something that is simply neutral, something that is faithful 01:30:51.040 --> 01:30:53.280 to the text that no one can disagree with. 01:30:53.280 --> 01:30:56.240 Yep. The Greek says this, the English is saying the same thing 01:30:56.240 --> 01:30:57.200 as the Greek. 01:30:57.200 --> 01:31:00.160 And then once I take this Bible, I'm gonna go in the 01:31:00.160 --> 01:31:03.760 next room and I'm gonna make my own denominational arguments for it. 01:31:03.760 --> 01:31:07.520 Fine. That's a separate fight from the translation fight. 01:31:07.520 --> 01:31:12.400 This cannot be something that's dominated by only one denomination, which is 01:31:12.400 --> 01:31:16.320 why I said earlier I'm happy that that new apostolic Bible has 01:31:16.320 --> 01:31:19.760 Protestants, Orthodox, and Roman Catholics involved. 01:31:19.760 --> 01:31:20.960 That's a good thing. 01:31:20.960 --> 01:31:23.280 Because all those guys disagree about so many things. 01:31:23.280 --> 01:31:26.960 If they can agree on what the Septuagint says, that's a good 01:31:26.960 --> 01:31:29.040 sign. That's a good test. 01:31:29.040 --> 01:31:31.120 That's a good Christian thing to do. 01:31:31.120 --> 01:31:33.200 And then we fight about theology. 01:31:33.200 --> 01:31:35.520 Let's all get the same Bible in front of us and then 01:31:35.520 --> 01:31:36.800 argue over what it says. 01:31:36.800 --> 01:31:37.360 That's fine. 01:31:37.360 --> 01:31:38.480 That's a good thing. 01:31:38.480 --> 01:31:42.640 But the translation committee is not the one making those choices. 01:31:42.640 --> 01:31:46.720 Which is why every decision along the way is exclusively the translation 01:31:46.720 --> 01:31:50.480 committee. That's why I said the advisory team, the librarians, those are 01:31:50.480 --> 01:31:51.600 not the deciders. 01:31:51.600 --> 01:31:55.280 Obviously the lawyers are not the deciders either, but they're really an 01:31:55.280 --> 01:31:57.440 external form of the librarians. 01:31:57.440 --> 01:32:01.280 They're really mainly there just to interact with external bodies for the 01:32:01.280 --> 01:32:03.280 securing of rights. 01:32:03.280 --> 01:32:06.960 Those legal clearances obviously need to be piled up and ideally they'd 01:32:06.960 --> 01:32:10.000 be able to secure legal clearances for everything that would be in 01:32:10.000 --> 01:32:11.520 the produced apparatus. 01:32:11.840 --> 01:32:15.680 'Cause again, ultimately all that we want to publish here is a 01:32:15.840 --> 01:32:20.960 an English translation of the Greek Septuagint and every single source that 01:32:20.960 --> 01:32:25.840 was used to produce it, which would include whatever from Göttingen or 01:32:25.840 --> 01:32:33.040 Ralph's, whatever from the Patristic sources, whatever from the ancient Greek sources, 01:32:33.040 --> 01:32:37.760 all of which may be copyright encumbered, especially if they're translations, but 01:32:38.080 --> 01:32:43.040 hopefully, because those are mostly academic groups on their end, hopefully they 01:32:43.040 --> 01:32:46.320 would concede without too much money having to change hands. 01:32:46.320 --> 01:32:50.800 In some cases, because we're talking about publishing entirely copyright unencumbered, they 01:32:50.880 --> 01:32:51.680 may want a big check. 01:32:51.680 --> 01:32:52.800 I don't know. 01:32:52.800 --> 01:32:56.000 But I think it's a vital part of this process that there 01:32:56.080 --> 01:33:00.640 be transparency and that again, the apparatus would be tremendously valuable as 01:33:00.640 --> 01:33:02.000 a study companion. 01:33:02.000 --> 01:33:05.520 Like here's to help you understand as you're reading your English translation 01:33:05.920 --> 01:33:07.280 of the Septuagint. 01:33:07.280 --> 01:33:11.120 Here's something to help you understand how those words and phrases were 01:33:11.120 --> 01:33:12.320 used in that time. 01:33:12.320 --> 01:33:13.520 I would love to have that. 01:33:13.520 --> 01:33:16.240 Like we're talking about something that we wished existed. 01:33:16.240 --> 01:33:18.800 Like this isn't just oh wouldn't it be nice? 01:33:18.800 --> 01:33:19.760 I want this. 01:33:19.760 --> 01:33:20.960 This is greedy. 01:33:20.960 --> 01:33:22.720 This is a very selfish episode. 01:33:22.720 --> 01:33:25.520 But I think it would benefit the whole world in every language, 01:33:25.520 --> 01:33:28.400 because again, this model will work for everyone. 01:33:28.400 --> 01:33:30.960 The last two aspects of all of this are 01:33:32.160 --> 01:33:38.320 copyright, distribution, printing, and access. 01:33:38.320 --> 01:33:42.240 Or fur back incorporate by reference everything that we said in the 01:33:42.240 --> 01:33:47.920 early paywall and God episode and the episode on capitalist idolatry. 01:33:47.920 --> 01:33:53.920 Very simply, nothing related to the Bible should ever be copyrighted in 01:33:53.920 --> 01:33:57.280 a way that causes these problems we're talking about here. 01:33:57.520 --> 01:34:01.200 The idea that I would need permission from someone else to reproduce 01:34:01.440 --> 01:34:05.840 part of what they say the Bible says is unconscionable. 01:34:05.840 --> 01:34:08.320 Now, that's not the argument the lawyers are going to be making 01:34:08.320 --> 01:34:12.480 to their representatives we're trying to secure those rights, but we are 01:34:12.480 --> 01:34:14.560 looking to set a new example here. 01:34:14.560 --> 01:34:19.040 We laid out the case in detail in Paywall and God that 01:34:19.040 --> 01:34:22.000 you simply don't do that when you're talking about God stuff. 01:34:22.000 --> 01:34:26.240 Now both Corey and I think that copyright should be abolished entirely, 01:34:26.240 --> 01:34:29.920 but I think that's what Corey believes, but even for the sake 01:34:29.920 --> 01:34:34.400 of argument, only if we limit it to what is theological, nevertheless, 01:34:34.320 --> 01:34:36.880 anything theological should not be copyright and cumbered. 01:34:36.960 --> 01:34:38.480 We're talking about God's stuff. 01:34:38.560 --> 01:34:40.080 We're talking about God's word. 01:34:40.080 --> 01:34:42.240 You don't have to pay me for that. 01:34:42.240 --> 01:34:44.240 I shouldn't pay you for that. 01:34:44.240 --> 01:34:47.920 That should be freely exchanged for the benefit of every soul on 01:34:47.920 --> 01:34:48.480 the planet. 01:34:49.440 --> 01:34:52.880 So we'll put a link in the show notes to one of 01:34:52.880 --> 01:34:57.520 the Creative Commons examples of a copyright statement that we think would 01:34:57.520 --> 01:35:00.080 be ideally suited to this sort of project. 01:35:00.080 --> 01:35:05.840 Essentially, what it does it says that this product, this Bible in 01:35:05.840 --> 01:35:11.840 this apparatus, would be entirely unencumbered by copyright beyond the requirement of 01:35:11.840 --> 01:35:16.080 an attribution, meaning if you want to say 01:35:17.040 --> 01:35:17.360 that 01:35:18.240 --> 01:35:22.080 we wrote this and you're writing something other than what we've translated, 01:35:22.080 --> 01:35:22.800 you don't get to do that. 01:35:22.800 --> 01:35:25.680 Now weed obviously doesn't include me, but for the sake of the 01:35:25.680 --> 01:35:29.760 project. Attribution simply means basically a checksum. 01:35:29.760 --> 01:35:33.680 Here is the septuagent produced by this committee, this group at this 01:35:33.680 --> 01:35:35.600 time, on this date. 01:35:35.600 --> 01:35:37.360 This is a completed work. 01:35:37.360 --> 01:35:39.600 You're free to do anything you want with it. 01:35:39.600 --> 01:35:42.400 You can make your own derivative works, you can alter it, you 01:35:42.400 --> 01:35:45.840 can modify it, you can add, remove, whatever. 01:35:45.840 --> 01:35:49.920 Any additions, removals, whatever, you don't blame us for it. 01:35:49.920 --> 01:35:51.760 You say that you got it from us and then you made 01:35:51.760 --> 01:35:55.680 changes and then you put your own copyright statement on it. 01:35:55.680 --> 01:36:00.560 And the last rule would simply be for copyright purposes, commercial use 01:36:00.560 --> 01:36:04.880 is fine, but you cannot encumber any derivative works with a more 01:36:04.880 --> 01:36:06.400 restrictive license. 01:36:06.560 --> 01:36:10.000 And this is a case where although we're opposed to copyright, we 01:36:10.000 --> 01:36:15.280 are advocating using the copyright funnel specifically in a very moral direction 01:36:15.440 --> 01:36:18.000 to say we're gonna unlock this down. 01:36:18.000 --> 01:36:19.520 We're not locking it down further. 01:36:19.520 --> 01:36:22.560 We are freeing this, and we're saying that anyone is free to 01:36:22.560 --> 01:36:25.600 use this for any reason or any purpose, any way they wish, 01:36:25.600 --> 01:36:28.240 but they cannot make it less free than what we have given 01:36:28.240 --> 01:36:30.640 them. That's the way it should work. 01:36:30.640 --> 01:36:33.840 And commercial use is necessary, obviously, because we want these to be 01:36:33.840 --> 01:36:38.400 printed. And the question of translation is entirely separate from the question 01:36:38.400 --> 01:36:39.440 of printing. 01:36:39.440 --> 01:36:42.240 Now personally, I think that as they're going, I think that the 01:36:42.240 --> 01:36:45.200 group involved should be typesetting, have somebody doesn't need to be the 01:36:45.360 --> 01:36:47.040 libraries and researchers. 01:36:47.040 --> 01:36:49.680 Someone could be on the side once the stuff is finished, begin 01:36:49.680 --> 01:36:53.680 typesetting and getting it ready, such that when the whole project is 01:36:53.680 --> 01:36:56.240 finished, you can go straight to press. 01:36:56.240 --> 01:37:00.800 Once it's been reviewed and everyone agrees, that's a finished Bible. 01:37:00.800 --> 01:37:02.560 That's pretty much it in a nutshell. 01:37:02.560 --> 01:37:05.440 It's not very complicated, it has not very involved. 01:37:05.440 --> 01:37:09.200 Some of the rules seem pretty strict, but I think I hope 01:37:09.200 --> 01:37:12.000 we made the case that it's simply a matter of hygiene. 01:37:12.000 --> 01:37:16.000 They're things you have to keep out, because once they creep in, 01:37:16.000 --> 01:37:21.200 if enough problems occur, if enough of these rules are broken, eventually 01:37:21.280 --> 01:37:23.040 in three hundred years a church is going to have to do 01:37:23.360 --> 01:37:27.200 this again, or a thousand years, or God forbid two thousand years. 01:37:27.200 --> 01:37:31.120 When the airs come in, they never stay. 01:37:31.120 --> 01:37:33.920 Leaven does what leaven does. 01:37:33.920 --> 01:37:35.040 It's yeast. 01:37:35.040 --> 01:37:39.120 All it does is feed and reproduce and burp and excrete. 01:37:39.120 --> 01:37:41.200 That's the life cycle of yeast. 01:37:41.200 --> 01:37:44.480 And it's used for beneficial purposes when you're making bread or beer 01:37:44.480 --> 01:37:45.520 or whatever. 01:37:45.520 --> 01:37:48.800 If that yeast gets somewhere it doesn't belong, it can kill you. 01:37:48.880 --> 01:37:51.120 They can do very bad things. 01:37:51.120 --> 01:37:54.640 So all of these measures are simply hygienic. 01:37:54.640 --> 01:37:58.240 These measures are intended to solve this problem once and for all, 01:37:58.240 --> 01:38:00.160 at least in the English language. 01:38:00.160 --> 01:38:04.800 Obviously, in the future, in other languages, things have to be translated 01:38:04.800 --> 01:38:08.240 again, but we shouldn't have to go through this rigor again. 01:38:08.240 --> 01:38:11.840 Between the vetted Greek sources and the Greek apparatus that would be 01:38:11.840 --> 01:38:16.080 produced, any other committee should have anything they would need to relatively 01:38:16.480 --> 01:38:20.880 quickly do the same sort of clean room implementation in any other 01:38:20.880 --> 01:38:25.120 language. There may well be other rules, other procedures, but we think 01:38:25.120 --> 01:38:29.920 that these are not necessarily complete, but these are certainly necessary as 01:38:29.920 --> 01:38:36.240 a baseline to ensure that this and future translations will not have 01:38:36.240 --> 01:38:40.240 the problems that we have today. 01:38:41.440 --> 01:38:45.040 To say that what would be produced by this would be the 01:38:45.040 --> 01:38:48.880 definitive English translation for all time. 01:38:48.880 --> 01:38:52.960 Because as mentioned in previous episodes, one of the things that is 01:38:53.120 --> 01:38:58.640 an aspect of an inherent attribute of living languages is that they 01:38:58.640 --> 01:38:59.840 change over time. 01:38:59.840 --> 01:39:00.800 We all know this. 01:39:00.800 --> 01:39:04.320 You can read even English sources from fifty years ago. 01:39:04.320 --> 01:39:07.680 You can read a novel written sort of at this point, more 01:39:07.680 --> 01:39:11.600 than that, seventy, eighty years ago, sort of one of the peaks 01:39:11.600 --> 01:39:15.440 of science fiction literature, you can read that novel, and the English 01:39:15.440 --> 01:39:18.480 will be different from the English you speak every day, the English 01:39:18.480 --> 01:39:19.920 you use every day. 01:39:19.920 --> 01:39:22.880 Because the language is living and it changes. 01:39:22.880 --> 01:39:27.680 Now, it doesn't change that much day to day, year to year, 01:39:27.680 --> 01:39:33.120 even decade to decade, but those small changes add up over time. 01:39:33.120 --> 01:39:36.560 One of the things that happens, one of the mechanisms by which 01:39:36.560 --> 01:39:40.880 this happens most frequently is that that lexical scope of a term, 01:39:40.880 --> 01:39:45.040 it's an umbrella under which you have a number of sub-definitions, as 01:39:45.040 --> 01:39:45.600 it were. 01:39:45.600 --> 01:39:48.880 There are a number of different senses for the term, and at 01:39:48.880 --> 01:39:52.720 one point in time one will predominate, and that will shift over 01:39:52.720 --> 01:39:56.000 time for various reasons, and another will predominate. 01:39:56.000 --> 01:40:00.640 And so it will be the case that A century from now, 01:40:00.640 --> 01:40:04.720 or whenever this is published, two centuries from then, three centuries from 01:40:05.040 --> 01:40:08.320 however long it happens to be, it varies by language. 01:40:08.320 --> 01:40:11.040 As I said, German is a little more stable than English. 01:40:11.040 --> 01:40:12.560 Some languages are more volatile. 01:40:12.560 --> 01:40:15.040 It just depends. 01:40:15.040 --> 01:40:21.280 You will need to have incremental updates, not in the sense of 01:40:21.520 --> 01:40:25.360 yearly issuance or an annual edition, not that kind of sense, but 01:40:25.360 --> 01:40:29.440 a hundred A hundred years after, a century after, you may need 01:40:29.440 --> 01:40:34.080 to go back and review what it was that you had in 01:40:34.080 --> 01:40:38.240 the previous version and make some minor changes in order to align 01:40:38.240 --> 01:40:42.400 it, not with the underlying text, because hopefully you did that right 01:40:42.400 --> 01:40:46.240 the first time, but rather with the usage of the language, the 01:40:46.240 --> 01:40:49.440 target language, the one you are speaking and using. 01:40:49.440 --> 01:40:53.200 Because those changes accumulate over time. 01:40:53.200 --> 01:40:55.600 This is not to say that we should have a ton of 01:40:55.600 --> 01:41:00.000 different versions of the Bible, because of course we don't want that. 01:41:00.000 --> 01:41:04.000 We want there to be one definitive version in each language. 01:41:04.000 --> 01:41:07.840 We want there to be an English Bible. 01:41:07.840 --> 01:41:10.000 We want the English Bible. 01:41:10.000 --> 01:41:13.440 But it is the English Bible for our time. 01:41:13.440 --> 01:41:17.520 It is not the English Bible for those who will follow us 01:41:17.840 --> 01:41:21.280 three hundred years in the future, assuming God permits things to continue 01:41:21.280 --> 01:41:25.360 for that long, they will need to have made some changes, some 01:41:25.360 --> 01:41:29.760 updates, because it will need to reflect the evolution of the English 01:41:29.760 --> 01:41:33.120 language during the intervening years. 01:41:33.120 --> 01:41:36.720 This is the sort of project that has to be undertaken by 01:41:36.720 --> 01:41:40.160 a civilization that wants to remain Christian. 01:41:40.160 --> 01:41:43.600 It's not that, again, we need to go back Go back and 01:41:43.600 --> 01:41:47.200 change things because we were unfaithful to the text, hopefully we were 01:41:47.200 --> 01:41:50.960 faithful to the text in the first instance, it is because of 01:41:50.960 --> 01:41:52.960 that natural evolution. 01:41:52.960 --> 01:41:55.360 That is something that has to be taken into account. 01:41:55.360 --> 01:41:58.640 We even do this with all sorts of secular works. 01:41:58.640 --> 01:42:04.080 We reissue older books updated in modern language. 01:42:04.080 --> 01:42:07.520 I use the example of Chaucer just because it's such a great 01:42:07.520 --> 01:42:10.240 example, at least for anyone who's read any of Chaucer. 01:42:10.240 --> 01:42:15.280 If you haven't read any of anything in that form of English. 01:42:15.280 --> 01:42:18.320 When you are finished listening to this episode, just go and read 01:42:18.320 --> 01:42:21.360 one sentence from chust pick one at random and read the sentence. 01:42:21.360 --> 01:42:26.720 You will recognize it seems like English, but it's so fundamentally different 01:42:26.720 --> 01:42:30.800 from the English we are using today that it is basically incomprehensible. 01:42:30.800 --> 01:42:35.520 Which is why modern English translations of Chouser exist, so that you 01:42:35.520 --> 01:42:39.280 can read them and understand them, because you can't read his English 01:42:39.760 --> 01:42:41.920 unless you have actually studied it. 01:42:41.920 --> 01:42:45.520 The same thing will probably be true three or four hundred years 01:42:45.520 --> 01:42:46.400 in the future. 01:42:46.400 --> 01:42:49.360 They will not be able to read without some help or without 01:42:49.840 --> 01:42:53.440 updating the English that we are using today. 01:42:53.440 --> 01:42:56.720 Because natural languages are not static. 01:42:56.720 --> 01:43:00.240 That is the difference between a dead language like Latin and a 01:43:00.240 --> 01:43:03.520 living language like English or German. 01:43:03.520 --> 01:43:06.400 The living language changes over time. 01:43:06.400 --> 01:43:09.520 It is perhaps one of the advantages of a dead language. 01:43:09.520 --> 01:43:13.280 It's something you can translate into and leave it alone because the 01:43:13.280 --> 01:43:15.440 language is no longer going anywhere. 01:43:15.440 --> 01:43:18.880 What it says today is what it will say five hundred years 01:43:18.880 --> 01:43:21.520 from today. 01:43:21.520 --> 01:43:24.720 But that isn't solving the problem. 01:43:24.720 --> 01:43:28.560 Because the problem is having a Bible in a language that we 01:43:28.560 --> 01:43:33.040 understand, that everyone can read, that the native speakers of any given 01:43:33.040 --> 01:43:38.240 language, whatever language it happens to be, can read without difficulty and 01:43:38.240 --> 01:43:39.200 understand well. 01:43:40.000 --> 01:43:42.800 And so it has to be in the language of the day, 01:43:42.800 --> 01:43:47.120 which is why those little updates will be necessary over time. 01:43:47.120 --> 01:43:50.720 And there's also the simple fact, sort of as a tangent from 01:43:50.720 --> 01:43:55.280 that, but very related to the core matter of the episode, those 01:43:55.280 --> 01:44:00.160 who do that update in a hundred years or two hundred years 01:44:00.240 --> 01:44:05.360 or three hundred years will be even more removed from any potential 01:44:05.360 --> 01:44:06.960 rabbinic corruption. 01:44:06.960 --> 01:44:12.000 Because they will have been using the actual scriptures based on the 01:44:12.000 --> 01:44:15.520 Septuagint in those intervening years. 01:44:15.520 --> 01:44:18.320 They will not have the same problems that we have to consider 01:44:18.960 --> 01:44:22.400 today, because we've all been reading the rabbinic text. 01:44:22.400 --> 01:44:26.480 We've all been immersed in the rabbinic text, because we read books 01:44:26.480 --> 01:44:29.040 that use it, we've read authors who use it, we listen to 01:44:29.040 --> 01:44:31.600 pastors and others who have used it. 01:44:31.600 --> 01:44:33.760 We have it all around us. 01:44:33.760 --> 01:44:38.640 If this is done correctly, then those who take up this task 01:44:38.640 --> 01:44:42.160 in the future will not have the same problems that we do. 01:44:42.160 --> 01:44:46.000 They will simply be addressing the reality of a living language and 01:44:46.000 --> 01:44:50.160 making minor changes here and there in order to make it still 01:44:50.160 --> 01:44:54.320 readable to those using that version of the language in that far 01:44:54.320 --> 01:44:55.920 distant future. 01:44:55.920 --> 01:44:56.880 It's a fundamentally different 01:44:57.760 --> 01:45:00.480 problem. It's not even really a problem for them. 01:45:00.480 --> 01:45:04.080 If we do things correctly here and now, which is one of 01:45:04.080 --> 01:45:06.480 the reasons that we have to make sure that we get this 01:45:06.480 --> 01:45:09.200 as right as we possibly can. 01:45:09.200 --> 01:45:14.000 Because we are setting up the stage for future generations. 01:45:14.000 --> 01:45:18.640 We can create problems for them, or we can solve the problems 01:45:18.640 --> 01:45:22.640 that were passed to us from previous generations and not pass on 01:45:22.640 --> 01:45:25.040 problems to future generations. 01:45:25.040 --> 01:45:28.320 Perfection, of course, is a goal. 01:45:28.320 --> 01:45:32.560 A difficult one to obtain, certainly, and perhaps an impossible one when 01:45:32.560 --> 01:45:37.040 it comes to language because just the inherent nature of the beast. 01:45:37.040 --> 01:45:40.240 But we can come as close as possible, as close as humanly 01:45:40.240 --> 01:45:44.480 possible. And personally I believe, and I know that Woe does as 01:45:44.480 --> 01:45:49.280 well, God will guide the translators if we are faithful. 01:45:50.400 --> 01:45:54.720 There's no reason to believe that God does not continue to preserve 01:45:54.720 --> 01:45:56.000 his word in that way. 01:45:56.000 --> 01:45:59.360 He promises that he will preserve his word. 01:45:59.360 --> 01:46:04.880 He can't possibly just mean the one language. 01:46:04.880 --> 01:46:07.360 That's not how human beings work. 01:46:07.360 --> 01:46:11.040 That's not what God wanted, because God wanted his word to go 01:46:11.040 --> 01:46:12.960 out to the entire world. 01:46:12.960 --> 01:46:18.160 Necessarily part of that is translating that word into other languages, and 01:46:18.160 --> 01:46:22.240 we already know that God does this because he caused the Hebrew 01:46:22.240 --> 01:46:25.440 forlaga to be translated into Greek. 01:46:25.440 --> 01:46:28.160 He already gave his stamp of approval once. 01:46:28.160 --> 01:46:31.360 Now it's not to say that if we simply replicate what was 01:46:31.360 --> 01:46:35.840 done with the Septuagint that naturally the outcome sort of, you know, 01:46:35.840 --> 01:46:39.360 in the same sense of a mechanical or a machine will produce 01:46:39.360 --> 01:46:40.800 this outcome because it's a machine. 01:46:40.800 --> 01:46:43.600 It's not that sense. 01:46:43.600 --> 01:46:48.240 But God is going to continue to guide the church, and I 01:46:48.240 --> 01:46:51.360 firmly believe that He will guide us in this project as long 01:46:51.360 --> 01:46:52.960 as we are faithful. 01:46:53.280 --> 01:46:58.480 Because God has promises attached to His Word and attached to His 01:46:58.480 --> 01:47:03.040 church. And the only possible way to fulfill that is to make 01:47:03.040 --> 01:47:07.840 it possible to have His Word in the various languages of the 01:47:07.840 --> 01:47:11.200 various peoples who comprise that church. 01:47:11.200 --> 01:47:15.360 And so each nation needs to have its own Bible. 01:47:15.360 --> 01:47:17.120 What does Revelation say? 01:47:17.120 --> 01:47:21.280 One of the things that's a refrain throughout Scripture is that God 01:47:21.280 --> 01:47:27.440 wants people from every tribe, nation, tongue, which is to say language. 01:47:27.440 --> 01:47:32.400 And so certainly it must naturally mean that his language, his Bible, 01:47:32.400 --> 01:47:36.640 his word must be translated into those languages so that those people 01:47:36.640 --> 01:47:39.840 can understand his word, so they can have his word and read 01:47:39.840 --> 01:47:42.480 it in a language that is theirs. 01:47:42.480 --> 01:47:45.200 Part of that is translating. 01:47:45.200 --> 01:47:48.560 And so yes, I do believe that God will guide us in 01:47:48.560 --> 01:47:49.600 this project. 01:47:49.600 --> 01:47:54.080 I'm not saying that the final product of this is going to 01:47:54.080 --> 01:47:58.000 necessarily be inspired again mechanically, because if you do the thing, then 01:47:58.080 --> 01:48:00.240 out pops the other thing. 01:48:00.240 --> 01:48:01.680 I'm not saying that. 01:48:01.680 --> 01:48:04.800 I'm saying that we can rely on God, and in so far 01:48:04.800 --> 01:48:08.160 as we are faithful, God is also faithful. 01:48:08.160 --> 01:48:11.200 And even when we are not faithful, God is still faithful. 01:48:11.200 --> 01:48:14.640 And so I believe that He will bless us in this undertaking. 01:48:14.640 --> 01:48:19.600 But we need to do is make sure that we safeguard ourselves 01:48:19.600 --> 01:48:23.920 against this contamination, against the problems, and that we produce the best 01:48:23.920 --> 01:48:28.400 possible thing that we can, so that future generations do not have 01:48:28.400 --> 01:48:31.680 to come back and do the work that we failed to do, 01:48:31.680 --> 01:48:35.760 like we are doing with regard to the generations that came before 01:48:35.760 --> 01:48:36.080 us 01:48:38.320 --> 01:48:42.000 While Corey was giving his closing, I was looking up something that 01:48:42.000 --> 01:48:44.320 I hoped would be in there and I found it. 01:48:44.560 --> 01:48:48.240 Talking about the evolution of language and how it's necessary to update 01:48:48.240 --> 01:48:52.720 things. James 2 3 in the King James reads And ye have 01:48:52.720 --> 01:48:56.160 respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, 01:48:56.160 --> 01:48:58.560 Sit thou here in a good place, and say to the poor, 01:48:58.560 --> 01:49:01.440 stand thou there or sit here under my footstool. 01:49:01.440 --> 01:49:05.600 Today, if I said, Hey, that guy's wearing gay clothing in church, 01:49:05.600 --> 01:49:10.400 it would mean something different than when the King James was translated. 01:49:10.400 --> 01:49:14.160 Obviously, it doesn't mean the same thing today. 01:49:14.160 --> 01:49:16.880 And while you might be thinking, oh, that just means happy and 01:49:16.880 --> 01:49:20.080 they corrupted it, well, that's not even what it meant four hundred 01:49:20.080 --> 01:49:20.960 years ago. 01:49:20.960 --> 01:49:24.800 It was something about splendid or bright, gleaming. 01:49:24.800 --> 01:49:29.360 And even in Webster 200 years ago, the notion of gay as 01:49:29.360 --> 01:49:33.440 Mary was a secondary definition. 01:49:33.440 --> 01:49:35.360 So language changes. 01:49:35.360 --> 01:49:36.000 That's fine. 01:49:36.000 --> 01:49:37.760 There's nothing wrong with that. 01:49:37.760 --> 01:49:40.080 I agree with what Corey said about timing. 01:49:40.080 --> 01:49:44.000 I think that I think on the century mark is the absolute 01:49:44.000 --> 01:49:47.280 earliest. I think every two centuries is ideal. 01:49:47.280 --> 01:49:50.160 I think pretty much every two centuries you want to be looking 01:49:50.160 --> 01:49:52.480 at updating for these reasons. 01:49:52.480 --> 01:49:56.320 Not going back to the original and redoing everything from scratch catch. 01:49:56.320 --> 01:49:57.520 That's stupid. 01:49:57.520 --> 01:50:00.320 If you get it right you don't have to do it again. 01:50:00.320 --> 01:50:05.280 But as language drifts and evolves and frankly devolves, mean most what 01:50:05.280 --> 01:50:07.600 happens to language is devolution. 01:50:07.600 --> 01:50:11.840 As long as English is the lingua franca, it's going to continue 01:50:11.840 --> 01:50:15.760 to go down the tubes because one goes invariably with the other. 01:50:15.760 --> 01:50:18.640 That's why Greek went down the tubes and got replaced. 01:50:18.640 --> 01:50:20.400 And then Latin got replaced. 01:50:20.400 --> 01:50:25.840 It's the natural evolution of empires and the devolution of languages. 01:50:25.840 --> 01:50:28.720 One of the other things that obviously is not going to be 01:50:28.720 --> 01:50:32.080 solved as part of this project, but is one of the other 01:50:32.240 --> 01:50:36.320 30 things that needs to be solved pretty much simultaneously to fix 01:50:36.320 --> 01:50:40.000 the world is we need to have godly princes in charge of 01:50:40.000 --> 01:50:40.880 things again. 01:50:40.880 --> 01:50:44.800 And that includes being in charge of Bible translations. 01:50:44.800 --> 01:50:48.160 The notion that there's a section of a bookstore that's full of 01:50:48.160 --> 01:50:52.640 Bibles and they're all different is not just a giant stack of 01:50:52.640 --> 01:50:55.920 the Bible is an abomination. 01:50:55.920 --> 01:51:00.480 Charlemagne was right when he worked with Alquin to figure out what 01:51:00.320 --> 01:51:04.560 the original Jerome Vulgate was, and then reproduce it and send it 01:51:04.560 --> 01:51:08.880 out to all of his churches and declare by Fiat as King, 01:51:08.880 --> 01:51:10.080 this is the Bible. 01:51:10.080 --> 01:51:13.280 Use this from now on, use this for preaching, use this for 01:51:13.280 --> 01:51:15.120 reproducing other Bibles. 01:51:15.120 --> 01:51:19.520 King James I did the same thing 400 years ago. 01:51:19.520 --> 01:51:21.120 This is the Bible, use this. 01:51:21.120 --> 01:51:22.240 This is our Bible now. 01:51:22.240 --> 01:51:24.000 This is the English Bible. 01:51:24.000 --> 01:51:26.160 That was exactly the right thing to do. 01:51:26.160 --> 01:51:28.480 And it needs to come from the top. 01:51:28.480 --> 01:51:33.120 And it stuck so well that it wasn't until 1808 that there 01:51:33.120 --> 01:51:36.480 was another English translation by the man I mentioned earlier, one of 01:51:36.480 --> 01:51:39.120 the founding fathers who happened to translate the Septuagint. 01:51:39.200 --> 01:51:40.000 It's amazing. 01:51:40.160 --> 01:51:42.960 I'm still reeling that I found that this morning. 01:51:42.960 --> 01:51:47.360 The godly prince needs to be the one calling and convening these 01:51:47.360 --> 01:51:51.840 things, because a man is not simply a church matter, is a 01:51:51.840 --> 01:51:54.560 matter of managing an entire nation. 01:51:54.560 --> 01:51:58.880 And this is entirely alien to our sensibilities and to our values 01:51:59.040 --> 01:52:02.240 and everything about our Judeo-Christian moray. 01:52:02.240 --> 01:52:03.280 That's the problem. 01:52:03.280 --> 01:52:06.000 It's another problem that needs to be solved. 01:52:06.320 --> 01:52:09.120 But don't think that because we are saying, hey, we need a 01:52:09.120 --> 01:52:10.160 new Bible translation. 01:52:10.160 --> 01:52:13.040 And by the way, here are three more Bible translations coming out 01:52:13.040 --> 01:52:14.480 before 2027. 01:52:14.480 --> 01:52:16.480 And you should have this, that, and the other, and then you're 01:52:16.400 --> 01:52:17.120 gonna have another. 01:52:17.120 --> 01:52:19.920 In 20 years you'll have this really good one. 01:52:19.920 --> 01:52:23.200 None of that implies that we think anything about any of this 01:52:23.200 --> 01:52:24.160 is good. 01:52:24.160 --> 01:52:28.400 By fixing this problem with this process, the intention is to solve 01:52:28.400 --> 01:52:29.760 it for centuries. 01:52:29.760 --> 01:52:31.280 That's what we're thinking about here. 01:52:31.280 --> 01:52:33.120 We're thinking in terms of centuries. 01:52:33.120 --> 01:52:36.800 Once this Bible is produced, if it is done correctly, and it 01:52:36.800 --> 01:52:41.520 withstands scrutiny as having been translated faithfully by that committee, there should 01:52:41.520 --> 01:52:42.720 be no more Bibles. 01:52:42.720 --> 01:52:46.400 There should be no new Bibles produced whatsoever, and the others should 01:52:46.400 --> 01:52:48.080 fall into disuse. 01:52:48.080 --> 01:52:51.680 They should be removed from circulation because they no longer serve a 01:52:51.680 --> 01:52:56.320 purpose. Once we have the Word of God fully intact. 01:52:56.320 --> 01:53:00.000 Now we're presented with a case where remember the wicked Bible example 01:53:00.000 --> 01:53:01.760 I've given previously. 01:53:01.760 --> 01:53:03.760 Centuries ago it was a Bible. 01:53:03.760 --> 01:53:08.000 They inadvertently through a printer error, said thou shalt commit adultery instead 01:53:07.920 --> 01:53:10.320 of thou shalt not commit adultery. 01:53:10.320 --> 01:53:13.040 That Bible is rare today because it was only one printing and 01:53:13.040 --> 01:53:15.360 wasn't very big, and most of them were destroyed. 01:53:15.360 --> 01:53:18.640 They were destroyed because they were perceived as blasphemous. 01:53:18.640 --> 01:53:21.440 Even though that every word from the mouth of God except for 01:53:21.440 --> 01:53:23.440 one, was a pretty important word. 01:53:23.440 --> 01:53:26.000 That was enough for them to destroy them. 01:53:26.000 --> 01:53:29.440 We should have no less devotion to the word of God today. 01:53:29.440 --> 01:53:31.840 Now there's nothing we can do about it right now. 01:53:31.840 --> 01:53:34.080 If I were to say destroy all the Bibles without the Word 01:53:34.080 --> 01:53:35.680 of God, we would have no Bible left. 01:53:35.680 --> 01:53:36.560 That would be an evil thing. 01:53:36.560 --> 01:53:39.440 I don't think that secretly I would never say that. 01:53:39.440 --> 01:53:41.200 It's the wrong point. 01:53:41.200 --> 01:53:47.040 But once we solve this problem generationally, such that our descendants in 01:53:47.040 --> 01:53:50.080 two centuries can be reading the same Bible as we are, which 01:53:50.080 --> 01:53:53.920 is the way it should be, it's the way civilizations work. 01:53:53.920 --> 01:53:58.000 Once that is the case, yeah, no other Bible should be in 01:53:58.000 --> 01:54:02.560 use. The fiat of Charlemagne, the Fiat of King James, should be 01:54:02.560 --> 01:54:05.040 the fiat of the next goggly Prince as well. 01:54:05.280 --> 01:54:10.000 Here's the Bible, use it, nothing else is suitable. 01:54:10.000 --> 01:54:12.320 This is normal in Christian lands. 01:54:12.320 --> 01:54:13.680 It has always been normal. 01:54:14.080 --> 01:54:17.840 We are the freaks and the weirdos who have fifteen Bibles in 01:54:17.840 --> 01:54:20.800 our houses and two hundred on our iPads. 01:54:20.800 --> 01:54:22.160 It's bizarre. 01:54:22.160 --> 01:54:23.760 It's not good. 01:54:23.760 --> 01:54:26.960 The fact that the status quo ante is messed up is not 01:54:27.440 --> 01:54:29.600 an excuse to perpetuate it. 01:54:29.600 --> 01:54:32.960 Fixing this problem of the translation is one of the very most 01:54:32.960 --> 01:54:37.920 important things that the church or civilization will ever accomplish. 01:54:37.920 --> 01:54:40.480 And until we get there, we're going to have a series of 01:54:40.800 --> 01:54:42.640 imperfect half measures. 01:54:42.640 --> 01:54:43.680 That's fine. 01:54:43.680 --> 01:54:47.200 As long as every half measure is a half step towards the 01:54:47.200 --> 01:54:48.880 right thing, it's an improvement. 01:54:48.880 --> 01:54:50.720 That's a good thing. 01:54:50.720 --> 01:54:57.040 If you're overweight or whatever, you don't magically get better by just 01:54:57.040 --> 01:54:59.040 waking up one day and the problem is gone. 01:54:59.040 --> 01:55:01.520 You have to work towards fixing it. 01:55:01.520 --> 01:55:04.720 We have to work towards fixing this problem of not having had 01:55:04.720 --> 01:55:06.000 the Greek scripture. 01:55:06.000 --> 01:55:08.240 Once we fix it, it will have been fixed. 01:55:08.240 --> 01:55:09.280 Past tense. 01:55:09.280 --> 01:55:10.240 It will be done. 01:55:10.240 --> 01:55:12.160 It will be finished. 01:55:12.160 --> 01:55:15.040 Getting there is going to take decades. 01:55:15.040 --> 01:55:18.400 As we've said at the beginning, this is not something Stonequir is 01:55:18.400 --> 01:55:19.440 going to be involved in. 01:55:19.440 --> 01:55:22.640 I'd like for someone to produce something and I could recommend. 01:55:22.640 --> 01:55:24.640 I really hope that happens. 01:55:24.640 --> 01:55:28.080 But we're not gonna be the guys that are involved because 01:55:29.040 --> 01:55:30.880 there's no point, there's no need. 01:55:30.880 --> 01:55:33.760 There are other men who are far better suited for this particular 01:55:33.760 --> 01:55:37.040 task. God creates different men for different purposes. 01:55:37.040 --> 01:55:41.280 I look forward to those men showing up to producing, to working, 01:55:41.280 --> 01:55:44.800 to laboring, to funding this project in such a way that these 01:55:44.880 --> 01:55:45.680 and uh whatever the rules 01:55:46.560 --> 01:55:51.200 end up making sense to get it done right once so that 01:55:51.760 --> 01:55:56.960 in two centuries, six generations from now, when your great great great 01:55:57.040 --> 01:56:00.880 great grandchildren are reading the same Bible as you did, that's because 01:56:00.880 --> 01:56:02.160 we got it right. 01:56:02.160 --> 01:56:05.120 It is achievable, it is normal. 01:56:05.120 --> 01:56:07.840 It has been normal throughout church history. 01:56:07.840 --> 01:56:10.320 We broke something and we have to fix it. 01:56:10.880 --> 01:56:13.760 Getting there is gonna take a while. 01:56:13.760 --> 01:56:17.840 So I hope that this series has been beneficial for you. 01:56:17.840 --> 01:56:21.440 We hope that it has planted some seeds that will bear fruit 01:56:21.440 --> 01:56:22.320 in the future. 01:56:22.320 --> 01:56:24.880 I hope to live to see the outcome of all of this 01:56:24.880 --> 01:56:30.880 work. This episode is the end of the Septuagint series. 01:56:30.880 --> 01:56:33.040 This is also the last episode that we're going to be doing 01:56:33.040 --> 01:56:34.240 for about a month. 01:56:34.240 --> 01:56:37.840 We're going to take an actual little vacation, 'cause although we've had 01:56:37.840 --> 01:56:41.280 some apparent hiatuses as we've been going along with this, there was 01:56:41.280 --> 01:56:41.840 no break. 01:56:41.840 --> 01:56:44.880 We were continuously working and things just kept coming up. 01:56:44.880 --> 01:56:48.080 Now that we've concluded this, I'm totally burned out. 01:56:48.080 --> 01:56:51.600 We're going to take about four weeks off before we get back 01:56:51.600 --> 01:56:54.560 to producing new stone choir episodes. 01:56:54.560 --> 01:56:57.920 I'm having my surgery next week as we're recording, so give me 01:56:57.920 --> 01:57:00.320 a time to recuperate and get back to the point that I 01:57:00.320 --> 01:57:04.080 can really walk around, hopefully I can exercise finally, first time in 01:57:04.080 --> 01:57:07.600 years. We'll probably be at returning within a day or two of 01:57:07.600 --> 01:57:12.080 the fourth anniversary of the first episode of Stone Choir, which I 01:57:12.080 --> 01:57:13.200 think is notable. 01:57:13.200 --> 01:57:17.200 It's kind of novel and monumental in a small way because we 01:57:17.200 --> 01:57:18.960 never thought it would last this long. 01:57:18.960 --> 01:57:21.840 We didn't know anyone would listen. 01:57:21.840 --> 01:57:24.240 So when we come back, I don't know what the world's gonna 01:57:24.240 --> 01:57:24.800 look like. 01:57:24.800 --> 01:57:27.440 The week that we're recording this, a lot of really terrible things 01:57:27.440 --> 01:57:30.320 have been happening Seems like every time I look at the internet, 01:57:30.320 --> 01:57:31.600 something worse has happened. 01:57:31.600 --> 01:57:35.600 There's nothing to say about those things beyond they were prophesied. 01:57:35.600 --> 01:57:38.320 We've always been told that things would be bad and would get 01:57:38.320 --> 01:57:40.080 worse near the end. 01:57:40.080 --> 01:57:44.720 What we do in the coming season of Stone Choir we have 01:57:44.720 --> 01:57:49.440 yet to determine, but when we come back we will see what 01:57:49.440 --> 01:57:51.040 the world gives us. 01:57:51.040 --> 01:57:55.600 There's plenty more to say, but this work on the Septuagint Along 01:57:55.600 --> 01:58:00.080 with some of the other series that we've done previously, that gave 01:58:00.080 --> 01:58:03.600 all of you the equipment and the grounding so that as you 01:58:03.600 --> 01:58:07.520 see these events unfolding in real time, you were not caught flat 01:58:07.600 --> 01:58:11.120 footed. You understood what you saw with your own eyes because we 01:58:11.120 --> 01:58:12.640 told you years ahead of time. 01:58:12.640 --> 01:58:14.400 Here's what that's gonna look like. 01:58:14.400 --> 01:58:16.240 Here's why it's gonna happen. 01:58:16.240 --> 01:58:17.760 There's nothing prophetic about that. 01:58:17.760 --> 01:58:18.880 It was obvious. 01:58:18.880 --> 01:58:21.120 They're just putting two and two together. 01:58:21.200 --> 01:58:26.000 So please don't infer any claim of prophecy or anything. 01:58:26.000 --> 01:58:28.960 We know nothing beyond what we see on the internet and read 01:58:28.960 --> 01:58:30.240 in the Bible. 01:58:30.240 --> 01:58:34.240 But being able to figure that out is something that we're happy 01:58:34.240 --> 01:58:35.840 to be able to share with people. 01:58:35.840 --> 01:58:38.240 We hope to continue to do that in the years to 01:58:38.240 --> 01:58:38.880 come.