EveryWord004 Mark 3

EveryWord004

Welcome to this FOURTH episode of the Every Word Podcast. This is a podcast series for those who enjoy studying details found in God’s Word. In every episode I will read from Dr. Wilbur Pickering’s fresh-sounding translation of the New Testament, which he named, “The Sovereign Creator Has Spoken.” In today’s episode, I will read and comment on Pickering’s translation of Mark chapter 3.

The episode notes for this podcast provide the text of everything I’m saying and links to supporting documentation.

Dr. Pickering’s translation is based on the Majority Text of the Greek New Testament, which is also called the Byzantine Text. This podcast series shows why the Majority Greek Text is superior to the Eclectic Greek Text, which was used as the basis of most of the NT translations of the last century. 

The shift in the Greek text used for English Bible translations began in 1881, with the publication of Wescott and Hort’s Greek New Testament, which was based on an extremely small sampling of manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text Type— that is from Egypt. 

[The main two manuscripts they relied on are Codex Sinaiticus (abbreviation א [Aleph] or 01) and Codex Vaticanus (abbreviation B or 03). Those are dated at 330-360 AD and 300-325 respectively.] 

At the time Wescott and Hort were working, it was anticipated that research into the most ancient manuscripts newly discovered in Egypt would reveal a coherent textual stream that would point to the authentic initial form of the Greek text. Now, over a century later, those ancient Egyptian manuscripts have been analyzed, but they do not reveal a coherent textual stream that can be followed. Instead they reveal that Egyptian scribes very freely edited the texts they copied.

In contrast, the Majority Text of the New Testament was made by copyists who lived in the same places as the original recipients of the apostles’ writings. Individual scribal errors have been weeded out, since this text type is based on the majority reading of thousands of Greek manuscripts. The Majority Text has been stable over the centuries and is the best academically defendable text of the Greek New Testament that we have today. It is my hope that these podcasts will build awareness of the faulty Greek text that underlies almost all of the English Bible translations of the last century, starting with the ASV (1901), and including RSV, NASB, NIV, GNT, NLT, NET, and ESV.

Mark 3: 

A Sabbath healing—the rejection

Another time He went into the synagogue, and there was a man there with a withered hand.

² So they watched Him closely, whether He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him.

³ Well He says to the man with the withered hand, “Come out in the middle”.

⁴ Then He said to them: “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent.

⁵ After looking around at them with anger, being grieved at the hardness of their hearts, 

*They had no compassion, no agape; their only concern was to preserve their system, their position and authority. 

He says to the man, “Stretch out your hand!” So he stretched [it out], and his hand was restored as healthy as the other! 

*Perhaps 5% of the Greek manuscripts omit ‘as healthy as the other’, as in NIV, NASB, LB, TEV, etc.

⁶ Then the Pharisees went straight out, and with the Herodians 

*Pharisees and Herodians were political opponents, so this was a strange alliance; evidently they perceived Jesus as a common enemy; such a serious enemy that He needed destroying. 

started hatching a plot against Him, how they might destroy Him.

 

PCF: The variant that Pickering shows us here is just returning three short words to the Greek text. While we already would know that the man’s hand was restored, it is nice to know that Jesus didn’t just give partial healing to this man. The hand wasn’t just better and useful again, but was just as strong as his other hand.

 

Healings by the sea

Jesus withdrew with His disciples to the sea; and a large crowd from Galilee followed Him—also from Judea,

⁸ from Jerusalem, from Idumea and beyond Jordan; even those around Tyre and Sidon. A huge crowd came to Him, having heard the sorts of things He kept doing.

⁹ So He told His disciples that a small boat should be kept ready for Him because of the crowd, lest they should press in on Him.

¹⁰ Because He had healed many, so that as many as had afflictions were pushing toward Him so as to touch Him.

¹¹ And the unclean spirits—whenever one saw Him, he would fall down before Him and cry out, saying, “You are the son of God!”

¹² And He kept giving them strict orders that they should not make Him known. 

*I wonder why the demons felt compelled to proclaim who Jesus was, evidently. I would say that He generally has the opposite problem with us!

 

PCF: I like how Pickering translated two imperfect Greek verbs in this section using ‘kept’. (v. 8 and 12) The imperfect shows a prolonged situation or in this case a repeated action.

 

The Twelve chosen

He went up on the mountain and summoned those whom He wanted, and they came to Him.

¹⁴ He appointed twelve, 

*Less than 2% of the Greek manuscripts, of objectively inferior quality, add ‘whom He also named apostles’, presumably imported from Luke 6:13, to be followed by NIV, LB, TEV, etc. 

that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach

¹⁵ —also to have authority to heal sicknesses and 

*Perhaps 1% of the Greek manuscripts, of objectively inferior quality, omit ‘to heal diseases and’, to be followed by NIV, NASB, LB, TEV, etc. 

to cast out demons:

¹⁶ namely Peter (a name He gave to Simon);

¹⁷ James son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James (and a name He gave to them was Boanerges, that is, ‘Sons of thunder’);

¹⁸ Andrew, Phillip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Cananite;

¹⁹ and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed Him.

²⁰ Then they went into a house; 

*This may well have been His own house in Capernaum. If He were in someone else’s house, the hosts could have protected Him so He could at least eat. 

and again a multitude gathered, so that they were not even able to eat bread.

²¹ Well upon hearing this His family came to apprehend Him, because they were saying, “He is out of his mind!”

 

PCF: When we find an addition to the Greek NT text, it is often where a copyist added something found in one Gospel and put that into the Gospel he was copying. The words ‘whom he named apostles’ was added to Mark by a copyist who liked those words in Luke’s Gospel. It is quite interesting to me that so many translations of the last century followed that addition, including those Pickering listed plus others like NLT, NET and ESV. The KJV does not contain those words. As a Bible translator, we often are tempted to do the same thing, shoring up the differences between Gospels. But it is better to allow each Gospel to stand on its own.

Then in verse 15, we have another thing left out of most translations. The phrase ‘to heal diseases’ is in the ones Pickering mentioned, plus left out of the ESV, NLT, and NET. The KJV contains the words. This omission has the support of only 1% of Greek manuscripts, and the Bible translations of the last century don’t even bother to footnote this variant. 

There is a tiny textual variant that Pickering does not footnote. That is in v.18, the spelling of Simon’s designation as ‘the zealot’. The Greek word most often translated as ‘zealot’ is Kananaios (Καναναῖος) in the Eclectic Text, whereas the Majority Text has Kananités (Κανανίτης). 99% of Greek manuscripts have the spelling as in the Majority Text.

So, both texts have the same word, but in the ET it is in the nominative form, and it is accusative in the MT. In either form, it can be translated as zealot (meaning a man wanting Israel to rebel against Roman rule) or as Pickering translates, a Cananite, (someone descended from the Cananite people). Either meaning would have been an epithet.

 

Scribes blaspheme the Holy Spirit

Then some scribes who had come down from Jerusalem 

*They had come all the way to Galilee, just to combat Jesus. 

started saying, “He has Beelzebub”, and “It is by the ruler of the demons that he casts out demons”.

²³ So summoning them He started saying to them in parables: “How can Satan cast out Satan?

²⁴ If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.

²⁵ And if a household is divided against itself, that household cannot stand.

²⁶ And if Satan has risen up against himself and become divided, [his kingdom//he] cannot stand, but is finished.

²⁷ No one can plunder the strong man’s goods, 

*Since the definite article occurs with ‘strong man’ the first time the phrase occurs, the entity has already been introduced, so the reference is to Satan. Here is a biblical basis for binding Satan, which is now possible because of Christ’s victory. Hebrews 2:14 informs us that Jehovah the Son took on human form to destroy the devil, while 1 John 3:8 affirms that He was manifested to undo the works of the devil. But in John 20:21 the resurrected Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, so send I you”, and not long after that He returned to the Father. He defeated Satan alright, but it is up to us to ‘undo the works’. 

invading his house, unless he first binds the strong man—then he may plunder the house.

²⁸ “Assuredly I say to you: all the sins of the sons of men can be forgiven, including whatever blasphemies they may utter;

²⁹ but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation” 

*Perhaps 1% of the Greek manuscripts, of objectively inferior quality, read ‘sin’ instead of ‘condemnation’, to be followed by NIV, NASB, LB, TEV, etc.

³⁰ —because they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit”. 

*Those scribes committed the unpardonable sin.

 

PCF: There are some footnotes from Pickering that I will not read. And there are two places in today’s reading where I have tweaked Pickering’s translation. Those are marked by square brackets in the program notes. If you want to see a nicely formatted PDF of the episode notes, please download that file from dailybiblereading.info.

I am somewhat uncomfortable with Pickering’s footnote about binding Satan. Due to his brevity, his note might be interpreted to say that we have been given the right to bind Satan in every circumstance. So let’s be clear: The One with authority to bind Satan is Christ, not us. I agree, however, that Jesus left us with the task of undoing as much as we can of Satan’s works. 

I believe that binding Satan works for us in areas where we have clear legal authority in God’s sight. When we were working in Indonesia, a fellow missionary family was having difficulty with their two-year-old daughter screaming at night and uncharacteristically not wanting her mom to hold her. They thought, as I do, that this was some kind of demonic harassment. In a case like this, I believe that the head of the family can speak out and directly forbid the evil spirit from bothering their daughter or even approaching their house. This is done by making it clear that you (as the head of the family) are claiming authority based on your union with Christ. Doing this solved the problem. Note that I as an outsider would have had no authority to bind Satan for my friend’s family. Similarly, for a child that is grown up enough to be out of the authority of your home, and one who has ‘gone off the deep end’, we cannot any longer bind Satan in the same way. In a case like that we ask Jesus to do that and ask for spiritual protection for the grown child. Therefore also, an area where each of us can legally bind Satan and forbid harassing spirits is in our own lives, bodies, or minds. We can consider 2Corinthians 12:7-9 as an example of why this may not work in every case.

The variant that Pickering points out in v. 29 is small but significant. ESV follows the Eclectic Text Mark 3:28-29 saying: “Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.”

It is a little difficult to understand how a single sin can be eternal? The Majority Text reading makes better sense:  “… but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation.” 

Being subject to eternal condemnation is scary-er to imagine than guilty of an eternal sin. And since 99% of the manuscripts say that, it is most likely to be the original form of the text.

 

Jesus goes on the offensive New relationships

Then His brothers and His mother came, and standing outside they sent to Him, calling Him.

³² A crowd was sitting around Him; so they said to Him, “Look, your mother and your brothers and your sisters 

*The reference to ‘sisters’ makes clear that the ‘brothers’ were indeed Mary’s sons. Some 30% of the Greek manuscripts omit ‘and your sisters’ (as in TR, AV and NKJV). 

are outside asking for you”.

³³ He answered them saying, “Who is my mother or my brothers?”

³⁴ And looking around at those seated in a circle around Him He said: “Behold [you who are sitting here are] my mother and my brothers!

³⁵ Because whoever does the will of God, the same is my brother, my sister, my mother.” 

*The claims of Christ’s Kingdom are more important than the claims of one’s family.

 

PCF: The textual variant at v.32 has the support of only 70.9% of the Greek manuscripts. Note that this is one where the Textus Receptus and therefore the KJV do not have the words ‘and your sisters’. As Pickering points out in his Greek NT, this is “not a very difficult case of homoioteleuton.” That Greek term means a variant caused by words in the text starting the same way. The words ‘and your brothers’ and the ‘and your sisters’ are almost identical. Brothers in Greek is adelphoi and sisters is adelphai, so the two four-word phrases (in Greek) are just one letter different. A copyist would be very likely to skip over ‘and your adelphai’, thinking he had already copied that. 

Pickering says that “The reference to ‘sisters’ makes clear that the ‘brothers’ were indeed Mary’s sons.” Well actually, in the context of his mother being paired with ‘brothers’, I don’t think very many readers would think that the word ‘brothers’ means ‘Jewish brothers from Nazareth’.

 

Dr. Pickering named his NT, “The Sovereign Creator Has Spoken.” That title contains three concepts that were not believed by Wescott, Hort, and the succeeding managers of the Eclectic Text. They did not believe that our Creator created humans as described in Genesis. They did not believe in the sovereignty of God. Nor did they believe that God actively inspired and has preserved every word of Scripture for us.

Moses and Jesus said, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but by every word of God.” (Deut. 8:3; Mat. 4:4; Luk. 4:4)

May the Lord bless you ‘real good’!

 

Resources:

Fields, Philip:

Playing Follow the Leader in Bible Translation, 2019, by Phil Fields. See the Resources list in that article for many more helpful articles on the superiority of the Majority Greek Text.

 

Friberg, Timothy: 

On the text of the Greek New Testament that also happens to be the right one for cousin audiences

Although the title of this four-page paper refers to translating for Muslims, the principles and summary is widely applicable. 

I suggest reading this paper before reading Friberg’s other articles listed below.

 

Layman’s Guide — A modest explanation for the layman of ideas related to determining the text of the Greek New Testament, 2019.

 

What is what? — Differences between the Traditional Text and the Bible Society Text of the Greek New Testament. Some data for the reader to weigh, 2019.

 

Pickering, Wilbur:

New Translation of the New Testament: The Sovereign Creator has Spoken

Greek Text of the New Testament based on Family 35

 

All of Pickering’s articles and books are freely available for download at PRUNCH.net. All are released under the Creative Commons license. Additionally, his second edition (2016) NT translation is available for a free download via the Kindle app. It is also freely available as a module in the MyBible program for Android and Apple devices. 

 

Robinson, Maurice: The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform, 1991, 2005, 2018. 

This is available in free digital form in the MyBible Bible app, and in other ways.

 

Article:

Full Text of the 105 verses lacking overall Greek Manuscript Support in the NA edition 27

Check out this episode!

DBRP 2020 February Update

Warm greetings to all of you who often or sometimes listen to my podcasts. Welcome to this first update for this year.

Here are some of the things I have been doing in my Bible-reading hobby recently:

I always want to follow the Digging Deeper Daily Reading plan in some form. I’m still not tired of it, and I want to up-to-speed when people comment about it. So this year I’m following my original Digging Deeper Daily YouVersion reading plan with 9 people sharing in the group with me. I have never met any of them personally, but two of them are long-time long-distance friends and prayer partners who have shared many times with me by email.

I listen to the 3D plan using the dedicated Android app for the podcast. If you are an Android user, I recommend that app, but it’s not easy to find in the Play Store. Search for this complete string: daily bible reading phil fields. Even being so specific, the app currently comes in third in the search results! I am using that app to listen one day ahead of everyone that started the plan on January 1st. I want to be a day ahead so that I can catch mistakes. My original recordings contain a few mistakes, and I have fixed a few of them. However, as I follow along in the NLT, I have found that many times the differences in the NLT text compared to my recordings is due to my having used an older edition of the NLT rather than newer ones. Newer editions were released in 2007 and 2015. 

While I keep checking off the days in my YouVersion Digging Deeper Daily reading plan, I am actually not reading daily in that app. This year I am using the MyBible reading app. The MyBible app is one of two that I know of that includes the 3D reading plan, and I find it very quick to navigate to the different readings each day. (The other app that includes the 3D reading plan is QuickBibles. QuickBibles is only for Android devices, while MyBible has both Android and Apple apps.) If any of you are interested in checking out the MyBible app, I hope these two observations may be helpful:

• I value the MyBible app because it allows me to also see the Biblical source texts and get definitions and grammatical parsing of every word.
• It takes a little time to set up the MyBible app to put all the plethora of features to work for you. For instance, to quickly access the reading plan button, you will need to use the settings and place that button in the header bar. 

 

The other thing that I have been spending a little time on is improving the audio recordings for the second semester of the Read To Me Daily YouVersion reading plan. I will finish that in just a couple of days, so the better recordings will be ready for any of you currently/ following the first semester of the RTMD plan now.

I have a new podcast series that some of you would have noticed. I have released three episodes of the EveryWord podcast. This is a podcast series for those who enjoy studying details found in God’s Word. In every episode I will read from Dr. Wilbur Pickering’s fresh-sounding translation of the New Testament, to which he gave the name, “The Sovereign Creator Has Spoken.” Dr. Pickering’s translation is based on the Majority Text of the Greek New Testament, which is also called the Byzantine Text. I consider the Majority Text to be superior to the Eclectic Greek Text which was used as the basis of most of the NT translations of the last century. Dr. Pickering’s translation is full of interesting footnotes, which I read and comment on. I hope that beginning soon more high quality Bible translations will be based on the Majority Greek Text rather than the Eclectic Greek Text. To learn more about all this, please see dailybiblereading.info and look for one of the three EveryWord podcasts.

Last week, for the first time ever, I got to visit the YouVersion headquarters near Oklahoma City, OK. I was able to meet with three people I have frequently corresponded with, and three others who help to make things happen behind the scenes. The headquarters is a beehive of activity, with more people working in it than it was designed for. I was able to discuss various things with them about the use and promotion of our Plain Indonesian Translation, and various things about my reading plans, which I have submitted in both English and Indonesian. They received me so very warmly, and part of that is because people who are their partners seldom show up to visit them. 

One of the things I discussed with them is the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan. Many of you know that that is a 365 day plan. Well, before Christmas I spent several days bringing the daily devotional text up to Youversion’s new guidelines, and giving each day a theme image. But then, all that work somehow got lost in cyberspace. My visit to the YV headquarters confirmed that the edits cannot be retrieved.  If there is anyone out there who has time to do some very exacting copy/pasting into an Excel spreadsheet with 365 rows, please let me know. 

In December, I concluded that the stand-alone forum for BibleReaders was not going anywhere, and reluctantly started a new Facebook group. I waited until mid-January to close the BibleReaders forum.  I have appreciated our smaller new Facebook group— the 2020 3D Bible Reading Group— which currently has 129 members. This group will be open for just this year. Next year I will either start a new group, or do something else. The other way to hear news from me is by visiting the ReadThisFirst pages at dailybiblereading.info. Look at the Stay Connected page and sign up for our email updates. 

If you have any comments or corrections to anything you hear in my podcasts, my favorite way for you to communicate those things to me is to use the Contact button at the very top of the dailybiblereading.info site. Or if you have already used that button before, just write an email to me using the same address that I used to reply to you.

I leave on February 18 for 7 weeks in Indonesia. Here are my prayer requests:

• There are issues remaining from our consultant checks of Genesis and Exodus that need to be cleared up. Genesis has been particularly difficult for our translation team. Please pray that we can finish those two books.
• We praise the Lord that the two most popular Bible reading apps in Indonesia are showing not just our Plain Indonesian Translation’s New Testament, but also 4 little books of the Old Testament. Please pray that people will enjoy Ruth, Esther, Ecclesiastes, and Jonah. Please pray that the presence of these books will prompt people to pray for our translation team.
• It looks like I will be giving about nine presentations in various places in Java and Papua, including fellowship groups, seminaries, prison groups, and even in a Bible school program that is for prison inmates. You may think that I would be OK at speaking because I have a podcast. But I have never been good at public speaking. It doesn’t help that the situations I find myself speaking in are so different. It throws me off if people can’t see the presentation slides I am showing, or if I can’t use the visual aids at all. Please pray for me.
• Please pray that our non-profit Bible organization in Indonesia will find someone talented who would like to take on a ministry of communication, handling our website and social media promotions. 
• Please pray for my health. I have had dizzy spells recently. We agree with our doctor’s treatment, and this is probably just something temporary. But all the same, please pray for me.
• It is exciting that we have 29 people in an online course that our organization is offering about how to understand and use different Bible translations. Please pray that this will be part of sharing the news about how our NT translation supports and complements the main Indonesian Bible. The two translations, and others out there, are not at odds, but give people better ways to get the full meaning of God’s Word.
• One social media post by one of the people in that class said that 70% of Christians in Indonesia are not interested in reading the Bible. The person said, “We need a Bible that young people enjoy reading.” Well, that’s what we are making, and the NT is published. But Indonesian people need to hear about it. Please pray that people who have lost interest in Bible reading will give our translation a try. And that people in rural areas who struggle to understand the default Bible translation will find out that there is an understandable alternative.
• I talk to Gale every day when I am gone. Please pray for Gale in managing the pain and mental fuzziness that is part of her chronic condition.

Check out this episode!

EveryWord003 Mark 2

 

Welcome to this THIRD podcast in a series that I am calling the Every Word Podcast. This is a podcast series for those who enjoy studying details found in God’s Word. In every episode I will read from Dr. Wilbur Pickering’s fresh-sounding translation of the New Testament, to which he gave the name, “The Sovereign God Has Spoken.” In today’s episode, I will read and comment on Pickering’s translation of Mark chapter 2.

 

Please bear in mind that the episode notes for all of my podcasts provide the text of everything I’m saying and links to supporting documentation.

 

Dr. Pickering’s translation is based on the Majority Text of the Greek New Testament, which is also called the Byzantine Text. I consider the Majority Text to be superior to the Eclectic Greek Text** which was used as the basis of most of the NT translations of the last century. 

**Footnote: The Eclectic Text is also called the Critical Text, the Nestle-Aland text, and the United Bible Societies (UBS) Text. The succeeding editions of the Eclectic Text have primarily followed Wescott and Hort, while the apparatus (or footnotes) dealing with textual variations has grown significantly to show details about textual variants found among Alexandrian manuscripts.

 

The shift in the Greek text used for our Bible translations began around 1881, with the publication of Wescott and Hort’s Greek New Testament, which was based on an extremely small sampling of manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text Type*— that is from Egypt. 

*Footnote: The two are Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. These are dated at 330-360 AD and 300-325 respectively. At the time Wescott and Hort were working, it was anticipated that research into newly discovered ancient New manuscripts from Egypt would reveal a coherent textual stream that would point to the authentic initial form of the Greek text. Now, over a century later, those ancient Egyptian papyrus manuscripts have been analyzed, but they do not reveal a coherent textual stream that can be followed. Instead the papyri manuscripts reveal that Egyptian scribes very freely edited the texts they copied. In contrast, the Majority Text of the New Testament was made by copyists who lived in the same places as the original recipients of the apostles’ writings. Individual scribal errors have been weeded out, since this text type is based on the majority reading of thousands of Greek manuscripts.

 

The Majority Text has been stable over the centuries and is the best academically defendable text of the Greek New Testament that we have today. It is my hope that these podcasts will build awareness of the faulty Greek text that underlies almost all of the English Bible translations of the last century, starting with the ASV (1901), and including RSV, NASB, NIV, GNT, NLT, NET, and ESV.

 

It is high time (now that I’ve reached the 3rd podcast) that I admit to you that— although I have worked as a Bible translator for most of my life— I am a new-comer to the whole study of textual criticism. In my article Playing Follow-the-Leader in Bible Translation, I speak about how little missionary Bible translators of my generation were trained in the area of textual criticism. I— unlike many of my colleagues— did not have the benefit of seminary education. My degrees are in the field of music. But from what I have heard from my seminary-trained colleagues, there is not much taught to normal seminary students about textual criticism. Few pastors today know anything about the subject.

 

It was in April of 2018 that I had the opportunity to visit Timothy and Barbara Friberg in Indonesia. Four years prior to this my team and I had published the Plain Indonesian NT. Dr. Timothy Friberg is famous for compiling the Analytical Greek New Testament, which is a reference work that virtually all Bible translators use. (Incidentally the AGNT is now being released in a new and improved edition.) I sought Dr. Fribergs advice because of his experience translating the NT for Muslim background audiences, because I am a consultant for such a project. During my two-day visit, I received excellent advice, but also received a bonus I didn’t expect. Tim Friberg convinced me that the Majority Greek Text should be used in translating the New Testament for Muslim background believers. 

 

But then he asked, “Well, what about your Plain Indonesian New Testament? Are you going to revise that to follow the Majority Text?” This was a hard question for me because that NT was already published. I had just played follow-the-leader in basing that translation on the Eclectic text. After some thought and prayer, I concluded that God would be most glorified if my translation team and I  revised our published New Testament to follow the Majority Text. The revisions are now about 75% complete. Please pray for us in this:

• Please pray that we will work carefully so that we do not make mistakes as we revise the Plain Indonesian New Testament.
• Please pray that Bible readers in Indonesia would be happy to have a translation following the Majority Text, even though that will make our translation different from the default Indonesian Bible.
• Being aware that the United Bible Society publishes the Eclectic Greek Text, please pray that the Indonesian Bible Society or other parties will not publicly criticize our move to the Majority Text. 

 

As I admitted above, I do not have training in the field of textual criticism. Because of that, I am sure that I have already made mistakes in these EveryWord podcasts. If you find errors in my statements, feel free to use the contact button at dailybiblereading.info to send your input to me. 

 

Mark 2 

Pickering’s footnotes are indented and italicized in the PDF attached to this podcast. Find EveryWord003 at dailybiblereading.info and use the red Download PDF button to get it.

A paralytic— the evaluation

¹ Well a few days later, He again entered Capernaum, and it was heard that He was at home.

² Without delay so many were gathered together that there was no more room, not even around the door, and He was speaking the Word to them.

³ Then four men came, carrying a paralytic to Him.

⁴ And not being able to get near Him because of the crowd, they removed the roof where He was; 

The roof was presumably flat, with an outside staircase leading up to it. I suppose damaging someone else’s roof could be considered a crime, but they were determined. If Jesus was in His own house, there would be no problem. 

upon breaking through they lowered the pallet on which the paralytic was lying.

⁵ So seeing their faith Jesus says to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven you”.

⁶ Now some of the scribes were sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts:

⁷ “Why does this guy speak blasphemies like that? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

⁸ Immediately Jesus perceived in His spirit what they were reasoning within themselves 

*Time and again the Inspired Record will point out that Jesus could read people’s thoughts.

and said to them: “Why are you reasoning these things in your hearts?

⁹ Which is easier: 

*I suppose the point to be that the first is easier to say, because no one can see whether it happened or not. But if you tell a paralytic to get up and he doesn’t, you get egg on the face. The Lord did it that way to help them believe that He could really forgive sin. There was nothing wrong with the scribes’ inference; indeed only God can forgive sin, so in fact Jesus was claiming to be God! 

to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins have been forgiven’, or to say, ‘Get up, pick up your pallet and start walking!’?

¹⁰ But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on the earth to forgive sins” —He says to the paralytic:

¹¹ “To you I say, get up, pick up your pallet and go to your house!”

¹² So forthwith he got up, picked up his pallet and went out in front of them all; so that all were amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!” 

Quite right; they never had!

 

PCF: I agree heartily with Pickering’s footnote on v. 8. I think especially of the Gospel of John that repeatedly shows that Jesus could read people’s thoughts.

 

I do not agree with Pickering’s first sentence about ‘which is easier to say’. The idea he supports is that it would be easier to forgive sins because no one could tell if it happened. But even he seems a bit doubtful about saying that, because his sentence starts with, “I suppose the point to be …”  Yes, the interpretation he gives— that forgiving the man’s sins would be the easier to say— can be found in some commentaries. But that is worldly thinking. Jesus would have known that saying ‘I forgive your sins’ would mean that He would pay for those sins on the cross. 

 

But Pickering is right in the last part of that footnote. Only God can forgive sin, so the scribes’ inference was right. He might as well as said, ‘I am God’.

 

There is interesting linguistic support for only God being able to forgive sins. In the Orya language of Papua, Indonesia, and in many other languages, ordinary persons cannot ‘forgive’ someone else’s wrongs or sins. The word  the Orya language uses for forgiving on a person-to-person level is simply to ‘forget’. You can choose to ‘forget’ a sin someone commits against you. But the real word for ‘forgive’ in Orya means to ‘finish’ or ‘nullify’ the sin. Only God can finish all the liabilities of a sin or nullify the consequences. So the scribes were right that it takes an action of God to have one’s sins forgiven.

Matthew called

¹³ Then He went out again by the sea; and the whole crowd came to Him, and He began to teach them.

¹⁴ As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office, and He said to him, “Follow me”. So he got up and followed Him.

¹⁵ Now it happened, as He was reclining at the table in his house, 

Matthew’s—he evidently put on a big dinner and invited all his associates. 

that many tax collectors and sinners 

‘Tax collectors and sinners’ seems to have been almost a frozen idiom. A Jew who collected taxes for Rome was viewed as a traitor and held in very low esteem. 

joined Jesus and His disciples at the table; for there were many and they followed Him.

¹⁶ The scribes and the Pharisees, seeing Him eating with the tax collectors and sinners, said to His disciples, “Why is it that He is eating and drinking with the tax collectors and sinners?”

¹⁷ Upon hearing it Jesus said to them: “It is not the healthy who have need of a doctor, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” 

Perhaps 10% of the Greek manuscripts omit ‘to repentance’, to be followed by NIV, NASB, LB, TEV, etc.

 

Fasting

¹⁸ Now John’s disciples and those of the Pharisees were fasting; and they came and said to Him, “Why do John’s disciples and those of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not?”

¹⁹ So Jesus said to them: “Can the groomsmen fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom to themselves they cannot fast.

²⁰ But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast, in those days. 

Some 15% of the Greek manuscripts read ‘day’ instead of ‘days’ (as in NIV, NASB, TEV, etc.), but obviously the fasting would take place on more than one day.

 

PCF: The two textual variants from the Majority Text that Pickering points out in verses 17 and 20 both make better sense than what is found in the Eclectic text. In particular, it seems a shame that most Bibles of the last century left out the words ‘to repentance’ in verse 17. The men who compiled the Eclectic Text chose a principle that would favor the Alexandrian manuscripts. They decided that a shorter variant in a text was more likely to be correct. Verse 17 is shorter without the two words ‘to repentance’ but it leaves the reader wondering, “Where is Jesus calling sinners to come to?” In the early years of the Eclectic Text movement, people did not yet realize that Alexandrian copyists frequently shortened the texts they copied. This goes for secular works as well as NT books. Alexandrian copies of Homer’s poems are much shorter than manuscripts found in other places. 

 

Together with verse 17, there are four places where Mark’s account uses the words ‘repent’ and ‘repentance’. Clearly the call to repentance was an important part of what both John the Baptist and Jesus taught. In Mark, Jesus sent the disciples out preaching that people ‘should repent’. (6:11) So having Jesus say that his mission was to call sinners to repent makes good sense in the context of this gospel.

Cloth and wineskins

²¹ “Further, no one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, or else the new tears away some of the old, and a worse hole results.

²² And no one puts new wine into old wineskins, or else the new wine bursts the wineskins, the wine spills out and the skins will be ruined; rather, new wine must be put into new wineskins.” 

There is no way of renewing an old wineskin. Whenever a church becomes an ‘old wineskin’, any introduction of new wine will always cause a split.

 

Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath

²³ 

Between verses 22 and 23 all of John chapter 5 takes place—that chapter revolves around the second Passover of His public ministry, in 28 A.D. A year and a half have passed since His baptism. 

Now it happened, on a Sabbath, that He was passing through some grain fields, and His disciples began to make a path, picking the heads of grain.

²⁴ So the Pharisees said to Him, “Just look, why are they doing on a Sabbath that which is not permitted?”

²⁵ And He said to them: “Did you never read what David did when he was in need and hungry, he and those with him?

²⁶ How he entered the house of God (making Abiathar high priest) 

My rendering is rather different than the ‘in the days of Abiathar the high priest’ of the AV. We are translating three Greek words that very literally would be ‘upon Abiathar high priest’. When we go back to the Old Testament account, we discover that David actually conversed with Ahimelech, Abiathar’s father, who was the high priest at that moment (1 Samuel 21:1-9). Within a few days Saul massacred Ahimelech and 84 other priests (1 Samuel 22:16-18), but his son Abiathar escaped and went to David, taking the ephod with him (1 Samuel 22:20-23; 23:6). That David could use it to inquire of the LORD rather suggests that it had to be the ephod that only the high priest wore (1 Samuel 23:9-12). That ephod was to a high priest like the crown was to a king; so how could Abiathar have it? The Text states that David’s visit filled Ahimelech with fear, presumably because he too saw Doeg the Edomite and figured what would happen. Now why wasn’t Abiathar taken with the others? I suggest that Ahimelech had a pretty good idea what would happen, so he deliberately consecrated Abiathar, gave him the ephod, and told him to hide; Abiathar escaped, but carried the news of the massacre with him; only now he was the high priest. Putting it all together, it was David’s visit that resulted in Abiathar’s becoming high priest prematurely, as David himself recognized, and to which Jesus alluded. 

and ate the consecrated bread, which only priests are permitted to eat, and shared it with those who were with him?”

²⁷ Then He said to them: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 

This is a crucial point. The Pharisees, etc., had turned the Sabbath into an instrument of domination that they used to impose their authority on the people.

²⁸ Therefore the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” 

The Lord of the Sabbath can change the rules, or even retire it!

 

Abiathar is not Ahimelech 

Mark 2:26 X 1 Samuel 21:1 

Some of my readers may be aware that this verse has destroyed the faith of at least one scholar in our day, although he was reared in an evangelical home. He understood Jesus to be saying that Abiathar was the priest with whom David dealt, when in fact it was his father, Ahimelech. If Jesus stated an historical error as fact, then he could not be God. So he turned his back on Jesus. I consider that his decision was lamentable and unnecessary, and in the interest of helping others who may be troubled by this verse, I offer the following explanation: 

“How he entered the house of God (making Abiathar high priest) and ate the consecrated bread, which only priests are permitted to eat, and shared it with those who were with him.” 

 

My rendering is rather different than the ‘in the days of Abiathar the high priest’ of the AV, NKJV and NIV. We are translating three Greek words that very literally would be ‘upon Abiathar high-priest’ (but the preposition here, επι, is the most versatile of the Greek prepositions, and one of its many meanings/uses is 'toward'―the standard lexicon, BDAG, lists fully eighteen areas of meaning, quite apart from sub-divisions). When we go back to the Old Testament account, we discover that David actually conversed with Ahimelech, Abiathar’s father, who was the high priest at that moment (1 Samuel 21:1-9). Within a few days Saul massacred Ahimelech and 84 other priests (1 Samuel 22:16-18), but his son Abiathar escaped and went to David, taking the ephod with him (1Samuel 22:20-23; 23:6). That David could use it to inquire of the Lord rather suggests that it had to be the ephod that only the high priest wore, since only that ephod had the Urim and Thummim (1 Samuel 23:9-12; cf. Numbers 27:21, Ezra 2:63). 

 

That ephod was to a high priest like the crown was to a king; so how could Abiathar have it? The Text states that David’s visit filled Ahimelech with fear, presumably because he too saw Doeg the Edomite and figured what would happen. Now why wasn’t Abiathar taken with the others? I suggest that Ahimelech foresaw what would happen (Doeg probably took off immediately, and Ahimelech figured he wouldn't have much time), so he deliberately consecrated Abiathar, gave him the ephod, and told him to hide―he probably did it that very day (once the soldiers arrived to arrest Ahimelech and the other 84, it would be too late). Abiathar escaped, but carried the news of the massacre with him; only now he was the high priest. 

 

Putting it all together, it was David’s visit that resulted in Abiathar’s becoming high priest prematurely, as David himself recognized, and to which Jesus alluded in passing (which is why I used parentheses). But why would Jesus allude to that? I suppose because the Bible is straightforward about the consequences of sin, and David lied to Ahimelech. Although Jesus was using David's eating that bread as an example, He did not wish to gloss over the sin, and its consequences. 

 

Recall that Jesus was addressing Pharisees, who were steeped in the OT Scriptures. A notorious case like Saul's massacre of 85 priests would be very well known. And of course, none of the NT had yet been written, so any understanding of what Jesus said had to be based on 1 Samuel

(“Have you never read…?”). If we today wish to understand this passage, we need to place ourselves in the context recorded in Mark 2:23-28. The Pharisees would understand that if Abiathar was in possession of the ephod with the Urim and Thummim, then he was the high priest. And how did he get that way? He got that way because of David's visit. It was an immediate consequence of that visit. 

 

Some may object that 'making' is a verb, not a preposition. Well, the 'in the days of' of the AV, etc., though not a verb, is a phrase. Both a pronoun and an adverb may stand for a phrase, and a preposition may as well. TEV and Phillips actually use a verb: ‘when… was’; NLT has ‘during the days when… was’. Where the others used from two to five words, I used only one.

 

 

PCF: Just a little comment from me on the this topic. The problem in this verse is very hard to deal with, and I am linking an article here written by Dr. Daniel Wallace to illustrate how hard this is. As I said before, we can’t prove anything because of how vague Greek prepositions are. An added thing to think about is that Jesus could have been speaking in Aramaic, not Greek, because that was the everyday language for him. I am willing to set this aside as a problem we cannot solve for sure. But one thing I hold onto is that God’s Word is true in the Old Testament record, and what Jesus said was also true. It seems more likely to me to conclude that He knew much more than us about it, and various things could have happened like what Pickering posits.

 

Secondly I think the comment about this verse destroying the faith of a Christian scholar is interesting. If you know who that scholar was, please let me know. My searches on the internet for likely choices failed to turn up the answer. Just the other day my son, David, mentioned how a little thing like this that erodes one’s faith puts a person on a dangerous slippery slope. He told about a fellow graduate of his Christian university who was his friend. But the friend learned things that shook his faith. He ended up as a pastor in an extremely liberal denomination. But now he has left even that and has taken up with Hindus in India, but it is unclear if he really believes what they teach either. 

 

A little thing like the presence of footnotes in our Bibles could be the thing that would cause someone to embark on that slippery downward slope. People will think, “Well, who knows what the apostles really wrote?” This has been a problem with the adoption of the Eclectic Text starting in 1901, which has contributed to liberalism in the church for over a century. Now I ask my listeners, Would your church hire someone as (let’s say) an associate pastor if the person did not believe in the inspiration of the Bible? I think I can hear the answer. My church wouldn’t. If someone interviewed for a job at my church without believing in Jesus or the inspiration of the Bible, the interview would quickly change to my pastor seeking to share the Gospel with that person. So then I ask, Do you think that it would be a good idea to trust a person with beliefs like that to manage the Greek text that is translated for our Bibles? I don’t think so! I recommend an an article I found about the beliefs of Kurt Aland, the one whose name is on the publications of the Nestle-Aland Eclectic Greek Text. It is linked here in the episode notes. 

 

 

The episode notes for all of the Every Word podcasts will include a Resources section which gives links to articles that will give further documentation about all of my claims about the Majority Text, the Eclectic Text, and about different Bible translations.

 

All of Dr. Wilbur Pickering’s works are released according to the Creative Commons License and are available at PRUNCH.net. Additionally, his second edition (2016) NT translation is available for a free download via the Kindle app. It is also freely available as a module in the MyBible program for Android and Apple devices. 

 

Dr. Pickering named his NT, “The Sovereign Creator Has Spoken.” That title contains three concepts that were not believed by Wescott and Hort. In their age Darwinism had invaded the church. W&H  did not believe that our Creator created humans as described in Genesis. They did not believe in the sovereignty of God. Nor did they believe that God has actively inspired every word of Scripture and has made sure that every word has been preserved.

 

Moses and Jesus said, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but by Every Word of God.” (Deut. 8:3; Luk. 4:4)

 

May the Lord bless you ‘real good’!

 

Resources:

Fields, Philip:

Playing Follow the Leader in Bible Translation, 2019, by Phil Fields. See the Resources list in that article for many more helpful articles on the superiority of the Majority Greek Text.

 

Friberg, Timothy: 

On the text of the Greek New Testament that also happens to be the right one for cousin audiences

Although the title of this four-page paper refers to translating for Muslims, the principles and summary is widely applicable. 

I suggest reading this paper before reading Friberg’s other articles listed below.

 

Layman’s Guide — A modest explanation for the layman of ideas related to determining the text of the Greek New Testament, 2019.

 

What is what? — Differences between the Traditional Text and the Bible Society Text of the Greek New Testament. Some data for the reader to weigh, 2019.

 

Pickering, Wilbur:

New Translation of the New Testament: The Sovereign Creator has Spoken

Greek Text of the New Testament based on Family 35

 

Articles and other major works:

See PRUNCH.net.

Robinson, Maurice: The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform, 1991, 2005, 2018. 

This is available in free digital form in the MyBible Bible app, and in other ways.

 

Article:

Full Text of the 105 verses lacking overall Greek Manuscript Support in the NA edition 27

Check out this episode!

GN-Day026 CORRECTION: Correct audio file for GN Day 26

The regular GN-Day26 podcast has now been corrected with the correct file. Sorry for the mistake!

Check out this episode!

EveryWord002 Mark 1:29-45

Welcome to this SECOND podcast in a series that I am calling the Every Word Podcast. This is a podcast series for those who enjoy studying details found in God’s Word. In every episode I will read from Dr. Wilbur Pickering’s fresh-sounding translation of the  New Testament. The NT was named, “The Sovereign God Has Spoken,” and I will read from the 2016 2nd edition. In today’s episode, I will read and comment on Pickering’s translation of Mark 1:29-45.

This is the kind of podcast where it might be better to look at the episode notes while listening. If you are flying down the freeway right now, just bear it in mind that you may want to check this out later.

With a few exceptions that I will discuss today, Dr. Pickering’s translation is based on the Majority Text of the Greek New Testament, which is also called the Byzantine Text. I consider the Majority Text to be superior to the Eclectic Greek Text which was used as the basis of most of the NT translations of the last century. The shift in the Greek text used for our Bible translations began around 1881, with the publication of Wescott and Hort’s Greek New Testament, which was based on an extremely small sampling of manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text Type*— that is from Egypt. 

*Footnote: The two are Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. These are dated at 330-360 AD and 300-325 respectively. At the time Wescott and Hort were working, it was anticipated that research into newly discovered ancient New manuscripts from Egypt would reveal a coherent textual stream that would point to the authentic initial form of the Greek text. Now, over a century later, those ancient Egyptian papyrus manuscripts have been analyzed, but they do not reveal a coherent textual stream that can be followed. Instead the papyri manuscripts reveal that Egyptian scribes very freely edited the texts they copied. In contrast, the Majority Text of the New Testament was made by copyists who lived in the same places as the original recipients of the apostles’ writings. Individual scribal errors have been weeded out, since this text type is based on the majority reading of thousands of Greek manuscripts.

The Majority Text has been stable over the centuries and is the best academically defendable text of the Greek New Testament that we have today. In this podcast, I am trying in a small way to undo the damage caused by Wescott and Hort’s Greek New Testament, which passed a legacy of mistakes down to all succeeding editions of the Eclectic/Critical Greek Text.** The damage I speak of can be found in almost all of the English Bible translations of the last century, starting with the ASV (1901), and including RSV, NASB, NIV, GNT, NLT, NET, and ESV.

**Footnote: The Eclectic Text is also called the Critical Text, the Nestle-Aland text, and the United Bible Societies (UBS) Text. The succeeding editions of the Eclectic Text have primarily followed Wescott and Hort, while the apparatus (or footnotes) dealing with textual variations has grown significantly to show details about textual variants found among Alexandrian manuscripts.

You may ask, “How can I find the damage that you speak of in my Bible?” The quick answer is to examine the footnotes found in the New Testament. Then check out what Pickering has to say in his NT translation. 

 

Mar 1:29-45: Pickering’s footnotes are indented and italicized.

Peter’s mother-in-law 

29 Immediately upon exiting the synagogue they went into the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 

30 Simon’s mother-in-law was lying down with a fever, so without delay they told Him about her. 

*WP footnote: The parallel passage in Luke 4:37 specifies that it was a high fever—she was burning.

31 So He went and grasping her hand lifted her up; immediately the fever left her and she began to serve them. 

*WP footnote: A high fever usually leaves a person weak, even after it passes, so we really have a double miracle here: Jesus dismissed the fever, but also reversed its effect. 

Many healings 

32 That evening, when the sun had set, they started bringing to Him all who were sick and the demonized. 33 So much so that the whole town was gathered at the door, 34 and He healed many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons; and He did not allow the demons to speak, because they knew He was Messiah. 

*WP footnote: I here follow some 40% of the Greek manuscripts, including the best line of transmission; most versions omit “He was Messiah”. 

Alone to pray 

35 Now very early, still night, He got up, slipped out, and went off to a solitary place, where He was praying.

36 Simon and those with him hunted for Him,

37 and upon finding Him they said to Him, “Everyone is looking for you”.

38 But He said to them: “Let us go to the neighboring towns, so I can preach there also; that is why I have come.” 

*WP footnote: I here follow some 40% of the Greek manuscripts, including the best line of transmission; most versions have ‘come forth’, presumably referring to why He had slipped out of town.

39 He was constantly preaching in their synagogues throughout all Galilee, and also casting out demons. 

The hinge—proof, evaluation, rejection, blasphemy A leper—the proof 

40 A leper came to Him, imploring Him, kneeling before Him and saying to Him, “If you want to, you are able to cleanse me”.

41 So being moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, 

*WP footnote: Wow! In those days, no one would touch a leper, because of contamination. Notice that Jesus agreed with the leper: “I want to; be cleansed!” Beautiful! 

and said to him: “I want to; be cleansed!”

42 And when He said this, immediately the leprosy left him, and he was cleansed.

43 And He sent him away at once, sternly warning him,

44 by saying: “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing the things that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” 

*WP footnote: This would be the first case the priest had ever had of evaluating a cleansed leper, because only the Messiah could cure leprosy. By instructing the cleansed leper in this way, Jesus was serving notice to the priests that the Messiah had come.

45 However he [the leper] went out and began to proclaim it freely, spreading the news, 

But he did go to the priest, which resulted in the following evaluation—Luke makes this point clearly in his parallel account. That said, however, I can sympathize with that leper—he had good reason to sound off! But it did increase the pressure on Jesus.

so that He [Jesus] was no longer able to enter a town openly, but remained outside in deserted places; yet [people//they] kept coming to Him from all over. 

*WP footnote: There were an awful lot of sick people who all of a sudden had hope.

 

My comments:

Before commenting on two textual variants footnoted by Pickering in the portion I just read, I would like to go back to the first episode to verse 1, and the variant that I pointed out at the end of the verse:

1 A beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of God!

Pickering has a footnote that says, “There is no definite article with ‘Son’, which in this case emphasizes the inherent quality of the noun.”

So Pickering makes this comment about his translation, not about a textual variant. He says that in Greek, ‘Son of God’ has no article before it. In other words, Greek doesn’t say, ‘the Son of God’. His comment may be right that in Greek, the absence of an article gives emphasis. Unfortunately, English doesn’t work that way, and not using the article ‘the’ before ‘Son of God’ makes the sentence sound odd to me, and an odd-sounding sentence doesn’t give me a feeling of emphasis. Pickering also leaves out a ‘the’ in a similar place is verse 34, and to me his translation sounds odd there too. (“and He did not allow the demons to speak, because they knew He was Messiah.”)

So here’s a little translational principle for free from me: Forcing an English translation to follow the Greek in tiny little grammatical things often doesn’t work very well. It just makes the translation sound odd, and perhaps alert the reader to look at the footnote. To add emphasis in English, we may need to add a word or two, or switch around the order of the words.

But I mentioned in the last episode that there is a variant that Pickering didn’t mention. To be complete I should have said that Wescott & Hort’s Greek text include ‘Son of God’ in brackets. The brackets indicate that they had some doubts that the words were in the original text, but decided to keep not erase the words in the text. Most of the time W&H were bolder in their choice of variants, and the mention of them was relegated to the footnotes. 

W&H started a giant game of follow-the-leader in such things. Succeeding editions of the Eclectic Greek NT followed W&H in similarly casting doubt about the authenticity of those three Greek words in Mark 1:1 by putting them in brackets. And now finally the popular SBL Greek Text* totally deletes the words. As I said in the last episode, 98.4% of ancient Greek manuscripts have those words.

*Footnote: The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) is jointly published in partnership with Logos Bible Software.

Thankfully, the translators of nearly all of the Bible versions of the last century decided to include the bracketed words, ‘the Son of God’ in Mark 1:1. That is probably why Pickering didn’t mention that variant.

So why am I even bringing all this up? Because I want to point out a rather interesting thing about Bible translation in the last century. Since W&H and the ASV of 1901, modern Bible translators have inherited the extra responsibility to choose whether or not to include words in brackets in the Greek text in their translation. You might think that diligent translators would carefully research each variant when brackets appeared in the text. But I have shown in my article entitled, “Playing follow-the-leader in Bible translation” that most Bible translators simply followed the choices that were made by the ASV of 1901. (See the link to that article in the episode notes.)

Indeed, whether a variant is in brackets or in the footnotes, Bible translators of the last century rather often switched between the Greek text they used, and often did not mention in a translation’s footnotes. So when you read in the preface of the NET, NIV, or the ESV that the translators followed the Eclectic Text (which might be called the Critical Text, Nestle-Aland Text, or the UBS Text), do not take that to mean that they followed that text 100% of the time. I give data in my follow-the-leader article which shows that for 44 significant variants in the Greek text, the translators of the last century followed their Eclectic Text an average of 71% of the time. 29% of the time they were following the Majority Text (or probably, whatever the KJV had).

The reason for the giant game of follow-the-leader is that the 1901 ASV and the RSV NT of 1946 bore the brunt of negative reactions from readers to the things that they missed in their KJV Bibles. So the safe thing for all succeeding Bible translators has been to just make the same decisions as the previous versions. Meanwhile they continue the appearance of scholarship by imitating the misleading footnotes that say, “Some ancient manuscripts say x y z.” 

Let me say it again in a different way: The Bible translators for the major Bible versions of the last century didn’t follow ANY Greek text faithfully. They played follow-the-leader with decisions that were made in 1901 based on following W&H. This method of switching back and forth between different Greek source texts is not academically or objectively supportable. It is time that we insist that our New Testament translations be made following just one Greek text in a consistent manner.

Now, everything that I have just said about how Bible translators have used published Greek texts is a backdrop for the two textual variants that Pickering footnotes in the portion of his translation I read. These are located at verses 34 and 38.

32 That evening, when the sun had set, they started bringing to Him all who were sick and the demonized. 33 So much so that the whole town was gathered at the door, 34 and He healed many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons; and He did not allow the demons to speak, because they knew He was Messiah. 

*WP footnote: I here follow some 40% of the Greek manuscripts, including the best line of transmission; most versions omit “He was Messiah”. 

ESV: … And he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

PCF: Pickering translates Greek kriston here as ‘Messiah’. Messiah is a word we transliterate from Hebrew and it means ‘the anointed one’, and kriston (Christ) is the Greek word meaning ‘the anointed one’. I like how this variant completes the text by saying WHAT INFORMATION the demons knew about Jesus. The ESV translation might be misunderstood to say that the demons knew Jesus in a friendly relationship.

36 Simon and those with him hunted for Him,

37 and upon finding Him they said to Him, “Everyone is looking for you”.

38 But He said to them: “Let us go to the neighboring towns, so I can preach there also; that is why I have come.” 

*WP footnote: I here follow some 40% of the Greek manuscripts, including the best line of transmission; most versions have ‘come forth’, presumably referring to why He had slipped out of town.

ESV: … that is why I came out.

PCF: I respect Pickering’s control of Greek as being WAY better than mine. However, if we follow the Eclectic Text and translate ‘come forth’, it is still not clear whether Jesus was meaning coming forth from heaven to earth, or from Peter’s town. I believe that either of the two Greek words here (ἐξῆλθον or ἐξελήλυθα) could be taken either way. I think it likely that this is one of several places which have a double meaning. The disciples might have understood, ‘why I came out of town,’ while Jesus may have been thinking, ‘why I came forth from heaven to earth’.

But now I want to discuss what Pickering said in both of the two footnotes that I just read to you. He said, “I here follow some 40% of the Greek manuscripts, including the best line of transmission …” Hey, 40% is not a majority of the Greek texts! So whenever Pickering says something like this, he is actually departing from the Majority or Byzantine text and following a subset of Byzantine texts which is called the f35 family of texts. Wow! The plot thickens here! Googling F35, I see that this is the name of a line of Lockheed-Martin fighter jets. That’s not what we mean. From my very limited reading I am concluding that Pickering has constructed a somewhat more restrictive version of the Majority Text. 

Here is Pickerings explanation, which can be found as the last footnote in each book of his Greek NT:

The citation of f 35 is based on thirty-five MSS*—18, 35, 141, 204, 510, 547, 586, 645, 689, 789, 824, 928, 1023, 1072, 1075, 1133, 1145, 1147, 1199, 1251, 1339, 1435, 1503, 1572, 1628, 1637, 1667, 1705, 2253, 2323, 2382, 2466, 2503, 2554 and 2765—all of which I collated myself. None of them is a ‘perfect’ representative of f 35 in Mark, as it stands [an unreasonable expectation, presumably, for a book this size, besides being a Gospel]. But 586 is only off by one letter, and its exemplar, and that of 35 and 2382, probably were perfect! And several other exemplars come close—that of 1628 was off by one variant, those of 510 and 2253 were off by two variants, those of 824, 1435, 1503 and 1637 were off by three, several by four, and so on. [This refers to the MSS I have collated—there may be even better ones out there! In fact, since I have collated scarcely 10% of the family representatives for this book, there probably are better ones out there.] The uniformity is impressive. Since these MSS come from all over the Mediterranean world (Sinai, Jerusalem, Cyprus, Patmos, Constantinople, Aegean, Tirana, Mt. Athos [six different monasteries], Corinth? , Athens, Grottaferrata, Vatican, etc.) they are certainly representative of the family, giving us the precise family profile—it is reflected in the Text without exception. 

*Footnote: In the preface to the F35 Greek NT Pickering states, “I call that segment [of Greek manuscripts that formed the basis for his NT] Family 35, because cursive [manuscript] 35 is the complete New Testament, faithful to the family archetype, with the smallest number.” So Pickering compiled his Greek NT from the 35 manuscripts listed above, but he named the family based on just one of them, number 35, which is the earliest manuscript that contains a complete NT and was faithful to the family archetype. For much more about this, see Pickering’s book, The Identity of the New Testament Text IV, or the other articles in the section of Prunch.net entitled Objective Authority of the Biblical Text.

Pickering has taken the time to compile his Greek text of the NT with two different sets of footnotes. One gives footnotes that show textual variants with all known manuscripts, then a second one shows variants found just within the f35 family, which represents 40% of the Greek manuscripts. Can you imagine the time it took for Pickering to painstakingly compare every letter of 35 Greek manuscripts?!

Here is my tentative conclusion about the f35 family of manuscripts: It is impressive that such a consistent family of manuscripts can be grouped together. But this designation has something I don’t like: It doesn’t seem right to me to depart from the historically unvarying Majority Greek Text to adopt a subset defined in the last century by Pickering. Let me explain this from my perspective of translating for the majority Islamic nation of Indonesia. There are Muslim scholars who love to point out that Christian Bibles have been fiddled with. They claim that our Greek texts have been corrupted. All they have to do to prove their assertion about textual instability is to point out the footnotes in the Bible translations of the last century. But if we translate the historical Majority Text, we don’t need any such footnotes, because it has remained stable since the third century. So although I am attracted to the two variants Pickering translated in verses 34 and 38, I believe I would still choose the Majority Text to translate for my audience. 

Please don’t take my words as a harsh criticism of Pickering. I think we will see that he doesn’t often choose the minority 40% in his translation. It just so happens that two times happened in our reading for today.

Quite a few other footnotes in today’s reading had to do with Pickering pointing out cool details. He loves to comment on Jesus’ miracles. I particularly like what he said about verse 45:

45 However he [the cured leper] went out and began to proclaim it freely, spreading the news, 

*WP footnote: But he did go to the priest, which resulted in the following evaluation—Luke makes this point clearly in his parallel account. That said, however, I can sympathize with that leper—he had good reason to sound off! But it did increase the pressure on Jesus.

so that He [Jesus] was no longer able to enter a town openly, but remained outside in deserted places; yet they kept coming to Him from all over. 

*WP footnote: There were an awful lot of sick people who all of a sudden had hope.

PCF: By the words ‘which resulted in the following evaluation …”, Pickering is talking about what happened next in the story. His next section heading at Mark 2:1 is A paralytic—the evaluation. In other words, Pickering considers the juxtaposition of the story of the healing of the leper and the arrival of Pharisees and teachers of the law from Jerusalem in the next story to show that the leper not only told everyone in his town about his healing, but he followed Jesus’ instructions and went to the temple in Jerusalem to tell his story to the priests. We can’t prove that, but it is a neat little insight to consider.

The episode notes for all of the Every Word podcasts will include a Resources section which gives links to articles that will give further documentation about all of my claims about the Majority Text, the Eclectic Text, and about different Bible translations.

All of Dr. Wilbur Pickering’s works are released according to the Creative Commons License and are available at PRUNCH.net. Additionally, his second edition (2016) NT translation is available for a free download via the Kindle app. It is also freely available as a module in the MyBible program for Android and Apple devices. 

Dr. Pickering named his NT, “The Sovereign Creator Has Spoken.” That title contains three concepts that were not believed by Wescott and Hort. In their age Darwinism had invaded the church. W&H  did not believe that our Creator created humans as described in Genesis. They did not believe in the sovereignty of God. Nor did they believe that God has actively inspired every word of Scripture and has made sure that every word has been preserved.

Moses and Jesus said, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but by Every Word of God.” (Deut. 8:3; Luk. 4:4)

Let’s pray: Lord Jesus, we want to know You better. Like the leper in today’s story, we come to You in our sin and sickness and say, “If You want to, You are able to cleanse me.” Yes, Lord, we DO believe in You. In faith we see you reaching out and touching us, saying “I want to.” Thank You, Lord, for your power and love revealed to us today in Mark 1.

Resources:

Fields, Philip:

Playing Follow the Leader in Bible Translation, 2019, by Phil Fields. See the Resources list in that article for many more helpful articles on the superiority of the Majority Greek Text.

Friberg, Timothy: 

On the text of the Greek New Testament that also happens to be the right one for cousin audiences

Although the title of this four-page paper refers to translating for Muslims, the principles and summary is widely applicable. 

I suggest reading this paper before reading Friberg’s other articles listed below.

Layman’s Guide — A modest explanation for the layman of ideas related to determining the text of the Greek New Testament, 2019.

What is what? — Differences between the Traditional Text and the Bible Society Text of the Greek New Testament. Some data for the reader to weigh, 2019.

Pickering, Wilbur:

New Translation of the New Testament: The Sovereign Creator has Spoken

Greek Text of the New Testament based on Family 35

Articles and other major works:

See PRUNCH.net.

Robinson, Maurice: The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform, 1991, 2005, 2018. 

This is available in free digital form in the MyBible Bible app, and in other ways.

Article:

Full Text of the 105 verses lacking overall Greek Manuscript Support in the NA edition 27

Check out this episode!