The NIV's Reformed slant in Galatians 6:16

Part and parcel of Calvinism is the notion that the Church has replaced Israel as the object of Divine favour and as the recipient of Divine promises. Popularly called Replacement Theology, it's technically referred to as Supersessionism, and it not only serves as a doctrinal pillar of Reformed Theology, it can even be shown to have roots about as far back in Church History as we are able to go. The Epistle of Barnabas, placed in the very text of Codex Sinaiticus by whomever compiled it, and thought to date almost as early as the New Testament itself, features it as a core teaching. According to Wikipedia, it argues that the Old Testament scriptures were always intended for Christians, that the Jews misinterpreted them by taking the Law literally, and that the covenant with Israel was broken early on (linked especially to the golden calf incident). Christians alone, it argues, are the true people of God.

Well, there are a lot of Bible verses that have to be suppressed--or at least ignored--for this to work. In writing to the Romans, the apostle Paul painted a picture of the Gentiles being grafted into Israel, not replacing them. His concern with the Jews was not that God had rejected them, but that they had rejected God--a situation he clearly saw as temporary. Thus throughout the millennia, Christian scholars have wrestled with the paradox that although Israel appears to have been set aside in favour of the Church, God's eternal promises to Israel have not been, and cannot be, annulled--if the words of Scripture actually mean anything like what they say. Thus, Barnabas' enduring assertion that God never intended the Law to be taken as written is crucial to the entire argument.

Now, the Geneva Bible, in its notes on Romans 11, does hold out hope that Israel will be saved eventually, but by joining the church; kind of a reverse of Paul's scenario, combining the permanence of all of God's promises to Israel with  the entire church being the actual beneficiary (which still requires some creative interpretation--could we even call it a dismissal?--of a lot of them). But it was this very doctrine, weakened as it was, that led Oliver Cromwell to open throw open the gates of England to Jewish immigration, and eventually led to a widespread rejection of Supersessionism among readers of the English Bible--especially in the United States, where both Dispensationalism and Ministries to Jewish People flourished in the 20th century. It appears that which Bible translation one uses really can affect his doctrine and practice, even at a national scale.

Not to say that I haven't already tipped my hand, but the point of this post is actually not to argue for or against Supersessionism--but rather to point out that the Committee for Bible Translation has done that very thing. A main point of Replacement Theology is to equate the Church of God with the Israel of God, and this is exactly what several Bible translations--could we even call them that--do at Galatians 6:16.

Peace and mercy be upon all who walk by this rule, upon the Israel of God. --RSV
All who walk by this standard are the true Israel of God - his chosen people. Peace and mercy on them! --The Message
May God’s peace and mercy be upon all who live by this principle; they are the new people of God. --NLT
Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule—to the Israel of God. --NIV

All four of these, ranging from the fairly literal to the wildly paraphrastic, have to do one thing to be able to equate the two: ignore not just one, but two of the three occurrences of the word και (and/also/even)--specifically the last one, which appears to draw a distinction between two groups of people: "those who follow this rule" and "the Israel of God." 

Contrast this to the versions that don't leave out any of the conjunctions:
And whosoever shall follow this rule, peace on them and mercy: and upon the Israel of God. --Douay-Rheims
And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God. --KJV
And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God. --ESV

Here, the two categories are clearly separate. It's easy to see that someone whose theology would dictate that they equate Israel and the Church would be inclined to leave out that crucial 'and' to find scriptural justification for their position.

Actually, this is one of the places where I don't think either the KJV or the NIV got it quite right. One recent craze in hermeneutics has been to find chiasms all over the scriptures, and while I think it's possible to take this way too far, the point can be made that a chiastic structure is in play in this verse, and it should actually be translated the way the HCSB did:

May peace be on all those who follow this standard, and mercy also be on the Israel of God!

--which appears a much better fit to the context of Pauline theology in general and Galatians chapter six in particular. 

Whether one decides to directly translate all of the 'ands', or to leave out the first as superfluous in English, it's a doctrinal choice--not a linguistic one--to ignore the last of them.

The CBT made the doctrinal choice, by taking away a word from the Scriptures, to use their translation to push Replacement Theology--or at least the result was indistinguishable from if they had. This, from the Bible whose introduction states that the translators went to great lengths to avoid sectarian bias.

This post will probably undergo a lot of editing over the coming weeks, but it's been percolating in my mind long enough to finally start the process of getting it in writing.

EDITED TO ADD: I do recognize that at least the last couple editions of the TNIV/NNIV have 'and' here in a footnote--but I reiterate that it was a conscious decision to relegate that reading to a footnote rather than leaving it in the text. Unless, of course, the allegation is true that the NIV was just a reworking of the RSV, in which case they did leave intact the reading in their favoured text, and any criticism about this sectarian bias would deservedly be moved back to that translation committee. I forget whether the RSV introduction proclaimed their translation to be free of sectarian bias, but that's one of the things I can track down for future updates. 

ADDED FURTHER: I could be even more magnanimous and say that translating και as 'even' here would provide for the desired equivalence of Israel and the Church. But that's not what the CBT did, even in their footnote. I can see, though, how they could have justified their rendition on linguistic, rather than theological, grounds--but it's still a rendition that only a Calvinist could produce.