Trusting God, or trusting the police?

After the shootings, authorities told nearby residents to stay inside and a small Christian school was locked down until state police could escort about 60 children from the building.

Resident Bethel Hawkins said Tuesday that police warned families to lock their doors in an area with many senior citizens.

"We're just being cautious, keeping our doors locked, not going outside," said Hawkins, who lives about 2 miles up the road from where the shootings occurred. "Our church service is supposed to be tonight, but we talked with our pastor and told him we're not coming out. We're not going out in the dark not knowing what's out there. But we trust in the Lord to take care of us."

In which the White Man is Quoted by a Scholar

As frustrating as it has been for me not to see my posts engender scholarly interaction in the comments section, I have received some hints over the years that they are not totally disregarded among those whose names grace their own publications. The latest of these appears to be Philip B. Payne, the very scholar who first identified umlauts in Vaticanus. Lately he has been called upon to defend his identification of these scribal marks as "early," that is, having been added to the manuscript before all but a handful of the other extant manuscripts for any given passage were produced. Other theories place the addition of the umlauts (now known as distigmai) in the middle ages or even as late as the end of the manuscript era.

Identifying the distigmai as "early" allows him to make such statements as:

"Although Vaticanus does not include John 7:53–8:11, its distigme is the earliest evidence for this text after John 7:52. Similarly, although Vaticanus does include 14:34–35, its distigme here is the earliest manuscript evidence for a text that omitted these verses."

The foregoing is a quote from his article, "Responses to Questions about 1 Cor 14:34-35 as an Interpolation."

I previously posted on this topic here. What's interesting about Payne's article is that he quotes me in it:

"The White Man wrote on Oct. 16, 2009:
'Note, however, that Dd F Gg support ὑμῶν after γυναῖκες alongside Byz against NA-27, so it's really just cherry-picking to count them as unequivocal evidence for removing the verses entirely."

He responds with:
"My point is not that Dd F Gg [this should be Dd Ee Ff Gg, per Fee] give unequivocal evidence for removing the verses entirely, but that they exemplify two features common to interpolations: the[y] put these verses into a different location in Paul’s text than most other manuscripts, and they add to the extraordinarily high number of textual variants in these verses."

He then goes on to respond to my questioning of his assertions which I raised on Oct. 16 at the Evangelical Textual Criticism Blog, which were:

1. Scribes copying the manuscript later would
a) naturally assume that the text in the margin was inadvertently omitted and
b) so insert those verses into the text.

2. All manuscripts of the Western Text-Type put these two verses after 1 Cor 14:40. (how about dem o x z vg?)

3. Such divergent positioning is one of the hallmarks of interpolations.

4. There is no comparable instance of any other manuscript of any of Paul's letters of a scribe rearranging Paul's argument with a significant block of text in this way.

5. we know that it was contrary to scribal convention for a scribe to take the liberty to change the order of Paul's argument simply because he thought a different ordering of the text would make better sense.

6. no scribe of any surviving manuscript (and there are thousands) of any of Paul's letters ever did anything like this in any other passage of Paul's letters.

7. In every other instance where Bishop Victor corrected the text of Codex Fuldensis,
a) surviving manuscripts support his rewriting of the text, and
b) he is known for preserving the readings of ancient manuscripts

His answers to all but the last of these begged the question by referring back to assertions made by CBT member Gordon Fee, the originator of the Interpolation Theory.

Well, I appreciate Dr. Payne's belated response. It appears from it that any quibble I have over this theory is really with Dr. Fee, but it may astound my readers to hear that, all in all, I think it's a pretty reasonable theory. It still strikes me as supported mainly by allegation rather than deduction, so I'm far from convinced. But I'm certainly willing to entertain the idea that 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 was not part of Paul's epistle at the time he signed off on it, and welcome further investigation and discussion.

But does it matter? Those evangelical scholars like Drs. Payne and Fee, who consider the Pericope Adultera an interpolation, nonetheless recognize it as an authentic record of Jesus' words and deeds. So, if this passage accurately reflects Pauline doctrine, it makes no difference to us today whether it was originally canonical or not--or does it?

It appears that that question has yet to be addressed, as only those already committed to an egalitarian interpretation of Scripture have yet proposed that 1 Cor 14:34-35 is non-canonical.

UPDATE: I have since addressed the question, in the longest series of posts on this blog. It starts here. 

It's MLK Day

Nearly 20 years ago, I participated in the local celebration of Martin L. King, Jr.'s birthday. I prepared to deliver his "I have a dream" speech, but was stricken from the program, I suspect because I wasn't black enough. At any rate, in celebration of the day, here are some ongoing quotes from the late racial rights leader--who, it should be noted, was born as Michael King and began his public life as M. L. King, and was actually the father of a son named Martin Luther King III for most of his celebrity.Therefore while Martin Luther King, Jr. is the name by which he is universally known, it was never more than a stage name.

Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

*

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

*

I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission—a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for “the brotherhood of man.” This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances; but even if it were not present, I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I’m speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men—for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao, as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

A vote for same-sex marriage: The TNIV and Mark 10:12

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The Committee for Bible Translation (known throughout this blog as the CBT) has closed the door for suggestions to improve the NIV/TNIV, as the two versions will be rendered obsolete by the newer and improveder NIV set to come out next year.

In one sense, this is too bad. In another sense, it's too late. There is only so much that can be done to improve the TNIV without either:

a) Reverting to the old reading of the NIV
b) Reverting to the reading (or at least the meaning) of the KJV
c) Violating the copyright of one of the other two dozen English New Testaments in print.

Take, for example, Mark 10:11-12. This is how it would read in a modern language KJV:

And he said to them, "Whoever puts away his wife, and marries another, commits adultery against her. And if a woman puts away her husband, and is married to another, she commits adultery.

The message is pretty clear. Whether a man or woman initiates a divorce, he or she becomes guilty of adultery by remarrying.

Now, I don't think this could be said any more plainly than the reading of the NLT:

He told them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries someone else commits adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries someone else, she commits adultery.”

You can't get more gender-inclusive than that. But how does the gender-inclusive TNIV read? Well, the same as the old NIV did:

He answered, "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery."

Notice the difference? The TNIV, blind as ever to the need to make generic feminine constructions gender-neutral, leaves a glaring loophole for same-sex marriage by either partner. A loophole that never existed in the KJV. And doesn't exist in the NLT.

Ah, you say, but the TNIV most accurately translates the Greek here, which does specify the gender of the new spouse in each case.

So what?

The CBT has shown wanton disregard for any number of places where the Greek specifies the gender--specifically, masculine gender. On what grounds do they show such respect for it here?

They certainly can't claim that they are trying to make the Bible more understandable to Today's Young Person, who needs to know, and really should be able to find out from reading the Bible, the opinion of their Creator on "same-sex marriage." Not the opinion of gay and lesbian members of a translation team.

UPDATE OCTOBER 2011: There was no change to the NNIV. The loophole remains.
UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2016: Now that marriage between homosexuals is a protected right in a growing number of judicial and ecclesiastical districts, the NNIV is already out of date.
Wow, that sure didn't take long.

Castellio on Calvin as a common despot

"Your words and your weapons are only those common to every despot; and they can give you but a temporal, not a spiritual, dominance--a dominance based on coercion, and not upon the love of God. Nor do I envy you your power or your weapons. I have other powers and other weapons--an imperturbable conviction of innocence, and a trust in Him who will help me and give me grace.

"Even if, for a season, truth is suppressed by the blind 'justice' of this world, no one can permanently coerce truth. Let us cease to heed the judgment of a world which slew Christ; let us ignore an assize before which only the cause of violence proves victorious. The Kingdom of God is not of this world."


--Sebastian Castellio to John Calvin, after Calvin used his authority to block publication of Castellio's book exposing Calvin's role in the brutal execution of Servetus (translated from the quotation in Castellio gegen Calvin oder Ein Gewissen gegen die Gewalt, by Stefan Zweig, 1936)