Legacy Standard Bible (LSB) - Dr. Abner Chou, Dr. William Varner, & Jason Beals - Q1 - 2023
00:00:00.000 | Well, I'm excited to be here today with three members of the Legacy Standard Bible
00:00:20.680 | Translation Team.
00:00:22.360 | My name is Chris Scottie, I'm the VP and Publisher of 316 Publishing, and we're going to start
00:00:27.560 | today's segment by giving these men an opportunity to see a brand new Bible, the Inside Column
00:00:34.320 | Reference.
00:00:35.320 | So, men, open up your boxes.
00:00:37.320 | Wow, it's like Christmas morning, like a little kid.
00:00:43.000 | Wow.
00:00:44.000 | I'll beat you, guys, I'll beat you.
00:00:47.040 | Were you that kid in Christmas?
00:00:49.960 | Yes.
00:00:50.960 | Yes.
00:00:51.960 | Yes.
00:00:52.960 | Wow.
00:00:53.960 | Can I rip this?
00:00:55.520 | You can slide it off, you can rip it.
00:00:57.640 | This is the first full reference edition of the Legacy Standard Bible.
00:01:02.880 | That is nice.
00:01:03.880 | Yeah.
00:01:04.880 | Always well-packaged, too.
00:01:05.880 | Oh, my.
00:01:06.880 | And for a guy my age, 39 years plus, it's a good-sized font.
00:01:13.360 | Also, even the references are in a good size.
00:01:19.400 | I have another reference Bible, remained unnamed as to what version it is, but I can't read
00:01:28.040 | the Scripture references in it.
00:01:31.280 | And this, not only the text itself, but the references are readable.
00:01:37.000 | Yeah.
00:01:38.000 | I always tell young guys preparing for ministry, "Get a Bible with larger font so when you
00:01:43.760 | make your notes, you can use it when you get older."
00:01:47.000 | A lot of guys have these like little tiny Bibles with that eight-point font.
00:01:51.040 | It's like, there'll be a day when you're going to need those.
00:01:56.240 | My initial reaction also is that it's a good preaching Bible, you know, it can be on the
00:02:00.040 | pulpit with you, and I like that.
00:02:03.120 | Preaching or teaching from it publicly, you can see it, yeah, I like it.
00:02:07.720 | Yeah, and I appreciate an emphasis on the text, and I think that's one of the beauties
00:02:14.560 | of the inside column reference, which is that the references are toward the bend of the
00:02:21.480 | page, toward the inner side, so that the text stands out.
00:02:26.240 | It's the main thing as it ought to be, and then if you want to refer, you go to the inner
00:02:33.800 | part of the column, but always what's on the flat of the page is the text of Scripture.
00:02:40.400 | Sometimes they put references on the outside margin, and so now the text of Scripture has
00:02:45.520 | to bend into the gutter of the page, and so you're kind of straining to see the main thing,
00:02:53.600 | even though what is the secondary aspect, which is still important, but secondary to
00:02:58.160 | the text, of course, is actually featured.
00:03:01.100 | So this is handy in that regard, and it's also handy that the references are spliced
00:03:08.240 | between, I think it says cross-references at the top, and then on the bottom, any translators'
00:03:13.480 | footnotes, which is handy to kind of go back and forth between and quickly find the kind
00:03:19.720 | of information you want to refer people to, or you're looking for.
00:03:25.260 | So this edition, man, actually represents more of your work.
00:03:28.640 | Oh, really?
00:03:29.640 | So it's not just the translation, but you gentlemen also worked on culling through the
00:03:35.100 | footnotes and such from the original NAS, the 95 and the 77, and so as part of your
00:03:42.520 | translation process, can you give us a few insights on how you handled that part of the
00:03:48.480 | process?
00:03:51.020 | Notes are very important.
00:03:53.920 | I remember when we first started talking about dealing with the footnotes, and in my heart
00:04:00.840 | I thought, well, the text itself is the most important, which is true, and the text itself
00:04:06.980 | is what we're going to focus on, which is true, and we don't have to concentrate at
00:04:10.640 | all on the footnotes.
00:04:11.640 | We'll just let them be because we're under strict deadlines.
00:04:14.400 | Well, that thought, that last thought was false.
00:04:18.040 | It really is important for several reasons, at least off the top of my head.
00:04:23.700 | One is because people really use the notes.
00:04:27.240 | They really do, and I think that's wonderful.
00:04:31.240 | I think it's wonderful that you have brothers and sisters in Christ who love the Word of
00:04:35.480 | God so much, and they want to know it so well that they care about those notes.
00:04:41.180 | It's something, it's a tool for them, just like a translation is a tool.
00:04:44.960 | This is an added layer on that.
00:04:47.240 | Second, it's not just a tool for them, it's a tool for us.
00:04:52.360 | That's what I think I soon realized, which was whenever we came to a quandary where we
00:04:58.920 | didn't know exactly how to solve, sometimes the note actually provided the solution to
00:05:05.640 | our question.
00:05:07.140 | If we thought, oh, how do you say this and refer to that?
00:05:10.800 | How do you mediate between the fact of you want consistency but there's this wordplay
00:05:16.240 | here and how do you make it all work together?
00:05:18.400 | Well, the footnote could be a really important solution to that.
00:05:22.960 | And then on top of all that, as soon as you made those solutions you realize, and that's
00:05:28.760 | going to help the reader study in the end.
00:05:31.640 | So you're building on what they wanted the footnotes to be, and you're taking it to a
00:05:36.120 | new level where it's not just about, okay, what does this literally say or an explanatory
00:05:42.780 | note or explaining measurements or the like, but it's on top of all that giving new ideas
00:05:49.280 | where they say, oh, okay, so this word is the same one as this other word in this other
00:05:54.880 | passage.
00:05:55.880 | And if the translators are telling me that I should cross-reference there, maybe there's
00:06:01.600 | an important connection that they're hinting at that I need to find, and all of that's
00:06:05.880 | embedded in the notes on top of other kinds of footnotes that we introduced into the Legacy
00:06:13.320 | Standard Bible.
00:06:14.840 | For example, whenever the New Testament deliberately is translating the Old, and you have Kyrios,
00:06:21.920 | Lord, translating Yahweh, since now we have in the Old Testament the Tetragrammaton translated
00:06:27.920 | as the name of God explicitly, we wanted to show the connections between the two, and
00:06:34.160 | the footnotes became part of that process.
00:06:37.040 | So there's a lot of helpful resources in these footnotes, and they're a helpful tool for
00:06:43.680 | us to communicate what we're trying to get across and sometimes mediate solutions within
00:06:51.040 | the translation.
00:06:52.040 | Yeah, it was an important thing.
00:06:53.960 | - Yeah, I think just going off the same concept there, one of the most common questions I
00:07:01.320 | think I received and I noticed even in social media is how we were going to translate Lord
00:07:09.560 | in the New Testament.
00:07:10.560 | What are we going to do, Yahweh?
00:07:12.840 | And I think that really does help when you have a footnote that says in the Old Testament
00:07:18.560 | Yahweh used, for instance, Matthew 22, "The Lord said to my Lord," and we have footnoted
00:07:25.260 | the first Lord and indicated that's Yahweh to help the reader understand that the Old
00:07:30.320 | Testament context makes that distinction.
00:07:33.480 | And I think it helps people, and sometimes too it eases people like, "Okay, we're not
00:07:38.920 | going to just shove a word in there that's not really there, but we're going to help
00:07:43.120 | you make the connection back into another passage."
00:07:46.880 | - A tradition that we continued is something that new users of the LSB, and not in the
00:07:55.440 | NASB tradition, you know, they see in the New Testament the Old Testament quotes in
00:08:03.200 | capital letters and it's the first time that they've seen it and they like that.
00:08:08.960 | You know, it's, boom, you know, call attention, there's a quotation from the Old Testament
00:08:13.800 | here.
00:08:14.800 | And so that, putting it in all caps as we continued that tradition, that legacy, is
00:08:22.200 | a good one, and new users of the Bible have commented on that, how much they appreciate
00:08:29.120 | it.
00:08:30.120 | - Yeah, I think of even in the Greek New Testaments that we use, whether it be in Nestle-Aland
00:08:35.960 | or UBS or whatnot, often Old Testament quotations, I think in UBS it's bolded, if my memory serves
00:08:42.960 | me right, and NA 27 I think is italicized or something like that.
00:08:47.240 | So we're just mirroring in our translation what scholars and people who know Greek see
00:08:57.280 | in their Bibles, and that's kind of the whole idea of a window, which is what we see is
00:09:03.000 | what you see, and what you see is what we see.
00:09:06.240 | And I can't, and I, you know, Jason and Dr. Varner are just across the hall from me at
00:09:11.560 | the Master's University, and we often comment as we look on social media, and people are
00:09:19.240 | saying, "Well, what about this, and how do you respond to that?"
00:09:22.560 | And it's often on Facebook, there's a Facebook group that's been very active and very encouraging.
00:09:28.240 | I've been really thankful for those individuals in the Lord who have been interacting there.
00:09:33.360 | And I often turn to both of them and say, "Man, the answer to that question, it's just
00:09:38.120 | in the footnote, and when they look at the footnote, it'll answer the question."
00:09:41.760 | And then I remember to myself, "Well, they don't have access to that wholly yet, at least
00:09:46.820 | at that time."
00:09:48.080 | And that's another beauty of these footnotes, is for people asking really good questions,
00:09:54.440 | questions that they ought to be asking, well, there's a reason why we put the footnote there,
00:09:58.400 | because that's a good question, and we anticipated it, and there is a good answer, and it's right
00:10:03.160 | there in the resource for them.
00:10:05.080 | And I think this just helps connect back to one of the lines that we came up with for
00:10:11.100 | the LSB, that it's your translation for a lifetime of study.
00:10:16.200 | And with 95,000 cross-references and 14,000 footnotes, there's a lot of studying that
00:10:23.400 | can be done in this edition.
00:10:25.480 | So we're grateful that it's finally out now, and that people are really enjoying this specific
00:10:33.680 | edition of the LSB.
00:10:35.960 | - And we should not neglect the physical beauty of this.
00:10:38.800 | - Oh, yeah.
00:10:39.800 | Oh, yeah.
00:10:40.800 | I was thinking that.
00:10:41.800 | - Very well done, not only content, but something that's totally out of our hands, is the physical
00:10:48.720 | construction of the Bible, and it's a beautiful, visible piece of work.
00:10:54.960 | - Yeah, the goatskin is just, it's fabulous.
00:10:57.360 | - Oh, yeah.
00:10:58.360 | I always like a good cover.
00:11:00.400 | - And one of the things, too, when you, the reason the inside column is one of my favorite
00:11:05.440 | formats is that oftentimes your Bible won't lay flat unless, like, maybe you get a rebound
00:11:12.560 | or something like that.
00:11:13.560 | But with this, like, it lays flat, and so you don't even have even the references kind of
00:11:20.760 | obscured because of that.
00:11:22.320 | So it's almost like water, just the flow of it is a beautiful, beautiful Bible.
00:11:29.280 | Not many versions of reference Bibles are inside column, from what I've observed.
00:11:36.040 | A lot of them still have it on the outside, and that's fine.
00:11:38.400 | It's not a sin, of course, but this is really useful, and I think, and I hope more Bibles
00:11:44.400 | imitate the style.
00:11:48.920 | - Well, I just wanted to mention that there's been a timeline here of right now, it's January
00:11:57.440 | of 2023.
00:11:59.360 | When the first complete edition of the LSB came out, it was October of 2021.
00:12:06.000 | And so that doesn't seem like a lot of time has lapsed yet.
00:12:09.480 | This is still a translation that people are discovering for the first time.
00:12:14.440 | But if you can share some examples or stories of people that have began to read the LSB,
00:12:20.800 | whether it's in their personal study time or people that have incorporated it into their
00:12:26.440 | theories.
00:12:27.440 | - Occasionally, we hear the general criticism, a literal translation does not read well.
00:12:37.280 | It's too literal.
00:12:40.640 | But I hear people saying, "You know, I've begun to use the Legacy Standard Bible, and
00:12:46.360 | it's readable.
00:12:48.160 | And I enjoy reading it to the congregation."
00:12:51.520 | An essentially literal, or as we call it, formal equivalence theory of translation does
00:12:58.400 | not produce a woodenly literal, hard to read, hard for people in the pew to understand version.
00:13:07.300 | So I'm hearing far more positive responses in that regard than I even expected.
00:13:15.000 | It is readable, they say.
00:13:16.880 | - Yeah, I remember it was really touching.
00:13:21.440 | We all teach at the university.
00:13:24.080 | And some of us, I don't, but I know some of us require the Legacy Standard Bible for class.
00:13:31.480 | But I remember even students under peer pressure, they say, "Oh, you just got to get one.
00:13:35.680 | You just got to get one," to their fellow student.
00:13:37.880 | And an individual wrote me a note one day, stuck it in my box, and it was just so remarkable.
00:13:44.520 | The person said, "Oh, for my whole life, I know I needed to read my Bible.
00:13:49.600 | I always struggled.
00:13:51.120 | I felt like I could never understand, just never could, just really, really struggled."
00:13:57.600 | And so this individual said when she arrived on campus, and people were talking about the
00:14:01.880 | Legacy Standard Bible, she just thought it was hype.
00:14:05.440 | And I understand that sentiment for sure.
00:14:09.480 | But then she said, "I bought one, and I started reading."
00:14:13.800 | And she said, "Whatever you did, I don't know what you did, but whatever you did, thank
00:14:19.520 | you, because for the first time, I really feel like I have a grasp on the text.
00:14:26.360 | I understand what's going on."
00:14:28.920 | And I think there is this notion that when you are "woodenly literal" or "literal," and
00:14:36.480 | you have this equivalence between the text, there is a kind of clarity that that produces.
00:14:43.280 | Because you're sensitive to, "This phrase is this kind of part of speech.
00:14:47.340 | This phrase is the main phrase.
00:14:49.200 | We've got to make sure everything connects correctly and correlates correctly."
00:14:52.880 | And people know how to talk.
00:14:54.240 | They know how a participle works, even if they don't know the part of speech off the
00:14:58.760 | top of their head.
00:14:59.760 | They understand these things.
00:15:02.360 | And when you sometimes flatten that out, it's just a bunch of ideas that don't seem to cohere
00:15:08.720 | together.
00:15:09.940 | But when you have the structure that the author wanted you to have, with the grammar that
00:15:15.640 | the author wanted you to have, things start to piece together the right way in people's
00:15:20.520 | minds.
00:15:21.520 | And there's a clarity to that.
00:15:22.520 | And I think that's what this dear sister was conveying, and she was just so moved by it
00:15:27.600 | that she took the time to write a card, which I thought was just really touching and really
00:15:34.320 | encouraging.
00:15:36.280 | So I see the effect not only in pastors who come up to me and talk with me about it, and
00:15:43.480 | not only in adults in the pew who also are talking about their own devotional life, but
00:15:48.960 | even in our students.
00:15:50.120 | And it's really precious.
00:15:51.120 | - Yeah, I would agree.
00:15:54.040 | Just a couple weeks ago, my wife and I led a trip to Turkey and Greece through the university.
00:16:02.120 | And so we would go to all of these biblical locations and, you know, for instance, Mars
00:16:08.880 | Hill in Athens, or at Corinth, or those kinds of places.
00:16:15.000 | And each stop, we offered the opportunity for people to have had memorized and quote
00:16:21.720 | Scripture on site.
00:16:23.480 | And so it was really fun to be in the Ephesian Theater and have a student quote the whole
00:16:30.800 | first chapter of Ephesians in the LSB.
00:16:34.480 | And so when I looked on, because we, you know, for a couple months ahead, we've prepared
00:16:39.880 | and had people sign up, not just students, but people who went on the trip.
00:16:43.680 | And I would say a good portion of them did the LSB, not because they had to, but because
00:16:49.480 | they wanted to.
00:16:50.480 | And it was really fun to see them on site, on location, quoting the LSB, and then talking
00:16:59.560 | with them afterwards as they've kind of memorized and things were really starting to piece together.
00:17:05.160 | They would see the structure and things like that.
00:17:07.160 | And it was just really fun to see that, and also encouraging that it's not just a good
00:17:13.180 | resource to read, but even the memorization, those things that the text points out were
00:17:20.240 | key things that they thought about even after.
00:17:24.440 | - Fantastic.
00:17:26.820 | One other point that this discussion reminds me of is that you all are also preachers.
00:17:34.120 | You're also preparing your own sermons to exposit publicly.
00:17:40.080 | And so in your own personal study time as you're preparing those messages, can you tie
00:17:46.040 | the idea of the LSB being a window and how that actually helps you in your sermon preparation?
00:17:54.800 | - Well, Chris, it was not a sermon preparation, but I'm looking forward to preaching on this
00:17:59.640 | someday, but it was preparation for class.
00:18:02.760 | I've taught the book of Judges for many years and people are familiar with the sad theme
00:18:09.200 | text at the end, "And there was no king in Israel, everyone did that which was right
00:18:15.240 | in his own eyes."
00:18:17.000 | And many translations do it that way.
00:18:20.540 | But as I'm reading about Samson, I'm excited to point out to my students that when Samson
00:18:29.780 | was looking for a Philistine girl and he found one and his parents were not excited about
00:18:35.340 | this, he said, "Get her for me because she is right in my eyes."
00:18:42.260 | The exact same expression that is used of the general problem of the book of Judges,
00:18:50.140 | people were doing right in their own eyes.
00:18:53.460 | And it jumped out at me because most translate, most versions will say something like, "She
00:19:00.280 | looks good to me."
00:19:02.100 | And that's the idea, but if you miss it, that he's saying, "She's right in my eyes," you
00:19:08.380 | might miss the connection that he's sort of like exhibit A of the book of Judges.
00:19:16.860 | She's doing, I don't care what Yahweh says, she's right in my eyes and I'm the standard
00:19:22.460 | and he becomes sort of like a prime example in the book of Judges.
00:19:26.780 | And then of course when you see that, that it was a Philistine girl that was right in
00:19:31.180 | his own eyes, he's captured by the Philistines and guess what the Philistines do?
00:19:36.120 | They put out his eyes.
00:19:38.680 | So there, this whole connection in the latter part of the book between doing what is right
00:19:44.140 | in my eyes, and who cares what Yahweh says, but also he loses his eyes.
00:19:51.660 | It's sort of like a sad irony that is brought out and strangely most versions don't translate
00:19:59.860 | it consistently.
00:20:02.440 | Thank you for that example.
00:20:04.860 | This isn't necessarily again in sermon preparation, although I can talk about that as well, but
00:20:09.140 | even this past Sunday the preacher was preaching on Psalm 12, and this kind of ties in a discussion
00:20:16.220 | we had on footnotes with the window concept of the Legacy Standard Bible.
00:20:21.940 | And Psalm 12 begins with the phrase, "Save Yahweh."
00:20:25.740 | It's a very short prayer to the point because of the desperation of the psalmist.
00:20:32.460 | And then later on in the same psalm, Yahweh says, "Now I will set him on high, and I will
00:20:40.300 | give him, and I will put him in," the safety is often how it's translated.
00:20:46.420 | But there's a good footnote in the LSB that says, literally, "Salvation," cross-reference
00:20:53.380 | Psalm 12, 1, and the idea is, "Hey, this word is the word salvation.
00:21:00.220 | Go back to Psalm 12, 1.
00:21:01.860 | Read it.
00:21:02.860 | Save Yahweh."
00:21:03.860 | Oh, the psalmist prayed, "Save me."
00:21:08.100 | He didn't even pray, "Save me."
00:21:09.460 | He didn't even have the pronominal suffix there, he just said, "Save."
00:21:13.220 | So desperate, and Yahweh says, "And I'll give him that salvation.
00:21:17.340 | I'll give it to him."
00:21:18.340 | And so there is this very precise and deliberate answer to prayer in the nick of time.
00:21:26.300 | Now Yahweh will do this at God's perfect timing.
00:21:30.220 | He will answer, and according to His own promises, in the way that is best, in the way that we
00:21:37.100 | need.
00:21:38.460 | And there's an example of window back into the text, good footnote there to help make
00:21:46.140 | the connection established, and it's all right in your Bible.
00:21:50.380 | As we went through verse by verse through the Bible, these are all the connections and
00:21:57.060 | the issues that we were working through, and we left that behind.
00:22:00.420 | I think often we've all said, "Oh, I'm so glad we made that decision."
00:22:03.900 | We sometimes forget what we did, and we discovered and we thought, "Wow, that's nice.
00:22:11.220 | I'm so glad we caught that.
00:22:12.660 | How did we catch that?"
00:22:15.020 | And it's a blessing working on commentary or in class.
00:22:20.540 | Sometimes you have to talk about a serious, very somber doctrine like hell, and it's in
00:22:27.180 | the Scriptures, and it's even lexically there by the Word.
00:22:31.500 | And a good example of that is in Isaiah 66, it talks about the worm will never be, fire
00:22:37.860 | will never be quenched, worm will never be satisfied, and they will endure everlasting
00:22:42.380 | reproach.
00:22:43.380 | Well, that word often translated "reproach" or "derision" or however you'd like to translate
00:22:49.620 | it, is a very unique Hebrew word, and it's only found elsewhere in Daniel 12 too, which
00:22:55.900 | also talks about there will be a resurrection for those unto eternal life and another resurrection
00:23:00.940 | for those under everlasting reproach, same word.
00:23:04.580 | And we wanted to make sure that those were translated the same way, and the students
00:23:09.300 | seeing, "Oh, it's consistently translated, oh, it's the same word," they start to realize
00:23:16.660 | as weighty as this doctrine is and as real as it is, it's not just something made up
00:23:23.580 | by scholars later or people who want to guilt people into salvation.
00:23:27.940 | This was consciously developed and expounded upon by the writers of Scripture from Old
00:23:33.500 | Testament to New Testament.
00:23:35.260 | And just consistency like that, that's very, very helpful.
00:23:39.980 | I think for me, I think of Philippians 2.11, after this amazing theological kind of unpacking
00:23:50.740 | of the personal work of Christ, you have verse 11, "And every tongue will confess that Jesus
00:23:56.860 | Christ is Lord," and we've capitalized some things to help the reader go back to the Old
00:24:03.300 | Testament.
00:24:04.500 | And I think as we do that, there's some like aha moments that happen.
00:24:10.340 | If you go back to that quote, it's Isaiah 45, and Isaiah 45, it's interesting, the whole
00:24:16.340 | context is about the exclusivity of Yahweh, that Yahweh is the only one.
00:24:22.580 | Verse 5, "I am Yahweh, there is no other besides me, there is no God."
00:24:27.460 | You have verse 6, "There is no one besides me, I am Yahweh, there is no other."
00:24:33.420 | You have in verse 18, "I am Yahweh, there is none."
00:24:37.860 | And it just keeps going on and on in chapter 45 until you get to this idea of, "Turn to
00:24:45.320 | me and be saved, all the ends of the earth," in verse 22, "For I am God and there is no
00:24:49.700 | other.
00:24:50.700 | I'm sworn by myself, the word has gone forth from my mouth in righteousness and will not
00:24:54.940 | turn back.
00:24:55.940 | That to me, every knee will bow and every tongue will swear allegiance that will say
00:25:00.380 | of me, 'Only in Yahweh are righteousness and strength.'"
00:25:03.740 | And when you come back to Philippians chapter 2, verse 11, "Every tongue will confess that
00:25:08.860 | Jesus Christ is Lord," L-O-R-D, with a footnote that says, "In the Old Testament, Yahweh."
00:25:15.380 | And it just shows the exclusivity of Christ, His deity, like He's already talked about
00:25:21.780 | it, and He does the exclamation point by referencing Isaiah 45, "There is no one but God."
00:25:30.120 | And yet, making that sweet connection of Jesus Christ is God.
00:25:37.220 | And I think that's a really sweet reminder that even when you see an Old Testament quote,
00:25:45.020 | it's not there just for you to go back to the one little verse that it quotes, but the
00:25:48.740 | whole context is in the mind of the writer, and it helps us to go back and kind of make
00:25:54.380 | those connections.
00:25:57.980 | - All of Scripture is such an amazing tapestry.
00:26:00.980 | And so just hearing these examples from you men just reminds me of that.
00:26:07.520 | And the uniqueness of the format helps give that clue to the reader that there are those
00:26:15.460 | connections.
00:26:16.620 | When you read the New Testament, there's connections frequently drawing back to the Old Testament.
00:26:23.140 | And it's not always just in the footnotes or cross-references, but it's also in the
00:26:28.200 | layout, the way the Old Testament quotations are formatted.
00:26:33.520 | So very helpful.
00:26:34.800 | Thank you, men.
00:26:36.760 | Well, gentlemen, the next question that I'd like to pose to all of you is, "Minor refinements
00:26:45.100 | to the text of the LSB."
00:26:47.100 | Can you expound upon that a bit?
00:26:49.120 | - Yeah, I'll tell a funny story first.
00:26:52.880 | When we were translating, I used to have nightmares whenever I got a little bit of a nap that
00:27:00.720 | there were these horrendous errors in our translation.
00:27:05.240 | And Dr. MacArthur was holding the violin saying, "What were you thinking?
00:27:09.360 | How does this happen?"
00:27:11.480 | And so we truly, and then I'd wake up and check and everything was fine.
00:27:16.640 | But we truly labored as hard as we could to prevent errors, to prevent mistakes, to prevent
00:27:25.040 | typographical issues from creeping into the text.
00:27:28.420 | But of course, we are people, and what happens if those things happen?
00:27:32.800 | Well, you make corrections.
00:27:34.680 | And I think just like everything we've tried to do is principally based, there were some
00:27:41.160 | principles about changing or making revisions, even minor revisions to the text.
00:27:46.560 | One was we were committed to making those that could be substantiated.
00:27:52.840 | In other words, you don't just change a text because of preference, and we've never done
00:27:57.480 | that.
00:27:58.480 | And we won't do that, and we didn't do that even in the minor revisions.
00:28:01.760 | The vast, vast majority of them, and there's only, yeah, I think just a few dozen compared
00:28:08.600 | to a lot of translations that do hundreds of revisions.
00:28:12.480 | But the vast majority of those few dozen are typographical, add a comma, formatting issues
00:28:19.880 | where this should have been italicized but wasn't italicized, and that's because computer
00:28:26.400 | code was mistyped and such, and so we needed to go back and do that.
00:28:30.960 | The vast majority are typographical.
00:28:33.720 | There's a subset of minor refinements I can think of maybe out of the few dozen, maybe
00:28:39.920 | three to four, that are all actually related.
00:28:43.760 | They deal with the issue of defilement and uncleanness in the book of Leviticus.
00:28:48.160 | And you say, "Why did that happen?"
00:28:51.520 | Well, the files that were syncing with the server, they're big files.
00:28:56.480 | I wish Joe was here because I think he burned through several computers just trying to do
00:29:01.200 | this translation because they take forever to load, and then they take forever to save.
00:29:07.080 | So I wouldn't turn on autosave, and you just hit Control-S, and then you leave your computer
00:29:12.600 | to take a nap and have a nightmare.
00:29:15.840 | And then you come back, and by that time, hopefully, the file is saved.
00:29:19.000 | But what can happen in that process is corruption, or a kind of corruption where certain kinds
00:29:24.120 | of changes weren't saved.
00:29:27.200 | And those words were marked to be changed in our notes a certain way, and the file got
00:29:34.560 | corrupted.
00:29:35.560 | And so someone lovingly pointed out, "Wait, this doesn't make any sense.
00:29:39.240 | What happened here?"
00:29:40.560 | And Joe and I are looking at it and thinking, "What did happen?
00:29:43.520 | This was supposed to be changed."
00:29:45.360 | And when we went into the computer logs, we realized there was an error in the file save.
00:29:49.800 | And so what should have been there wasn't there, and so we needed to make that correction.
00:29:54.800 | And we've been noticing some things like that all along the way, but the changes we make
00:30:01.920 | are minor in the sense that the majority are these typographical errors.
00:30:07.600 | And most people wouldn't even notice the change because they're so subtle.
00:30:12.960 | But that leads to a second principle, which is transparency.
00:30:16.280 | One of the things we really pressed for was to say to the reader, "Hey, these are the
00:30:21.240 | changes made so that everyone can be on the same page."
00:30:24.760 | Now, I know for a publisher, that can be a total nightmare.
00:30:29.600 | And really, all it takes is a pencil, and you just kind of make the edit.
00:30:33.400 | And it's kind of nice.
00:30:34.760 | You get this idiosyncratic edition, which has these issues.
00:30:38.920 | And you can say, "I was one of those."
00:30:41.120 | And it's a real first edition.
00:30:42.440 | How do you know it's a real first edition?
00:30:44.440 | Because it has these unique features, let's just put it that way.
00:30:48.000 | And so it was our goal to have things principally based, to make sure things were as consistent
00:30:55.280 | as possible.
00:30:56.280 | Any change always had a rationale.
00:30:58.360 | Most of them were typographical.
00:31:00.120 | A lot of them also were technologically related.
00:31:05.640 | And then we wanted to be transparent with it.
00:31:08.480 | And we've kept it to a minimum.
00:31:10.440 | Sometimes, some people say, "Hey, I noticed this issue.
00:31:15.280 | How do you-- can you just insert x here?"
00:31:19.040 | And the answer is, probably not.
00:31:21.600 | We're not going to do that.
00:31:23.720 | But what we can do-- and this is where our earlier conversation about footnotes comes
00:31:26.880 | into play-- that's an amazing tool, where we can accommodate observations readers and
00:31:35.400 | others have made into the coordination of the text by virtue of a footnote.
00:31:41.980 | And so there's a lot of tools at our disposal to resolve issues that come up, but still
00:31:48.120 | guarantee the stability of the text, so that people say, "My text isn't changing.
00:31:53.580 | It's not changing.
00:31:54.580 | It's going to endure the test of time.
00:31:56.200 | And it's totally fine."
00:31:57.200 | Yeah.
00:31:58.520 | Thank you for that.
00:32:02.080 | As we move into this next portion of our segment today, we're actually going to cover some
00:32:07.480 | questions that came to us through users and such through our LSB website.
00:32:14.760 | And so your explanation, I think, dovetails into the question that came through about
00:32:21.200 | the word "baby" in the original Greek and how, in some places, it's translated differently.
00:32:29.800 | And so it appears to some that that is a break of the rule of consistency.
00:32:35.360 | So if you could, gentlemen, just expand upon what you went through translating those places
00:32:41.920 | where the word "baby" is used.
00:32:44.680 | Yeah.
00:32:45.680 | Well, I can.
00:32:46.680 | I'm happy to jump in there with brephos, I think, is the Greek term.
00:32:51.520 | And there's several things involved.
00:32:54.400 | I think, first, consistency does not mean-- let's put it this way-- consistency does not
00:32:59.760 | mean that you translate the same word always, no matter what.
00:33:07.180 | We recognize that every word in Greek or Hebrew or English, it has nuances.
00:33:13.920 | It has different usages.
00:33:16.520 | And so it would be inappropriate to translate a certain word the same way when it doesn't
00:33:23.080 | match what we might call the semantic tree or the different usages of a term.
00:33:28.920 | For example, in English, if we use the word "dust," we say, yeah, what's dust?
00:33:34.000 | Oh, that's the dirt on the table.
00:33:36.640 | OK.
00:33:37.640 | So when you dust your home, what do you do?
00:33:39.960 | Well, that's when you remove the dust.
00:33:43.000 | Oh, OK.
00:33:44.040 | So when it's a verb, it's always removing dust.
00:33:47.120 | So what's a crop duster?
00:33:48.120 | Is it an aerial vacuum?
00:33:50.280 | No.
00:33:51.320 | It's something that actually spreads fertilizer or whatever, nutrients on plants and such.
00:33:57.880 | And while in English, the word "dust" can carry all three of those nuances, no problems.
00:34:03.600 | But if you were translating it into a different language, you might have to use different
00:34:06.800 | words because language transfers differently between the target language and the receptor
00:34:14.480 | language.
00:34:15.480 | We understand those tensions.
00:34:16.720 | And so when we wanted consistency, at bare minimum, if we could find one word that got
00:34:20.960 | it all, hey, praise the Lord for that.
00:34:23.200 | But bare minimum, we needed consistency between and within nuances.
00:34:28.440 | And with the term "brefos," there's a lot of different dynamics with that.
00:34:33.240 | There's when it has the article and when it doesn't.
00:34:36.480 | There's when it's used in idiom and when it's used not.
00:34:39.840 | And we had to account for all of that so that when, say, you're talking about the baby that
00:34:47.720 | is brought to Simeon and Anna in Luke versus the infant, which is translating a Hebrew
00:34:56.120 | word in the New Testament quotation of the Old, versus an idiom where it's talking about
00:35:02.160 | from childhood, you knew the Scriptures.
00:35:06.060 | We had to differentiate each of those ideas.
00:35:10.960 | And that's because we're consistency relative to nuance, not just rote consistency of every
00:35:17.540 | single word, every single time, no difference whatsoever.
00:35:22.260 | And there's a lot of examples of this.
00:35:26.000 | One of them is, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling."
00:35:28.920 | Well, that's one translation of the word "kaergatzo," but there is another nuance where it's being
00:35:35.980 | "worked out within yourself" as opposed to working something out.
00:35:40.320 | And we had to translate it differently, otherwise the translation wouldn't make any sense and
00:35:45.360 | would give the wrong impression.
00:35:47.620 | And these are examples of every word has nuances.
00:35:52.120 | They have kind of major categories, and we try to be consistent relative to the major
00:35:56.680 | categories.
00:35:57.680 | Sometimes, and oftentimes, a dictionary like BDAG or whatnot, they'll delineate those categories
00:36:03.080 | for us so that we can keep things straight, but sometimes we had to kind of delineate
00:36:10.280 | it.
00:36:11.280 | A good example in Hebrew would be "relent" versus "regret."
00:36:17.280 | You know, the Lord "relented" doing this, or the Lord "regretted" doing something.
00:36:21.860 | Why do we do these different things?
00:36:23.340 | Because "relenting" is when you are restraining that which is in process.
00:36:30.300 | "Regretting" is what happens after the thing is done.
00:36:35.300 | You can't say, "Oh, the Lord regretted doing this, and so it stopped."
00:36:39.660 | Well, no, then that doesn't make any sense because you only regret things that have already
00:36:43.580 | happened.
00:36:44.580 | And we have limitations like that in English.
00:36:46.740 | They didn't have it in Hebrew.
00:36:48.380 | Good for them, but we do.
00:36:50.140 | And so we just had to figure out solutions.
00:36:52.140 | And so even then, "relent," "regret," we try to make them sound pretty similar so that
00:36:58.660 | it kind of rolls off the tongue and such, and we kept it consistent.
00:37:02.300 | And by the way, just for people who are wondering, does that imply that God can have regrets
00:37:07.220 | or God can change His mind?
00:37:08.900 | No, because in 1 Samuel 15, it explicitly says, "The Lord does not regret," using that
00:37:15.220 | same word.
00:37:16.580 | And so by having consistency of translation, and even sometimes a footnote that points
00:37:21.860 | people back to 1 Samuel 15, people can see the theology that's happening there.
00:37:26.740 | - Chris, you know, to follow up, and in case people didn't quite get that on "brephos,"
00:37:33.060 | the Greek word "brephos" can refer to a little one in the womb, it can refer to a little
00:37:38.940 | one in a manger that's born, and it can refer to a very young child.
00:37:45.620 | So we have to be, you know, so from a child in the womb, you have known the Holy Scriptures?
00:37:51.980 | No.
00:37:52.980 | From an infant, you know, no, no, they don't.
00:37:56.420 | But from a young child.
00:37:59.100 | So depending on the context, that it's a young child that would know the Holy Scriptures,
00:38:04.820 | not an infant in the womb.
00:38:06.460 | So we're still paying attention to context, which oftentimes really helps us to define
00:38:13.300 | the word more accurately.
00:38:15.420 | - And the last thing you want, if you're trying to articulate the author's intent and what
00:38:21.700 | he was saying, is to misrepresent it by taking a word that he used out of context, because
00:38:30.860 | in the name of consistency.
00:38:32.300 | So consistency, I know, has been a big emphasis that we have, but that's not in exclusion
00:38:39.360 | of context and other linguistic factors.
00:38:42.860 | And they all have to play together to get us a conclusion.
00:38:47.540 | - Very good.
00:38:48.680 | Another question that came through the LSB website is regarding the name Yahweh in the
00:38:55.620 | Old Testament that was chosen.
00:38:58.500 | But why were other names of God not translated, such as Elohim and Adonai?
00:39:06.900 | - Yeah, when you think about Elohim or Adonai, they're not just names, they're titles.
00:39:14.700 | And that's a big distinction of why you transliterate one and not the other.
00:39:21.280 | When we talk about King Nebuchadnezzar, we don't say Melech Nebuchadnezzar, because Melech
00:39:28.380 | means king.
00:39:29.380 | It's a title.
00:39:30.900 | And when we say, "Oh, Elijah's a prophet," we don't say Elijah Navi.
00:39:36.620 | We don't say that.
00:39:37.660 | It's not necessary.
00:39:38.660 | In any case, we don't need to do that because the title represents a role.
00:39:46.060 | Even though that title is ascribed to somebody in a very formal way, it's still a title that
00:39:51.860 | conveys an office, a role, a status.
00:39:57.180 | And so with Elohim and Adonai, they are titles, which accentuates this, that Yahweh is God's
00:40:05.060 | name.
00:40:06.860 | It's not His title.
00:40:09.700 | It's His personal name.
00:40:11.700 | You know, we might, Chris, call you Mr. Vice President, yes, but that's no substitute for
00:40:21.460 | your name.
00:40:23.220 | And we understand the difference between the two.
00:40:25.300 | And when we want to address you as a person, as someone we care about, we would use your
00:40:30.660 | name.
00:40:32.340 | And that's the treasure that the Lord has given to us.
00:40:35.780 | He says, "My name is Yahweh.
00:40:39.060 | I don't just give you titles to worship Me.
00:40:41.660 | Amen to that, and we ought to, but I've also given you My name because I love you and because
00:40:49.140 | you're to love Me."
00:40:51.180 | And when it says, "They will call Him by name," they weren't just saying, "Call Him by title."
00:40:57.380 | They were saying, "Call Him by His name."
00:41:00.180 | What an amazing God to do that.
00:41:02.060 | Now, other gods can be called Elohim, and it's possible that other gods can be called
00:41:07.660 | Adon because it means "master," but other gods are not called Yahweh.
00:41:12.860 | And that is why we wanted to make that special and unique.
00:41:16.220 | "This is My name," He says.
00:41:20.060 | So where do you stop if you start translating every, or transliterating every single one
00:41:26.740 | of those?
00:41:27.740 | We stopped at the point that, as you said, Abner, others are titles that could even be
00:41:33.060 | applied to pagan gods, Yahweh is unique.
00:41:37.860 | And that's what I think people, generally speaking, I've run into very little opposition.
00:41:45.980 | Maybe there are some out there.
00:41:47.180 | There will always be some out there.
00:41:49.420 | So okay, then maybe this Bible's not for you if you're that opposed to using Yahweh.
00:41:55.280 | But generally speaking, I one time referred to it, to Dr. MacArthur, as a shock value.
00:42:02.780 | I'm reading it as Yahweh, and it shocks me.
00:42:05.420 | Well, maybe it's a good shock because it reminds me, oh.
00:42:09.380 | And also, does every English Bible reader always see capital L, capital O, capital R,
00:42:17.180 | capital D, and distinguish it from capital L, small o-r-d?
00:42:22.220 | Sometimes that flies past them.
00:42:24.900 | They may not recognize that, as Bibles do, English Bibles do, four capitals means Yahweh.
00:42:33.000 | But not every Bible reader picks up on that.
00:42:35.220 | Let me tell you, you pick up on it when it says Yahweh is my shepherd.
00:42:38.860 | Absolutely.
00:42:39.860 | Even in Hebrew, we were trained, when we saw the Tetragrammaton, to read Adonai.
00:42:46.040 | And so, Joe and I were even commenting, because of that training, and that's been decades
00:42:53.300 | of training, when we read, we just say Adonai.
00:42:57.540 | We don't even think to stop and meditate on, no, no, no, that's not Adonai, that is Yahweh.
00:43:04.940 | And so, where we're really confronted with that is when we read the English, ironically,
00:43:10.740 | because we kind of dulled ourselves to these realities inadvertently when we were reading
00:43:15.220 | the Hebrew.
00:43:17.240 | And it not only accentuates the usage of Yahweh, it accentuates every time Adon or other terms
00:43:24.480 | are used, too, because now you don't confuse it.
00:43:26.560 | I remember in Zechariah, as well as Daniel 1, we're writing some commentary, maybe more
00:43:32.160 | on that in a little bit, on it.
00:43:34.360 | And I said, "Oh, yeah, the Lord handed them over."
00:43:38.360 | And I thought, "Oh, I better check if this is Yahweh or if this is Adonai."
00:43:42.720 | And then I laughed at myself, and I thought, "I know it can't be Yahweh, because it doesn't
00:43:49.000 | say Yahweh in the text, in the English text, it says Lord."
00:43:53.480 | And I realized at that moment, that actually tells you the theology.
00:43:57.320 | Daniel could have said Yahweh, amen, if he said Yahweh, but he said, "The Lord handed
00:44:02.780 | Israel over."
00:44:04.040 | Why?
00:44:05.040 | Because this is Adon, this is Adonai, this is the master, this is the true sovereign.
00:44:10.680 | It was not the power of Nebuchadnezzar.
00:44:12.960 | It was not the king of Jehoiakim.
00:44:16.040 | It was not him.
00:44:17.280 | It was the Lord, the one who possesses all authority.
00:44:21.880 | That's who was sovereign in that moment.
00:44:23.480 | There are many kings in human nations, but there is one Lord.
00:44:28.520 | And that is brought forth when you are able to make sure you can distinguish between names
00:44:35.400 | and titles.
00:44:37.520 | - Very good, well, another question that came to us is a question that we see come
00:44:44.180 | through fairly regularly, probably a few times every month.
00:44:48.900 | And the question goes something like this, "You gentlemen are all from the same school,
00:44:56.740 | so is there any Calvinism imported into this translation?"
00:45:04.920 | Only if the Greek words and the Hebrew words convey a high view of salvation.
00:45:16.480 | I prefer that over Calvinism because I don't think Bible writers knew about Calvinism.
00:45:22.760 | But if the original languages communicated a sovereign view of election, did we communicate
00:45:31.360 | it?
00:45:32.760 | I guarantee you, I was not thinking, "Well, I hope I translate this as a Calvinist, or
00:45:39.040 | I hope my Calvinist friends will like this."
00:45:41.920 | I was just committed to translating what the Hebrew and Greek said.
00:45:47.340 | So I'm sure my colleagues were like that too.
00:45:51.600 | - Were you like that?
00:45:52.600 | - Yes, of course.
00:45:53.600 | I think it goes back to being men of principle and having a principle that we want to reflect
00:46:03.520 | the text, be a window into the text and not a window into a theological system.
00:46:09.360 | And if the text moves a certain way, then that's where we want to...and I think anybody
00:46:16.040 | that is a believer wants to go where the text goes.
00:46:20.880 | And so I think having a window into the text, into what the author's intent was and is,
00:46:27.560 | really helps dispel any myth of, "Oh, Calvinism, dispensationalism," or any of the other isms
00:46:34.920 | that could be there.
00:46:36.840 | I think we want to show what the Bible says and then let the text help build a theology.
00:46:47.840 | - I think there's a fundamental theological commitment, which is you don't win theological
00:46:54.560 | arguments by translation.
00:46:59.120 | That's frankly cheating.
00:47:00.660 | That's what the cults do, is they translate something a certain way to prove their point.
00:47:07.640 | But then you haven't won the theological argument because it's not the author who has said this,
00:47:13.360 | it's you, the translator, you've made that point.
00:47:16.480 | Well, that's pretty convenient, but that's not the truth, because that's a layer you
00:47:21.640 | inserted on top of the Scriptures as opposed to letting the Scriptures speak.
00:47:28.160 | So my theological convictions, they don't require, I hope they don't require me to rig
00:47:35.920 | the results.
00:47:38.080 | That's not necessary.
00:47:39.080 | They stand or fall, and they ought to stand or fall based upon the standard of Scripture
00:47:44.320 | and what was originally articulated.
00:47:47.400 | And that's our commitment.
00:47:49.080 | And you can even see it.
00:47:50.720 | People are saying, "First Corinthians, you're a cessationist.
00:47:53.400 | You guys are not charismatics, and so you shouldn't translate it as tongues."
00:47:57.160 | Well, we translate it as tongues.
00:47:58.160 | Why?
00:47:59.160 | Because the word is tongues.
00:48:00.160 | - Glossa.
00:48:01.160 | - Yeah.
00:48:02.160 | - It's tongue.
00:48:03.160 | - It means your tongue, and in Hebrew, lashon, is tongue.
00:48:09.920 | That's what you have to translate it, and in fact, there's even word plays made.
00:48:14.300 | Even in Acts, you saw a shape of a tongue in fire, and then they spoke in tongues.
00:48:20.240 | Well, there's a correlation that needs to be made.
00:48:22.080 | If you translated one language and the other tongue, you break the consistency principle.
00:48:26.440 | And so we translated what is there.
00:48:30.600 | That's always been the principle, and the linguistic decisions are based upon exactly
00:48:35.440 | that, linguistic decisions.
00:48:37.720 | When this plus this plus this, it's pretty mathematical.
00:48:41.880 | It'll get you this, and that's how we did it.
00:48:45.800 | And so I understand people's concern, "Oh, are you going to infuse your theology into
00:48:52.600 | the text?"
00:48:53.600 | No, no, it's a commitment to the principle of what is said should be transferred over,
00:49:03.040 | and the theology derives from that.
00:49:06.360 | And if our theology has to rig the results, then it's a wrong theology.
00:49:13.000 | - You brought up an important point about how you all had certain principles in the
00:49:20.080 | translation process.
00:49:21.800 | Now, as part of this, and the men that were chosen, can you explain a little bit about
00:49:28.560 | the doctrine of inerrancy and why it was important for each man that was participating in the
00:49:35.760 | work being done held to that doctrine?
00:49:40.040 | - I'm thinking of all Scripture is breathed out by God.
00:49:44.280 | That is a high view of Scripture.
00:49:47.800 | It can be translated all Scripture is inspired by God, but the literal meaning of the word
00:49:54.240 | is all Scripture is God-breathed.
00:49:58.640 | That certainly supports our view of inerrancy, because if God breathed out those words upon
00:50:07.240 | the writers, obviously they were true.
00:50:10.080 | So I think that there is an evidence, not that we forced the meaning on that, Theopneustos
00:50:18.920 | literally means that, God-breathed, and we brought that out.
00:50:23.660 | Does that support a high view of Scripture?
00:50:25.520 | Yes it does, but it still is a literal translation that supports the high view of Scripture.
00:50:34.320 | We didn't force the meaning onto that.
00:50:36.980 | We simply tried to bring out the meaning that Scripture is God-breathed, 2 Timothy 3:16.
00:50:43.760 | - And even part of inerrancy deals with the level of truthfulness of Scripture, that it
00:50:52.000 | is truthful to every word, not just what results in your life is true, or not just its ideas
00:50:59.840 | are true, but every word, every proposition, every claim, and every detail that it stipulates
00:51:09.180 | is true, and Joshua says at the end of the book, "Not one good word of all the good words
00:51:17.360 | that God spoke failed."
00:51:20.520 | Can we remember that truth and say that's why words matter?
00:51:25.960 | Yeah, if we didn't believe that the words mattered, only the ideas or the results mattered,
00:51:34.760 | then yes, translation would be dramatically different.
00:51:38.800 | We could just kind of gloss over and give a summary of what was going on in the Bible.
00:51:44.320 | But the reason translation exists is because people believed, and the Scripture asserts,
00:51:51.360 | that every word of it are pure words refined seven times beyond gold and silver, and that's
00:51:59.320 | what we carried here, and so that is part of our translation philosophy.
00:52:04.080 | It's embedded in that, and without really having a strong conviction on inerrancy, yeah,
00:52:10.360 | the rigor of, shall we say, of the word-for-word formal equivalent window translation, it would
00:52:17.640 | change.
00:52:18.640 | It would change.
00:52:19.640 | Yeah, all the words matter and are inspired, and every word, and even down to the singular
00:52:28.420 | plural usage when it comes down to Galatians 3 and the fact that Paul talks about and his
00:52:34.840 | seed singular, and so when you come to the text and a window into the text, it's even
00:52:45.200 | something as precise as plural versus singular.
00:52:53.640 | Another question that came up is about a specific word.
00:52:57.200 | We know that one of the things that was used in the LSB is the word doulos.
00:53:04.200 | The Greek word is translated as "slave."
00:53:07.520 | Somebody asked the question, "Well, the verb of that, doulo, I believe, why was that not
00:53:16.400 | translated?"
00:53:17.400 | Yeah, a great question.
00:53:20.320 | When it comes to just the dual root, right, you have doulo and doulo.
00:53:30.160 | One is causative, right, to enslave, and that was across the board.
00:53:36.680 | And then you have the doulo that oftentimes was translated to serve because the first
00:53:43.580 | term deals with the idea of enslavement, the causation of slavery.
00:53:51.320 | The second term is the product of a slave, what does he do, the result of that serving.
00:53:58.860 | And even within the usage of that, because we want to be consistent and we want to make
00:54:03.740 | sure that we're attentive to the linguistic details, there are sometimes within the doulo
00:54:10.940 | where it is translated as "enslave" for a couple of reasons.
00:54:16.740 | One is the perfect tense of doulo because it's talking about a state of type of idea.
00:54:25.260 | Another is the wordplay of "master/slave" and when "slave" is used to bring that out.
00:54:33.540 | And so you have like several different kind of features of that, like a master type of
00:54:40.980 | idea with that wordplay.
00:54:44.140 | But then you also have concepts that are enslaving, like "sin" or things like that.
00:54:50.540 | And so those were kind of the contextual factors that lean towards shaping how it was translated
00:54:59.460 | because they're linguistically driven, not necessarily, "Well, we like this and this
00:55:03.620 | and this sounds pretty in this way and oh, this, you know, you know, I prefer this kind
00:55:08.660 | of a thing."
00:55:09.660 | It's that term in particular is usually translated as "serve/serving."
00:55:18.460 | But when there were contextual factors, perfect tense or masters or a wordplay, we wanted
00:55:24.020 | to make sure that our choices were linguistically driven because the author is making that.
00:55:30.860 | So again, we want to be a window into the text, so the author is choosing a specific
00:55:35.740 | emphasis even using that term.
00:55:37.820 | And that's why it wasn't across the board because then you'd miss what the author is
00:55:42.020 | intending.
00:55:43.020 | Also, the word "duluo," you wouldn't bring it over into English as "to slave."
00:55:47.660 | That doesn't make sense.
00:55:49.900 | You know, that's not good English, "to slave."
00:55:52.980 | It means "serve," "to serve as a slave."
00:55:56.220 | So I don't see where that's, you know, a problem.
00:56:00.180 | Well, we had a conversation about this because I was just so zealous.
00:56:04.660 | I was like, "Let's just translate, I'm slaving away!"
00:56:09.060 | And everyone on the team's like, "Everett, that's not even English.
00:56:13.060 | Come on, you gotta relax.
00:56:16.260 | It's not that."
00:56:17.900 | And it's true.
00:56:19.340 | This is the limitation sometimes of English.
00:56:22.700 | But at the same time, there is an accuracy to it too because you don't want to press
00:56:29.640 | the verb of the dual root beyond its proper parameters because slaves, yes, they work.
00:56:38.860 | We understand that, but it might not have all the nuances of slaving.
00:56:44.500 | It's doing the activity of a slave.
00:56:46.420 | Well, what is the activity of a slave?
00:56:48.740 | The activity is to serve.
00:56:50.620 | The activity is to work.
00:56:52.900 | And that's why it can be used in all kinds of arenas.
00:56:58.060 | But yes, when in certain contexts with certain linguistic factors, whether it be wordplay,
00:57:04.420 | whether it be in a certain tense, or even with certain words where abstractly it doesn't
00:57:10.100 | make sense because sin is not normally conceived of as a human master, that would be having
00:57:17.660 | to regard as personified.
00:57:20.140 | Then in those cases, yes, you have to change the normal translation of the word to show
00:57:27.020 | the abstract nature or to show a nuance brought out by the author himself.
00:57:33.020 | Well, there's another question that I'm going to ask you gentlemen today that came in through
00:57:37.740 | our LSB website, and it's regarding the base text that you used for your translation.
00:57:45.660 | The question reads, "Why does the LSB use the NA 27 UBS 4 as the base text for the New
00:57:54.340 | Testament rather than the majority text, Textus Receptus, Tyndale House Greek New Testament,
00:58:01.860 | or even the updated NA 28-UBS 5?"
00:58:06.860 | Well, oftentimes Abner said, "Dr. V, maybe this is for you on textual criticism.
00:58:13.580 | I'm sure we all could answer it, but I'll give a shot at it."
00:58:17.660 | This is not a matter of a liberal or conservative fundamentalist or unbelieving issue.
00:58:25.540 | There's general agreement across evangelicals, Bible believers, that there needs to be improvement
00:58:33.700 | on the Textus Receptus.
00:58:36.980 | God honored and blessed that text for many years, but manuscript discoveries, manuscripts
00:58:45.260 | that predated the manuscripts that were used for the Textus Receptus, and evangelicals
00:58:52.100 | agree with this, too, and so we, with all due respect to those who advocate the Textus
00:59:01.800 | Receptus, we don't condemn them.
00:59:04.820 | They're not wicked people, but we want the earliest text of the New Testament, particularly
00:59:12.220 | I'm thinking of the New Testament here, and that is represented, we believe, in the
00:59:18.100 | Nestle-Alan 27th edition, and the Tyndale House is not much different, really.
00:59:25.580 | The Tyndale House is not much different.
00:59:28.300 | I worked with that quite often, so it's a very, very small difference.
00:59:34.580 | So the NA 27, as it's called, or the UBS 4 is, we think, the best, earliest, most reliable
00:59:46.580 | edition of the New Testament.
00:59:48.580 | There is a movement that resulted in the NA 28 and the UBS 5 that we're concerned about.
00:59:58.420 | I don't want to go into details about it.
01:00:01.500 | It's called the coherence-based genealogical method.
01:00:04.860 | I like to say this, any method that tells me that 2 Peter 3.10 is a text that is represented
01:00:14.620 | by no Greek manuscript at all, I'm not going to put any value on that.
01:00:20.420 | And sadly, the NA 28 and the UBS 5 are committed to a different approach to textual criticism
01:00:30.620 | that comes up with things that we're concerned about.
01:00:34.840 | So we stuck with the NA 27 and the UBS 4, and again, I emphasize, this is not a matter
01:00:41.700 | of liberal or conservative.
01:00:44.020 | Across the board, those who have a high view of Scripture stand together on the idea that
01:00:50.020 | the earliest and the best manuscripts are represented in the NA 27 and the UBS 4.
01:01:00.100 | That being said, it's not as if we didn't consult all of those texts from SBL, Tyndale
01:01:08.540 | House, GNT, NA 28, UBS 5, and in fact, some of our readings and selection based on the
01:01:17.020 | evidence went against sometimes the NA 27-based text when you have issues in Jude with Jesus,
01:01:26.140 | for example, as opposed to Joshua and other, our Lord, excuse me, is it Kyrios or is it
01:01:33.580 | Jesus, who led them out into the wilderness and into the Promised Land?
01:01:39.980 | And there were other issues in Mark that we had to kind of defer to, and it was based,
01:01:44.660 | though, upon the evidence.
01:01:45.780 | So it's not a slavish, automatic adherence to these texts.
01:01:53.620 | You have to start somewhere, but then from there, you have to go through the evidence.
01:01:59.180 | And one of the things that Dr. Varner really did is go through every problem, go through
01:02:03.900 | every issue, go through every variant, and map out, here's what it says in these different
01:02:09.820 | collections of texts, here's all the different textual evidence, here's what the strongest
01:02:16.320 | supporting evidence would suggest, and that's how we worked through it.
01:02:21.300 | So it wasn't blocking things out, and even for those of our friends who are Texas Receptus
01:02:25.980 | friendly, LSB, like its NASB predecessor, still includes the different texts from John
01:02:35.620 | 8 and other passages, Mark 16, which are excluded in other translations just because we say,
01:02:42.180 | "Hey, these are issues that you have to deal with," and we're being transparent.
01:02:47.860 | This is what we would see in our Greek New Testament.
01:02:50.960 | It would be marked as a textual critical issue, so you should see the same thing.
01:02:55.820 | So you know that we're not hiding anything from you.
01:02:58.340 | So people can work with that.
01:03:02.260 | Well, as I had mentioned at one point earlier in our discussion today, it's been just a
01:03:10.300 | little over a year since the full LSB was released, and I wanted to ask the question
01:03:16.340 | of you men, where are you seeing the LSB used in print or dissertations, et cetera?
01:03:24.940 | Right now, then, you'll see a graphic, and it's got the most freely translated here over
01:03:33.560 | here and the more strictly translated over here, and you'll see all these versions from
01:03:40.140 | the New Living Bible to the KJV, and it'll be on a gradient like that.
01:03:45.820 | Well, we're starting to appear there.
01:03:49.100 | Just recently, I saw in some of those charts, there's LSB down at the bottom of the Legacy
01:03:53.580 | Standard Bible, and they're locating us pretty accurately on the more formal equivalent,
01:03:58.900 | literal.
01:03:59.900 | So evidently, somebody's taking note of us.
01:04:03.460 | They're putting us on their charts, so that's one way.
01:04:08.180 | And also, the growing number of people in this Legacy Standard Bible fan group, as they
01:04:16.100 | call it, it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and they're fans, and to see their
01:04:24.660 | excitement is really encouraging to me.
01:04:28.860 | - Yeah, a lot is by word of mouth, and you see those people who are, you know, sometimes
01:04:35.780 | they're the free promoters.
01:04:37.740 | They're just, you know, they're talking about how much they love it, and especially like
01:04:42.240 | this edition has come up on social media quite a bit in that fan group as like the best edition
01:04:49.740 | or best format.
01:04:50.740 | They're like, they just love it, and looking at it, I can see why.
01:04:54.020 | I mean, it's a beautiful layout and really helpful, and on a personal note, when I started
01:05:00.780 | this project with joining my colleagues, I was in the middle of writing a dissertation,
01:05:08.020 | and so at the end, I was able to include some LSB shout-outs, if you will, or footnotes
01:05:16.780 | in my own dissertation, and so I don't know if that's a big deal, but I know that I used
01:05:22.900 | it.
01:05:23.900 | - It's a big deal to me.
01:05:24.900 | - Yeah.
01:05:25.900 | - I like it.
01:05:26.900 | - So it was good to be able to use what I had been working on for both in the LSB and
01:05:32.820 | in my dissertation at the end.
01:05:34.860 | - My last three books, one of which is soon to be published, use the LSB, and I've not
01:05:42.060 | got any negative response to that.
01:05:44.180 | People appreciate using this newer version in these books that I've published.
01:05:51.140 | - And that's a great segue, Dr. Varner.
01:05:53.940 | So I have a couple books here that I wanted to show.
01:05:56.780 | So this one is Psalms of Grace, which is from the Master's Seminary Press, and this was
01:06:04.620 | just put together, just released in the last few weeks, and it's a beautiful psalter that
01:06:11.340 | includes the entire book of Psalms from the Legacy Standard Bible.
01:06:15.500 | So that's one example, and then rather than talk about this book that just came out, I'd
01:06:20.860 | like you to talk about it a little bit.
01:06:22.860 | - Okay, Chris, can you just hold it there?
01:06:26.540 | Last May, I was praying Scripture as I always do, and the thought came to me, "Hey, hmm,
01:06:34.540 | we finished the Legacy Standard Bible, I'm praying somebody else's handbook of Scripture."
01:06:41.620 | You think, Varner, you could produce a handbook for praying Scripture from the Legacy Standard
01:06:47.340 | Bible?
01:06:48.340 | - I usually put in a few days of prayers, and I emphasize our adoration of God, our
01:06:57.860 | thanksgiving to Him, our affirmation of Him, our confession, and also personal petitions
01:07:07.520 | and intercessions, and put in the disciples' prayer and a benediction.
01:07:13.380 | So those are categories each day, and I've used about 300 verses and passages from the
01:07:21.200 | Legacy Standard Bible, so that we are actually praying to the Lord.
01:07:28.020 | Occasionally, we adapt a verse, and I like the way that our editors, whenever I have
01:07:34.220 | slightly adapted a verse, in the reference, they put an asterisk there to let you know
01:07:39.020 | that I've adapted it, but I've never changed the intent of the verse at all.
01:07:45.260 | So people are using it.
01:07:46.780 | It's only been out, my, just less than a couple of weeks, and recently, the students at the
01:07:53.880 | Master's University got a copy, and it's just a delight to see them and hear that they're
01:08:00.420 | praying.
01:08:01.420 | I think of the benediction that I use occasionally, "Yahweh bless you and keep you.
01:08:07.500 | May Yahweh lift up His face upon you and be gracious unto you.
01:08:11.140 | May Yahweh lift up His face to you and give you peace."
01:08:15.060 | People oftentimes forget that the word "face" is the same in the first part of the verse
01:08:19.340 | and the second part of the verse.
01:08:21.100 | But many translations will say "face" in countenance, because it's the same word.
01:08:26.340 | We use "face" both times.
01:08:28.760 | And then as we pray that benediction, I'm reminded of the verse right after that that
01:08:33.380 | says, "Thus you will place my name on the children of Israel."
01:08:39.620 | My name.
01:08:40.620 | Then it's important that we translate it as "Yahweh bless you and keep you.
01:08:45.300 | Yahweh make His face to shine upon you."
01:08:49.420 | So it's been a delight, and I'm very thankful to the publishers of the Legacy Standard Bible.
01:08:57.180 | I remember sending you, you know, the idea, "Chris, what do you think about that?"
01:09:01.580 | And you said, "Well, send me some samples."
01:09:03.420 | So I sent some samples, and you said, "Hmm, I like this, you know, okay, let's see who
01:09:07.380 | else likes it."
01:09:08.620 | And so it was field-tested to a bit, and enough people liked it that you committed to it.
01:09:14.380 | So I'm very thankful.
01:09:17.780 | It's very personal, and I hope people will read the preface, because this arose out of
01:09:23.820 | my life.
01:09:25.640 | And when you write a book out of your life, it's different than just writing about something.
01:09:31.460 | And so this has been a blessing in my own life to pray Scripture, and it's my most
01:09:40.140 | personal book, but I hope that it'll minister to others and enrich our prayer lives.
01:09:47.100 | I think when you ask just about any pastor what they'd like their congregation to do
01:09:51.780 | more of, it's read the Bible and pray.
01:09:56.100 | And so this is a great resource to help equip the church, so we're excited for it.
01:10:00.500 | And we realize that, okay, well, do I just pray Scripture, or do I pray personal requests?
01:10:05.420 | At the end of each of those, I've got what I call a pause button.
01:10:08.820 | So at the end of the intercessory Scripture prayers, pause button, introduce your own
01:10:14.220 | intercessory prayers.
01:10:15.660 | So it gives freedom as well as structure to one's prayer life, I hope.
01:10:22.380 | - Thank you very much for sharing about your book.
01:10:25.360 | And Abner, I understand that you've been working diligently on a project regarding
01:10:30.820 | Pastor MacArthur's content.
01:10:33.100 | - Yes, so after we completed the Legacy Standard Bible, Joe and I had just such a wonderful
01:10:39.340 | time working together, and we're part of the same fellowship group, and both emphasizing
01:10:44.500 | Old Testament as well, that we said, "Well, let's see if we can't figure out a project
01:10:48.620 | to do together."
01:10:49.620 | And we kind of said, "Oh, it'd be amazing if we had the honor to complete the MacArthur
01:10:56.860 | commentary on the Scriptures."
01:10:58.780 | Obviously Pastor John has done the New Testament and gone through every book preaching-wise
01:11:03.820 | as well as writing commentary on the entire New Testament, and we thought, "Well, why
01:11:09.420 | not try it with the Old Testament?"
01:11:11.060 | So we pitched the idea to him.
01:11:12.740 | He was thrilled, and we wanted to do it with the Legacy Standard Bible.
01:11:17.400 | And doing the Old Testament commentary, we've finished Zechariah, we've done work in Jonah,
01:11:24.340 | we've done work in Haggai, we've done work in Nahum, and we've done work in Daniel now
01:11:31.280 | as well.
01:11:32.940 | And Zechariah, I think, should be ready for Shepherds Conference 2023, so that's a huge
01:11:38.100 | praise and it's exciting to see this project really kick off.
01:11:42.640 | But using the Legacy Standard Bible for all of it has been such a blessing because we've
01:11:47.700 | been able to maximize on the consistency.
01:11:50.500 | We've been able to see and bring out the distinction of God's name, Yahweh, as opposed to His other
01:11:58.780 | titles.
01:12:00.220 | And seeing all of the factors of the careful precision that was brought into the translation,
01:12:07.200 | it really does pay dividends when you're explaining the text.
01:12:10.180 | Dr. MacArthur always said, "Oh yeah, a really good translation is the expositor's dream."
01:12:14.780 | And I thought to myself, "Yeah, I could see that.
01:12:17.580 | Yeah, sure, that sounds good."
01:12:19.260 | And then now being in it, I really see the reality of it.
01:12:22.780 | And so we're really excited to complete an entire set so that people have both New Testament
01:12:28.740 | and Old Testament all produced in conjunction with Dr. MacArthur as a resource for the church
01:12:36.020 | expositing through the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation.
01:12:40.420 | - Big project.
01:12:41.420 | - Yes.
01:12:42.420 | - Wow.
01:12:43.420 | - Can't wait.
01:12:44.420 | - Yes.
01:12:45.420 | Many people can't wait because many people have been blessed for a long time using his
01:12:50.220 | New Testament commentaries.
01:12:52.480 | So I'm sure you're going to get a lot of emails saying, "When's it going to be ready?
01:12:56.260 | I'm preaching on this book."
01:12:57.700 | - Yeah.
01:12:58.700 | - That's true.
01:12:59.700 | That's true.
01:13:00.700 | And we're moving as fast as we can.
01:13:03.100 | - That's fantastic.
01:13:06.840 | Well, today we also wanted to showcase our Scripture Study Notebooks in the Legacy Standard
01:13:16.500 | Bible.
01:13:17.500 | The New Testament set came out in the last month, and today we're showing the Old Testament
01:13:24.060 | set that's in production and releasing very soon.
01:13:28.040 | So these books are uniquely designed, and actually Jason and his wife have been using
01:13:34.400 | them.
01:13:35.400 | So I've asked Jason to give us an explanation of how useful this is as a tool.
01:13:40.480 | - Yeah, we love these.
01:13:42.360 | When my wife first saw that these were up for an option, I asked her, "What do you want
01:13:49.380 | for Christmas?"
01:13:50.380 | And this was on the top of the list, like, "I want this for Christmas."
01:13:52.920 | And so she got it for Christmas.
01:13:54.600 | It came in.
01:13:55.600 | We were excited.
01:13:57.000 | It's a wonderful opportunity for inductive study.
01:14:02.120 | One of the things that I love about this, and my wife as well, is that there is so much
01:14:08.560 | room to make notations, highlight, draw, all kinds of things on the front side, when you
01:14:17.080 | have that, just that room to work through, and then the notes that you can then take
01:14:23.420 | on the right-hand side.
01:14:25.760 | And then you can have this and keep it and add to it as you continue to go back and study.
01:14:32.400 | I love just this concept, and the fact that it's an LSB, and the way that you formatted
01:14:37.960 | it, I just feel like is better than some of the other ones that I've seen, because of
01:14:42.000 | the space and the ability to do that.
01:14:44.160 | In fact, I teach a class in Romans every spring, and I was telling them that when it becomes
01:14:51.120 | available to do the Romans one, because I have them do specific projects in studying
01:14:57.240 | the text, looking for repetition, making notes, that kind of thing, that it would be perfect
01:15:02.300 | for that, too, and just a big fan.
01:15:04.800 | I think it's great.
01:15:07.240 | And the Scripture Study Notebooks are also available individually, so if somebody is
01:15:11.960 | studying a particular book and just wants to try one, they're welcome to do that as
01:15:16.200 | well.
01:15:17.200 | - Well, thank you all today for taking time out of your busy schedules to address questions,
01:15:23.100 | give us more insights into the translation process for the Legacy Standard Bible, and
01:15:28.280 | it's been a joy to have you all together today.
01:15:31.440 | - Thank you.
01:15:31.720 | - Thank you.
01:15:32.720 | - Thank you.
01:15:32.720 | - Thank you.
01:15:33.720 | - Thank you.
01:15:34.720 | - Thank you.
01:15:35.720 | - Thank you.
01:15:35.720 | - Thank you.
01:15:40.720 | [BLANK_AUDIO]