Legacy Standard Bible (LSB) - Round Table Discussion with John MacArthur

00:00:00.000 | Well, this is a very significant day for the obvious reason that the Legacy Standard Bible

00:00:12.760 | translation is finished.

00:00:14.280 | Does that feel like an accomplishment?

00:00:18.840 | Are you getting some sleep?

00:00:23.680 | I think one thing that could be said is to do this entire translation in a year is just

00:00:31.320 | really unheard of.

00:00:32.640 | The second thing that can be said is I don't know that there's ever been a translation

00:00:37.160 | done by one faculty.

00:00:41.340 | And I think that would almost be required if you were going to do it in a year because

00:00:45.360 | you couldn't be fighting theological battles along the way and come to consensus.

00:00:51.760 | So I see the Lord's hand in this.

00:00:56.040 | So it's a wondrous thing the Lord has done in His providence.

00:01:00.840 | And then as I was saying earlier, the fact that we were given the privilege to do this

00:01:06.200 | from the Lachman Foundation, who have the rights to the NAS, and they let us put our

00:01:14.640 | hands and hearts and minds on that most honorable translation and make changes.

00:01:21.360 | That was very generous on the part of the Lachman Foundation.

00:01:27.200 | What stands out in my mind is the common theology among all of us and the common commitment

00:01:35.060 | that we were going to translate with authorial intent.

00:01:41.080 | We were not thinking of the reader.

00:01:43.120 | We were thinking of the writer.

00:01:48.040 | I don't know that you would have expected years ago that this would have ever been done.

00:01:53.820 | You'd have been a part of it, but the Lord knew who He needed.

00:01:57.500 | And I just thank you and commend you.

00:01:59.800 | And I've seen the Lord's hand in this clearly.

00:02:02.880 | And I think we're about to see not just His hand in the process, but His hand in the usefulness

00:02:09.920 | of this.

00:02:10.920 | And you've gotten a lot of feedback from outside readers, right?

00:02:16.000 | What number of people, just give me a general number, of people have been reading the translation

00:02:21.720 | as you've been working on it outside this group?

00:02:24.440 | Yeah, we're looking at an approximate range between 50 to 80 people outside of this group

00:02:31.920 | reading the translation.

00:02:33.380 | And they would be qualified by being skilled at handling the Word of God in the original

00:02:40.840 | languages.

00:02:41.840 | So you're getting not just a lay opinion, but you're getting a scholastic reading and

00:02:48.360 | opinion.

00:02:49.360 | So that played a role in the finished product.

00:02:54.960 | But it passed inspection by all of us, right?

00:02:57.680 | That's right.

00:02:58.680 | So that's just wonderful.

00:03:02.400 | The past six months or so has been spent primarily on the Old Testament.

00:03:10.920 | What can readers expect when they see the Old Testament, they begin to read it?

00:03:17.880 | What's going to make this different?

00:03:19.840 | What's going to set it apart from other translations?

00:03:23.920 | Maybe I'd ask you, Joe, since you're kind of the Hebrew point man.

00:03:28.840 | Yeah, the past six months have been just terrific.

00:03:31.560 | And Abner and I worked on it very intensively together.

00:03:35.200 | But I think that the philosophy of translation goes across the board, New Testament and Old

00:03:39.360 | Testament.

00:03:40.360 | And so I think that when we think about the way that we translated the Old Testament,

00:03:44.200 | we sought to be literal, to be consistent, to be precise.

00:03:48.920 | And so in the end, when you look at the entire product, you're looking at a refined accuracy.

00:03:54.120 | NASB was great, but you're looking at something that was refined and where those elements,

00:04:00.280 | consistency, precision, those were intensified in this translation.

00:04:05.440 | And you can think about an example maybe from Exodus.

00:04:10.840 | Consistency is something that we've talked about a lot.

00:04:13.280 | But I think the other side of the coin is that we try to distinguish words in English

00:04:17.640 | that were different even in Hebrew.

00:04:21.320 | And so you think about the narrative of the Exodus, and we know that God hardened Pharaoh's

00:04:27.780 | heart and that Pharaoh hardened his own heart.

00:04:31.480 | And we remember the word hardened very familiarly for us because it appears so many times.

00:04:37.680 | But in the Hebrew, there are different words for the word hardened.

00:04:41.200 | And so we sought to bring that difference out when we translated it.

00:04:45.560 | And so you have God hardening Pharaoh's heart with firmness.

00:04:52.200 | And then you have God hardening Pharaoh's heart with stiffness, just like the stiff-necked

00:04:57.480 | people that we're familiar with.

00:04:59.240 | And you have God hardening Pharaoh's heart with strength.

00:05:02.720 | And all of those are differences that bring out the fact that Pharaoh's heart was hardened

00:05:07.840 | from different perspectives.

00:05:09.560 | So it was really hard from various elements.

00:05:11.960 | So it sort of brings out the progression in the hardening of his heart.

00:05:15.760 | Yes.

00:05:16.760 | It brings out the progression as well as the wholeness of the hardening that Pharaoh had

00:05:24.580 | towards the people of Israel.

00:05:26.040 | So if you think about the firmness, God hardened Pharaoh's heart with firmness, it's like a

00:05:32.440 | rock that you can't penetrate and that you can't move.

00:05:35.360 | You think about the hardening with stiffness, it's like he's set in his ways and he's moving

00:05:39.820 | in a certain direction just like the stiff-necked people.

00:05:43.380 | You think about the hardening with strength, and that's his proactive intent to be determined

00:05:49.640 | to move into a certain direction no matter what happens, no matter what the consequences

00:05:54.000 | are.

00:05:55.000 | So you get this element of emphasis by seeing the difference of the hardening that he experiences.

00:06:01.200 | And we would say that every word was inspired by the Holy Spirit.

00:06:06.600 | So the Holy Spirit was communicating something in those different Hebrew words that hasn't

00:06:12.080 | up to this point showed up in an English translation.

00:06:14.520 | That's exactly right.

00:06:15.760 | And I think seeing this difference brings out exactly what the Holy Spirit intended

00:06:19.800 | within the text.

00:06:22.720 | And we also, I think, would be doing well to answer this question.

00:06:30.360 | How much of the NAS that you started with did you find that was good and accurate and

00:06:39.880 | could be retained as opposed to how much new in the Old Testament?

00:06:44.680 | I think overall NASB is a great translation.

00:06:48.000 | It's a solid translation, which made it easy for us to work with because we appreciate

00:06:51.560 | it.

00:06:52.560 | You mentioned that.

00:06:53.560 | Absolutely.

00:06:54.560 | Going back to the original language.

00:06:55.560 | Yeah.

00:06:56.560 | So everything we didn't change, it's actually our seal of saying, "We affirm this.

00:07:00.200 | This is correct.

00:07:01.200 | This is good."

00:07:02.640 | And the tweaks that we made, the alterations that we made only enhanced consistency and

00:07:08.640 | accuracy.

00:07:09.640 | Another one that I think of is in Isaiah where we are familiar with Isaiah 6 that the Lord

00:07:16.120 | is on the throne high and lifted up.

00:07:19.520 | And throughout Isaiah, that pairing of words is used.

00:07:24.020 | But it is used in a way to show that people are not high and lifted up.

00:07:28.000 | They have eyes that are high and lifted up, but God will lower them.

00:07:32.820 | They have a heart that is high and lifted up, but God will humble them.

00:07:37.300 | In Isaiah, there's only one who is high and lifted up, and that's God on the throne, and

00:07:42.800 | then the servant.

00:07:43.800 | Isaiah 52.

00:07:44.800 | Isaiah 52.

00:07:45.800 | Yeah.

00:07:46.800 | And so having the consistency of the language of high and lifted up throughout Isaiah demonstrates

00:07:54.140 | that in the end, though people want to be high and lifted up, there is only one, and

00:07:58.980 | that is God and His Son.

00:08:00.500 | So those are the kinds of things we try to bring out with consistency.

00:08:04.840 | And for expositors, which all of us should be, because preaching the Word of God is what

00:08:12.480 | we're called to do, this is critically important, because you can't explain the Word of God

00:08:20.500 | unless you have it, and you have it accurately, which is exactly what we've endeavored to

00:08:28.060 | do.

00:08:30.440 | The reading of it, is it fair to say, will sound a lot like the NAS?

00:08:36.240 | Oh, yeah.

00:08:37.640 | So people who've been familiar with the NAS, it's not going to be a big jump, not like

00:08:43.400 | even going to the ESV or back to the King James or the RSV.

00:08:49.300 | They're going to feel the familiarity of this.

00:08:51.640 | It feels very much like an NAS thing.

00:08:53.960 | And I think that's a big thing, Paul, because as a preacher who has preached from the NAS

00:08:59.600 | for years, I couldn't shift to something that was too different, or I'd be quoting things

00:09:08.760 | from one translation and reading things from another, and never the twain would meet in

00:09:16.800 | my mind.

00:09:17.960 | So I think that's a question that's going to come up a lot.

00:09:21.800 | I've preached from the NAS for years.

00:09:24.800 | Can I make the shift?

00:09:27.800 | I know a pastor down in Florida who has already made the shift and has ordered the LSB in

00:09:39.000 | the form that it's available now, New Testament Psalms and Proverbs, and he's got it for his

00:09:43.040 | entire congregation, and he's preaching from it.

00:09:46.240 | And he's made that shift, and he's absolutely enthusiastic and excited about the shift.

00:09:52.520 | I can think back, when I came out of seminary, it was at the time that I came from seminary

00:09:59.480 | that the NAS first appeared.

00:10:02.400 | I graduated in '64, and there was a version of the NAS sometime around that time, then

00:10:09.280 | later the '77 and then later the '95.

00:10:12.480 | But the guys that were teaching me, Dr. Feinberg and Dr. Thomas, were the main guys on the

00:10:18.520 | Old and the New Testament.

00:10:20.280 | So I had always used basically the King James, and I was used to it because I'd memorized

00:10:29.600 | it growing up, and I wondered if I could make the shift, and obviously it was right at the

00:10:37.640 | time that I came to Grace I started preaching from the King James and made that shift early

00:10:43.840 | on in my ministry.

00:10:46.000 | I only say that to say you can do it even when it's a little more difficult.

00:10:50.080 | This will not be that difficult.

00:10:52.640 | - Yeah, people say to me, "Oh, it just reads like the NASB."

00:10:56.640 | And they think that that's some kind of derogatory statement, and I think of it as our greatest

00:11:01.280 | victory because it affirms what the NASB is, and it's our affirmation that you can trust

00:11:07.960 | your Bible translation.

00:11:09.720 | And it takes a lot of work to make changes in a way where it still sounds exactly like

00:11:15.400 | the New American Standard.

00:11:16.760 | And as we've already said, if there is a change, it's for a reason.

00:11:21.320 | There's a reason behind that, not just a preference issue, but we're trying to justify something

00:11:27.320 | in that way.

00:11:28.320 | - Sometimes you guys actually jumped back past the '95, back to the '77, and back to

00:11:35.160 | the '71, and picked up a previous original translation, so you were faithful to the original

00:11:44.080 | translation.

00:11:45.080 | I mean, there are examples of that that you can think of?

00:11:48.240 | - Yeah, the simplest one is in Mark with the conjunctions.

00:11:53.240 | So one of the things that a lot of people responded to, I was surprised, and in a pleasant

00:11:59.720 | way, is they said, "Put the conjunctions back in, in the Gospels, and in the epistles of

00:12:06.880 | the New Testament."

00:12:07.880 | In the '95, I tried to smooth things out by removing certain conjunctions.

00:12:12.960 | And we know that Mark is characteristic, or a characteristic of Mark is the repetition

00:12:20.200 | of conjunctions.

00:12:21.200 | It's a fast-moving narrative.

00:12:24.760 | And the irony is that we talk about and immediately, and immediately, and immediately, and oftentimes

00:12:29.440 | in the New American Standard, the and might not even be there.

00:12:33.760 | So we put those things back in, so that we're going back to the '77.

00:12:38.120 | - I mean, that's the integrity of this translation.

00:12:43.800 | So when you delivered this to various readers, give me some examples of where they may have

00:12:52.280 | come back to you and said, "We think this could be better done this way," or, "We think

00:12:57.000 | you need to think about this."

00:12:59.200 | Obviously, you told me one time on a single weekend, you had been given as many as 1,500

00:13:05.920 | suggested changes.

00:13:06.920 | - That's right.

00:13:07.920 | - And I'm knowing you, I'm sure you went through all 1,500 of them.

00:13:15.600 | So how did you decide, did you re-inject the discussion back into the committee?

00:13:23.280 | - Oftentimes, sometimes a suggestion was a typographical error, and I knew everyone was

00:13:29.880 | going to say, "Yes, you should spell that word correctly," so I didn't need to ask them.

00:13:35.400 | But there were times where either we knew that the person didn't have the whole context,

00:13:41.560 | and if they had the footnote, or if they had the whole context of what we were doing throughout

00:13:46.800 | the entire Bible, they would have come to a different conclusion.

00:13:50.680 | But there were other times where, and a significant amount, where we needed to have a broader

00:13:54.640 | discussion, and so I would give the whole team a list of, "Here are all the questions,

00:14:00.800 | and please write down your comments," and they would faithfully, every morning, do so,

00:14:07.320 | and we would compile that and figure out a decision together.

00:14:10.200 | - And I think there's an example that comes, which actually came from a Hebrew scholar.

00:14:16.040 | He said, "How come you guys don't translate the expression cut the covenant as cut the

00:14:20.760 | covenant, and you typically translate it as make the covenant?"

00:14:24.640 | Which is what all of the other translations do, as far as I know.

00:14:27.880 | And so we talked about it, and we thought, "Well, people understand if we translate cut

00:14:32.120 | the covenant as cut the covenant," which is exactly what the Hebrew has, and so we thought

00:14:37.160 | about English expressions, "You cut a deal," and so we thought, "Okay, we could actually

00:14:41.880 | use that and introduce it into the translation," and so we did.

00:14:46.200 | But it also has theological and exegetical implications.

00:14:49.520 | You see the image of cutting the animals and then walking through the animals, and it's

00:14:53.640 | used in contexts where that image is of cutting the covenant, and you get to Jeremiah 34,

00:15:00.000 | for example, and there the language of cutting the covenant and cutting the calf in two,

00:15:06.080 | and then walking through that calf as part of the commitment that you're making to the

00:15:09.640 | covenant is all within the same verse.

00:15:11.480 | - Like Abraham in the book of Genesis.

00:15:13.480 | - It's exactly, you get that image in Genesis 15, you get the same language in Jeremiah

00:15:18.680 | 34, 18, but the scholar said, "Use the same language that the Hebrew has," and so we did,

00:15:25.000 | and it worked.

00:15:26.000 | - Yeah, and it really, it solidifies the theological implications.

00:15:29.280 | There are even wordplay, David and Jonathan cut a covenant with each other, and the idea

00:15:34.920 | is we are going to cut a covenant so that my offspring will not be cut off, and you

00:15:40.280 | can hear the pairing of that language there.

00:15:43.320 | It would be lost in translation if we didn't do that.

00:15:47.400 | So reviewers had a lot of helpful and insightful comments.

00:15:51.680 | - But it's also the integrity of the translation because that's what it says.

00:15:56.320 | So when I was a student in seminary, Dr. Robert Thomas was the translator in the New Testament.

00:16:07.520 | The question comes, can you share one or two principles of translation that he taught some

00:16:15.560 | of you?

00:16:16.560 | - I think we said Dr. Thomas' middle name was Precision, and I think that's something

00:16:21.880 | that he really impressed upon me as a student was to be very, very precise, to account for

00:16:30.880 | every feature of the Greek text, and he wouldn't allow you to come in below that standard,

00:16:43.800 | and so I think that was very important, and I think he shared some lessons about where

00:16:50.200 | he thought the New American Standard really shined as he translated it, and kind of the

00:16:55.880 | word-for-word correspondence, making sure people had basically the Greek text in their

00:17:01.680 | language, and that kind of philosophy I thought was very, very helpful in how we do our philosophy

00:17:08.200 | here.

00:17:09.200 | - Yeah, he started out his college days at Georgia Tech, and he was an engineering major.

00:17:13.040 | He had that kind of engineering mind, and precision was really important to him.

00:17:18.160 | - Yeah, I think an example of that, I think, coming from Dr. Thomas' investment in us,

00:17:23.480 | but I'm thinking of 1 Peter, one of those words is fear, that many translations stay

00:17:29.260 | away from, because it has certain negative implications, and I was comparing the New

00:17:33.800 | Testament, the NASB rather, with the LSB, and sometimes the word is always phobos, it's

00:17:41.320 | always fear, multiple times, but sometimes it's respect, respectful, reverent, but the

00:17:49.000 | root word is the same, and to soften some of the implications, for example, when the

00:17:53.040 | women are expected to be respectful to their husbands, and so instead of putting fear there,

00:17:58.520 | even though fear really implies directed towards God, and a fear for God, this is how you interact

00:18:04.240 | with your unbelieving husband in 1 Peter 3.

00:18:07.320 | So we went all the way back, instead of the consistency, the precision of the original

00:18:11.080 | text is fear, but I also think beyond just the immediate passage, you go through the

00:18:16.640 | whole book, and it says, okay, if the context is persecution, you need to live in a certain

00:18:22.080 | way that demonstrates your respect for God, and your fear for God, more than fear for

00:18:26.720 | man, who can harm you, and remember who you're ultimately to fear.

00:18:30.680 | Yeah, and I think in doing that, you also expand the meaning of fear.

00:18:38.840 | It can be explained as respect, but it's a component of what it is to fear God.

00:18:47.320 | You love God, you fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell, Luke 12.

00:18:53.200 | That's different than coming to Him for comfort, but all of that is embodied within what the

00:19:01.400 | Bible would say is a correct fear of God, which is the beginning of all wisdom.

00:19:07.280 | So yeah, sticking with the purest translation, as you have done, I think is the key gift

00:19:16.840 | that this translation gives, and that's why I'm kind of pushed on the idea that probably

00:19:22.360 | 90% of this LSB will be like the NAS.

00:19:30.320 | But the 10% is really significant, and it was grappling with that.

00:19:38.320 | Can you give us some other illustrations of where a literal translation helps the expositor,

00:19:44.680 | where without that literal translation, somebody who didn't know the original would not be

00:19:50.520 | able to get to the correct interpretation?

00:19:54.960 | I think this even goes back to what we were just saying about Dr. Thomas, about precision

00:19:59.120 | and about literalness, and it not only relates to things that seem theologically significant,

00:20:05.520 | but to words that seem completely simple.

00:20:08.040 | And you can think about the word temple in the Old Testament, the way that it's translated.

00:20:12.940 | You see it appearing all throughout the Old Testament, and you go to Ezekiel, you see

00:20:18.320 | that God's glory departs from the temple in Ezekiel 10, and you understand what that

00:20:25.560 | means.

00:20:26.560 | But when you read Ezekiel 10 in Hebrew, it says that God's glory departs from the house

00:20:31.360 | of Yahweh.

00:20:32.400 | And so the word temple actually is the house of God from which His glory departs.

00:20:39.760 | And then you think about that word in light of the entire Old Testament, you remember

00:20:44.360 | what was David doing?

00:20:46.120 | He was building a house of God, a house for God, for God to dwell in, because he said,

00:20:51.680 | I already dwell in a house, I've built a house for myself.

00:20:54.720 | But God doesn't have a house to dwell in.

00:20:56.720 | When Solomon builds the temple, he is actually building a house for God.

00:21:01.520 | When the exiles return and they're rebuilding the temple, they're actually rebuilding the

00:21:06.660 | house for God, for Him to dwell in.

00:21:09.120 | And so you see this simple literal translation, which we have in the Legacy Standard Translation,

00:21:16.400 | but you see the word for temple or literally for house in Ezekiel 10, because it represents

00:21:24.160 | God's presence as it did from the very beginning until Ezekiel 10, when God's presence departs.

00:21:30.200 | And if you go to the latter part of Ezekiel where it describes God's, the new temple,

00:21:36.360 | it also is the house of Yahweh in which God will dwell.

00:21:40.320 | Another example I think of is in Isaiah, again, it's the word council and the nation's council

00:21:50.160 | and the king has counsel and there's counselors and all of that is maintained in the Legacy

00:21:57.200 | Standard Bible.

00:21:58.200 | But in other translations, it might be they have advice, they make plans, they come up

00:22:03.000 | with schemes, but we maintain council, council, council all the way through because of the

00:22:08.920 | infamous passage, the famous passage, I should say, which is that our Lord is the wonderful

00:22:14.120 | counselor.

00:22:16.000 | And the reminder is kings will counsel, nations will counsel.

00:22:21.560 | There will be counsel taken amongst many advisors, but there is one wonderful counselor and his

00:22:28.600 | counsel is that which stands and overcomes all other kinds of counsel.

00:22:33.840 | And so it's those kinds of things where, again, an English reader might not be able to make

00:22:39.080 | the connection because it is a little bit hidden with the translation.

00:22:43.360 | We've tried to bring that out.

00:22:44.840 | - Yeah.

00:22:45.840 | I think word plays, especially, are really helpful to try to help the reader see the

00:22:51.920 | authorial intent.

00:22:53.520 | One instance that I can think of is boasting in Romans.

00:22:57.800 | Romans has this idea of boasting oftentimes has a negative connotation, right?

00:23:03.120 | You can't boast in your works, boasting in the law, that faith excludes boasting.

00:23:10.480 | And yet in chapter five, you have this kind of cool connection, I think, a really helpful

00:23:17.160 | connection, and that is oftentimes it's translated rejoice or exult.

00:23:24.120 | And we decided to continue the same terminology and use boasting.

00:23:28.880 | So in Romans five, we boast in the hope, and we boast in our afflictions, and we boast

00:23:34.260 | in what God has done for us.

00:23:36.240 | And so I think that helps the reader just in those five chapters follow this flow of

00:23:41.540 | thought that says, "We don't boast in and of ourselves.

00:23:44.720 | We don't boast in people.

00:23:46.800 | We boast in God and what He has done."

00:23:50.200 | So that allows the term "boast" to be something good if you're boasting for the

00:23:56.960 | right thing.

00:23:57.960 | Yep.

00:23:58.960 | That's right.

00:23:59.960 | But again, all of this comes back to the whole point of doing this, and that is to get back

00:24:06.080 | to the original.

00:24:08.640 | And I think people listening to this conversation have to be saying, "Well, why didn't other

00:24:13.160 | translators do this?"

00:24:14.980 | Because not doing this has obscured these things.

00:24:20.140 | So what you all have done is you've unwrapped some packages that have been wrapped up, and

00:24:28.180 | now they're unwrapped.

00:24:30.820 | Is this the kind of thing that the reader will be able to pick up just in reading the

00:24:37.940 | text?

00:24:38.940 | Yeah, I would say so.

00:24:39.940 | I think it's not just seeing the consistency that we've talked about a few times now.

00:24:44.500 | It'll pick up.

00:24:45.500 | I'm spending some time in 1 Peter these days, and so it's fresh on my mind, but I

00:24:49.220 | think of the word "conduct."

00:24:51.980 | We consistently translate it on the strophe as "conduct."

00:24:56.180 | But in the previous translation you have behavior, you have way of life, and you have conduct

00:25:02.060 | as well.

00:25:03.060 | But when you see conduct in various contexts, so the context of always be walking or live

00:25:09.440 | your life in a way, so make sure your conduct is always out of view for God.

00:25:13.820 | Even in your relationship with employers, or in your relationship in the household,

00:25:17.500 | or in your relationship with unbelievers when you evangelize, 1 Peter 3 for example.

00:25:21.980 | The word "conduct" keeps appearing in multiple contexts in the book to show that there's

00:25:27.140 | a consistent approach to your life, and that it always is to be excellent and God-honoring

00:25:32.620 | and done in the fear of God.

00:25:33.860 | So I think anybody who sits down and reads, I would say, a book in one sitting or multiple

00:25:39.540 | sittings, if they pay attention, they'll see that there's this repeated term, and hopefully

00:25:44.180 | they'll pause and reflect, "Okay, if this is the same idea here, then maybe God expects

00:25:48.460 | a consistent conduct out of me in every single context."

00:25:52.020 | One of the things that you do if you're a writer, at least what I've done through my

00:25:57.860 | whole life of ministry and writing, is keep a thesaurus handy so that I don't use the

00:26:03.740 | same word all the time, but I'm not inspired.

00:26:08.540 | So a translator doesn't need a thesaurus.

00:26:13.020 | You don't want to be looking for another word, that's what you're saying.

00:26:15.740 | It's almost the opposite principle.

00:26:17.060 | Yeah, it's the opposite.

00:26:18.420 | You want to get the thesaurus out of there.

00:26:23.020 | I don't want to overstate this, but this simplifies.

00:26:26.780 | It takes unnecessary complexity out of it, because if words are different, people assume

00:26:33.380 | concepts are different.

00:26:35.500 | If words are the same, then the concept is the same.

00:26:40.260 | So that is a huge, huge gift.

00:26:42.780 | I was going to say, I think part of our exegetical method is to make sure that we pay attention

00:26:48.260 | to repetition.

00:26:49.260 | So if there's repetition of the same word, whether it's in the same verse or in the same

00:26:52.420 | paragraph, for us it's a big deal.

00:26:54.900 | So that's where the preacher comes into the picture and says, "I need to explain to you

00:26:58.820 | why somebody would say, 'Don't fear their fear.'"

00:27:02.940 | Why would you repeat the same word?

00:27:03.940 | It almost doesn't make any sense in the English, but it's because it's a quotation from the

00:27:07.340 | Old Testament, literally.

00:27:08.940 | And now he's trying to say, "Pay attention that the only person you should fear is God,

00:27:12.980 | not any humans."

00:27:13.980 | And so I do think, answering your previous question, Pastor John, that there's an element

00:27:17.900 | where the preacher has to get into the picture and say, "Okay, let me explain why it's the

00:27:22.620 | same term as opposed to a synonym."

00:27:24.620 | Well, yeah, Will, I'm sorry.

00:27:27.420 | John, you asked if—can the English reader of the LSB pick up on the differences in the

00:27:34.820 | Greek?

00:27:35.980 | And I thought right away of James 2:14.

00:27:38.780 | The LSB says, "What use is it, my brothers, if someone says that he has faith, and faith

00:27:43.820 | does not have the article there, but he has no works?"

00:27:48.480 | And then it says, "Can that faith save him?"

00:27:52.500 | That second faith has the article in front of it.

00:27:55.980 | It's referring back to the kind of faith that does not have any works.

00:28:02.020 | So I think we're correct in saying, "Can that faith—can the faith that I've just

00:28:06.380 | spoken of that has no works save him?"

00:28:09.900 | And the rhetorical answer is, "No, that kind of faith can't save him."

00:28:15.900 | Rather than asking the question, "Can faith save him?"

00:28:18.540 | Because that confuses—yeah.

00:28:19.540 | That's right.

00:28:20.540 | That's why there's such a dilemma over that passage and why Luther threw it away.

00:28:25.060 | Because faith does save us, but that kind of faith that I've just said that has not

00:28:29.780 | accompanied my works.

00:28:30.780 | So I think the reader can pick up on that.

00:28:32.340 | You know, my least favorite thing to do as a preacher is to fix the translation.

00:28:38.980 | Do I hear an amen?

00:28:39.980 | Yeah.

00:28:40.980 | Amen.

00:28:41.980 | Absolutely.

00:28:42.980 | Yes.

00:28:43.980 | Because it makes you—the people listening thinking, "Okay, can I trust this?"

00:28:46.100 | Right.

00:28:47.100 | Well, of course.

00:28:48.100 | If you keep correcting it—

00:28:49.100 | And the further the translation gets from the original, the more you're fixing the

00:28:52.500 | translation.

00:28:53.740 | And to fix the translation is to create suspicion and maybe doubt.

00:29:01.220 | So just on a personal note, how has this year-long exercise impacted your personal life, apart

00:29:13.440 | from irritating your kids and messing with your schedule?

00:29:19.060 | What is the personal impact of this intensity toward the Word of God for a year?

00:29:27.940 | I just think it's rewarding, you know, as I think through just even being on the team

00:29:33.420 | with these men has been humbling.

00:29:36.700 | And I think through—like, I feel like I'm always learning with them, a constant student,

00:29:46.100 | I guess, if you will.

00:29:48.940 | And so I just think from a personal standpoint, just that learning experience and growing

00:29:56.340 | and knowing the Word more in depth and being appreciative of the translators before us

00:30:02.940 | and then also even these men here and the insights that they would bring.

00:30:07.140 | And I just—sometimes in our meetings, when we would meet during the COVID shutdown, I

00:30:12.540 | was just like a kid in a candy shop.

00:30:14.660 | Like it was just—it was so much fun to be a part and to glean from that.

00:30:19.220 | And so I think that's one part.

00:30:21.260 | And the other thing, too, as I think through it is that it's just a blessing to be a part

00:30:24.680 | of something that, Lord willing, outlasts all of us, that impacts the church.

00:30:30.340 | But that's, you know, from my personal standpoint.

00:30:32.700 | Yeah, for me, it was reassurance to trust the Word of God.

00:30:37.600 | Because the deeper you go in grammar, the more reaffirmed you are in your faith and

00:30:41.660 | trust that this is God's Word.

00:30:44.720 | It's not just man's.

00:30:46.620 | Yeah, the only way you could come up with the idea that the Bible is open to any interpretation,

00:30:54.740 | as you hear the naive people say, or that the Bible is too complex to understand is

00:31:01.080 | when you don't understand it, when you don't read it.

00:31:03.540 | But the deeper you go, the more cohesive it becomes, right?

00:31:08.220 | It just gets tighter and tighter and tighter, and all the loose ends disappear.

00:31:12.780 | Yeah, walking away from this project, I just think, even what we talked about earlier,

00:31:17.700 | the consistency across the Testaments, what you just said, it gets tighter and tighter.

00:31:23.020 | You walk away thinking this is God's Word, and I believe it, and I trust it, and I hope

00:31:27.620 | to have that same emotional, I would say, response after a year of study for the rest

00:31:33.180 | of my life, that nothing will undermine that trust.

00:31:36.100 | Well, with the exception of Will and myself, you guys are going to have to figure out something

00:31:39.700 | else to do the rest of your life, because you've been to the mountain, right?

00:31:45.460 | You're like Moses, you got it.

00:31:47.580 | You came down the hill, the glory's on your face, so what am I going to do now to get

00:31:52.300 | this people in line?

00:31:54.100 | John, you took the words out of my mouth.

00:31:57.140 | I was just about to say, John and I can say, "Now, what are two old guys going to find

00:32:01.860 | something fresh in this?" and I can say, "Yes."

00:32:06.180 | Just the impact of the word Yahweh on my Bible reading now, there's a good shock value to

00:32:14.780 | that.

00:32:15.780 | No question.

00:32:16.780 | One of the questions that I was thinking about is, "Am I ever going to preach from this?"

00:32:23.180 | And just a while ago, I preached on Psalm 19, and you guys know Psalm 119, verses one

00:32:29.700 | to six.

00:32:30.700 | It's about Elohim, God.

00:32:32.700 | Heaven was declared the glory of God.

00:32:35.140 | Then there's a shift in verses seven and following to Yahweh.

00:32:40.620 | The natural creation of Elohim is spoken about, but the supernatural revelation in God's Word

00:32:47.960 | is Yahweh, and reading that, there's a shock value to it.

00:32:52.820 | I mean, yes, I think I could understand the law of the Lord, all capitals, but it reminds

00:32:58.940 | me that this is God's covenant name, and these are God's covenant scriptures, and I appreciated

00:33:06.420 | that so much.

00:33:07.420 | - And this Yahweh name is his personal intimate name, and he wants you to know him that way.

00:33:17.060 | Not as some category of being that gets a title, but of a person.

00:33:22.820 | - Yeah, I think for myself, and this just echoes what everybody has said, the way I

00:33:28.860 | would describe it is, we as believers, we don't know the depth and the breadth of verbal

00:33:34.860 | plenary inspiration, but when you come out of a project like this, you realize the intentionality

00:33:42.100 | behind everything, things that often we might take for granted or just say, "Oh, it's coincidental."

00:33:48.820 | It's not, because we've had to struggle and wrestle through it, and in the end, we realize,

00:33:53.020 | no, there were deliberate choices, and everything was a deliberate choice, and it all matters,

00:33:59.020 | and there are just great moments of devotion.

00:34:00.780 | I was remembering when I was translating Daniel 11 through 12, and the Hebrew word, which

00:34:10.260 | means to stand, is used throughout that chapter, and it talks about how the king of the north

00:34:15.700 | will stand, and the king of the south will not be able to stand against somebody, and

00:34:20.740 | the word stand, and stand, and stand, and how they cannot stand is said over and over

00:34:25.140 | and over, and then in Daniel 12, in the end, Michael, the angel of God, stands for his

00:34:33.060 | people, because he stands before his God, and now you know who stands in the end.

00:34:40.220 | And I just read that, and seeing the consistency, I just worshipped, because it was so powerful

00:34:47.860 | to understand the thrust of this passage based on the consistency of the word choice.

00:34:53.260 | And I think that's what makes the Legacy Standard readable, is because people can hear the repetition,

00:35:00.260 | and it stitches everything together in a cohesive whole, and that's what people have said makes

00:35:08.020 | the text so much more sensible to them, because they see how it fits together, and they see

00:35:12.620 | the theology.

00:35:13.620 | It's powerful.

00:35:16.060 | - Is there value in reading it out loud?

00:35:19.300 | - Yeah.

00:35:21.380 | - I find, even by myself, that reading the Scripture out loud is a blessing.

00:35:30.560 | It's almost like it's not just a meditation, it's speaking to me, even though it's my own

00:35:38.540 | voice.

00:35:39.540 | - Well, I think you're employing another sense, just seeing the word, but you're hearing it

00:35:44.560 | by your own voice, and perhaps then we're just more aware of how that word is working

00:35:51.620 | together.

00:35:52.620 | - But I think also, when you're just reading it silently, you don't pronounce those words

00:35:59.680 | like stand, stand, stand, stand, you just kind of flow by, but when you say it, and

00:36:05.860 | I've noticed that I've been reading the Legacy Standard Psalms on Sunday morning, and it's

00:36:13.520 | very quiet, and what you said, Will, is true, there's kind of a stun that hits them when

00:36:21.200 | you say Yahweh, they're not used to that, but it gives them a whole new sense of God.

00:36:36.280 | Do you have any particular things that you do differently with poetry or narrative?

00:36:44.600 | - I think people think, oh, narratives are just easy, they're just a story.

00:36:49.080 | That's true, they are a story, they have a plot, they have characters, and it's all historically

00:36:54.480 | true because it's inspired and inerrant, but stories are complicated, and bringing that

00:37:00.560 | out is hard.

00:37:02.760 | So one of the books that I think Joe and I struggled the most was Ruth, not because the

00:37:09.920 | Hebrew's difficult, but to capture everything that's going on in the narrative with the

00:37:15.760 | consistency of it, it can be tricky.

00:37:20.880 | The beginning, it says, "May Yahweh grant you, give you blessing, give you this," and

00:37:28.200 | it's a wish, it's a prayer, and then in the end, "And Yahweh has given these things,"

00:37:34.440 | and so there's this symmetry, what you prayed for, now you receive, and there's even language

00:37:42.480 | of gathering, there's different kinds of language throughout Ruth, and to get all of that symmetrical

00:37:47.520 | so people can see the contrast and the buildup, it's difficult.

00:37:50.760 | Esther was another one.

00:37:51.760 | Esther, okay, Ruth and Esther, they're very hard, 'cause Esther has this great irony that

00:37:58.240 | comes out.

00:37:59.240 | How do you have, it begins with the king of a pagan land, it ends with Mordecai as a ruler.

00:38:06.600 | There's just this huge reversal that takes place, and you see it.

00:38:10.880 | There's an edict that goes out and is reversed, and then in the end, there's an edict that

00:38:15.340 | goes out that is going to be reversed, and there's even this word, I think we translated

00:38:21.160 | "reached out," and so it reached Esther's turn to go before the king, it reached her

00:38:28.360 | time to appear, it reached, it reached, it reached, you have reached royalty for such

00:38:33.520 | a time as this, and then when she appears before the king, she reaches out to touch

00:38:38.920 | the scepter.

00:38:39.920 | So there is this providential unfolding that happens surrounding this word.

00:38:45.120 | But now it sounds easy, but to figure out a word that kind of stitches all those things

00:38:49.120 | together.

00:38:50.120 | - Coming up with "reach out."

00:38:51.120 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was hard.

00:38:54.200 | But that's the richness of a narrative under the inspiration of the Spirit, and there's

00:38:59.920 | a theology in it.

00:39:01.280 | It's a great theology of providence.

00:39:03.720 | - So there's some challenges there.

00:39:05.960 | Well, again, profound gratitude, and the world is going to discover this translation soon,

00:39:17.000 | and to move them as fast as we can, we're going to have Shepherd's Conference in March,

00:39:24.120 | March 9 through 11, 2022, and at that Shepherd's Conference, there will be the premier edition

00:39:31.120 | of the entire Bible given as a gift to every person who's there, and so you will have the

00:39:37.760 | original autographs of the LSB, first edition, if you're a part of the Shepherd's Conference.

00:39:45.140 | So that's when we know it'll be ready to go, and then there'll be different formats, but

00:39:51.720 | we'll make sure that we introduce it and feature it at the Shepherd's Conference, and we'll

00:39:56.000 | also major on emphasizing the glory of the Word of God.

00:40:02.240 | God, Psalm 138, 2, says He's exalted His Word equal to His name, and so that'll be the theme

00:40:09.600 | of Shepherd's Conference.

00:40:10.600 | - Amen.

00:40:11.600 | - Amen.

00:40:12.600 | - Amen.

00:40:12.600 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Legacy Standard Bible (LSB) - Round Table Discussion with John MacArthur - Pt. 3

Chapters