Insight on the News
Bible Preface to Be Reconsidered?
In attempting to explain why Today’s English Version uses the title Lord instead of God’s personal name Jehovah, the Preface to that translation says: “Following an ancient tradition, begun by the first translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Septuagint) . . ., the distinctive Hebrew name for God (usually transliterated Jehovah or Yahweh), is in this translation represented by ‘LORD.’”
However, the publishers of this translation, the American Bible Society, were recently presented with the results of scholastic studies proving that the “first translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Septuagint)” did contain the Tetragrammaton and that the practice of using Kyrios (Lord) instead of God’s personal name started only at the beginning of the second century CE. In its letter of response to one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the American Bible Society’s Research Department admitted: “Recent manuscript discoveries have shown that the Tetragrammaton . . . was used in some Greek manuscripts. . . . In light of your suggestions we are happy to review our statement in the Preface regarding the rendering of Yahweh in the Old Testament. Our present statement does not claim that all ancient manuscripts of the Septuagint use Kyrios. However, some modification may be appropriate in light of recent manuscript discoveries and scholarly studies.”
Persons with high regard for God’s personal name and its proper place in the Bible will be interested to see this modification when it appears in the next edition of Today’s English Version.
Clergy View of Jonah
The book of Jonah “should by no means be regarded as a historical account,” said Timo Veijola, a Finnish doctor of theology. During an interview on a Finnish program, Dr. Veijola asserted that the book of Jonah “is in fact as much historical as ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ or ‘Don Quixote.’ As regards the story, it is actually a satire wherein the grotesque and downright absurd features are dominant.”
How do the opinions of this theologian measure up with those of Jesus Christ, who witnessed Jonah’s experiences during his prehuman existence? Did he regard the account of Jonah as “a satire,” as “downright absurd”? Jesus’ eyewitness testimony is reflected in his prophecy: “Just as Jonah was in the belly of the huge fish three days and three nights, so the Son of man will be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights. Men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and will condemn it; because they repented at what Jonah preached.” (Matthew 12:40, 41) The resurrection of Jesus Christ was to be as real as Jonah’s salvation from the belly of the fish. And the generation that heard Jonah’s preaching must have been as real as the one hearing what Jesus preached.
Like Dr. Veijola, who has shared in translating the new Finnish Bible, many modern religious scholars and clergymen question the factualness of Jonah’s experience. Thus the real absurdity is not Jonah’s account but clergymen who translate and teach the Bible when they do not believe it to be the inspired Word of God.
Lesson in Humility
Just before his retirement as chancellor of the City University of New York, the late Robert J. Kibbee counseled the graduating class at Brooklyn College to be humble and compassionate and to “temper your judgments to the limits of your knowledge.” He added: “What I have learned by living is that there is too much arrogance, simple-mindedness and indifference in the world. The antidotes to these destructive evils are humility, an appreciation for complexity, and compassion.”
Good counsel, indeed, not only for graduating students but for people of all ages! Especially is this so in view of the repeated counsel in God’s Word as to the importance of humility. Christians are also counseled to be “tenderly compassionate, humble in mind.” (1 Peter 3:8) And Proverbs 29:23 states: “The very haughtiness of earthling man will humble him, but he that is humble in spirit will take hold of glory.”