Even today, and especially today, throughout the multiplicity of separated groups within the broad reach of the Christian Church, we have our own ongoing and self-perpetuating derivative of Babel. We have all played a part in the process that has spawned the fragmentation and dilution of our understanding of the Word of God.
Any admission, even secret and unspoken, of anything even vaguely resembling those thoughts can discomfort us in a way that threatens to hurt if we dwell on it. It stirs something very deep within us: something that brings distraction, and an indefinable awareness that, however rarely we may open a Bible, or give any thought to scripture other than hearing the readings at Sunday mass, we really do value whatever is written between the covers of that solid body of a book.
The confusion lies with the many translations available, though many of us will be untroubled by this availability as it does not translate into a consciousness of there being a choice involved. If we have a Bible of our own, we can truthfully declare that we possess a copy of the Bible; and what more is needed? – Whether we open it or not. But if the Bible contains the Word of God, and if, as everyone hears so often, many Christians believe every word written there, then in every verse where translations differ, which particular words are the correct translation? Which words accurately convey the Word of God? Which words are God’s words? What, and where, is God’s Word?
I do not usually give much thought to these questions, as I am aware that time spent with them would be better spent elsewhere: – reading my own Bible perhaps? The one I am used to; the same one that others around me use; the one that I have come to regard quite simply as “The Bible”: The New Jerusalem Bible. Other Christians, from other denominations and churches, will think along the same lines, but their solid book will not contain the same translation as the one I use. Any attempted discussion would probably carry us towards a defence of our own particular volumes, and that, in its turn, will only lead us into the blind alleys of fruitless disagreement and fractious discontent – the thorny ground in which many translations have already been seeded and germinated.
Someone gave me their email address a few days ago; writing it on a card which had a scripture verse printed large on one side of it. I looked at the photograph on the other side but, unlike the words of that verse, it carried no message for me. I read it as though it spoke directly to me as an individual, and found myself wondering if that card just happened to be the first suitable thing that came to hand when looking for something to write on, or whether it had been recognized earlier as having some relevance for me, and therefore carried for the sole purpose of passing it to me. Almost certainly it was the former.
I looked up the verse in my own Bible later, as that is the one I use on these pages; but having done so I had to reject it in favour of the words I had read on the card. I believe they were taken from the New King James Version; they were the ones that spoke to me.
‘He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?’
(Micah 6:8)
For me, on that day, the Word of God was recognized in the above wording: in that translation rather than the one I always use for myself. The last few words are the same in both, for which I was thankful, as they tell me to continue with my solitary walk, my waiting, and my watching with my Lord, without any thought of needing to do anything more specific. But the ‘O man’ was received as being aimed directly at me as I read: a twist that would not have been possible with my own Bible’s version.
Intimations of Babel echoing through the ages came with my finding that in my own Bible, ‘To love mercy’ – which I love – was rendered as ‘to love loyalty’.
Am I alone in having difficulty in accepting that they are one and the same? – that they both convey the same meaning? Which do I take as being the better, and hopefully correct translation? Which is the Word of God?
Objectively, I am in no position to know the answer, and to pretend that I do, based on my habitual preference for the Bible I have used for years, is not helpful. Subjectively, however, I know what I am meant to know; that on that day, with my thoughts and feelings at the time, and with the person and the means chosen to bring those words to me, God’s Word for me came in the particular words printed on that card.
That is the reality of The Word; it is not a lifeless book of words, phrases and sentences; dead verses, chapters, stories and letters. It speaks to us collectively as the Church, but it is forever speaking to us individually and personally: – subjectively.
Reading it is not enough; we must learn to feel it. God has ever longed for us to understand that it is so.
‘The word of God is something alive and active:
it cuts more incisively than any two-edged sword:
it can seek out the place where soul is divided from spirit, or joints from marrow;
it can pass judgement on secret emotions and thoughts.’
(Hebrews 4:12)
