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Transcript 227C — Bible Footnotes + Paraphrased Bibles
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Good evening. You commented on being careful of the footnotes, and so forth, that are at the bottom of the pages in your Bible. And I assume that what you're doing is admonishing us not to consider that as part of the scripture. Is that correct?
HC: Your observation is concerning footnotes that are found on the bottom of the pages of the Bible. Are we simply to understand that they are not part of the scriptures?
Yes. I want to emphasize that, but I'm distressed by Bibles that have these at the bottom of the pages. And there are a number of them that do. The Jerusalem Bible does, the Berkeley Version of the Bible does, the Scofield Bible does. There are a number of them that do. You see, invariably the person who reads the Bible is going to check the footnotes to get the opinion offered there, and then immediately he'll begin to understand what the Bible says in the light of that footnote. And without realizing it, he will put as much weight to that footnote as to the Bible itself. And that cannot be.
Now if he had to go to another book, called a Commentary, and found that information in the Commentary, because it's in that Commentary he knows without question that it's not the Bible, that this is the work of some men. And therefore he's very much more apt to take it with a grain of salt – maybe it's true or maybe it's not true.
But when it's on the page itself, and particularly when you find certain notes like the headings of the Psalms, which are also on the page itself, and which are a part of the Holy Canon, there is great confusion. What is the Bible and what is not the Bible?
CALLER: With respect to, let's say, the Living Bible, which is an acknowledged paraphrase, what opinion do you have?
HC: In my judgment a book like the book that's called the Living Bible is no more the Bible at all than anything else. It has no regard at all for the individual words that were used in the original autographs. It fails to realize altogether that in a particular phrase, that may appear rather awkward in the Bible, God may have some very deep spiritual truth. And when the paraphraser puts that into his own language, if he guesses right he might get at least a little part of the meaning God wanted. But he'll close off some deeper meaning. And it he guesses wrong, he'll turn that phrase into a lie.
And God, you see, could have written the Bible to be very easily read and understood, because God is infinitely wise. But God didn't write it that way. He wrote it so that it would be very difficult to understand. This was God's purpose, that it had to be received by faith, not because we understood it. And so I personally do not want to have anything to do with a paraphrased Bible.
I'm distressed enough to see the small amount of paraphrasing that creeps into some of our translations, which I sometimes even find in the Revised Standard Version. That's bad enough, the way that is.
CALLER: Which do you think are the best of the more recent translations?
HC: One of the best translations that ever came out is the King James translation. Amongst the more modern translations, the best one is the American Standard. It also tried to be as faithful as possible on a word by word basis. The New American Standard and the Revised Standard may still be considered to be good translations, but I don't think they are nearly as superior as the American Standard or the King James.
CALLER: All right, sir. Thank you very much
HC: Thank you for calling. Good night.